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Apple: New Seattle Office, Union Bay Networks Acquisition

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Apple- A New Seattle Office

Apple is moving into competition’s territory by starting an engineering office in Seattle, its first in the Northwest. The new office will be accommodating 2,000 employees to work on Apple’s network infrastructure.

It was reported that the nucleus of the Apple office is a group of employees who had worked at Union Bay Networks, a cloud computing startup near Google’s Seattle campus in Fremont. Union Bay’s information email no longer works, and at least five of its employees have changed their LinkedIn profiles to say they began working at Apple in September. Seven of the startup’s nine employees became Apple employees and are working at an undisclosed office location in the city.

That may be just what Apple needs to accelerate its cloud offerings and narrow the gap with leading cloud services, which were largely built in Seattle.

Most of the Union Bay team came from F5 Networks, including Benn Bollay, a former principal engineer at F5 and chief technology officer at Union Bay, according to his LinkedIn profile. Bollay now describes himself as an Apple manager and on Friday reportedly posted that he was looking to hire “multidisciplinary engineers” to work on “core infrastructure services and environments driving every online customer experience at Apple ranging from iCloud to iTunes”. The post that was later removed said: “Ever wanted to work at Apple, but didn’t want to live in Cupertino?”

One of Union Bay’s backers, Madrona Venture Group, was unusually tight-lipped about its investment and declined to say whether the company was sold to Apple.

Apple confirmed to the Seattle Times that it had indeed opened an engineering office in Seattle, but it has not confirmed a Union Bay Networks acquisition. Moreover the location of Apple’s new Seattle office has not been released yet. However this shouldn’t come as a surprise, because Apple has dozens of offices in secret locations in the Bay Area.

Until recently, Apple remained one of the few top-level tech companies that had yet to establish offices in the northwest corner of the US. Apple now joins Twitter, Facebook and Oracle as examples of companies moving up the US west coast from California. Seattle happens to be home to Microsoft and Amazon, as well.

 

 

 

Entrain App Can Help With Jet Lag

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entrain app jet lagFrom Wikipedia: “Jet lag, medically referred to as desynchronosis, is a physiological condition which results from alterations to the body’s circadian rhythms resulting from rapid long-distance transmeridian (east–west or west–east) travel on high-speed aircraft. It was previouslyclassified as one of the circadian rhythm sleep disorders.”

Fortunately, as it has been the case with a plethora of situations, there is a new app for this condition: Entrain app is designed especially to help people who travel by plane to adjust to new time zones. You might ask how does this work? It’s quite simple. The app lets you know when to manipulate the exposure to light in order to adjust to new time zones faster, by cheating the circadian clock. This is because light is very important and it influences people’s circadian clock and the way this regulates our bodily functions, such as sleeping.

The circadian rhythm is our master biological clock which actually dictates when to go to sleep and when to be more alert. When we travel across time zones our body clock has to reset itself – its strongest regulator is the light exposure.

The Entrain app designs lighting schedules for its users, based on their own itinerary. All of these schedules follow one basic rule: we must be exposed to the brightest light at one point in the day and to darkness at another point.

Depending on where your destination is, the app may suggest that you expose yourself to a bright outdoor light, late at night. Same goes for the darkness scenario: if you need to go outside into bright daylight when your schedule knows that you should do some night time activity like sleeping, you can wear pink tinted glasses.

Entrain app – how does it work?

When launching the Entrain app it will ask you to type in the time you usually wake up and the approximate hour you go to sleep at night. The app then asks you to select a light exposure that is typical for you: low indoor, bright outdoor, low outdoor and bright outdoor. Based on these criteria, the app will model your circadian clock. We can’t wait to test it and tell you if it actually works.

You can download the Entrain app for from the iTunes store.

What are your opinions on this new tech invention? Do you think this could really be the cure for jet lag? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

SkinneePix App Helps Us Look Thinner In Selfies

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skinneepix appIt’s no wonder that companies are trying to take advantage of the latest “selfies” trend. Since Ellen DeGeneres popularized it at the 2014 Oscars it seems that the whole world has gone crazy over it. And since we’re not always happy with the way we look in pictures there is a new gadget that tries to resolve that. It’s called the SkinneePix app and it was designed especially for making our faces look slimmer in selfies. You’re probably aware of the fact that the camera can add an extra few pounds. The SkinneePix app does exactly the opposite: it removes 5, 10 or even 15 pounds with just a few taps on our iPhone.

The app helps us edit our selfies if we’re not satisfied with the way our faces look, in terms of weight. The app was just launched last week and it’s already making a big buzz among the gadget lovers. It also created a lot of controversy among people who suffer from anxieties regarding their body image. We all know we live in a photoshopped era and some believe that apps like SkinneePix are just making things worse.

In their defense the creators of the SkinneePix app say that using this app can help motivate users to lose a few pounds if they’re not happy with their weight by showing them how they would look with a few pounds less.

SkinneePix app – availability and pricing

The app was developed by a company called Pretty Smart Women LLC and it’s available to purchase in the iTunes store for $0,99.

Whether the SkinneePix app is harmful to a lot of teenagers and adults that have body image anxieties, it remains to be seen. What do you think about this new app? Is it to be taken as a fun gadget or something that can make things worse? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

 

iTunes Radio Comes to Life with iOS 7 Release

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Just before Apple released the new iOS 7, it brought out the latest version of iTunes. Apple has also released the much rumored iTunes Radio with the iOS 7 release. With iTunes Radio, Apple ventures its way into streaming music market.

The internet radio has been ruled by Pandora since quite some time but the new iTunes Radio seems to be serious threat. So, users who are going to install the iOS7 today will also get iTunes Radio. However, after installing the iTunes Radio, you won’t be much surprised with it.

itunes_radio

With iTunes Radio, you will be able to make customized radio streams by selecting your favorite artists. You can also make the app play more songs like the one you are currently playing. However, the music streaming service from Apple does not bring anything new to the users as compared to other popular services like Pandora and Spotify.

The only advantage iTunes Radio has got is that users do not need go to the App Store and search for it and download and install it. The service comes preloaded with the new iOS7. You also do not require creating any account to use it. However, you are required to shell out a small fee of 25USd for an year to use the service. If you have not subscribed for iTunes Match, the service will feature ads.

In the previous month, Google had announced its very own music streaming service called Google Play Music All Access. When you compare Apple’s music streaming service with that of Microsoft’s Xbox Music, you can understand how cheap Apple’s service is. Xbox Music users are required to pay 99USD per year. The Xbox Music service app is available for iOS. Pandora costs 36USD per year for a user.

As of now, iTunes Radio does not allow users to store music so that they can listen to it later if they happen to face issue like internet disconnection. Also, the service does not allow users to choose individuals songs to listen. You won’t find specific albums to listen but you will have to rely on Apple’s algorithm to search for the songs you would like to listen.

iTunes Radio is available in the new iTunes version 11.1 for Windows, Mac and iOS7 users. iTunes now comes with a new feature called Genius Shuffle. Based on the selection of the user, this feature allows automatically shuffling and playing of similar songs. Some of the other features of iTunes Radio include track rating and social integration.

iOS 7 which comes with a refreshingly new design comes preloaded on iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. Both the device are going to be released on 20th Sept. Apple has promised that as time passes by the music streaming service will become even more personalized that what is now.

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