Author: Jim O Brien/CEO

CEO and expert in transport and Mobile tech. A fan 20 years, mobile consultant, Nokia Mobile expert, Former Nokia/Microsoft VIP,Multiple forum tech supporter with worldwide top ranking,Working in the background on mobile technology, Weekly radio show, Featured on the RTE consumer show, Cavan TV and on TRT WORLD. Award winning Technology reviewer and blogger. Security and logisitcs Professional.

Tech Review – Edifier WH700NB ANC Headphones

The Edifier WH700NB ANC Headphones are the latest cans on offer from the brand that delivers great audio experiences at affordable price which for me puts it up to other headphones that are overpriced with a clean look and comfortable finish they have another winner here.

The presentation is low key here with simple packaging and no hard case given this time however this is fine, the headset is robust and no creaks on twisting it about and they do fold up for travelling and could be placed in order carry cases if you have any.

They have a ratchet style extension arm each side which is solid and will stay in place, the cups are comfortable and can be used for hours on end and the headband is too with no clamping effect notice during my many hours of testing.

The controls are all on one side here again and easy to use and navigate giving you a clean and easy task to get things done with your controls which we demo in the video review below.

You have small but definitive buttons here even for my big fingers there was no issue doing what I wanted but then you have the Edifier connect app to that will help you also with controls.

We have play/pause skip and reverse tracks volume control and access to your voice assistant and of course call management.

There is a dedicated multifunction key too for ANC control on this key you can turn on/off ANC and switch ambient sound on and off.

The sound is excellent with decent due to being equipped with 40mm dynamic drivers coated in titanium, volume too how I like it, the ANC is also decent too highs lows and mids no issue and listening to all genres and some movies of course delivered an excellent audio experience with the ANC and volume turned up to the max and not hearing a thing going on outside which is how I like it, there is game mode too so if you are a gamer you will enjoy this, gaming is not a huge thing on my list but I do from time to time play so on the phone and it works really well.

Call quality is also rather good here for the few calls taken and a zoom session, and battery life is up there with some of the best on the market too with high end brands. We also have dual connection here so for me working on my laptop an using my phone all day this works really well and will do for anyone in similar positions which there is many of out there today.

There is no lag latency no tinny sound maxed out on volume or on any EQ setting so for me overall another great pair of headphones almost as good as their WH950NB Hi-Res audio headphones.

 

The Edifier connect app

 

Features 

     Enhanced Active Noise Cancellation Experience advanced multi-mode active noise cancellation designed for both outdoor and indoor environments, including commuting, library, airplane, and underground use.

·         Up to 68 Hours Playback Time

·         Crystal-Clear Call Clarity Powered by advanced Al algorithms and a single microphone with DNN noise cancellation, the headphones picks up the human voice clearly even under noisy conditions. Effortlessly engage in hands-free calls or tele-conferences with impeccable clarity.

·         Equipped with 40mm dynamic drivers coated in Titanium, the WH700NB headphones deliver deep, impactful bass and crystal-clear high frequencies.

·         Fully Foldable For a Comfortable Use Designed for your comfort, the W700NB headphones boast skin-friendly ear cushions and a soft-toned headband. The foldable and compact design enhances portability, making them your ideal on-the-go companions.

·         Seamless Dual Device Connectivity The headphone can connect two source devices at the same time. Seamlessly transition between music, online meetings, videos, and calls across two different devices.

·         Customized App Control Unlock a realm of possibilities through the Edifier Connect app. Tailor your listening experience with 4 preset EQ settings, soothing sounds, customizable button configurations, and more. Your audio preferences, your way.

 

Overall here for the money Edifier has once again delivered on a well balanced pair of headphones with a clean look and plenty of features at your disposal including access to their Edifier Connect app which is also clean and simple to use and if you want good sound at a really affordable price here it is on one package that you cant complain about.

 

BUY

Video Review

Remora Unveil Groundbreaking Wireless Audio Solution, Remora PRO

Remora, a leading audio startup at the forefront of eliminating cables from professional and high-end consumer audio applications, is proud to announce the launch of their inaugural product: Remora PRO. This cutting-edge innovation, based on the acclaimed Headphone 3.0 platform from Sonical Inc, introduces a game-changing Ultra-Wideband (UWB) wireless connection, delivering an unparalleled loss-less audio experience with imperceptible latency.


Designed to cater to the millions of professional users and premium audio listeners who refuse to compromise on quality or latency, Remora PRO is set to empower audiophiles, music producers, live performers and DJs with a cable-free audio experience. The product’s groundbreaking design connects seamlessly with all existing audio sources via analogue and USB interfaces, and is adaptable to all headphone models. Moreover, the Remora PRO offers full Bluetooth support, ensuring backward compatibility with billions of existing wireless audio devices.

The Remora PRO fulfills the unmet performance needs of audio professionals and music enthusiasts that Bluetooth has been unable to support.  Mark Wade, Head of Products at Remora explains “By using CosmOS, the operating system for the ear from Sonical, running on their high performance ear computer platform, Remora PRO provides a complete solution for a personalized experience through downloadable plugins.”

Grammy award-winning mix engineer Wez Clarke expressed his enthusiasm, stating, “I love the fact that I can use the professional headphones I already own, which I’ve had for years and understand the sound profile of.” Clarke further emphasized, “This level of audio performance goes beyond regular Bluetooth wireless headphones and is truly a cable replacement.  More than that, it means I don’t have to throw away my headphones just to get access to the latest technology”

The Remora will include THX AAA, the patented THX linear amplifier technology for headphones. THX AAA on the Remora will ensure the ultimate no-compromise headphone audio experience by delivering the world’s highest fidelity audio with infinitesimally low levels of noise, distortion, and power consumption for a quality and fatigue-free listening experience.
Anticipating a high demand for this revolutionary product, Remora PRO are scheduled for shipping by the end of September with a suggested retail pricing of GBP £759 USD $949 EUR €890. Pre-orders are now open on the company’s website: www.remora.pro

Key Features of Remora PRO:

  • Ultra Wide Band (UWB) wireless connection for an uncompressed lossless audio experience with imperceptible latency at 24bit / 96kHz
  • End to End latency of sub 5ms in UWB mode
  • Compatibility with all existing audio sources via analogue and USB interfaces.
  • User configurable through Sonical’s CosmOS with downloadable plugins for a personalised audio experience
  • Full Bluetooth support for backward compatibility with existing wireless audio devices
  • XMOS USB input and an ESS Powered DAC output
  • THX AAA certified headphone amplifier for an unparalleled headphone audio experience

Remora will be at the Sonical booth in Hall 1, C12 at HIGH END Munich 2024.

 

 

Gamma Risk strengthens UK presence with launch of retrofit calculator solution

Gamma Risk, the property risk technology company, today announces that it is strengthening its UK presence with the launch of a retrofit calculator solution, EPCWOW. The company – which has an office in Manchester and has previously rolled out other products in the UK market – is hoping to replicate the success it has had in its home market with BERWOW.

Since launching in 2020, the BERWOW application has enabled over 100,000 people across the country to explore retrofit projects, resulting in millions of euros being invested in residential retrofit. For SSE Airtricity alone, BERWOW has resulted in a 60% increase in retrofit conversion rates. Last year, AXA became the first insurance company offering the BERWOW tool to Irish homeowners, using it to support its new Go Green web platform.

Specifically developed for the UK market, including Northern Ireland, EPCWOW is a new web tool which can be customised for each client and is particularly relevant for customers of banks, insurance companies and energy providers.

The white-label offering helps these organisations to better support their customer bases by enabling homeowners to understand both the financial and energy savings benefits of home upgrades.  Furthermore, it enables these organisations to affect real change in their customers’ properties, reducing their Scope 3 CO² emission levels in the process. This results in the reduction of CO² emissions across properties and therefore improves the green credentials of providers.

To enable EPCWOW to calculate the energy efficiency of specific property types and potential cost savings for homeowners through selected retrofit measures, Gamma Risk has partnered with EPC specialist, Quidos.

Homeowners simply enter their property type details into the online platform, which prompts EPCWOW to suggest retrofit improvements based on the specific house type along with estimated costs, bill savings, grants, and other benefits.  The user can then select and deselect measures until the desired bundle of upgrades is satisfactory and affordable.

The rollout of EPCWOW comes as Gamma rebrands as two entities, Gamma Risk and Gamma Labs. Gamma Risk assesses both physical and transitional risks to property assets for the entire UK and Ireland through the use of cutting-edge technology, operating the largest and most complete property risk database for the region. Gamma Risk will also aim to deliver innovative solutions – including EPCWOW – and data insights which enable businesses to make more sustainable business decisions, adapt operations to reduce CO² emissions and uphold compliance with regulatory requirements.

Commenting on the launch of the new service, Feargal O’Neill, CEO of Gamma Risk, said: “This is the first interactive energy calculation tool of its type in the UK market, regenerating net savings as different measures are selected. By simplifying complexity and delivering high-quality data insights through cutting-edge solutions, we can help businesses across the UK to enhance their customer experience and enable sustainability. Through EPCWOW specifically, this means empowering homeowners and supporting retrofit journeys.

“This solution will not only help to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency for individual properties but for society as a whole – driving towards a greener future and showing the future impact of current actions. It also allows the businesses involved to boost their standing from both a sustainability and profitability perspective.”

Brits spend 182.5 hours per year searching for something to watch, study finds

Being stuck between multiple streaming services and debating what to watch can be time-consuming. A recent study by Currys uncovered how much time people spend choosing a programme or movie to watch and asked 2,018 Brits to understand their challenges and difficulties in selecting what to watch. Out of those asked, 10% admitted they spend up to 2 hours trying to find something to watch, with the average time spent, across all respondents, on this decision dilemma being 30 minutes a day.

For those who find themselves watching TV daily, this 30 minutes per day translates to a staggering 182.5 hours per year dedicated to the daunting task of deciding what to watch—equivalent to just over 7 days annually lost to “choice paralysis”.

The survey also revealed that nearly 60% admit that after endless scrolling, they give up on finding something to watch altogether.

Endless scrolling for the perfect show can lead to overwhelming anxiety, making the search for something enjoyable more stressful than fun.

Dr. George Fieldman, a Consultant Psychologist, offers insights into the reasons behind people’s anxiety when it comes to deciding what to watch on TV, he said: “Fear and danger are poorly correlated which means that people fear making the wrong choice. Even when it comes to picking something to watch on TV still comes with a fair amount of factors to consider which can lead you to spiral into anxiety. What you watch is a significant investment of time and people don’t want to make the wrong choice. It has to be worthwhile to justify spending that time which could be spent elsewhere.

“Those that suffer from anxiety are more likely to experience choice paralysis. This usually happens because making the right choice is important for them and they overestimate the impact of making the wrong decision.”

Brits only give shows 34 minutes to impress them

The study also revealed that UK viewers take a surprisingly short time to figure out if they want to continue watching a show or not, with the average decision time being 34 minutes to assess whether the unfolding plot or character dynamics align with expectations and preferences.

When it comes to movies, Brits take even less time to decide as the average time is just 30 minutes before turning it off.

The storyline was found to be the most important factor for 47% of Brits when choosing a TV program. Delving deeper into their considerations, the cast and actors follow closely at 41% and genre at 40% (with drama voted as the UK’s go-to genre). Combining this with the influence of reviews standing at 31%, it highlights a varied approach to viewers’ decision-making process.

Top pet peeves for Brits when trying to watch something 

Considering the hassle of trying to decide what to watch, the last thing Brits want is to be disturbed while viewing. The survey found that the top bug bear of Brits while watching a film or TV is someone talking, this being a top annoying habit for 45% of respondents.

Next is spoiling key moments for 32%, in joint third, people checking their phones (30%) and constantly asking about the plot (30%) and lastly falling asleep during the show or movie, which is a pet peeve for 27%.

Action % who find this annoying
Talking 45%
Spoiling key moments 32%
People checking phones 30%
Constantly asking about the plot 30%
Falling asleep 27%

You can find the full study here: https://www.currys.co.uk/techtalk/tv-advice/no-you-choose.html

Microsoft agrees 30MW renewable energy deal with SSE Renewables and FuturEnergy Ireland

Microsoft announced today that it has entered into a long-term Corporate Power Purchase Agreement (CPPA) with SSE Renewables and FuturEnergy Ireland that will add 30MW of wind energy capacity to Ireland’s electricity grid by way of the newly commissioned Lenalea Wind Farm near Letterkenny, County Donegal.

The renewable energy Corporate PPA secures a sustainable route to market for one of Ireland’s newest onshore wind farms, which was jointly developed by SSE Renewables and FuturEnergy Ireland. SSE Renewables is part of FTSE-listed SSE plc, while FuturEnergy Ireland is a Coillte-ESB joint venture.

Under the terms of the Corporate PPA, the renewable electricity produced by the seven Vestas V117-4.3MW onshore wind turbines at Lenalea Wind Farm will contribute towards Microsoft’s goal of powering its data centre operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.

Today’s announcement is additional to 900MW of renewable energy CPPAs that Microsoft announced in November 2022. Of that capacity, more than 216MW of onshore wind and solar energy projects have already reached commercial operation, delivering clean energy to Ireland’s grid, with a further 250MW due to reach commercial operation this year.

This agreement is the first long-term Corporate PPA to be jointly entered into by co-development partners SSE Renewables and FuturEnergy Ireland.  CPPAs, such as this one, provide important routes to market for renewable energy developments, and play a valuable role in enabling the development and accelerated delivery of renewable energy generation to underpin Ireland’s decarbonisation targets.

The deal with Microsoft will also provide for a Community Benefit Fund of approximately €150,000 per year, equivalent to €2 for every megawatt hour generated by the project. The allocation of funds by way of annual grants will be overseen by a locally appointed Community Committee, which has already been established. A funding strategy will be developed in conjunction with the Community Committee to inform and shape the structure of the fund.

Today’s announcement follows the completion of construction at Lenalea in December 2023. The 30.1MW onshore wind farm is now fully operational, generating renewable electricity for export to the national grid, and contributing towards Ireland’s 2030 targets for onshore wind.

Eoin Doherty, Vice President, EMEA Regional Leader, Microsoft Cloud Operations + Innovation, said: “At Microsoft, we are committed to playing our part in supporting the decarbonisation of energy grids in markets in which we operate data centres. With the Lenalea Wind Farm achieving commercial operations, we are taking another important step on our journey to achieve 100% renewable energy supply and support wider efforts to add clean energy capacity to Ireland’s energy grid.”

Stuart Donnelly, Director of Corporate Power Purchase Agreements, SSE Renewables, said: “Securing our first long-term Corporate PPA for new onshore wind in Ireland is a satisfying milestone for SSE Renewables and our development partner FuturEnergy Ireland. We are pleased to support Microsoft’s climate and renewable energy goals, while delivering a meaningful contribution to Ireland’s energy targets and security of supply. Working together we will also deliver a positive socio-economic impact through a substantial, locally managed community benefit fund. This agreement is an excellent example of sectors collaborating in Ireland to meet infrastructure and sustainability objectives, supporting the accelerated delivery of renewable energy, which will be vital in the years ahead to enable renewable energy investments and the delivery of 2030 and longer-term net zero targets.”

Mary Lynch, Portfolio Director at FuturEnergy Ireland, said: “Lenalea represents the first project delivered by FuturEnergy Ireland and the very first step towards achieving our 1GW 2030 target. It is also the first of seven projects which we expect to deliver in partnership with SSE Renewables.

“Corporate PPAs are an important part of the Irish electricity market and we are very happy to support Microsoft’s commitment to carbon-free energy targets. Such collaboration and partnerships are critical if Ireland is to meet its climate action goals. We are also looking forward to maximising the local impact of the Community Benefit Fund, which is now live.”

Delivery of the Lenalea Wind Farm represented a total capital investment of more than €40 million by SSE Renewables and FuturEnergy Ireland, providing a significant economic boost locally. Construction and delivery of the project helped to support County Donegal’s economy and employment, with over 150,000 working hours recorded by regional contractors employing a significant local workforce. The positive economic contribution from the project to the region is expected to continue during the wind farm’s operation through a combination of local operational spend as well as annual contributions in commercial rates payments to the local authority.

How taking time out for breakfast can help Childline change lives

This May, Childline is asking workplaces across Ireland to come together and host a breakfast to support Ireland’s only 24-hour listening service for children and teenagers nationwide.

Pictured are Jessica O’Leary, Head of Fundraising, Childline by ISPCC, with Reggie Power (5) celebrating the launch of Rise and Shine for Childline, the charity’s national breakfast campaign designed to get people talking while raising funds for its essential services

Since February alone, 145 children have reached out to Childline by ISPCC’s 24/7 listening service to talk about self-harm, and 65 of those children are repeat contacts who have then gone on to reach out to us for help with suicide ideation.  Please join us by hosting your own breakfast so we can continue to be there for every child that needs us.

Rise and Shine for Childline is kindly supported by McCambridge bread.

Companies that sign up will receive a fresh delivery of McCambridge bread. To sign up visit:  https://childlinebreakfast.com/

AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Q

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the general availability of Amazon Q, the most capable generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. Amazon Q not only generates highly accurate code, it also tests, debugs, and has multi-step planning and reasoning capabilities that can transform (e.g., perform java version upgrades) and implement new code generated from developer requests. Amazon Q also makes it easier for employees to get answers to questions across business data such as company policies, product information, business results, code base, employees, and many other topics by connecting to enterprise data repositories to summarize the data logically, analyze trends, and engage in dialog about the data. Today, AWS is also introducing Amazon Q Apps, a new and powerful capability that lets employees build generative AI apps from their company’s data. Employees simply describe the type of app they want, in natural language, and Q Apps will quickly generate an app that accomplishes their desired task, helping them streamline and automate their daily work with ease and efficiency. To learn more about Amazon Q, visit aws.amazon.com/q.

“Amazon Q is the most capable generative AI-powered assistant available today with industry-leading accuracy, advanced agents capabilities, and best-in-class security that helps developers become more productive and helps business users to accelerate decision making,” said Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Data at AWS. “Since we announced the service at re:Invent, we have been amazed at the productivity gains developers and business users have seen. Early indications signal Amazon Q could help our customers’ employees become more than 80% more productive at their jobs; and with the new features we’re planning on introducing in the future, we think this will only continue to grow.”

Amazon Q Developer

Today, developers tell us that only 30% (or less) of their time is spent on coding, while the rest is spent performing tedious and repetitive tasks. This could be researching best practices from various parts of the web or learning how things work through documentation, forums, and conversations with colleagues. Developers also have to manage infrastructure and resources, troubleshoot and resolve errors, and understand operating costs. When they switch projects, they have to spend time learning the existing code base to understand its programming logic. Finally, there is all the work of testing and refactoring code, upgrading applications, debugging and optimization, and ensuring security by having to carry out vulnerability scanning and applying appropriate security fixes in a timely fashion. Companies want to empower their developers to spend less time on this coding muck and more time on creating unique experiences for their end users, while being able to deploy faster.

Q assists developers and IT professionals (IT pros) with all of their tasks—from coding, testing, and upgrading applications, to troubleshooting, performing security scanning and fixes, and optimizing AWS resources. Amazon Q delivers advanced and tailored generative AI capabilities, including:

  • Most accurate coding recommendations: Amazon Q helps developers build faster and more securely by generating code suggestions and recommendations in near real time. Customers such as Blackberry, BT Group, and Toyota are already using Q to increase developer productivity and speed up innovation in their organizations. Amazon Q Developer has the highest reported code acceptance rates in the industry, for assistants that perform multi-line code suggestions, with BT Group recently sharing that they accepted 37% of Q’s code suggestions and National Australia Bank reporting 50% acceptance rates. Q also has a powerful customization capability that securely leverages a customer’s internal code base to provide more relevant and useful code recommendations. With this capability, Q is an expert on your code and provides recommendations that are more relevant to save even more time. Q keeps customizations completely private, and the underlying FM does not use them for training, protecting customers’ valuable intellectual property.
  • Amazon Q Developer Agents: Q has a unique capability, called agents, which can autonomously perform a range of tasks–everything from implementing features, documenting, and refactoring code, to performing software upgrades. Developers can simply ask Amazon Q to implement an application feature (such as asking it to create an “add to favorites” feature in a social sharing app), and the agent will analyze their existing application code and generate a step-by-step implementation plan. Developers can collaborate with the agent to review and iterate on the plan before the agent implements it, connecting multiple steps together and applying updates across source files, code blocks, and test suites. Carrying out these tasks, Q has achieved the highest scores of any software development assistant available today, scoring 13.4% on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard and 20.5% on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard (Lite), a dataset that benchmarks coding capabilities.

To save customers months, even years, of time upgrading applications, Q can also automate and manage the entire upgrade process–with Java conversions available today and .Net conversions coming soon to help people move from Windows to Linux. In their IDE, developers simply ask Amazon Q to “transform” their project and the agent analyzes application source code, generates new code in the target language or version, executes tests, and completes all code changes. A five-person team at Amazon used Q to upgrade more than 1,000 production applications from Java 8 to Java 17 in just two days (the average time per application was less than 10 minutes), saving months of time, and improving application performance–previously, many of these applications would each take a couple of days to upgrade.

  • Best-in-class security vulnerability scanning and remediation: Q scans code for hard-to-detect vulnerabilities, such as exposed credentials and log injection. With a single click, Q automatically suggests remediations tailored to the application code, allowing developers to quickly accept fixes with confidence. Q’s security scanning capabilities outperform leading publicly benchmarkable tools on detection across most of the popular programming languages, helping to significantly improve the security and code quality of a developer’s application.
  • Q is an expert on AWS and optimizing your AWS environment: Amazon Q Developer is an expert on AWS and is in the console to help IT pros optimize their cloud environments, as well as diagnose and resolve errors and networking issues, select instances, optimize structured query language (SQL) queries, extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines, and provide guidance on architectural best practices. To further help customers optimize their cloud environments, today Amazon Q Developer includes a new feature that helps customers list their AWS account resources, configurations, and analyze billing information and trends, making it easier for them to manage their accounts. For example, IT pros can simply ask, “What instances are currently running in US East 1?” or “What’s my S3 bucket encryption?” or “What were my EC2 costs by region last month?” and Amazon Q Developer will list the resources and details in a summarized answer with links to learn more.

 

Amazon Q’s conversational interface is available wherever it is needed—in the AWS Console, in Slack, or in IDEs, including Visual Studio Code and JetBrains–to give developers the ability to use the conversational experience of Q within their favorite software development solutions. To extend the Q experience to more places developers work, AWS is announcing new partner extensions from Datadog and Wiz, and an integration with GitLab Duo that will offer joint customers a unified interface—whether working in AWS or GitLab.  By integrating Amazon Q’s generative AI capabilities with solutions that developers know, use, and trust, developers can update and create software faster.

Amazon Q Business

Organizations possess vast amounts of data spread across multiple documents, systems, and applications. Employees across every organization and department spend hours every week searching internal sources for information, piecing together analyses, writing reports, building presentations, gathering insights from dashboards, and adapting content for different audiences. Generative AI can help solve these challenges. However, the offerings available today are not connected to business data or internal resources and are not built from the ground up with security in mind. Because of these barriers, many organizations cannot safely tap into the full potential of generative AI.

Q Business is a generative AI–powered assistant that can answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and securely complete tasks based on data and information in your enterprise systems. It empowers employees to be more creative, data-driven, efficient, prepared, and productive:

  • Q unites more data sources than any other generative AI assistant available today: Amazon Q Business easily and securely connects to 40+ commonly used business tools, such as wikis, intranets, Atlassian, Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)–more than any other generative AI assistant available today. Simply point Q at your enterprise data repositories, and it will search all of your data, summarize logically, analyze trends, and engage in dialog with end users about the data. This helps business users to access all of their data, no matter where it resides in their organization.
  • Built from the ground up with security and privacy in mind: Amazon Q Business seamlessly integrates with a customer’s existing identities, roles, and access permissions to personalize the interactions for each individual user, while maintaining the highest levels of security. It generates accurate responses based on enterprise information, and customers can restrict sensitive topics, block keywords, and filter out inappropriate content. Q also does not use customer content to train the underlying models for anybody else. Amazon Q Business outperforms all published results for other assistants on correctness, truthfulness, and helpfulness for general Q&A (using the MultiHop-RAG dataset), as well as industries like finance (using a FiQA dataset sample) and technology (using a LoTTE dataset sample).
  • Inventive generative BI allows analysts to build detailed dashboards in minutes and business users to get insights fast: Amazon Q brings its advanced generative AI technology to Amazon QuickSight, AWS’s unified Business Intelligence (BI) service built for the cloud. With Amazon Q in QuickSight, customers get a Generative BI assistant that allows business analysts to use natural language to build BI dashboards in minutes and easily create visualizations and complex calculations. It is also the only BI product where business users can get AI-driven executive summaries of dashboards, ask questions of data beyond what is presented in the dashboards, and create detailed and customizable data stories highlighting key insights, trends, and drivers. Business users can ask to “build a story about how the business has changed over the last month for a business review with leadership;” and in seconds, Amazon Q creates a narrative with specific insights and supporting visuals, including specific ideas of how to improve the business. Users can choose to layout the content produced by Q in an easy to share document or presentation where they can customize text, images, and themes, and use Amazon Q to rewrite and improve the text.
  • First-of-its-kind capability that helps every employee go from conversation to generative AI-powered app in seconds: Today, AWS is announcing the new Amazon Q Apps capability (in preview). Amazon Q Apps allows employees to easily and quickly create generative AI-powered apps based on their company data, without requiring any prior coding experience. With Q Apps, employees simply describe the app they want, in natural language, or they can take an existing conversation where Amazon Q Business helped them solve a problem, and with one click, Q will instantly generate an app that accomplishes their desired task that can be easily shared across their organization.

For example, creating employee onboarding plans for new recruits can be a long and laborious process. They require many hours of searching through different data stores and documents to find the appropriate content for the new employee; and often, the content is out of date or not specific enough to their role. With Q, an HR professional could simply describe they want an app that will create an onboarding plan for a new employee that utilizes the company’s existing best practices, and has an input field for employee ID that personalizes the onboarding plan to their role by drawing from internal data sources specific to their job family.  In a matter of seconds, Amazon Q Apps will build an app that can automatically generate a personalized onboarding plan tailored to the employee, their role, and the department using the latest best practices. The HR professional can then share the app with hiring managers across the company to instantly build personalized onboarding plans for their own teams.  Now, with Amazon Q Apps, business users can easily, quickly, and securely build an app based on enterprise information to improve their work productivity.

What Amazon Q customers and partners are saying

GoDaddy helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. “Amazon Q in QuickSight allows us to ask our data contextual business questions without having to constantly rely on ad-hoc dashboards. For example, now we can much more easily discover and drill into anomalies in business performance across the company,” said Ed Sarausad, senior director, Data & Analytics, at GoDaddy. “This shift not only streamlines our processes, but also elevates our analytical capabilities. What excites us most is the opportunity to unlock insights with profound, previously unasked questions. That allows us to respond more swiftly and with greater depth, enhancing our data learning journey.”

National Australia Bank is one of the largest financial institutions in Australia. “At NAB, teams across the bank are excited about how generative AI can transform our work, and we’ve found a great solution in Amazon Q Developer, a powerful generative AI-powered tool for our engineers and developers,” said Andrew Brydon, executive chief engineer at National Australia Bank. “The tool has seamlessly integrated advanced generative algorithms and tools into our development process, delivering unparalleled benefits like completing tasks faster, increasing productivity, and minimizing repetitive actions. So far, our developers have accepted 50% of the code suggestions made by Amazon Q Developer, and that number continues to increase as we scale. We look forward to seeing how Amazon Q Developer will continue to empower and inspire our engineers to upskill their technical expertise, delivering better service for customers.”

Netsmart is a leading technology provider for community-based care. “The demand for community-based care has grown exponentially, and Amazon Q Developer is helping us meet that demand by fueling our efficiency and innovation,” said Paul Snider, vice president of engineering at Netsmart. “Amazon Q Developer can transform the way our engineering team approaches research, design, and coding. Since using Amazon Q Developer, our team has seen a strong code suggestion acceptance rate of 35%. This has allowed our engineers to efficiently generate high-quality code and documentation, implement new features, which can accelerate development cycles, and significantly reduce manual effort. We are excited about the impact of Amazon Q Developer on our development processes.”

Novacomp provides a diverse range of IT products and services while specializing in Quality Assurance Automation, Software Testing services and Nearshore Outsourcing. “Modernizing applications at Novacomp has historically been a time-consuming task that is often de-prioritized against other development initiatives,” said Gerardo Arroyo, CTO of Novacomp. “Our team turned to Amazon Q Code Transformation to help upgrade a project running in Java 8 to Java 17 with over 10,000 lines of code. This is a task that would typically take an expert over two weeks to manually complete, but Amazon Q seamlessly modernized our project in a matter of minutes. Since adopting Amazon Q across our organization, we have realized a 60% decrease in average in our tech debt.”

Persistent Systems is a multi-national technology services company that builds software that drives digital transformation. “Amazon Q Apps has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach generative AI,” said Praveen Bhadada, head of generative AI at Persistent Systems. “We can now empower everyone on the team to quickly build and integrate applications with a no-code approach, using enterprise data sources while carefully aligning with existing identities, roles, and authorization levels.”

Smartsheet is an enterprise software as a service offering for collaboration and work management. “Amazon Q Business is streamlining knowledge management and accelerating employee productivity at Smartsheet,” said Bani Bedi, senior vice president, corporate development and strategy at Smartsheet. “Previously, it was too difficult for our 3,300 employees to find the information they needed across public help documents, training courses, and hundreds of all-employee Slack help channels. We have consolidated our organizational knowledge into a single AI engine to give our workforce immediate answers, significantly boosting employee productivity. Now, employees can simply tag @AskMe in any Slack channel, ask a question, and Amazon Q will instantly give them an answer. Our CEO uses Amazon Q Business to obtain answers and conduct research, getting the information that he needs without interrupting an employee’s workflow. We accomplished all of this in a couple of weeks and without writing a single line of code, using our existing identity system. Additionally, our engineering teams use Amazon Q to summarize incident statuses, identify action items, access API documentation, and troubleshoot technical issues more efficiently, so they can focus on delivering exceptional products to our customers.”

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization. “Together with AWS, we’re leveraging generative AI to help our people work more efficiently and deliver superior digital experiences to our clients,” said Laura Money, EVP & chief information and technology innovation officer at Sun Life. “Adopting Amazon Q Apps will enable our teams to build secure and seamless solutions that create value and differentiation across our business. For example, empowering our teams with access to Amazon Q in just a few clicks will streamline the creation and sharing of applications tailored to their respective needs.”

Dell Technologies helps ignite Irish start-up growth with inaugural Powering AI event

Dell Technologies hosted the inaugural Powering AI event in Dublin this week bringing together leaders from across Ireland’s start-up and scale-up community to explore the key ingredients needed to power their AI journey and unlock new growth opportunities.

Held in partnership with Scale Ireland over 50 founders, industry leaders and AI experts came together at the Digital Hub in Dublin to discuss the opportunities presented by Generative AI (GenAI) and the obstacles they need to overcome to embrace this technology in their organisation.

The first Powering AI event featured a number of speakers including Catherine Doyle, Managing Director, Dell Technologies in Ireland; Brian Caufield, Chair, Scale Ireland, Dr. Patricia Scanlon, Ireland’s AI Ambassador & Chair of AI Advisory Council; Dr. Paul Byrnes, CEO, Mavarick; Andreea Wade, VP & Product Strategy at iCIMS, and Ivor Buckley, Field CTO at Dell Technologies Ireland.

This comes as Dell Technologies unveiled its Innovation Catalysts Study which revealed that 75% of organisations in Ireland have begun implementing Generative AI. 47% cite GenAI’s transformative potential to enhance the customer experience while 42% believe it has significant potential to unlock productivity. However, 95% are experiencing data management challenges as they look to adopt GenAI.

Highlighting the significance of the inaugural gathering Catherine Doyle, Managing Director at Dell Technologies in Ireland said: “As the clear leader in computing and storage, Dell is helping to power AI for businesses and organisations across Ireland. That’s why we’re delighted to host the inaugural Powering AI event which is focused on how GenAI can enable Ireland’s vibrant start-up community to grow and scale-up their success.

 “Due to their agility and the fact many were born in the Cloud, start-ups and scale-ups are uniquely positioned to adopt GenAI at speed. By bringing together industry leaders, AI experts and founders, we can highlight the ingredients that will power the AI journey of our thriving start-up community and ensure in time that they can compete internationally.”

Tech Review – Shure AONIC 50 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones Gen 2

The Shure AONIC 50 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones Gen 2 have been on my bonce the last few weeks and is their latest cans on offer and as promised we will doing more headphone reviews over earbuds but keeping the pace going on both.

Presentation to begin with is excellent here as seen below in the unboxing a review and you get nicely laid out instructions in the box and lots of detail on the box which is not cheaply made, you also get a hard case for travelling and storing away when not in use and you should use this by the way to get more longevity out of them

The build quality is top notch here with plus ear cups and headband which makes for comfortable listening for hours which is nice, the top of the headband has a leather finish giving them a premium look.

The controls are all on one side and you have all the requirements needed here by the usual combination of taps which are as follows.

Check battery level – Double Press power button

Play and Pause – Press center button

Skip track – Double press centre

Reverse Track –  Triple press center ( I feel these would have been better placed on the volume keys with a long press)

Volume – Volume up/down key press once.

Voice Assistant – Again sees you pressing the center button.  So effectively the center button is an MFB ( Multifunctional Button)

The sound

There is three modes to start with and you should check these out.

  • Music Mode: enables users to experience listening through high-end speakers and is the most subtle, maintaining the original source material.

  • Cinema Mode: emulates the low frequency excitement that users experience in a theatre that employs subwoofers for an immersive, larger-than-life sound through clarity, presence, and natural sounding dialogue.

  • Podcast Mode: brings the voice of a user’s favourite podcast host closer to their ears.

Unlike some earbuds or headphones there is a notable difference here between these and this again is subjective to one’s audio taste but for me these work well and are excellent and give you all angles to get a feel for how audio works if you have not tried such before. Also in the app as you can see in the screenshots you can pick between the EQ settings, again a must have and you must try this it is again yes you guessed, excellent.

 

ShurePlus PLAY App 

 

Additional Features and Benefits:

  • Enhanced Environment Mode: Immerse yourself in the outside world with a simple switch. The adjustable slider on the ShurePlus™ PLAY app lets you refine the ambience settings to your liking.

  • Extended Battery Life: Holds up to 45 hours of battery life with quick charging capabilities, more than doubling runtime from the earlier generation. The quick charge feature provides up to five hours of use with only 15 minutes of charge.

  • Customizable EQ: Choose from a variety of presets or create your own personalized sound profile using the ShurePlus™ PLAY app. Save your settings directly to the headphones for a seamless and personalized audio experience across different apps and devices.

  • Crystal Clear Communication: Experience superior call quality with beamforming microphone technology and proprietary automatic gain control (AGC) settings. Leveraging six microphones, the precision-engineered system adjusts automatically to minimize surrounding noises, providing unmatched clarity for video calls and phone conversations.

  • Cutting-Edge Bluetooth® 5 Wireless Technology: Seamlessly connect to your phone, tablet, or laptop with the class one transmitter, offering enhanced stability and a remarkable range of up to 100 meters.

  • Premium Headphone Amplifier: Enjoy support for Snapdragon Sound™ with Qualcomm® aptX™ Adaptive technology for high-res music streaming, and AAC, SBC, and LDAC codecs.

Overall these are the best yet I have tried from Shure when it comes to headphones and their app is also excellent giving them more justification for their high price they are comfortable to wear for long periods of time and when it comes to the audio experience you have more than enough at your fingertips to get the desired audio experience you need and it is a joy to wear them and block out the outside world.

BUY

Video review