Smartwatch maker Polar has launched the latest edition in its GPS smartwatch lineup—the Polar Ignite.While it doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary when it comes to smartwatches, the Ignite touts a fresh sleep analysis feature that I’ve not seen integrated into rival devices on such a level, and that’s overnight recovery insights.Personal trainer and co-founder of No1Fitness in Lond...

Facebook owes its resilience to savvy acquisitions and tolerant regulators.In 2003 mark zuckerberg built Facemash.com, a website ranking the attractiveness of his Harvard classmates. The college made him delete it. But the 19-year-old soon launched another site, on which users could create profiles and communicate. TheFacebook.com spread rapidly to other campuses. By 2006, when The Economist fi...

Google’s sister company verily has partnered with US consumer goods giant procter & gamble (P&G) to sell ‘smart diapers‘ that monitor baby’s sleeping patterns and track their pee.The new product, called lumi, will be sold by pampers and comprises an all-in-one connected system that includes two activity sensors for diapers, a logitech camera that works as a wi-fi monitor and an app...

Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset could include a number of sensors to track the eyes, gestures and even facial expressions of its users. The company applied for a patent to track these kinds of inputs, and combine them with information gathered from outward-facing sensors for mixed reality experiences.The patent application in question, simply titled “Display System Having Sensors,” wa...

The race is on for the car of the future, equipped with self-driving capabilities, on-board personalised information and entertainment and an ever-smaller carbon footprint. Today, however, comes news of a startup that’s improving car performance from the outside.UVeye, a Tel Aviv-based company that has built a set of drive-through external scanners that can take images of the exterior of a veh...

With a decade-long bull market and an ultra low interest rate environment globally, it’s not surprising to see capital flock to housing assets.For many investors, real estate is considered as good of a place as any to park money—but what happens when things get a little too frothy, and the fundamentals begin to slip away?In recent years, experts have been closely watching several indicators t...

Most coverage of the rollout of meatless fast-food burgers like Burger King’s Impossible Whopper and White Castle’s Impossible Slider pegs them as a long-awaited drive-thru option for vegans. But new data indicates it’s not vegans who are buying them, but meat eaters.A new report from market research firm NPD Group finds 95 percent of plant-based burgers buyers have also purchased a beef bur...

There are clear signs that the popularity of Korean beauty (K-beauty) brands is quickly fading after being trendy for almost a decade in China. - In “Chinese Whispers,” we share the biggest news stories about the luxury industry in China that have yet to make it into the English language. In this week’s edition, we discuss:- The decline of Korean beauty wave in China and the rise of Chinese...

It’s encouraging that the overall M&A market in 2018 was largely stable and that the year ended with reasonably robust activity. But over the year, both deal volume and value slipped from their heights of the first quarter. And even though the first quarter of 2019 held steady, the global outlook for 2019 and beyond also looks mixed—volatility is on the rise, and economic and political un...