KA SCHOOL is the important stuff

Wednesday, 25 May 2016

Interesting and powerful

Just found this website and it's truly fascinating.
I've been searching for ways to make creating questions for the games easier, where I get AI's and some algorithms to create and test sentences.

What I like about this site is that the breakdown happens as you type and it even has a politeness level.


https://foxtype.com/sentence-tree


Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Hopefully in Japan soon too

HTC Vive Is Investing $100 Million in Virtual Reality Startups

futurism.com · April 29, 2016
In Brief
HTC has announced Vive X, an accelerator program designed to help support startups looking to develop virtual reality content for the HTC Vive VR headset.

The Vive X Program

Startups looking to develop virtual reality (VR) technology using the HTC Vivecould be getting support from HTC itself. The company just announced a $100 million accelerator program called Vive X.
The program will launch in San Francisco and Beijing for a start, with HTC looking to expand the program to many more cities.
The Vive X program is designed to offer startups mentorship and help them secure investment opportunities while providing access to VR technology. HTC would even go so far as to give companies temporary office spaces and host demo days for investors. The pilot program is set to begin in Beijing in May of this year.
A woman tries out the HTC Vive, the next big thing in virtual reality technology. Credit: REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
While HTC has been clear that it is not the only company backing this program, the company is declining to list its other investors. HTC says that their goal is to “support a healthy and vibrant ecosystem for the Vive.”
Any companies that get into the Vive X program will receive anywhere between $50,000 and $200,000, while HTC gets what they are calling “a small amount” of equity.

Taking VR Seriously

The Vive X program is a clear sign that HTC is taking VR and its own future in it very seriously. While the Vive VR headset is still considered an early adopter’s project, it is the biggest thing that HTC has done in years.
The company has been turning most of its resources toward VR, and so far it’s doing great. The HTC Vive is currently the only VR headset available that comes with motion trackers, and its partnership with Steam helps establish the company as the big VR gaming platform of the future.
The Vive X program also sees HTC getting into the huge Chinese market, planting the seeds for what could be their biggest VR market.
Interested companies can apply now.

Might be nice to have one or two.

Touchjet Turns Any Surface Into a Supersized Touchscreen

futurism.com · by Jolene Creighton · April 29, 2016
In Brief
Touchjet's Pond uses infrared technology to recognize movement and transform any surface in your home or office into an interactive touchscreen.
The age of the screen is fully upon us. Whether we are working on laptops, watching YouTube videos on our phones, or checking Facebook on our smart-TVs, a vast majority of the time, we aren’t looking at one another, but at our screens.
This, as it turns out, is kind of a problem.
Fortunately, there are a number of individuals who are working to change things. Case in point, Touchjet. They have made a device that lets you turn any flat surface into a touchscreen. And it’s changing the way that we interact with technology and with one another.

Meet Touchjet

Touchjet Pond Projector. Credit: Touchjet
When I met with Helen Thomas, the CEO of Touchjet, at the 2016 Edison Awards, she stated that one of the company’s major goals is to bring people together.
She notes how screens are increasingly overtaking our lives, stating, “more and more people, especially young children, are using touch technology because of smartphones, but as much as smart devices are connecting people around the world, people are isolated because everybody is sucked into a small screen.”
This is where the idea for the Touchjet Pond comes in.
In short, the Pond is like a tiny wireless projector. It’s an interactive Android PC that transforms the surfaces around you into 80” touchscreens, and it does so for a rather affordable $599, which is far less than many other technologies.
As Thomas notes, “large touchscreen technologies are very cost-prohibitive. An 82-inch touchscreen costs some $22,000.” To that end, part of the goal at Touchjet was to make something that the everyday consumer—the everyday family—could afford.
Thomas clarifies, “As a mother, I think parents and grandparents are increasingly frustrated by the fact that they cannot get their family together anymore because everybody is used to doing their own thing…. So that’s really the mission of the company, to create a shared experience. Now, when a family goes on vacation, they can watch a movie together wherever they are—if they are at a beach house, in the wild, or in a camp.”
Thomas also notes that, as opposed to one person sitting and Clashing on their phone alone, this technology also lets individuals play interactive games together: “You can play Fruit Ninja. You can play Angry Birds. You can play multiplayer games. It’s really shared entertainment built into a device that fits in your hand.”
Of course, you can do a lot more than watch moves or play games. You can do presentations, take notes as a team by writing on the projection with a stylus, and basically anything that you can do on a normal computer…except that it is easier to do with others.

Features

Thomas begins outlining the features by starting with the wireless nature of the device: “I can bring my presentation or material from the cloud without connecting to any laptop or tablet. I can share my presentation just using the projector. It’s truly a wireless experience. At the same time, we allow you to participate using your individual devices.”
And she details how it works, stating that infrared light is ultimately the key to the technology: “The stylus is really a digital pen that ejects infrared light. The light gets captured by the infrared camera on the projector. So we built an infrared camera right next to the projector lens so it sees where the stylus is, and that is simulated as a touch signal. So utilizing the pen allows us to basically have the touch screen anywhere.”
She concludes by noting Touchjet’s vision of the future, and what they hope their role will be in this new age: “We think the world is going to be digital. What we’re providing is an enhanced experience for people to do things together. That’s what we do, and we do it in a way that everybody can afford…and so everybody can enjoy the fun.”
Neither Futurism nor the author of this article received monetary compensation (or any other form of compensation) in exchange for writing this piece. This interview has been slightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Thursday, 12 May 2016

As predicted but earlier than expected

Two interesting stories:


A teaching assistant that wasn't human. Working for over a month on forums through natual language without anyone noticing. Of course, powered by Watson.

http://futurism.com/suprise-georgia-tech-teaching-assistant-isnt-human-shes-robot/


And this little nugget :

http://futurism.com/artificially-intelligent-lawyer-ross-hired-first-official-law-firm/



Even though accelerating change is predictable the rate of change in the first third of this year is constantly surprising.

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

NEW SITE!

A new version of KAISKOOL.COM with a more professional design is up and running.
Games keep track of how many times they are played and many have a high scoring system.
I've also added a few non game curios and will be adding more as the weeks go by.

J