Tag: canada mobile gadgets

Mobile devices used for 49 percent of online time, comScore

| October 14, 2014

Nearly half of all of the traffic on the internet from Canada stems from a smartphone, tablet, or similar gadget.

According to the research firm, comScore, the use of mobile devices by Canadians is making its way beyond an important milestone, as the number of hours spent online over these gadgets closes in on the fifty percent mark.

Of all of the time that Canadians spend online, 49 percent of it comes from smartphones and tablets.

Canadians are currently spending an average of 33 total hours online when taking the use of all of their connected gadgets into account. Forty nine percent of that is coming from mobile devices such as their cell phones, tablets, wearable technology gadgets, the iPad Touch, and other connected electronics. If things continue in the same direction, it won’t be long at all before people in Canada are using their smartphones and tablets for more of their online time than their laptops and desktop computers.

comScore explained that messaging apps, web searches and social networks are driving the use of mobile devices upward.

mobile devices - CanadaThe firm explained that these are the purposes for which mobile gadgets are being most used while connected to the internet. For some of those users, smartphones and tablets represent the only way in which they are using the internet, and they have given up on their desktop and tablet computers, altogether.

There are currently 1.3 people in the country that will use a mobile device exclusively for accessing the internet, and who will not even touch a traditional computer, said senior account manager at comScore, Paul Rich. Rich explained that “Four per cent (of Canadian Internet users) look at online content in a month with (just) their mobile devices — their smartphone or tablet —and they don’t access anything on the desktop. That’s an emerging shift we’re seeing.”

On the other hand, while the use of mobile devices the only way that 4 percent of Canadians were accessing the internet, there was still a tremendously larger 47 percent who used their computers exclusively for their online activities, added Rich. Among those who used only smartphones or tablets, women made up 55 percent.

Gadgets startup creates futuristic mobile devices

| August 15, 2013

This new company is coming up with products that you’d expect James Bond to carry.

A startup company called Thalmic Labs, from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, has started taking pre-orders for some of its gadgets which have been described as futuristic and have been compared to the types of devices that 007 would be seen using in his movies.

Among the products receiving the most attention is the Myo armband that it has had available for pre-order for a few months.

This particular gadget from Thalmic Labs picks up the forearm muscles’ electrical activities – particularly the movements for the control of the wrist and fingers as they gesture and perform various tasks – in order to translate those signals into commands. Stephen Lake, the co-founder and CEO of Thalmic, said that the advantage of the Myo armband over motion capture devices – such as Kinect from Microsoft or the Leap Motion Controller – is that users are not required to wave their hands around in front of a camera.

This gadget requires a smaller amount of workspace and less dramatic movements.

Lake explained that when cameras are used by gadgets, they need a larger workspace in which to function, and they are able to detect only exaggerated movements, or on the other hand, require a very tiny workspace with the fine type of movements that exist only in areas such as surgery. But the Myo is capable of detecting large arm motions as well as more subtle gestures of the fingers, moreover the user is not required to remain in one place and face a single direction.

He stated that what the company is most interested in achieving in terms of the gadgets that it produces, “is the next evolution of smart devices–in getting away from sitting in front of a computer.”

At the moment, the applications for the Myo have to do with using the armband as a replacement for other types of controllers, such as to control a tool or weapon in a video game, to turn up the volume on a computer, or to flick the wrist in order to move to the next slide in a presentation. Lake also added that “We’ve also played with things like the Sphero robotic ball and a remote-controlled helicopter drone.”