Light Start – GoPro goes social, a manned drone, bodies better than Bluetooth and Instagram Direct grows up

Wearables could one day send data through our bodies instead of via BluetoothBluetooth may be the de facto way of getting wearables to communicate with other devices like our smartphones, but a team at the University of San Diego in California is testing a system that uses the human body’s natural magnetic field to transfer data instead. It works on the same principles as an MRI, but involves far less energy. What does it mean? It could mean we get wearables that can go far longer between charges. Or we could accidentally create a real-life Magneto. Either way, it’s going to be fun to watch this play out.

Source: Engadget

GoPro adds the option to make social-sized clipsYou’ve just finished the run of your life down the ski slope and while you’re on the lift headed back to the top of the hill you might as well share the best 15 seconds of your run to Instagram, right? After all, if you did something awesome and didn’t Instagram it did it really happen? Exactly. Only you can’t share your amazingness, because that involves transferring the whole video to your smartphone and then trimming the key 15 seconds. Well, not anymore. [Cue drumroll] GoPro’s added a new feature called Video Trim + Share to all of its Wi-Fi-enabled cameras and its Android and iOS apps that lets you pick the key moment of optimal like-bait and post it to the socials quicker than you can say “gnarly”.

Source: GoPro

Forget a camera, this drone can carry a person

The tech world is enjoying something of a love affair with drones at the moment, from DJI’s latest offerings to Amazon’s plans to deliver parcels with them. But wouldn’t it be amazing if a drone could do more than let you take bird’s-eye-view pictures of you mucking about in your garden like, say, taking you to the local supermarket and back? (Yes, yes it would). Some chap in the UK agrees, and has built a drone with “54 counter-rotation propellers” that managed to get him (or an extremely trusting friend) off the ground, if not very far off it. We’ll take two, please.

Source: TechCrunch

Instagram’s messaging feature Direct is growing up

Facebook-owned image sharing service Instagram launched its direct-messaging functionality in 2013. But by the sound of it, many people don’t know it exists at all. Or, if they do, they don’t use it. That’s probably because it’s been pretty limited until now, making it easier to either mention someone in a comment if you want them to see a particular post, or send the image to a group of friends using an instant messaging service like Facebook’s Messenger or its other messaging service, WhatsApp. Images you post to Instagram will now have a share arrow next to the like and comment icons so you can send them using Direct, and the feature now supports group chats of up to 15 users. Because everyone could use a few more cat pictures in their digital life.

Source: Instagram