The week that was (TWTW) takes a look back at the week’s most prominent tech stories from around the world.
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In the week that was October 14th to October 20th, 2018:
- There’s a new Palm mini smartphone
- Adobe MAX conference
- Amazon announce a new Kindle
- Panasonic make human blinkers
- Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen passes away
Intro
Hello everyone, my name’s Raj Deut and it’s time to take a look back at the tech news in the week that was:
October 14th to October 20th, 2018.
Stories
The Palm brand rose like Lazarus this week, resurrected by the company TLC who’ve slapped it on a new “mini” smartphone.
The phone has zero resemblance to its namesake of yesteryear instead it’s been designed to act as a complimentary phone to your everyday device.
The 3.3.” LCD Palm phone has no SIM card and instead uses an eSIM to split your phone number digitally across multiple devices, similar to the Apple Watch.
Currently available exclusively to Verizon customers in the US there’s no word on it becoming available elsewhere soon.
Adobe held their MAX conference this week showcasing upcoming features for their Creative Cloud suite of applications.
Most of note was the realisation of Photoshop for the iPad, which Adobe eluded to some time ago now. The iOS version of the world’s most popular photo editing tool relies on Adobe’s cloud for storing and syncing files and fully supports the Apple Pencil.
The new version will be available to anyone on an existing Adobe Creative Cloud subscription in the new year.
Amazon announced an update to their popular Kindle Paperwhite that’s immediately available for order.
The new Paperwhite retains the same 6″ 300ppi touchscreen e-ink display as its predecessor but is now completely waterproof.
Thew new version also comes in two different sizes, an 8GB for A$199 and a larger 32GB model for A$249. There’s also a third version which includes Amazon’s worldwide cellular access to the Kindle store, which retails for A$369.
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The crazy award this week goes to Panasonic Japan. Their “Future Life Factory” departments has cooked up the most interesting vapourware I’ve seen in a while unveiling a new product dubbed “Wear Space” at SXSW.
The device which is essentially a pair of human blinkers wraps around the wearers head to cute down your peripheral vision by up to 60% causing you to focus on what’s in front of you.
Incorporated into the blinkers are a set of bluetooth headphones and by all reports are lightweight and not uncomfortable to wear.
Wear Space is being crowd-funded on the Japanese website Green Funding where a single unit will set you back around A$380.
And finally on a sad note, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has passed away at the age of 65. Although he famously left Microsoft in 1983 Allen remained on the board until 2000 and was there from day dot.
A philanthropist and Seattle stalwart Allen will be remembered for his great contribution to the tech world he leaves behind as well as his great charity work and contributions to medical science.
Outro
And that’s it for another week!
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Have a great week and bye for now.
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