Size matters. And the Apple Watch Series 4 comes bigger in both models, a growth from 38-millimetre and 42-millimeters screen to the latest at 40-mm and 44-mm.

The bigger screens come with a redesign that features a stunning display with thinner borders and curved corners to help users to easily – and clearly – see all contents on the screen.

The larger screen allows users to see and do many more things with the watch.

The screen is now 30-per-cent larger while the watch is thinner and lighter, resulting in a better feel for the wearer.

Tuning options for the new screen allows users to personalise the display with their own designs and placement of their favourite, most important, or most frequently used applications on the display screen.

There are now up to eight configurations, each of which can be changed at any time and as often as the user wishes.

The display-screen configuration helps users check their information without the need to  tap  the screen.

Users can put up to four ID contacts on-screen and view financial information and activities in graph format, a new addition in Apple Watch Series 4.

It also supports many third party applications, including DeckCom app, which monitors and displays glucose levels, a great boon to diabetics.

The LifeSum app can let users instantly know many calories they are consuming and burning, great for those concerned about their weight.

Other new features include Watch Face, which comes with beautiful animation.

For photographic capability, users can take a live three-second picture as their home-screen photo.

And with the bigger screen, map-lovers can more easily search for routes and details on the watch.

Another useful feature for users is the Electrocardiogram heart rate sensor, with quicker and more frequent measurements from seven to 10 minutes.

And another new feature is a user alert that notifies when the wearer’s heart rate is too slow.

It defaults to an average 120-beat high rate and 40-beat low rate, but can be adjusted by the user to fit their personal heart rate.

A new Fall Detection feature is a game-changer that marries the Apple Watch Series 4 to Siri 4.

This feature helps users connect with emergency service and their loved ones if they have a fall-related accident.

Siri will ask whether the wearer is okay or not. Siri is satisfied if the answer is “okay”.

But if there is no response within 60 seconds (perhaps due to losing consciousness), or they respond that they are not okay, Siri will call out to the emergency unit number as well as contact the wearer’s personal emergency number (set in advance) and send an exact location to them.

For users over the age 65, the Fall Detection is active by default, but those younger will need to turn on the feature by going to Watch App, then to Emergency SOS and set the emergency contact to help with detection.

“That’s not the plan,” Zuckerberg told CNN Business when asked if he would consider stepping down as chairman.

He also defended Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who has drawn criticism over her handling of the social media giant’s recent crises.

“Sheryl is a really important part of this company and is leading a lot of the efforts for a lot of the biggest issues we have,” said Zuckerberg.

“She’s been an important partner to me for 10 years. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done together and I hope that we work together for decades more to come.”

Facebook has stumbled from one mess to another this year as it grappled with continuing fallout from Russia’s use of the platform to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which user data was harnessed in a bid to help candidate Donald Trump, and a huge security breach involving millions of accounts.

Most recently, an investigative piece published last week by The New York Times said Facebook misled the public about what it knew about Russia’s election meddling and used a PR firm to spread negative stories about other Silicon Valley companies and thus deflect anger away from itself.

“It is not clear to me at all that the report is right,” Zuckerberg said of the Times article.

“A lot of the things that were in that report, we talked to the reporters ahead of time and told them that from everything that we’d seen, that wasn’t true and they chose to print it anyway.”

Zuckerberg also defended his company against the broader wave of flak it has taken this year.

“A lot of the criticism around the biggest issues has been fair, but I do think that if we are going to be real, there is this bigger picture as well, which is that we have a different world view than some of the folks who are covering us,” he said.

“There are big issues, and I’m not trying to say that there aren’t… But I do think that sometimes, you can get the flavor from some of the coverage that that’s all there is, and I don’t think that that’s right either.”

After rising to become one of the easiest and most popular payment methods among Korean users through its flagship messenger service, Kakao Pay announced Monday it is expanding its business with an easy-to-use investment facilitator platform.

The mobile finance unit of South Korean mobile messaging giant Kakao announced the launch of a new service, Kakao Investment, which lets users invest in various projects through the KakaoTalk messenger without the need to install a separate app. The service will become available from Tuesday.

“If Kakao Pay focused on how to make spending easier for users until now, we are now looking to help users earn profit (through investments) in the most convenient way,” Kakao Pay CEO Ryu Young-joon said during a press conference in Seoul.

The biggest advantage of Kakao Investment is convenience, as users do not have to install a new app or sign up and link new bank accounts. The low minimum investment requirement also opens up investment opportunities to a wider public, Ryu said.

Users can open the KakaoTalk app, access Kakao Pay and click on the “investment” option to browse through a list of potential financial products to invest in, ranging from crowdfunding projects, securities and funds. The expected amount of return, excluding tax, is shown on a simple interface.

Kakao Pay said it has selectively picked out “mid-risk, mid-return” financial products expected to guarantee a return of around 10 percent. The minimum amount required for an investment is 10,000 won ($9).

While noting that all investment carries some level of risk and uncertainty, Kakao said the investment options it has prepared have been carefully selected and packaged to ensure a profit of at least 6 percent and as high as 15 percent.

In addition to the investment service, Kakao also plans to launch a cross-border mobile payment service by the first quarter of next year in partnership with China’s Alipay, operated by Alibaba’s financial arm Ant Financial Services.

Ant Financial is currently Kakao Pay’s second-largest shareholder, having invested $200 million in the Kakao subsidiary in February this year.

Since the partnership began, Kakao has been working to make Kakao Pay’s QR code and barcode payment service compatible with Alipay, and therefore available at Alipay-supported stores and businesses abroad.

The firm will first roll out a cross-border payment service in Japan — where mobile pay services are being strengthened ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics — and later move into China and Southeast Asia.

Steps to make Alipay available at Kakao Pay-supported stores in Korea are also underway, to raise convenience for foreign tourists, the company said.

“Kakao Pay users will no longer have to exchange currencies when visiting countries abroad, while foreigners visiting Korea will be able to pay for their goods more conveniently,” Ryu said.

According to the Kakao Pay CEO, the launch of its two new services are part of its broader vision to emerge as a “techfin” company, in which information technology leads innovations in finance, rather than the other way around.

“If Kakao Pay helped build a ‘wallet-less’ finance paradigm until now, we now want to focus on making finance more ‘effortless’ for local users,” he said.

Kakao Pay was rolled out in September 2014 as the first simplified mobile payment service that bypassed Korea’s cumbersome authentication procedures required for financial transactions, such as “public certificates.”

It has since introduced a slew of new areas such as biometrics authentication, membership barcode accumulation, and utility bill payment services. This year, it entered the offline payment realm by introducing a QR code and bar code payment option.

As of end-October, Kakao Pay’s monthly transactions handled surpassed 2.3 trillion won. The firm’s fleet of mobile finance services currently has around 25 million registered users, including 13 million active users per month.

As mobile payments experience rapid growth in the region, Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings is considering launching WeChat Pay, its digital payments platform service, in Thailand, says Royal Chen, vice president of financial technology for Tencent.

“We are considering which approach – doing the payment service by ourselves or working with local partners – is more suitable to launch WeChat Pay Thailand,” Chen told a group interview for Thai media on Wednesday in Hangzhou.

Chen is responsible for the product planning and operation in both the China and international payment services for the company. Tencent is thinking about partnering with certain Thai business sectors, particularly banks, to provide the service because payment needs to be localised in different countries.

“A local partner is important,” Chen stressed several times during the interview.

Thailand is a key market for the company, given the huge number of users of WeChat, Tencent’s popular social network, Chen said.

However, the firm has no timeline to launch WeChat Pay Thailand, he added.

WeChat Pay service is currently provided in Thailand for Chinese tourists, to ensure they have a good experience while away from home.

China remains the largest contributor in terms of both arrivals and tourism revenue to Thailand and, on average, they spend more than other tourists – above Bt5,000 per person a day, according to data from the tourism authority.

Chinese accounted for nearly one-third of last year’s record 35 million arrivals but the number began to fall in August this year, plunging 11.77 per cent from a year earlier due to a boat accident that killed over 40 Chinese in Phuket in early July.

WeChat Pay has about 800 million active monthly users, most of them Chinese nationals, according to Tencent. The payment feature integrated into the WeChat app is now supported by merchants in over 40 countries, including Thailand.

In August this year, WeChat launched payment features in Malaysia called WeChat Pay My, its first market in Asia beyond mainland China and Hong Kong.

The WeChat Malaysia’s payment feature will enable local businesses to engage with their customers under the same platform, and make or transfer payments in Malaysian ringgit.

“The outcome is beyond our expectations, and we are expecting the digital wallet in Malaysia will grow faster than in others and even faster than in Hong Kong,” Chen said.

In 2016, Tencent launched WeChat Pay HK in Hong Kong with transaction growth exceeding ten-fold last year. Although it’s difficult for Chen to forecast the trend of mobile payments for the next three years because the system has been in use for just four years in China, his guess it that developments could speed up and cover more business sectors.

Convenience highlighted

Payment technology developments aim for convenience and ease of use, and for users to feel like they are at home even while travelling, with no need to worry about currency exchange rates, Chen said.

“In the future, mobile payment systems will be part of your daily life. It’s just like you drive a car to your home [today] and have a very good experience or enjoy making a payment from your home. You can order coffee and the shop will send a messenger to facilitate your payment,” Chen said.

Also, payment systems in the future will be cashless. Consumers may not need to scan the QR code when doing transactions, because everything will be on cloud services and big data, he said.

From the consumer’s point of view, they do not need to bother with which method of payment they are using, because all their data is already in the cloud and it’s safe, he said.

“We can use voice recognition or facial recognition in order to identify users when they want to make a payment transaction,” he added.

During his speech titled “Exploration of Cross-border Mobile Payment, its Development and Challenges Ahead” at the Money 20/20 conference held in Hangzhou on Wednesday, Chen said mobile payments are developing rapidly in China with support from the regulatory authorities. The growth will continue and penetrate different segments of society, he said.

Tencent will continue to actively explore reaching out to overseas markets via three channels – Chinese outbound tourists, WeChat Pay and the Open Payment Platform.

He cited the success story of WeChat Red Packet since its 2014 launch. The Red Packet continues to break its own records from time to time. That mobile application was developed by Tencent based on the Chinese tradition of hongbao in which money is given to family and friends as a gift.

WeChat Red Packet transactions in one week during this year’s Chinese New Year were 768 million yuan (Bt3.64 billion), Chen said.

In October, Tencent launched the first of its kind cross-border mobile payment service, allowing WeChat Pay HK users to conduct yuan-denominated transactions with Hong Kong dollars in mainland China.

Chen noted the WeChat mini-programmes, tax refunds dubbed the “We Tax Refund”, that enable Chinese tourists to quickly apply for tax refunds from within the app while abroad or once they have returned home.

The service is now open in 81 airports and 19 countries, but not yet in Thailand, though Chen said his firm has a plan to bring it here.

“We are willing to cooperate with partners to facilitate the development of mobile payments globally,” he said.

“ML helps to forecast when the machine will be non-functional. If customers know in advance they will be able to handle the problem or avoid it and that will lead to efficient production and reduced damage,” said Ron Beck, energy industry marketing director of AspenTech, in Bangkok this past week.

Beck gave an example of AspenTech’s “predictive and prescriptive” maintenance solution, which has been developed as tools to alert customers that something is going to happen and why it will happen.

He explained that predictive analytics is able to tell businesses that a machine was going to break down in 30 days because that is what the data showed, he said.

Prescriptive analytics will also provide the data that shows something is leaking, for example, so that the operators can reduce the temperature and prevent it from happening, he added.

At AspenTech, they create “low-touch machine learning” in which they build a complete application that is very easy to use and can be easily taught to a company so that they can do it themselves, Beck said.

The advanced machine learning software, packaged as prescriptive maintenance solutions, has demonstrated incredible success in the early identification of equipment failures, and in learning behavioural patterns from streams of digital data produced by sensors on the relevant equipment, according to Beck.

A couple of Thai companies are now implementing the prescriptive maintenance.

By adopting that solution, they can avoid unplanned breakdowns of equipment while increasing productivity and reducing the cost of maintenance, said the director, whose company has been in Thailand for over 20 years.

In the energy sector, digital transformation is a key to making the most effective use of resources as firms or governments utilise digital technology to figure out the best solution, he said.

Digital transformation will also make things easier for people to use, he added.

Like other sectors, energy companies are increasingly embracing digital transformation. But companies need a clear road map to be successful, one that aligns with business objectives and is pegged to measurable outcomes, he said.

Companies need to maximise value from current technology and understand the level of maturity in their organisations, he added.

It is also necessary to define business drivers, challenges and key success metrics. Workforce skills development should be encouraged as well, Beck said.

Transformation the key

Finally, it is the smart companies with the ability to successfully transform digitally and pursue operational excellence via asset optimisation that will be market leaders, he concluded.

For Thailand, Beck said, digitalisation is a key integration driver for the process industry. It can drive leadership in the new generation of integrated plants, empower teams across remote locations, and boost cooperation between industry players in the region, Beck explained.

In his view, Thailand and Malaysia are ahead of other neighbouring countries in terms of the speed of take-up of digital transformation.

According to Beck, AspenTech started getting requests to help Thai companies with digital strategies about a year-and-a-half ago – about the same time they started doing the same with Malaysia.

“I think companies in Thailand generally are open to it. They assigned a group of people to work on it and are spending a lot of money and that’s the commitment,” Beck said.

“For us, Thailand 4.0 is about digital transformation.

“Thailand is trying to push that concept so the energy companies are trying to respond by asking how they can pursue digital transformation in a practical way.”

However, as Thailand embraces the 4.0 era, energy companies need to look at a more integrated energy approach, including ensuring multiple energy sources in their master plans, Beck suggests.

“If someone could think about it that way, which might not be limited to one individual company, to me that would be a really great way to think about progressing through Thailand 4.0,” he said.

The other component involves identifying the kind of product you want coming out at the end of the process, he said.

“The concept of Thailand 4.0 is to transform society to making higher value products, so more people can be self-employed and people can make more money.”

The summit celebrated diverse creators across the region who are using the power of one view to open minds, inspire understanding, celebrate culture – and make a difference.

Following a series of kick-off boot camps across Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, a committee selected 15 regional “fellows” from these five countries, collectively representing an audience of over two million fans. Over the past two months, armed with production funding and opportunities to work with civil society organisations, these up-and-coming voices created more than 15 inspiring videos.

Additionally, YouTube’s Creators for Change ambassadors recently came together to release over 50 new films that aim to promote tolerance, encourage empathy, and spark dialogue, locally and globally.

At the summit, the video projects of ambassadors and fellows across APAC were officially premiered to an audience of policymakers, NGOs, and fellow creators who are passionate about driving positive change. Creators also had the opportunity to reflect on their learning journeys and cement established partnerships to combat misinformation, extremism and intolerance through a variety of approaches.

Simon Finley, regional conflict prevention adviser, said it was very encouraging to experience a group of such dynamic and creative young people collaborating with others – such as the UNDP, private sector companies like Google, and local NGOs – to produce positive messages advocating for peace. “Building networks and partnerships like the ones here is important to make sure that tomorrow’s world is a safer and more tolerant one,” said Finley.

Jake Lucchi, Google Asia Pacific’s head of content and AI for public policy, said that the tech giant is pleased to partner with UNDP on this important initiative. They are happy to see the power of online platforms like YouTube leveraged to promote positive social values and build a sense of community among people from diverse backgrounds, said Lucchi.

In line with the government’s Thailand 4.0 initiative, the private university aims to familiarise its first-year college students with the latest cloud-based computing facilities provided by Oracle for its new course – Innovative Start-ups.

For the first time, first-year students will have access to a cutting-edge digital cloud platform to turn their innovative ideas into real online businesses, while studying for their Bachelor’s degrees at the university’s College of Information Technology and Communication.

Dr Chetneti Srisa-an, the dean, said Oracle Cloud is chosen to power the students’ start-up community, which kicked off last year.

So far, recent graduates of Rangsit University have already launched eight start-ups, including those related to QueQ app (which does away with unnecessarily having to queue up at restaurants, hospitals etc) and GateDee app (for an at-home blood-testing service).

Last year, Rangsit University’s graduates also contested in the Start-up Thailand league organised by National Innovation Agency that provides incubation, funding and other services to promising start-ups. According to Chetneti, the university’s innovative start-up course is open to all first-year students. They can earn a total of six credits through project-based assignments, while also competing to win prize money in multiple contests.

The university has also encouraged students to take part in the Asian business plan competition, which covers start-ups from nine countries including Thailand.

For this year, more than 160 students have enrolled in the course with a total of 28 projects underway, and so they need the latest cloud-based computing facilities to turn good ideas into scalable online enterprises that solve problems for people and businesses.

“We want to promote to students that they commercialise their innovative ideas for various use cases,” he said, noting that Thailand had previously wasted a lot of financial and other resources on many research projects that could not be further developed and commercialised.

According to Chetneti, ongoing digitalisation of the economy and society is posing new challenges to educators as they need to prepare students for the “workforce 4.0”, including through a more personalised education platform with a focus on technology and innovation.

However, not all students will become entrepreneurs, since the ratio of success is less than 20 per cent. Many graduates will still seek jobs as salaried workers but they, too will need new skills and a certain mindset for innovative projects in their workplace.

The GateDee app’s co-founder Kannaphat Kraengkrai is a recent graduate of RSU. Kannaphat said GateDee was created by her and three classmates to help elderly persons who need to get their blood tested regularly.

At most hospitals, people have to wait at least an hour for blood-test results before they can see the doctor, so it is more convenient to have a licensed practitioner get a blood sample for lab analysis ahead of a visit to the doctor’s office.

Kannaphat says Thailand now has about 12 million seniors aged 60 or above. There is a huge potential market for such a service in the rapidly ageing society.

Customers can now get an appointment online for the service and pay for it using the MyMo payment app from Government Savings Bank, Kannaphat said, adding that lab results are delivered online within 24 hours.

Passanan Chamusri, cloud platform lead at Oracle Corp (Thailand), said the company helps the university educate students for workforce 4.0 by leveraging its global learning experience as well as various cases in which innovative technology is practised in the cloud-based environment. The Oracle Cloud programme also highlights competition to help make education more effective.

The workforce 4.0 course starts with sessions to inspire first-year students with actual start-up case studies.

Students then take classes on fundamental knowledge about digital transformation and an introduction to creating platforms in order to develop their own ideas and bring them to life.

Next, students learn how AI (artificial intelligence) and other tools can be used to help execute the projects by embedding it into the core technology to drive innovation and potential success.

The programme also includes hackathon-themed contests in which students create products from their initial ideas. In this process, promising ideas are made concrete by developing them into healthcare apps, micro loan apps, a better registration system or grading system, or a student behaviour analysis system.

The US space agency believes it can put humans on the Red Planet within 25 years, but the technological and medical hurdles are immense.

“The cost of solving those means that under current budgets, or slightly expanded budgets, it’s going to take about 25 years to solve those,” said former NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who flew on four space shuttle missions before retiring in 2001.

“We need to get started now on certain key technologies,” he told reporters in Washington.

At an average distance of about 140 million miles (225 million kilometers), Mars poses scientific problems an order of magnitude greater than anything encountered by the Apollo lunar missions.

With today’s rocket technology, it would take an astronaut up to nine months to reach Mars — the physical toll of floating that long in zero gravity would be huge.

For instance, scientists think prolonged weightlessness can cause irreversible changes to blood vessels in the retina, leading to vision degradation.

And after a while in zero G, the skeleton starts to leach calcium and bone mass.

With gravity only one-third of Earth’s, scientists don’t yet know the effects of a presumed one-year mission to the surface of Mars.

– Better propulsion –

One way to reduce wear and tear on the human body is to dramatically cut down on travel time to Mars.

Jones called for nuclear propulsion systems that would have the added benefit of producing electricity on flights.

“If we start now, in 25 years we might have these technologies available to help us and protect us from these long transit times,” he said.

Under current conditions, just an outbound trip to Mars would take so long that any astronaut would receive the same amount of radiation than ordinarily would be deemed safe over the course of an entire career.

“We don’t have the solution yet in terms of shielding, in terms of protecting you from cosmic rays and solar flares that you experience during this transit time,” Jones said.

Aerospace experts have identified several technologies that need rapid development, including spacecraft that can survive the harsh entry into Mars and land softly enough, as well as the ability to lift people off the surface and head back to Earth.

NASA currently has a new robotic lander called InSight zooming towards Mars, due to land on November 26 after taking off from California on May 5.

The $993 million project aims to expand human knowledge of interior conditions on Mars, inform efforts to send explorers there, and reveal how rocky planets like the Earth formed billions of years ago.

Jim Garvin, chief scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said InSight would fill in “critical unknowns” and help build a key understanding of Mars.

In 2020, another mission will see NASA send a rover to Mars that aims to determine the habitability of the Martian environment, search for signs of ancient life, and assess natural resources and hazards for future human explorers.

Additionally, private firms like SpaceX and a host of other nations are building technologies that could be used on future Mars missions.

Some experts see new exploration of the Moon as key to a future mission to Mars, as astronauts there could learn about extracting water or using technology and apply those lessons to future Mars missions.