Marketed as the world’s first portable webcam, the Opal Tadpole is tiny and surprisingly affordable. Despite its small size, the camera features a directional mic that blocks surrounding noise, and offers an unexpectedly high-quality 4K camera. It can be clipped on top of any laptop and taken anywhere.

This device will seem familiar to any keen-eyed readers. Currently, it’s hard to tell if this is revolutionary or just a trend that won’t last the year. The Humane AI Pin is a device to replace your smartphone, offering an Al assistant, camera and a display that lights up on your hand. The aim is to decrease dependence on a smartphone, so you can make calls, text, check maps and do all your phone tasks in an easier way.

A smart pair of glasses with one single purpose: to record your thoughts. Designed for deaf people or those who are hard of hearing, they use a small microphone to pick up voices. Whether it’s from a conversation, a video or a museum tour, the glasses will automatically record voices and display subtitles in front of your eyes. It all happens in real time and, according to the company, is highly accurate.

CMF is all about making popular tech more affordable. The Watch Pro costs an impressively low £69. Most competitors at that price are somewhat limited, but CMF has managed to create something that looks like the Apple Watch, while offering a lot of the same features. Sure, it isn’t quite as powerful, or feature-packed, but for this price it’s impressive what they’ve managed to cram into it.

Unless you bring your own thermos, paper cups are the real option for on-the-go coffee. But as we all know, producing these simple items cuts down forests of trees and contributes to mountains of waste. In fact, Starbucks alone uses 4 billion paper cups a year globally and most of these plastic-lined cups are never recycled.

But a project from Reduce. Reuse. Grow. is handling the coffee industry’s paper cup problem by giving these single-use coffee holders a further purpose: reforestation.

A company in California has developed the world’s first plantable coffee cup, which has seeds in the paper-based material. That means after you’re done with the cup, you can tear it, leave it in water for a few minutes, bury it and let nature take over.

To prevent the spread of invasive plants, the bottom of the cup details the seed variety and also includes instructions on how to plant it either in the northern or central coast of California. For those who don’t want to get their hands dirty, the cup can be put into a Reduce. Reuse. Grow bin where it will eventually be taken to a reforestation location. The cup can biodegrade (生物降解) within 180 days and offer nutrition to plants.

The company is trying to put the cup into commercial production and persuade coffee shops to buy the cups.

Independent living at home is the ideal for every aging person. But a fall or other health-threatening incidents can change everything rapidly.

The wearable “panic buttons” introduced in the late 1980s were a great advance. But they only work if people actually wear them and can reach the button in an emergency. Today there are passive wearables that automatically detect falls, and camera-based systems to monitor elder safety.

Coming from a 40-year career in the semiconductor and wireless communication field, Rafi Zack decided to find a better alternative. “People aren’t devoted to wearing small devices 24/7, and camera-based systems are an invasion（侵犯）of privacy,” he points out, “The most challenging aspect is a fall. How fast we can detect a fall matters because the medical situation worsens quickly. Sometimes people stay on the floor for a long time. We have to find out how to solve that problem.”

Zack is a co-founder, CEO and vice president of R&D at EchoCare Technologies which has developed ECHO (Elderly Care Home Observer), a cloud-connected monitor based on radar technology and machine learning.

Because radar sees through walls, one ECHO unit fixed on the ceiling or wall can monitor one person (or two persons, in a future version) in a standard-sized apartment in a senior living facility. The device detects falls, breathing difficulties, drowning in a bathtub and other dangerous events. It gives out warnings to potential health worsening conditions by continuously monitoring and analyzing the person’s location, posture（姿势）, motion and breath. EchoCare tested the device in the United States, Japan, Australia and Israel. ECHO was certified（认证）in 2019 in Japan with the most aging population in the world.

“Bathrooms were the main testing area where about 17,000 deadly accidents happen annually.” said SMK Director and Executive Vice President Tetsuo Hara. “Bathroom makers, home security service providers and nursing homes are highly interested in EchoCare’s solution.” Zack noted, “As more and more elder people live alone as a result of social distancing, there is an increased need to monitor them without the burden of wearables or privacy-invading cameras.”