Play with your pet even remotely with Acer’s new pet cam

Acer subsidiary Pawbo outs a new pet cam at IFA that lets you play with your furry little creatures even when you’re not at home. The Pawbo+ has a laser pointer to let you play with your cat and it dispenses treats as well. The footage it takes can be live streamed to you and seven other users. It will eventually be paired with accessories, such as a whack-a-mole game called Pawbo Punch and Pawbo Catch. If you want to catch your pets being silly, the videos taken can be stored on either Dropbox or Google Drive and photos can be saved locally on your phones. The camera will retail for US$169 (approx. $220 CAD) starting November.

Source: The Verge

TomTom expands fitness wearable line with three new models

TomTom adds to its fitness wearables portfolio in North America with the announcement of a line of new and distinctive devices:

• TomTom Touch: World's first fitness tracker to measure body composition and all day heart rate from the wrist
• TomTom Spark 3: A fitness watch that leverages TomTom’s well reputed heritage in GPS and map technology, TomTom Spark 3 comes equipped with Route Exploration so that fitness enthusiasts can freely explore new places
• TomTom Adventurer: A rugged watch with all of the features of Spark 3 and a built-in barometer made for hikers, trail runners and skiers

“TomTom once again stands out in the wearables market by offering unique feature-rich products at competitive prices, leveraging our heritage in GPS and map technology,” said Jocelyn Vigreux, President of TomTom, Inc. “Our goal is to change people’s lives by empowering movement with intuitive and easy to use devices. The line of products that launched today is well-designed, versatile and smart, packed with disruptive innovation that will inspire fitness enthusiasts.”

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Capital One Canada helps out local charities with 40-hour hackathon

Capital One Canada, together with Hackworks, are hosting a 40-hour Gift the Code Hackathon this October 21 to 23 to help address digital issues faced by six Toronto-based charities. Over 100 participants—a mix of volunteers and Capital One associates—will be brainstorming, building, and submitting technology solutions for the charities’ digital challenges. The event, which is hosted by Marc Saltzman, will see the participants broken into teams of four to six experts at BrainStation’s Toronto campus to help solve these problems.

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Visit Orlando app takes advantage of AR and Watson’s tech

Central Florida’s official tourism organization outs beta version of its Visit Orlando app. This destination mobile app makes use of WayBlazer’s IBM Watson-enabled technology and augmented reality (AR) technology to help provide personalized recommendations and understand conversational language of the users. The Watson-enabled machine learning capabilities allows the app to learn from your previous interactions with it and help refine recommendations for you over time. It culls information from different data sources such as media stories, expert blogs, trusted third-party travel resources, and Visit Orlando’s own database.

The AR technology enables features like “Around Me,” which overlays information about relevant dining and entertainment experiences in your area; and Magical Orb game that has you hunting and capturing Magical Orbs in different destinations, which you can collect to enter a sweepstakes for prizes. The apps gives you instant access to an Orlando Destination Specialist with just one tap. The app is available for download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.