Weekly Tech News, Week of April 10-14

Here we will gather all of the nifty stuff that’s new in the world of technology.

Three words: Giant. Robot. Duel. Holy cow, it’s actually happening.  We have been hearing rumors of a giant robot duel since 2015, but it appears that this time it’s for real, y’all. According to  The Verge, American company MegaBots challenged their Japanese counterparts, Suidobashi, to a fight by mecha a couple of years ago. I guess that the Japanese finally accepted, because  MegaBots today announced an August 2017 date for the event. The venue for the event won’t be announced until later, though.

The good folks at MegaBots have been creating one awesome bot. They have an entire YouTube channel dedicated to the construction of their bot. If you just can’t wait to see the awesomeness, MegaBots will offer a sneak peek of the Mk.III bot in the San Francisco Bay Area next month.

Stay tuned for further details of the ultimate mecha battle!

I guess everyone hates parking. Let’s face it, if you live in any city with a population over 50,000, you are going to have to deal with trying to find a parking space. Even worse, you might have to deal with *shudder* parallel parking. A Dallas-based company feels your pain. ParkHub, founded by a former events manager, is trying to make parking as easy as possible. The company first started at the 2011 Super Bowl. After making parking painless at that event, ParkHub has expanded their products to MLB stadiums. You can learn more about how ParkHub is trying to make event parking suck less here.

There is now a tracker for everything. Forget Fitbit. The new trackers look to improve all aspects of your life. There is one that detects radiation levels–a great gift for the nuclear engineer on the go.There is one that claims to improve your mood.Then there is a supercool “Swiss Army” smartwatch by Sandfox that can do everything but your laundry. It has natural voice recognition, two cameras (front and back), navigation buttons, and even a sim slot. It’s exorbitant at $650 for the 8GB version, but if you need to get a last-minute gift for the billionaire in your life it should serve well.

Lastly, there is another one that tells you when you are too drunk to operate a motor vehicle safely. While I support anything that keeps idiot drivers off the road, I have to wonder how accurate it is. And honestly, if you need some fancy device to tell you whether you are drunk or not, you definitely shouldn’t be driving.

Honorable mention for the week: YouTube TV. They are trying to capture the vast, growing market of cord-cutters. At the moment, it is only available in a few U.S. cities, but if you want to check it out they are offering a free trial.

And speaking of new, Commercient is pleased to announce our newest arrival–SYNC for Infor Syteline and Salesforce. You can check it out on the Salesforce App Exchange.