Peter's Interest

They are the bane of impatient motorists and are responsible for thousands of road rage incidents across the globe. Now the humble traffic light has been honoured with a  Google Doodle  to celebrate its 100th Anniversary on Wednesday. The first ever traffic lights were unveiled in London in the late 19th century, and placed outside the Houses of Parliament. Non-electric and gas-operated, police officers had to work the lights by hand in a bid to control vehicles crossing on nearby Bridge Street, Great George Street and Parliament Street. The project was short-lived after an explosion in 1869 when a leak in gas lines passing under the device exploded, and seriously injured the police officer operating the lights. More than thirty years later an American enjoyed greater success with some eletronic lights that focused on a similar - and now internationally recognisable - system of red and green lights. Lester Wire, a former detective in Salt Lake City, ...

Google Translate is a pretty useful app when you're on the road. The tech giant has been working to help travellers explore the world without the barriers of language, and its latest update does just that. Google has added 20 new languages to its instant visual translation feature, the company  announced  on its blog. This means that in addition to the seven languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – that were made available in the last update, you can now use the app to translate signs between English and Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Slovak, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. You will have to download a language pack for each. The app also now extends the visual translation feature, called Word Lens, to Hindi and Thai. Currently, you can only visually translate signs one-way, from English to Hindi or Thai. For the oth...

BENGALURU: Taxi app Ola is preparing to offer shuttle bus services for urban commuters by aggregating tourist and chartered buses on its platform, according to two people privy to the company's plans to emerge as a complete urban transport solutions provider. Ola — one of India's 'unicorn' startups estimated to be worth about Rs 15,700 crore, or $2.5 billion — expects to launch the bus service in the next two months with the Ola Bus feature integrated into the company's app, allowing riders to choose between cabs, autos and buses. "Much like how disruption happened in the taxi space, Ola will not own any buses but use available tourist and chartered buses to aggregate supply," said a senior company executive. "Passengers will be able to make bookings by entering the desired destination and time preference; the app will then indicate the closest bus with available seating." The Bengaluru company has tasked Sundeep Sahni, a vice-president for ne...

Travel companies such as Thomas Cook, Qantas Airways, and Destination BC in Canada are also creating their own promotional VR videos.  Jennifer Parker   Holy cow.  My feet are planted firmly beneath me, but somehow I'm stepping into and through a map on the wall, when a blast of warm air ruffles my blouse. Now I'm on a sandy beach in Hawaii. A spray of clean ocean air mists my face. But before I can reach out and touch the fanned leaves of a sun-kissed palm tree, the ground beneath my feet shakes, and I've been sucked through a wormhole. Seconds later, I find myself in the swank lobby bar of a Marriott hotel. This is advertising on steroids.  Marriott calls this a "4D" experience, and its one of the latest innovations in virtual reality. Delivered via an Oculus Rift headset inside a special Teleporter station, this experience is part of the hotel chain's "Travel Brilliantly" campaign. You feel as if you're in a movie playing 360-degrees around...