Samsung’s Gear Live Android Wear Smartwatch First Impressions 

The Gear Live is Samsung’s first kick at the Android Wear can, and like the other hardware in this category, it offers Android Wear basically as Google intended it. Software wise, there’s almost nothing to distinguish these devices – which means it’s all down to hardware design for Wear makers to make their mark.
Samsung’s Gear Live is the only one in the launch crop of devices to sport an optical heart rate sensor, which is a handy spare feature if you’re an athlete or incredibly interested in your fitness levels and activity tracking. The Gear also features pretty much the exact same hardware that Samsung shipped with the Gear 2 smartwatch, released earlier this year and powered by Tizen, which is itself a refinement of the original Gear.

They’ve managed to make a device that’s comfortable and easy to wear all day, albeit with a band that isn’t all that easy to latch onto your wrist to begin with. The smooth transition from bezel to lug is also aesthetically pleasing, but it isn’t convenient when you want to replace it with something else; the connector is proprietary to Samsung, limiting the availability of custom options.
The display on the Samsung is more legible in direct sunlight than the LG G Watch, too – though neither is wonderfully clear in those circumstances. But it is incredibly bright and colorful, vividly rendering the new Material Design principles Google introduced at I/O.

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Google Play Quarterly App Revenue More Than Doubled Over Past Year, Thanks To Games, Freemium Apps

How well the Android app marketplace on Google Play is performing is the subject of a new report from recently expanded app analytics firm App Annie, out today ahead of this week’s Google I/O 2014 developer conference. The report indicates that the past year has been significant for Android app publishers, as Google Play apps, downloads, and revenue have all seen what the firm referred to as “phenomenal” growth.
Most notably, Google Play quarterly app revenue – a number that tends to trail that of Apple’s iOS App Store – has more than doubled over the past year, up 2.4x from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014, App Annie says.

But raw numbers of apps on hand and apps on phone don’t mean much to mobile app developers if there’s not the potential for revenue.
That’s historically been a challenge for Google Play, which has seen the Amazon Appstore competitor giving developers a better shot on this front, according to several reports. And iOS still generates more revenue for developers overall, though Google Play has been narrowing that gap in recent months.
Today, App Annie says that the growth in Google Play downloads and revenue represents “an expanding opportunity” for developers, with quarterly app revenue more than doubling from Q1 2013 to Q1 2014. Revenue growth is also now outpaces download growth, and this is in large part due to growth of the games category, in particular.
In Q1 2014, games accounted for nearly 90% of Google Play app revenue, up from 80% in the same quarter last year, although they make up just 40% of downloads.

Downloads, meanwhile, are growing across almost all categories with tools and communication categories seeing particularly high downloads, and communication and social apps seeing high revenue growth.


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Google Makes Its Nest At The Center Of The Smart Home

“Okay Google, turn down the heat.”
Using Google Now, a homeowner will soon be able to talk to a Nest Learning Thermostat and complain about the heat. And that’s just the beginning.
Google is turning the Nest Learning Thermostat into the hub of smart homes. With the “Works with Nest” certification program, announced today, gadgets, cars and universal remotes will all work with the Thermostat, providing automated actions agnostic of the brand. Suddenly the smart home world is much smaller.
Nest’s Matt Rogers says the idea behind this system is to build seamless and practical experiences in the home and to sell more Nest gadgets at the same time.
The smart home world is widely fragmented. Everything from smart light bulbs to web-connected thermostats are controlled by a separate app and live in their own world. Several gadgets have attempted to bridge brands and conjoin the worlds, but this requires another gadget and another app, thereby compounding the problem.
With the “Works with Nest” program, suddenly, the center of the smart home is the de facto smart home gadget in the Nest Learning Thermostat.
The program leans on the sensors within Nest’s products. The product’s motion detection and machine learning are all tapped and farmed out for use by other gadgets.

The “Works With Nest” Ecosystem

Some of the most popular smart home gadget makers have signed onto the “Works with Nest” program, including LIFX, Logitech, Chamberlain and even Whirlpool. With Whirlpool, when the Nest thermostat notices the homeowner is away, a connected dryer will switch to Fan Fresh mode so the dryer’s cycle doesn’t end early and instead keeps running so clothes stay wrinkle-free. And with LIFX, the web-connected lightbulbs can flash red if a Nest Protect notices elevated CO2 levels or toggle the lightbulbs on to simulate someone’s in the home.
Google also enlisted the help of IFTTT so home owners can program smart switches for the Nest Protect and Thermostat. For instance, with IFTTT, homeowners can program “If my Nest Protect detects smoke, then send a text message to my neighbors” or “If a Nest Thermostat is turned under 72 degrees when the air conditioning is turned on, then send a Twitter DM to me so I can yell at my kids.”

With the “Works with Nest” program, suddenly, the center of the smart home is the de facto smart home gadget in the Nest Learning Thermostat.

Mercedes is also part of the program and select models can tell a connected Nest Learning Thermostat when the driver will be home, activating the heating or cooling at the exact moment so not one cycle is wasted on an empty home.
Sometime in the fall, Google Now will become “Works with Nest” certified, allowing Android users to command their thermostats from anywhere.
Lastly, Google worked with Jawbone to tie the Jawbone UP’s sleep tracker into the Nest Learning Thermostat ecosystem.
“Integrating with Nest is brilliant for our users because it creates a seamless experience for our users,” Jawbone’s Jim Godfrey told me. Travis Bogard, Vice President of Product Management and Strategy, expanded on the thought noting “It’s based on great technology and two sets of insight and data — Nest and Jawbone — combined to create a great experience.”
For Jawbone, the “Works with Nest” program aligns nicely with its core mission of providing an open platform. By pressing the UP’s only button, a Jawbone UP wearer can activate the sleep tracker and have the Nest adjust the climate to a nighttime mode. Likewise, when the wearer wakes up, a single press will change the UP’s mode and switch the Nest to a daytime setting.
Several notable systems are currently absent from this program, including Philips’ Hue smart lightbulbs, smart switches from Lutron and any of the home locking systems. These systems are currently enlisted in Wink’s smart home platform. Dropcam will likely adopt the “Works with Nest” certification as it will soon be under Nest’s ownership.

At first it’s a bit strange to think of a thermostat as the central hub of a smart home, but the Nest Learning Thermostat is packed with enough sensors to make the move logical. The thermostat has a motion detector, Wi-Fi, the goods to learn user behavior and currently untapped wireless protocols of Zigbee. In theory a true smart home shouldn’t need a control panel requiring constant user interaction, but rather actions that are carried out serendipitously.

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A Tale Of Two Patents: Why Facebook Can’t Clone Snapchat

Facebook released Slingshot, its second attempt at an impermanent sharing app, last Tuesday. The app borrows heavily, in concept and features, from Snapchat, as well as smaller startups like Frontback and Look.
Slingshot and Facebook Messenger feature the same photo and video recording interface–a very user friendly mechanism where you tap the main button to take a picture, and hold that button to record a video.
There’s just one problem: Facebook may be violating Snapchat’s patent, “Single mode visual media capture” that was approved over a year ago.
Representatives from both Facebook and Snapchat declined to comment for this story, but the patent appears to describe the way both companies’ apps record media:

“An electronic device includes digital image sensors to capture visual media, a display to present the visual media from the digital image sensors and a touch controller to identify haptic contact engagement, haptic contact persistence and haptic contact release on the display. A visual media capture controller alternately records the visual media as a photograph or a video based upon an evaluation of the time period between the haptic contact engagement and the haptic contact release.”

To some extent, this copying is commonplace in a playing field where ideas and features overlap significantly.
But Snapchat isn’t the only startup involved with a patent claim. Look debuted the idea of a messaging app in which people have to send back content to view friends’ messages at the TechCrunch Los Angeles Pitch-Off, which it won.
Look’s website has a “patent pending” sticker near the top; while Look CEO Megel Brown wouldn’t comment directly on whether Facebook violates Look’s patent application, he did note, “We never imagined Facebook would use our messaging mechanic to compete with Snapchat. Neither company has reached out to us.  However, we have been in contact with a major Silicon Valley player about our app after Facebook initially released and pulled their app from the App Store.”

A Second Snapchat Patent

A second Snapchat patent may show how each company thinks about this space–and why I believe Snapchat will continue to beat Facebook.
The patent, “Apparatus and method for single action control of social network profile access,” describes the way users view content in Snapchat Stories. Particularly, when you view another user’s story, Snapchat only shows you content you haven’t seen yet:

“A computer implemented method includes allowing a user to access a user-controlled social network profile page with posts in a specified order. A user is permitted to traverse an interface element across the specified order to establish a set position for the interface element. Access to posts is provided on a first side of the set position to define a viewable profile. Access to posts is blocked on a second side of the set position to define a non-viewable profile.”

The most interesting aspect of the patent? It was filed on November 8, 2012. So, when Facebook launched its first Snapchat clone, Poke, on December 22, 2012, Snapchat was already thinking far ahead.

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Microsoft Has Just Launched Its First Android Smartphone, The Nokia X2

Meet the Nokia X2, the first Android-based smartphone being made by Microsoft.
Yes, you read that right: Microsoft has just made a new Android-based handset.
It’s also still using the Nokia name at this point, despite previously saying it didn’t plan to trade on that name for long. (Evidently Microsoft’s marketing minions are still working on cooking up that “go forward” smartphone brand.)

The Nokia X2 is not the first Android device Microsoft owns, being as Redmond took over Nokia’s mobile making division in April – a move which brought the original Nokia X device under its wing. But some doubted whether Microsoft approved of Nokia’s Android experiment — and speculated that the line would be quickly culled by Redmond.

Nokia forked Android back in February to create a new smartphone platform, which it called the Nokia X Software Platform to slot in between — pricing-wise — its Series 40 based low cost Asha devices and its Windows Phone powered Lumia smartphones.
At the time Nokia described the fork as a Lumia “feeder” — with then CEO Stephen Elop saying Nokia X devices would be a Trojan horse within Google’s ecosystem by introducing first time smartphone owners to Microsoft’s services rather than Mountain View’s.
Evidently Microsoft approves of this strategy after all — since it’s now building on that experiment with a follow up device. Or at least it’s willing to give the fork a chance.
The Nokia X2 is priced at €99 before taxes and subsidies (a little up on the original Nokia X’s €89 price-tag), and has a slightly larger screen (4.3 inches vs 4 inches), along with a beefier processor (1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor vs 1GHz dual-core in the original device).
Otherwise it’s much the same fare, with the handset coming in a range of eye-popping colours and featuring Nokia’s blend of UI experiences — with a Windows Phone-esque tiles-based homescreen, combined with Nokia’s Fast Lane notifications screen, plus plentiful Microsoft (and Nokia) services preloaded, including Skype, Outlook, OneDrive, Mix Radio, Here Maps; and — of course — access to Android apps.
The X2 also supports dual-SIM — a popular feature in emerging markets where Microsoft will be hoping the Nokia X platform can better compete with other Android rivals than Windows Phone has been able to, thanks to those plentiful Android apps — and by reaching a lower price tag than entry level Lumias can.
The Nokia X2 extends the original trio of devices on the platform which were the Nokia X, X+ and XL.

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Snapchat’s “Our Story” Is A Genius, Collaborative Reinvention Of The Livestream

What does it feel like to be a massive music festival? Nothing like a glossy livestream of the mainstage. Much more like Snapchat’s new Our Story feature, a curated channel of user submitted photos of videos from all around a big event. I was there last night at Vegas’ Electric Daisy Carnival, an 140,000-person dance music festival where Snapchat piloted Our Story. I can vouch that the decentralized perspective was remarkably accurate. Our Story has huge potential, and you can follow along tonight by adding “EDC Live” on Snapchat.
The startup’s other big experiment at EDC didn’t fare so well.
See, cell phone networks get overloaded at every music festival. Wouldn’t it make sense for Verizon or AT&T or someone to set up extra towers or Wifi to help their customers or lure in competitor’s? Well Snapchat tried to beat them to it by providing free wifi for the mega-rave, but only for using the official EDC app and…Snapchat.
The idea was that while people’s texts, Instagrams, Facebook posts and tweets wouldn’t send, Snapchats would go through in an instant.
Unfortunately, it didn’t really work.

I tried more than 20 times across my 8 hours at the festival, and never successfully connected to the Snapchat Wifi networks. None of a dozen people I talked to were able to connect either and many festival goers expressed frustration about the experience on Twitter. It would have been very useful as few people’s mobile networks could handle the load and communication became nearly impossible. But worse than just resigning to being disconnected, many like me wasted battery and attention futilely trying to jack into Snapchat’s wifi.
Maybe that’s why Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel looked a bit hurried when I ran into him for a split-second in the EDC media center just before midnight. Snapchat had secured a nice partnership with the festival that promoted it in the official EDC app. Banners around the grounds advertised “No Signal? No Problem” and advised people to connect to Snapchat’s wifi. Some people must have gotten it to work, but the promotion seems to have attracted more users than the network could handle. Still, it was a valiant effort, and I hope Snapchat and other companies keep experimenting with the concept though it fell short at EDC night..

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Google May Buy Video Search Startup Baarzo

Google has been in talks to acquire video search startup Baarzo, according to sources with knowledge of the company. However, those sources were less clear about whether the companies had reached a final agreement. (One suggested that the deal had closed, the other was noncommittal.)
The companies both declined to comment, Google offering its standard note: “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation.”
Baarzo describes its product as “true video search,” allowing users find specific moments in a video, like a slam dunk in a basketball clip.
If it delivers on that promise (I can’t say one way or another, since the company is not accepting signups), that would be pretty appealing to Google, both for search in YouTube and for the company’s efforts to offer “universal” search across media types. Apparently Google Executive Chairman (and former CEO) Eric Schmidt was impressed by a demonstration of the technology at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where co-founder and CTO Siva Yellamraju just got his MBA.
Here’s a little more of Baarzo’s description of its technology:

Unlike Google or YouTube searches, which only evaluate the text around the video, the Baarzo search technology actually analyzes the video content, recognizing hundreds of thousands of objects and millions of faces, and locates the precise moment in the video when the search objects interact in the way you had specified.

Someone tipped me off about the possible deal when people started posting on Facebook that Google had acquired Baarzo. Some of those posts were private, but at least one (screenshot below) was public.
The startup has not announced any funding, but its AngelList profile says that it was part of StartX, the incubator for Stanford alums, and that investors include Ullas Naik of Streamlined Ventures and Matt Sonsini of Sobrato Capital.

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Autopilot Launches CoPilot Sales Automation Tool

Any startup worth its salt these days built a mailing list from before it even launched, but what do you do after that? How do you identify the best leads from all of those random people who signed up for your service? Fresh off its $10 million Series B funding round, marketing automation service Autopilot today announced the launch of its CoPilot email sales automation tool, which aims to make it easy for companies to find and engage their prospects with the help of automated email flows
While it uses much of the same technology as Autopilot, CoPilot is geared towards salespeople and not marketers, says CEO and co-founder Michael Sharkey, who founded the company together with his brothers Peter and Chris. He argues that the worlds of marketing and sales technologies are starting to converge. Right now, “in one corner marketing has marketing automation, in another corner sales has CRM,” he said. “But there is this third corner where sales development representatives live and that’s who CoPilot focuses on.”
The service aims to remove all of the manual tasks that sales development teams often spend much of their days on and automatically engages prospective clients through automated outbound campaigns. Ideally, thanks to automating most of the prospecting steps, the first time a sales person actually has a conversation with a potential client, it’ll be about getting a deal done, Sharkey tells me.

Those campaigns can be tweaked based on a client’s behavior, and CoPilot automates follow-ups based on the recipient’s actions. The service also provides sales teams with a real-time feed of a prospect’s actions from within the email.
Unsurprisingly, CoPilot is integrated with Autopilot’s Prospect Ace, which allows companies to verify their email lists using social profiles. The service also allows companies to import their existing lists using CSV files. The team tells me the service is also integrated with Salesforce Sync, and the plan is to add more solutions and data providers directly over time, so users won’t need to rely on CSV files.
CoPilot is now available for sign-up, with prices starting at $39 per month and seat, which allows a company to send up to 5,000 monthly emails.

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Microsoft Does Us A Solid By Accidentally Confirming That The Surface Mini Is Real

Microsoft declined to comment. Earlier today, a manual published to help users dig into their new Surface Pro 3 devices contained multiple mentions of the currently Super Secret Surface Mini. Oops.
Surprised? Don’t be. Microsoft had originally planned to debut the Surface Mini alongside the Surface Pro 3. I’ve heard from people with knowledge of the matter that the decision was made close to the cusp, making the mistakes funny, if not particularly surprising.
Keep in mind that Microsoft also slipped up — perhaps the accident wasn’t much of an accident — and outed the coming Surface Pro 3 before its official announcement.
Today, of course, marks the first day of general availability for the Pro 3. Hence the user guide. Does this mean the Surface Mini will go on sale in the future? No. But it does underscore how far along the device got before it hit the weeds.

Is a smaller Surface a good idea? There has been success by some — the Dell Venue Pro 8 comes to mind — in selling smaller Windows-based tablet devices. However, given the Surface line’s focus on keyboards, and docs, and the ability to do more than consume content, the smaller form factor is slightly hard to parse.

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Twitter Now Supports Animated GIFs Online And On Mobile

Um, finally. Twitter today announced a small, but SUPER AWESOME change to its social network: It will now support the ever-popular animated GIF format. The change, the company says, is live as of today on the Twitter.com website, Android and iPhone.
The company made the announcement via a tweet (of course) where it demonstrated what the animated GIF would look like.
That GIF itself pokes fun at the ongoing debate about the pronunciation of the word “GIF.” Some, like the format’s inventor Steve Wilhite, say that it should be pronounced “JIF,” like the peanut butter. But a whole bunch of us got comfortable with saying “GIF” with a hard “G,” and don’t like change.
In Twitter’s demo GIF, someone starts typing the word “GIF” with a “J,” as a little inside joke to those in the know.
The company is also rolling out GIF support to its API, it seems, which would allow third-party developers to offer similar support in their client applications.
Many social networks today, including Tumblr and even Pinterest, have added support for animated GIFs as the format grew in popularity. Facebook and Twitter, however, have been big exceptions. (There were workarounds, however, as with Giphy’s URL shortener, for instance.)
It’s worth noting that Facebook made a very conscious decision to not support GIFs because the company believes it would make the news feed too chaotic, and it’s already waging war against memes. Instead, only natively uploaded Facebook videos, Instagram videos and premium video ads can auto-play in the Facebook feed today. Whether Twitter’s move to support GIFs will influence Facebook’s decision here remains to be seen.
There’s some possibility that Twitter, too, could become a bit overwhelmed with GIFs as the change goes live across the site, and everyone starts testing the waters. But it also makes sense in terms of Twitter’s larger goal to become a more rich-media-focused service, as it moves away from being known only for its 140-character text updates.

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Analytics Startup Heap Brings Its “Capture Everything” Approach To iOS Apps

 

Heap, a startup aiming to bring a more comprehensive and flexible approach to analytics, is moving into mobile.
The Y Combinator-incubated company first announced its iOS integration about a year ago, but at the time it was an invite-only product in beta testing. More recently, the company has removed the beta label and opened the product to any developer.
Founder Matin Movassate contrasted the experience of using Heap with the process at Facebook, where he previously worked at a product manager. If he had a data-related question, he had to ask an engineer to write the necessary code, then it would take weeks for the data to “trickle in”, and then he’d have to work with a data analyst to actually get a report that answered his questions. (Movassate said there are similar experiences when using most analytics products.)
“A lot of times you end up working with the data you have, instead of getting the right data,” he added.
Heap, on the other hand, automatically collects data on every action taken by a user (on iOS that includes taps, swipes, form submissions, views, and more) and it then allows customers to pull the data they need without writing any code. You can see the automated event capture in the image above.
Movassate said this approach also makes the data more usable by non-technical team members, like salespeople and marketers: “We found that when an organization adopts Heap, they all use it, instead of it being bottlenecked in IT.”
On iOS, the big challenge was collecting this data without significantly taxing the CPU or the cell network, but Movassate said he succeeded. He said it’s too early to identify any iOS customers, but he would reveal that Heap has 1,000 customers sending in data (including Airbnb, Salesforce.com, Blue Bottle Coffee, and the Onion), and that an increasing number of them are using the iOS capabilities, too.
The company raised a $2 million seed round last year.

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Google and Nest Acquire Dropcam For $555 Million

Remember those rumors a few weeks ago that Google was looking to acquire the plug-and-play security camera company, Dropcam?
Yep. It just happened.
Just months after being acquired themselves, the now Google-owned Nest has just announced that they’ve acquired Dropcam. We’re digging for more details on the deal now, but have confirmed that the final sale price was $555 million in cash.
Wondering what the heck a Dropcam is? They make a few different things, but their namesake device is a WiFi-enabled security camera ($149 or $199, depending on video quality) that requires little-to-no-effort to maintain. You plug it in, get it up on your WiFi, and you’re set. If you just want to be able to check in on your cameras remotely, that’s free; if you want Dropcam to keep an archive of recorded footage on their servers, that’ll cost you anywhere from $10 to $30 a month (depending on how long you want archives kept).
In a blog post on the acquisition, Dropcam founder Greg Duffy explains the move:

Nest and Dropcam are kindred spirits. Both were born out of frustration with outdated, complicated products that do the opposite of making life better. After numerous conversations with Nest Founders Tony and Matt, it was clear that we shared a similar vision.

If privacy advocates were bothered by the idea of Google buying a thermostat, this acquisition will probably send them up the wall.
Right off the bat, Nest founder Matt Rogers started working to sooth the inevitable concerns in his initial announcement of the deal:

Like Nest customer data, Dropcam will come under Nest’s privacy policy, which explains that data won’t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer’s permission. Nest has a paid-for business model and ads are not part of our strategy. In acquiring Dropcam, we’ll apply that same policy to Dropcam too.

According to Crunchbase, Dropcam had raised just shy of $48M to date.

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Apple’s iWatch Could Be The Next Big Sports Fashion Accessory

Sports sells gatorade, and sports sells sneakers, and sports sells clothing and hats and TV trays and bottle openers and anything that has enough surface area to hold a logo. But can sports sell the concept of the smartwatch? That’s what Apple might find out beginning in October, the rumored launch date of the iWatch, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. The blog’s sources say Apple is working with professional athletes to test the fitness tracking features of the upcoming device, and it’s only logical that if they’re helping inform product design, Apple should tap them for promotion, too.
The stars working with Apple include Kobe Bryant, Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, and other unnamed stars from top U.S. pro sports organizations. 9to5Mac also says that the iWatch is being developed as a fashion piece, to ship in two different designs, with an announcement in October and a ship date soon after. The report echoes one earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, which said it would include fitness tracking and be unveiled in October, too.
Building wearables so far has proven a challenge, at least in terms of making something that sells with the kind of volume that makes them worthwhile for a company like Apple. The top-selling smartwatches to date are the Samsung Gear line, and 2 million total smartwatch devices were sold last year according to Strategy Analytics, of which 1.2 million were Android powered. Apple, by contrast, is shooting for first year sales of between 50 and 60 million units for its device alone, according to reports from media outlets including WSJ and Reuters.
To sell the devices, turning to the age-old marketing machine that is professional sports is a logical path. Apple is said to be packing a heap of sensors into this device (10 to be exact) and working with Nike on the fitness features. Traditionally, if you create something that has a ‘performance’ or activity angle, turning to pro athletes for a marketing push delivers huge dividends – Gatorade, and every other sports drink on the market, likely wouldn’t exist without the influence of celebrity endorsements.
Apple hasn’t leaned too heavily on the celebrity angle for promoting its past products, at least not directly. Instead, it has used a comprehensive media strategy of helping Apple products find their way naturally into films, TV shows and celebrity pockets, along with a few select endorsements via television ads and media spots. But it has acquired a company recently that could help with this kind of market positioning: Beats.
Beats doesn’t really make sports accessories – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they do. Their advertising campaign around the World Cup is one example of how well they’ve been able to tie their headphones to athletes and athletics. Nevermind the fact that Beats on- and over-ear headphones are pretty much the opposite of what you want on your head while you’re running five miles or training for a triathlon. They share the same basic design as earmuffs, which are made to keep heat in your head. True, Beats makes wireless earbuds, too with the Powerbeats line but they’ve managed to give the whole brand sports cache.
There is no evidence that a smartwatch will pack people into stores, Apple-made or not. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an Apple-built sports and fitness/fashion accessory will sell and sell well. Apple wouldn’t be the only company trying to use fashion as a selling point for wearables, but it might be the one with the best angle yet.

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Apple’s iWatch Could Be The Next Big Sports Fashion Accessory

Sports sells gatorade, and sports sells sneakers, and sports sells clothing and hats and TV trays and bottle openers and anything that has enough surface area to hold a logo. But can sports sell the concept of the smartwatch? That’s what Apple might find out beginning in October, the rumored launch date of the iWatch, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. The blog’s sources say Apple is working with professional athletes to test the fitness tracking features of the upcoming device, and it’s only logical that if they’re helping inform product design, Apple should tap them for promotion, too.
The stars working with Apple include Kobe Bryant, Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, and other unnamed stars from top U.S. pro sports organizations. 9to5Mac also says that the iWatch is being developed as a fashion piece, to ship in two different designs, with an announcement in October and a ship date soon after. The report echoes one earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, which said it would include fitness tracking and be unveiled in October, too.
Building wearables so far has proven a challenge, at least in terms of making something that sells with the kind of volume that makes them worthwhile for a company like Apple. The top-selling smartwatches to date are the Samsung Gear line, and 2 million total smartwatch devices were sold last year according to Strategy Analytics, of which 1.2 million were Android powered. Apple, by contrast, is shooting for first year sales of between 50 and 60 million units for its device alone, according to reports from media outlets including WSJ and Reuters.
To sell the devices, turning to the age-old marketing machine that is professional sports is a logical path. Apple is said to be packing a heap of sensors into this device (10 to be exact) and working with Nike on the fitness features. Traditionally, if you create something that has a ‘performance’ or activity angle, turning to pro athletes for a marketing push delivers huge dividends – Gatorade, and every other sports drink on the market, likely wouldn’t exist without the influence of celebrity endorsements.
Apple hasn’t leaned too heavily on the celebrity angle for promoting its past products, at least not directly. Instead, it has used a comprehensive media strategy of helping Apple products find their way naturally into films, TV shows and celebrity pockets, along with a few select endorsements via television ads and media spots. But it has acquired a company recently that could help with this kind of market positioning: Beats.
Beats doesn’t really make sports accessories – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they do. Their advertising campaign around the World Cup is one example of how well they’ve been able to tie their headphones to athletes and athletics. Nevermind the fact that Beats on- and over-ear headphones are pretty much the opposite of what you want on your head while you’re running five miles or training for a triathlon. They share the same basic design as earmuffs, which are made to keep heat in your head. True, Beats makes wireless earbuds, too with the Powerbeats line but they’ve managed to give the whole brand sports cache.
There is no evidence that a smartwatch will pack people into stores, Apple-made or not. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an Apple-built sports and fitness/fashion accessory will sell and sell well. Apple wouldn’t be the only company trying to use fashion as a selling point for wearables, but it might be the one with the best angle yet.

More on::techcrunch.com

Apple’s iWatch Could Be The Next Big Sports Fashion Accessory

Sports sells gatorade, and sports sells sneakers, and sports sells clothing and hats and TV trays and bottle openers and anything that has enough surface area to hold a logo. But can sports sell the concept of the smartwatch? That’s what Apple might find out beginning in October, the rumored launch date of the iWatch, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. The blog’s sources say Apple is working with professional athletes to test the fitness tracking features of the upcoming device, and it’s only logical that if they’re helping inform product design, Apple should tap them for promotion, too.
The stars working with Apple include Kobe Bryant, Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, and other unnamed stars from top U.S. pro sports organizations. 9to5Mac also says that the iWatch is being developed as a fashion piece, to ship in two different designs, with an announcement in October and a ship date soon after. The report echoes one earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, which said it would include fitness tracking and be unveiled in October, too.
Building wearables so far has proven a challenge, at least in terms of making something that sells with the kind of volume that makes them worthwhile for a company like Apple. The top-selling smartwatches to date are the Samsung Gear line, and 2 million total smartwatch devices were sold last year according to Strategy Analytics, of which 1.2 million were Android powered. Apple, by contrast, is shooting for first year sales of between 50 and 60 million units for its device alone, according to reports from media outlets including WSJ and Reuters.
To sell the devices, turning to the age-old marketing machine that is professional sports is a logical path. Apple is said to be packing a heap of sensors into this device (10 to be exact) and working with Nike on the fitness features. Traditionally, if you create something that has a ‘performance’ or activity angle, turning to pro athletes for a marketing push delivers huge dividends – Gatorade, and every other sports drink on the market, likely wouldn’t exist without the influence of celebrity endorsements.
Apple hasn’t leaned too heavily on the celebrity angle for promoting its past products, at least not directly. Instead, it has used a comprehensive media strategy of helping Apple products find their way naturally into films, TV shows and celebrity pockets, along with a few select endorsements via television ads and media spots. But it has acquired a company recently that could help with this kind of market positioning: Beats.
Beats doesn’t really make sports accessories – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they do. Their advertising campaign around the World Cup is one example of how well they’ve been able to tie their headphones to athletes and athletics. Nevermind the fact that Beats on- and over-ear headphones are pretty much the opposite of what you want on your head while you’re running five miles or training for a triathlon. They share the same basic design as earmuffs, which are made to keep heat in your head. True, Beats makes wireless earbuds, too with the Powerbeats line but they’ve managed to give the whole brand sports cache.
There is no evidence that a smartwatch will pack people into stores, Apple-made or not. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an Apple-built sports and fitness/fashion accessory will sell and sell well. Apple wouldn’t be the only company trying to use fashion as a selling point for wearables, but it might be the one with the best angle yet.

More on::techcrunch.com

Apple’s iWatch Could Be The Next Big Sports Fashion Accessory

Sports sells gatorade, and sports sells sneakers, and sports sells clothing and hats and TV trays and bottle openers and anything that has enough surface area to hold a logo. But can sports sell the concept of the smartwatch? That’s what Apple might find out beginning in October, the rumored launch date of the iWatch, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. The blog’s sources say Apple is working with professional athletes to test the fitness tracking features of the upcoming device, and it’s only logical that if they’re helping inform product design, Apple should tap them for promotion, too.
The stars working with Apple include Kobe Bryant, Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, and other unnamed stars from top U.S. pro sports organizations. 9to5Mac also says that the iWatch is being developed as a fashion piece, to ship in two different designs, with an announcement in October and a ship date soon after. The report echoes one earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, which said it would include fitness tracking and be unveiled in October, too.
Building wearables so far has proven a challenge, at least in terms of making something that sells with the kind of volume that makes them worthwhile for a company like Apple. The top-selling smartwatches to date are the Samsung Gear line, and 2 million total smartwatch devices were sold last year according to Strategy Analytics, of which 1.2 million were Android powered. Apple, by contrast, is shooting for first year sales of between 50 and 60 million units for its device alone, according to reports from media outlets including WSJ and Reuters.
To sell the devices, turning to the age-old marketing machine that is professional sports is a logical path. Apple is said to be packing a heap of sensors into this device (10 to be exact) and working with Nike on the fitness features. Traditionally, if you create something that has a ‘performance’ or activity angle, turning to pro athletes for a marketing push delivers huge dividends – Gatorade, and every other sports drink on the market, likely wouldn’t exist without the influence of celebrity endorsements.
Apple hasn’t leaned too heavily on the celebrity angle for promoting its past products, at least not directly. Instead, it has used a comprehensive media strategy of helping Apple products find their way naturally into films, TV shows and celebrity pockets, along with a few select endorsements via television ads and media spots. But it has acquired a company recently that could help with this kind of market positioning: Beats.
Beats doesn’t really make sports accessories – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they do. Their advertising campaign around the World Cup is one example of how well they’ve been able to tie their headphones to athletes and athletics. Nevermind the fact that Beats on- and over-ear headphones are pretty much the opposite of what you want on your head while you’re running five miles or training for a triathlon. They share the same basic design as earmuffs, which are made to keep heat in your head. True, Beats makes wireless earbuds, too with the Powerbeats line but they’ve managed to give the whole brand sports cache.
There is no evidence that a smartwatch will pack people into stores, Apple-made or not. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an Apple-built sports and fitness/fashion accessory will sell and sell well. Apple wouldn’t be the only company trying to use fashion as a selling point for wearables, but it might be the one with the best angle yet.

More on::techcrunch.com

Apple’s iWatch Could Be The Next Big Sports Fashion Accessory

Sports sells gatorade, and sports sells sneakers, and sports sells clothing and hats and TV trays and bottle openers and anything that has enough surface area to hold a logo. But can sports sell the concept of the smartwatch? That’s what Apple might find out beginning in October, the rumored launch date of the iWatch, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. The blog’s sources say Apple is working with professional athletes to test the fitness tracking features of the upcoming device, and it’s only logical that if they’re helping inform product design, Apple should tap them for promotion, too.
The stars working with Apple include Kobe Bryant, Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, and other unnamed stars from top U.S. pro sports organizations. 9to5Mac also says that the iWatch is being developed as a fashion piece, to ship in two different designs, with an announcement in October and a ship date soon after. The report echoes one earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, which said it would include fitness tracking and be unveiled in October, too.
Building wearables so far has proven a challenge, at least in terms of making something that sells with the kind of volume that makes them worthwhile for a company like Apple. The top-selling smartwatches to date are the Samsung Gear line, and 2 million total smartwatch devices were sold last year according to Strategy Analytics, of which 1.2 million were Android powered. Apple, by contrast, is shooting for first year sales of between 50 and 60 million units for its device alone, according to reports from media outlets including WSJ and Reuters.
To sell the devices, turning to the age-old marketing machine that is professional sports is a logical path. Apple is said to be packing a heap of sensors into this device (10 to be exact) and working with Nike on the fitness features. Traditionally, if you create something that has a ‘performance’ or activity angle, turning to pro athletes for a marketing push delivers huge dividends – Gatorade, and every other sports drink on the market, likely wouldn’t exist without the influence of celebrity endorsements.
Apple hasn’t leaned too heavily on the celebrity angle for promoting its past products, at least not directly. Instead, it has used a comprehensive media strategy of helping Apple products find their way naturally into films, TV shows and celebrity pockets, along with a few select endorsements via television ads and media spots. But it has acquired a company recently that could help with this kind of market positioning: Beats.
Beats doesn’t really make sports accessories – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they do. Their advertising campaign around the World Cup is one example of how well they’ve been able to tie their headphones to athletes and athletics. Nevermind the fact that Beats on- and over-ear headphones are pretty much the opposite of what you want on your head while you’re running five miles or training for a triathlon. They share the same basic design as earmuffs, which are made to keep heat in your head. True, Beats makes wireless earbuds, too with the Powerbeats line but they’ve managed to give the whole brand sports cache.
There is no evidence that a smartwatch will pack people into stores, Apple-made or not. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an Apple-built sports and fitness/fashion accessory will sell and sell well. Apple wouldn’t be the only company trying to use fashion as a selling point for wearables, but it might be the one with the best angle yet.

More on::techcrunch.com

Apple’s iWatch Could Be The Next Big Sports Fashion Accessory

Sports sells gatorade, and sports sells sneakers, and sports sells clothing and hats and TV trays and bottle openers and anything that has enough surface area to hold a logo. But can sports sell the concept of the smartwatch? That’s what Apple might find out beginning in October, the rumored launch date of the iWatch, according to a new report from 9to5Mac. The blog’s sources say Apple is working with professional athletes to test the fitness tracking features of the upcoming device, and it’s only logical that if they’re helping inform product design, Apple should tap them for promotion, too.
The stars working with Apple include Kobe Bryant, Dustin Brown of the LA Kings, and other unnamed stars from top U.S. pro sports organizations. 9to5Mac also says that the iWatch is being developed as a fashion piece, to ship in two different designs, with an announcement in October and a ship date soon after. The report echoes one earlier today from the Wall Street Journal, which said it would include fitness tracking and be unveiled in October, too.
Building wearables so far has proven a challenge, at least in terms of making something that sells with the kind of volume that makes them worthwhile for a company like Apple. The top-selling smartwatches to date are the Samsung Gear line, and 2 million total smartwatch devices were sold last year according to Strategy Analytics, of which 1.2 million were Android powered. Apple, by contrast, is shooting for first year sales of between 50 and 60 million units for its device alone, according to reports from media outlets including WSJ and Reuters.
To sell the devices, turning to the age-old marketing machine that is professional sports is a logical path. Apple is said to be packing a heap of sensors into this device (10 to be exact) and working with Nike on the fitness features. Traditionally, if you create something that has a ‘performance’ or activity angle, turning to pro athletes for a marketing push delivers huge dividends – Gatorade, and every other sports drink on the market, likely wouldn’t exist without the influence of celebrity endorsements.
Apple hasn’t leaned too heavily on the celebrity angle for promoting its past products, at least not directly. Instead, it has used a comprehensive media strategy of helping Apple products find their way naturally into films, TV shows and celebrity pockets, along with a few select endorsements via television ads and media spots. But it has acquired a company recently that could help with this kind of market positioning: Beats.
Beats doesn’t really make sports accessories – but you’d be forgiven for thinking they do. Their advertising campaign around the World Cup is one example of how well they’ve been able to tie their headphones to athletes and athletics. Nevermind the fact that Beats on- and over-ear headphones are pretty much the opposite of what you want on your head while you’re running five miles or training for a triathlon. They share the same basic design as earmuffs, which are made to keep heat in your head. True, Beats makes wireless earbuds, too with the Powerbeats line but they’ve managed to give the whole brand sports cache.
There is no evidence that a smartwatch will pack people into stores, Apple-made or not. But there’s plenty of evidence to suggest an Apple-built sports and fitness/fashion accessory will sell and sell well. Apple wouldn’t be the only company trying to use fashion as a selling point for wearables, but it might be the one with the best angle yet.

More on::techcrunch.com

This Glove Makes You Beethoven

“Have you ever seen the Matrix?” Thad Starner excitedly asks me over the phone. “There’s that scene where they need to fly a helicopter and Trinity just says, “hang on” and then uploads the instructions to her brain. That’s the future of what I’m doing.”
What started as a wearable experiment for the Georgia Tech professor could possibly make anyone a master at guitar, piano, Braille or even dance steps at superhuman speed.
All you have to do to play like Beethoven, Starner tells me, is slip on this glove he’s made called the Mobile Music Touch and it’s just bzzz, bzzz bzzz… bzzz bzzz…bzzz bzzz buh bzzz bzzz bzzz. Pretty soon you’re playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” like a pro.
Starner, by the way, is a current technical lead on Google Glass. He’s actually been wearing some kind of computer on his head for over 20 years. In fact, he built a wearable computer with a mounted display back in 1993. He’s also heavily involved in AI and techniques in human computer interaction (HCI) using wearable tech.
His glove is like one of those fingerless leather gloves you’d see at the gym for weight lifting, but with a robotic box of wires fixed at the back containing a Bluetooth radio and microcontroller. This means you can hook it up to your laptop or mobile device and start to play a song.
Mobile Music Touch has been something of a study in haptic learning for Starner for the past couple of years. That repetitive buzz from the device infuses a kind of muscle memory that, in theory, can really cut your time for learning things like playing the piano.
But it has a much wider potential for teaching not just patterns but also language. He lists off a series of other applications like sign language and Braille.
He’s also studied the effects the glove might have on those with spinal cord injuries. “We looked at those with fractured spines between the second and fourth vertebrae and found that using the glove actually helped them gain some sensation back in their hands.” This was over the course of a year and without other rehabilitation efforts, according to Starner.
The remarkable thing is that those studied in the injury actually pick up skills faster if they don’t think about it. It’s an idea called Passive Haptic Learning (PHL). If you’ve ever been a dancer or played guitar you know you’re better when you just move to the rhythm instead of thinking about what you are doing. Starner says it’s kinda like that.
The PHL activities associated with Starner’s glove allows an individual to learn one skill through their sense of touch while performing another, unrelated activity.
“And do you think a baseball player improves his pitch if you just show him a video of what he’s doing wrong?” he asks. Maybe? “Who knows? I don’t know…but what if he had something that could teach him how to throw right while he’s throwing?” Rad.
We’re far off from learning to immediately fly a helicopter, according to Starner. And of course you don’t suddenly become Beethoven just by putting on the glove. But the research does indicate you can master skills at a much faster pace and with more precision than just trying to do it on your own.

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This Waterproof Kindle Paperwhite Is Humanity’s Greatest Achievement

Sometimes a device comes so close to being perfect that you’d be forgiven for not realizing that with just a single tweak, it can become, in actual fact, perfect. The Kindle Paperwhite is such a device, as an e-reader that Amazon has crafted so well that you pretty much never need look beyond for anything better. But while a regular book ends up with wrinkly pages after being caught in a surprise downpour on the beach, the Paperwhite fizzles – unless you get the Waterfi-treated Kindle Paperwhite.
The Waterfi version is shipped in the original Kindle packaging without any outward appearance of having been modified. It looks and feels like a Kindle, albeit a slightly heavier version, and interacting with its touchscreen is the same as you’d find with an unmodified version. But because of Waterfi’s special treatment process, its Kindle Paperwhite is completely waterproof – submersible to above 200 feet in either fresh or salt water, for any length of time.
That means it isn’t just splash resistant, though it is that too – you could literally go scuba diving and sit on the ocean floor (in more shallow waters) and read “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea,” if you had a hankering to do so. Or you could read in the bath; or at the swim-up bar at your favorite Caribbean all-inclusive resort; or in the inflatable kiddie pool you set up in your backyard to escape the summer heat.
I showered with mine, and I was able to read pretty well so long as I didn’t hold it directly under the spray from the shower head, which triggers touch responses. I also put it in a bowl of water completely submerged and left it for three whole days, after which it came out working good as new. I’m convinced you could store this Kindle underwater for a month and you’d still have some reading time thanks to the long-lasting battery – imagine clearing up drawer space by storing Kindles in your toilet tank, so it’s ready right when you need it.
There are good arguments for making any and all electronics waterproof, but the Kindle Paperwhite, that travel and beach companion, is perhaps the number one candidate I can think of right now. For the Wi-Fi version (without ads) it’ll cost you $239.99, or $299.99 for the 3G-capable edition, so that means you’re paying $120 over and above the current price at the low end, but it really is like giving your Kindle superpowers, and it’s hard to put a dollar value on the added convenience of that.

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Apple’s Activation Lock Brings Down iPhone Theft In Major Cities

Apple’s introduction of iOS 7 Activation Lock has actually led to a decrease in iPhone-related theft in New York, London, and San Francisco, according to NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
“The introduction of kill switches has clearly had an effect on the conduct of smartphone thieves,” said Schneiderman in an interview with the New York Times. “If these can be canceled like the equivalent of canceling a credit card, these are going to be the equivalent of stealing a paperweight.”
Measuring the six months before and after the release of Activation Lock, San Francisco police officers said that iPhone robberies fell 38 percent. Over the same period, London-based iPhone robberies dropped 24 percent.
Within the first five months of 2014, Apple-related robberies dropped 19 percent from the same period in 2013.
Theft has been on the rise since the introduction of smartphones, which offer thieves an easy way to pluck $200-$300 out of someone’s hand, erase the device, and re-sell it. In fact, the NYPD introduced an “Anti-Apple Picking” campaign in 2012 so that iPhone owners could register their devices in cast of theft.
But it would appear that the introduction of Activation Lock, which gives users the ability to remotely wipe or lock a device, has reversed the growth in smartphone-related thefts.
Apple isn’t the only company working on anti-theft measures in smartphones. The state of California recently passed a bill requiring anti-theft provisions on smartphones sold in the state, and Microsoft is currently working on its own system for Windows Phones.

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Google’s Search Engine Can Now Launch Your Favorite Music Apps, Turn On The Tunes

 

Google has taken another small step toward connecting its search engine with world of mobile apps, having just introduced a new feature that lets you search for a band or artist, then tap to immediately start hearing their music in one of your preferred music applications, like Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Rdio or Google Play, for example, as well as YouTube.
The feature is being targeted at mobile users, who may be curious about a new artist, or want to hear their favorite band’s latest album.
Today, a good many of those initial searches still take place on Google.com, but apps themselves have likely been siphoning off some of this music-related search traffic by becoming users’ preferred ways to look up, learn about and listen to new music and popular tracks.
With this change, Google has effectively turned its search engine into the entry point for a majority of the top music apps, with plans to add more over time.
This isn’t the first time Google has done something like this. With its mobile “deep linking” agenda, the company is actively working to index the individual pages inside native mobile applications, so users can search on Google.com for information, then be directed to the right place with an app they have installed on their phone, when it offers a relevant result. The company is already working with a good many of the top app makers for things like restaurant searches travel searches, news, social, photos, and more.
In addition, those deep links won’t just be in search results – they’ll be ads, too.
But getting consumers to actually understand that you can use Google.com as an app launcher, so to speak, may take some work.
Over the years, smartphone users have grown accustomed to just tapping the app in question to get going – eschewing Google altogether. So it make sense that Google would launch, and then promote, one of the more appealing use cases that demonstrate how Google search works with mobile applications. And music search is a nice, simple example.

Google says the new music search feature only works on Android in the U.S. for now, but the company is working to bring it to worldwide users, and other local music services, like Deezer.

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With Multiple iWatch Designs And A Host Of Sensors, Apple Could Win Over Smartwatch Skeptics

Apple’s iWatch is almost certainly coming soon, according to a host of recent reports, and the latest from the Wall Street Journal is that it’ll be offered in a variety of designs and screen sizes, and be loaded with over ten sensors including those that track health and fitness. Apple plans to sell a lot of them – between 10 and 15 million before the year ends, according to WSJ, and the key to that optimism might be Apple’s focus on design, and a desire to release something other than a one-size-fits-all take on the smartwatch.
Earlier this week, a report from Reuters claimed a 2.5-inch diagonal, rectangular screen for the iWatch. The WSJ’s information suggests multiple screen sizes, which would be a good way to address critics who immediately came out of the woodwork to criticize how large a device with a 2.-5-inch diagonal measurement for its display would look on the average wrist. Much of the criticism of existing smartwatch designs focuses on how they only offer one option, and how those can be far too big and imposing, especially for slender wrists.
Remember that Apple hired away Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve last year, to work on “special projects” in a new VP role reporting directly to CEO Tim Cook. At the time, many speculated that Deneve’s experience in the high-fashion world is what brought him back to the fold (he’d worked at Apple in Europe between 1990 and 1997). The Financial Times also reported around the same time that Apple was “aggressively” recruiting new talent to focus on iWatch design. There was likely a push to source more engineering talent, but it makes sense that they would seek new design expertise for a project so outside their normal realm.
The fact is that no one yet has managed to create a smartwatch that has mass appeal, and design has a lot to do with that. A wrist-worn computer is very different than a smartphone or laptop, because it’s something you’re expected to have on you, in plain sight, touching your skin for all-day wear. Creating something that succeeds based on those parameters, for a range of potential customers that’s gender- and age-inclusive is no small task.
Lastly, the sensor package that WSJ describes could also give Apple the edge. Even if users aren’t crazy about the look of the accessory, they might be willing to wear it anyway if it provides a huge amount of additional value over and above what their smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices offer them. Pulling in a host of new data sources, provided they can actually enable new things on devices like the iPhone connected to the iWatch, could help make a convincing argument that yes, we do need another gadget in our tech-filled lives.

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Google Acquires mDialog To Improve DoubleClick’s Video Advertising

Google today announced that it has acquired video advertising company mDialog.
In a post on Google+, the company said that it will “work with the mDialog team to incorporate their technology and expertise into our DoubleClick product suite,” helping publishers on DoubleClick (which was a Google acquisition) monetize their video content.
The company pointed to Partner Select, its recently announced programmatic marketplace for video ads, as another example of how it’s investing in “helping brands connect with high-quality video content.”
mDialog was founded nearly a decade ago and raised $8 million in funding, most recently in a Series A led by Blackberry Partners Fund. (Update: By the way, the firm managing the fund rebranded as Relay Ventures a couple of years ago. Through its Smart Stream Platform, mDialog says it can integrate with existing ad tech to deliver videos to a number of devices, including iPad, iPhone, Android, GoogleTV, Apple TV, Roku, and Xbox.
mDialog said on its website that it will continue to work with its existing customers with “no immediate changes.”
A Google spokesperson, meanwhile, said the company is not disclosing the acquisition price or commenting beyond its initial post.

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Apple launches lower-cost iMac, now starting at $1,099

Apple on Wednesday launched a cheaper 21.5-inch iMac that brings the baseline cost of ownership down from $1,299 to just $1,099.
The new entry-level iMac ships with a dual-core Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 1.4GHz (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz), 8GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and Intel HD 5000 graphics. All iMacs also include 802.11 ac Wi-Fi, two Thunderbolt ports and four USB 3.0 ports for high-speed connectivity.
There are some obvious sacrifices in terms of hardware selection that had to be made to reach the lower price point such as the low-voltage i5 processor (the same one used in the MacBook Air) and the 500GB hard drive.

Of course, the system can always be bumped up in the specs department during configuration. For example, one could replace the 500GB drive with a 1TB SATA drive, a 1TB Fusion drive or a 256GB solid state drive for a bit more coin.
It’s not the full iMac refresh that many were likely hoping for but it’s probably all that is coming down the pipeline for now. It’s entirely possible that we won’t see a “true” refresh of the line until Intel launches its Broadwell desktop processor.
The company’s next generation processor will be built on a 14nm manufacturing process as a “Tick” in Intel’s “Tick-Tock” release philosophy. It’ll deliver better power efficiency and improved performance when it arrives later this year.
The new iMac is available today through Apple's Online Store, its retail stores and select authorized resellers.
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Nokia introduces alternative home screen app for Android

Nokia’s hardware division may have been sold to Microsoft, but it seems the Finnish company’s spun-off technologies group isn’t done with the mobile space. Today they’re announcing their first new project since the acquisition closed, a homescreen launcher for Android phones called Z Launcher.
The team is pitching it as “the fastest way to access everything on your phone”. Similar to third-party launchers like Cover, which was recently acquired by Twitter, Z Launcher rethinks the Android home screenby showing contextually-relevant app shortcuts instead of a static grid of icons.
Across the top of the screen are the time, date and one upcoming calendar event -- which can be tapped to launch their respective default app -- while your phone’s standard row of apps stay the same on the bottom.

The rest of the screen is occupied by a list of shortcuts to frequently used apps, contacts and websites. The promise is that Z Launcher will will learn your preferences over time and show the content you’re most likely to use based on time of day, location or who you’ve been talking to.
The app is constantly learning and evolving based on your usage patterns. For all other apps not shown on this list, Z Launcher supports swipe-based character recognition, so you can scribble an ’S’ with your finger and shortcuts to installed apps like Spotify, Skype, SoundHound and others will show up. You can jot one or more letters together to find what you’re looking for.
Z Launcher is still in a "pre-beta”phase and will be scaling gradually. Brook Eaton, the lead product manager of Nokia's emerging platforms group, told The Verge they want to get the product out there and learn from user feedback. Moreover, he says this will hopefully be just the first of many new consumer-facing projects from Nokia.

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Microsoft explains why there were no Windows games at E3

E3 is perhaps the biggest gaming-related trade show in the world. Every year, a bevy of game publishers and accessory manufacturers converge on the Los Angeles Convention Center for nearly a week to showcase their new wares to eager media. It seems like the perfect place to let everyone in on your next big project, right?
Not so, according to Microsoft.
As you may have noticed, Windows PC gaming was a no-show at this year’s conference and according to Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer, that was no accident. In a recent interview with Polygon, Spencer said gaming on Windows has arguably never been healthier in the sense that big franchises like League of Legends and World of Tanks dwarf a lot of what they are doing in the console space in terms of users and monetization.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean a show like E3 is a good fit for such titles.
Spencer pointed out that E3 is a retail show, a console show, and it didn’t really feel like the right place for Microsoft to talk about Windows gaming. That’s not to say that Windows games aren’t critical to the company’s success, however.
With E3 off the table, where then should Microsoft peddle PC games? Spencer said e-sports gaming meets, like Intel’s recent Extreme Masters e-sports event that attracted more than 55,000 spectators, could have potential.

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BlackBerry's upcoming Passport smartphone is an oddball

BlackBerry CEO John Chen took the wind out of the proverbial sails of any further leaks regarding its upcoming handset codenamed Windermere. The chief on Thursday confirmed the handset’s existence and that it’ll arrive as the BlackBerry Passport in September.
Unfortunately the details stopped there so we have to rely on previous leaks. As you can see, the Passport is one of the strangest smartphones to come out of any company to date.
The squareish handset appears to have a large display and a small QWERTY keyboard. Sources claim the phone has a stainless steel band around the outer edge although we can’t verify that from the leaked image. The volume buttons are positioned on the right side, we’re told.

Rumored specs include a 1,400 x 1,400 resolution display, a quad-core Snapdragon MSM8974 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 2-megapixel front shooter and a 3,450mAh non-removable battery.
Sources also claim the keyboard could be capacitive in nature. For example, a user could swipe from right to left over the keyboard to delete words. Furthermore, when in landscape mode, the keyboard could be used to scroll while in a web browser, photo album, etc.
The specs certainly seem impressive but it’s unclear whether or not the odd form factor would be a hit with the BlackBerry faithful.

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Apple's smartwatch to pack 10 sensors, might come in different sizes

Apple has been long rumoured to be working on a smartwatch, and recent hires as well as the company’s growing interest in health and fitness-tracking would suggest that we might see something sooner rather than later. If “people familiar with the matter” speaking to the Wall Street Journal are to be trusted, we could even see multiple versions with different screen sizes.
The paper says the wrist device is likely to be launched in the fall and will pack more than 10 sensors. Although no specific features were discussed in the report, the device is expected to have a strong focus on health and fitness.
One source at a component supplier said shipments of the smartwatches are estimated to total between 10 and 15 million units by the end of this year.
The claims about having multiple screen sizes do sound a bit unlikely for Apple, which is usually all about streamlined product lineups, doing fewer things but doing them well. It could be that they’re still experimenting with different form factors in house, or perhaps they are going a different route seeing as watches are fashion accessories and one design might not fit all.
A separate Reuters report recently talked about a single 2.5-inch screen device with wireless charging and pulse sensing capabilities.
Apple has been hinting at new product categories for a while and most are putting their bets on something TV-related and wearables. Just last month at the Code Conference, media chief Eddy Cue teased that the roadmap for upcoming products is the best he’s seen in his 25 years at Apple.
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Scientists use a shadow network that's 100 times faster than Google Fiber

 

Internet speeds have come a long way for the average home user, but in many cases it is still too cumbersome and slow to transfer really large files back and forth. However, this isn't an issue for those who have access to the astonishingly fast Energy Sciences Network (ESnet). Scientists and NASA officials dealing with massive sets of data have access to a shadow network that is 100 times faster than Google's impressive Fiber initiative.
The private pipeline is supervised by the US Department of Energy and has recently demonstrated a cross country data transfer rate of 91 gigabits per second between Denver and Maryland, which is the fastest of its kind ever reported, according to Wired. The network is specifically reserved for what sounds like high level scientific teams that work with data sets from the Human Genome Project and the Large Hadron Collider.

There have previously been faster transfers benchmarked, but they were done over direct connections. Earlier this year Alcatel-Lucent and BT recorded a 1.4 terabit connection between London and Ipswich, but it was a direct one-to-one connection rather than a real world network of connected hubs like seen in the above image.
Wired writes that NASA and other researchers are using ESnet to actually test real world applications. The groups are said to use the blazing fast network to test out networking technologies that could end up on the internet we know, but from the sounds of it we are talking more about advanced scientific level networking tech. ESnet's goal is to push transfers speeds to as high as a terabit per second in the future and has already begun working on a 400 gigabit network.
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Nokia Says It’s Disappointed With Indian Court Ruling That Rejected Asset Transfer To Microsoft

Nokia’s transfer of its Indian manufacturing unit and other assets in the country to Microsoft is facing a legal hurdle that could force the Finnish phone maker to take some extreme steps including potential shutdown of the plant.

If the Indian manufacturing plant is not transferred to Microsoft, it could mean less money for Nokia from the Microsoft deal.

After India’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld an earlier ruling asking Nokia to give financial guarantee before transferring any local assets to Microsoft, the mobile phone maker said it’s disappointed and will consider “the next steps.”

“Today, India’s Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Nokia on how its assets could be unfrozen and transferred to Microsoft. The decision means that the case now reverts to the February 5 Delhi High Court ruling on the asset transfer,” Nokia said in a statement.

“Nokia is disappointed by today’s decision. The company strongly believes its offer to the Indian tax department is fair for all sides, allowing its employees and assets to transfer to Microsoft while also providing the necessary financial guarantees. Nokia regrets the anxiety this extended legal process has caused its employees,” the company said in a statement.

A Delhi High Court ruling last month had asked Nokia to pay up additional amounts as a guarantee for any future tax claims. At the centre of this dispute is Nokia’s manufacturing plant in Chennai, which employes around 8,000 people.

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