Yahoo News Digest to offer bite-sized news for busy people
Yahoo has just announced Yahoo News Digest, an app that summarizes all the biggest news of the day into short easily consumable chunks. Summly’s Nick D’Aloisio is heading up the venture, and he came on stage to describe how the app works. A large cover image greets you on the splash screen while a cluster of headlines lie underneath. The app is designed to summarize news twice a day from multiple sources, and the news chunks have contextual information like maps and tweets baked right in. Infographics, stock tickets, scoreboards are part of the app, and it’ll prompt you when you’re done reading.
Source: Yahoo
Sprint’s new “Framily” plan lets you share your account with 10 friends, but still bills you separately
It’s a scam thrifty cellular subscribers have been pulling for years: sharing a “family plan” with a group of non-biologically related peers to save a few bucks. It works, but it’s kind of a headache – family plans arrive as one bill, and the ringleader needs to hassle their friends to pay their share of the bill. Tired of the nightmare? So is Sprint – the company has dropped all pretense for these plan-sharing schemers with its horribly named “Framily” plan, which allows up to 10 lines to be shared on a single account regardless of blood relation.
The initial line of service costs $55 a month, but each additional user takes $5 off the price of every line on the plan until they reach a maximum discount of $30 per line, per month. A group of seven, for instance, can score unlimited talk, text and 1GB of data for $25 per line. Best of all, each line is billed individually, and allows each user to manage and customize their own plans without going through the central account holder. The new system will be available to new and existing Sprint customers on January 10th, although currently active lines can only be combined if they are already owned by the same person. If you can tolerate its moniker, Framily seems to be a good spin on the existing shared plan dynamic. Want more details? Check out Sprint’s official announcement at the source below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Source: Sprint
Yahoo acquires Aviate to build context-sensitive Android apps
That was quick — Aviate hasn’t even finished developing its context-aware Android home screen, and it’s already an acquisition target. Yahoo has announced at CES that it’s buying Aviate for an undisclosed amount; the web giant wants to use Aviate’s simplified, ever-changing interface as a “central part” of its Android software in 2014. While it’s not clear just what that entails, the launcher replacement will live on for the foreseeable future — in fact, the first 25,000 people to use the code “YAHOO” will get into the ongoing private beta.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Sprint announces Virgin Mobile hotspot with Spark LTE support, adds six new markets
Most carriers shy away from offering LTE on its prepaid plans, but Sprint is diving right in by making it available on its first Virgin Mobile device. The network will take advantage of Sprint’s Spark service, which will offer tri-band LTE support at faster speeds on the company’s Broadband2Go plans. The first device to leverage it is the Netgear Mingle, which is essentially a red version of Sprint’s Zing (pictured above). You can get the fast service at a cost of $5 per day, or you can choose monthly plans of 1.5GB for $25 or 6GB fof $55. Additionally, Sprint announced that it will launch Spark in six more cities: Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston and Fort Lauderdale.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Sprint
Hands-on with Garmin’s windshield HUD prototype
We’ve tracked Garmin’s K2 since last year at CES and this year sees a HUD concept introduced into its navigation mix. In our conversation with Garmin, it seem this in large part this system’s focus is on following NHTSA driver distraction guidelines. Interaction with the HUD is very simple as there are only three buttons on the steering column: a scroll wheel which is mounted in capacitive housing, a back button and a menu button. Each level of the menu is well thought out, and only requires a roll of the finger to get in or a tap of a button to hop back out of. Colors, fonts and general layout have all been chosen to work well in brightly lit, snow, dark and most other conditions you find yourself in while out driving making the task of peeking down at the HUD quick and simple. Of course, we’ve seen many similar setups, but Garmin’s infotainment-focused offering adds a dimension of useful and quick interaction to the system that makes it much more compelling than a simple read out of speed, direction and time. We look forward to see this hit retail but in the meantime give the video a once over if you want to see s bit more.
Filed under: Transportation
Mad Catz’ Tournament Edition Rat is lighter, faster and brighter
If you didn’t have enough transforming mice in your cursor collection, Mad Catz has one more for you: the Rat TE (Tournament Edition). It’s the latest in the company’s line of formerly Cyborg-branded mousing products and is designed specifically, as the name implies, for professional and competitive gamers. That means its lighter (to improve inertia, the company says), offers faster reaction times and has been outfitted with a new 8200 DPI laser sensor. Mad Catz has also given the mouse the ability to adjust its lift-off height calibration, giving pro gamers one more aspect of play to fine-tune. That said, it’s not a exactly a dead-ringer for the original Rat – the horizontal scroll wheel is missing and the ever-important sniper button is twice as large as the mouse’s first design. Mad Catz hasn’t announced the teal-accented mouse’s price yet, but expect to see it ship in early 2014.
Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals
Live from the Engadget CES Stage: AMD’s Kevin Lensing
And what about the chips that power all of those shiny new devices we’re seeing on the show floor here at CES? Kevin Lensing, the director of AMD’s mobility product line will discuss the hardware that makes our mobile devices tick.
Follow all the latest CES 2014 news at our event hub, and check out our full stage schedule here.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, AMD
Internal game development at Oculus VR is already happening (and yes, it involves John Carmack)
It’s hard to imagine John Carmack not developing games. Sure, he signed on to Oculus Rift as Chief Technology Officer, but he’s also the man who co-created such gaming classics as Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein 3D. With Oculus Rift, Carmack and the many talented game developers working at Oculus VR have a new test on their hands: showcasing their new device with impressive software. Thus far, Oculus has relied on third-parties to create demonstrations of the Rift. From our conversation this morning with CEO Brendan Iribe and director of dev relations Aaraon Davies, it sounds like that may change in 2014.
“He’s working on a lot of exciting tech,” Iribe told us of Carmack’s role. “But, his heart and soul and history certainly lies in the game development side.” That means, like Epic Games before them and id Software before Epic, Carmack and co. are working on software that’ll showcase the Rift’s many functions. “That’s always been Epic’s philosophy. And it’s what allowed them to make what they made. It’s certainly been id’s philosophy in the past. It’s been John Carmack’s philosophy — you gotta eat your own dog food here, and develop internal content also,” he told us.
So that’s what Carmack and Oculus are doing, with plenty of game developers in-house to expedite the process. “You’ll see, over the next six to 12 months, if you monitor the careers page, we are putting up our team out there. We wanna make this a very open company. Pay attention to that page and you’ll see more and more game developers showing up,” Iribe added.
That’s to say nothing of supporting external dev studios, both big and small, or even outright publishing third-party games. The company even hired ex-EA Partners director David DeMartini to lead that charge. There’s also a blend of the two, where the folks at Oculus discover an especially exciting mechanic but don’t have the means to dig in themselves. “When we catch on to a nugget that seems like it should become a full experience, we may end up doing it ourselves. We may end up putting it out and working with a third-party studio that does. We’ve actually started to engage with third-party studios like that through the relations group, the publishing group, as well as our own development,” he said.
Of course, when the Rift ships later this year, it’ll have some form of UI built in for navigation and management. All that is being developed in-house at Oculus VR. In terms of internal game development, though, that avenue is just now being explored. “We’ll see where it goes,” he added. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t do more and more internal development.”
Sony debuts Xperia Smartwear
Sony is officially in the game of wearable tech with the debut of the Xperia Smartwear which records your activities throughout the day. Now I said “activities” because this is much more than just another fitness band that counts steps and calorie output. However, it’s not quite a smart watch such as the Qualcomm Toq.
Smartwear gently vibrates on your wrist when you receive a notification or a call, but the really cool feature is the bookmark feature. With the simple press of a button on the wristband, Smartwear will record everything that is happening at that moment. For example, you’re out with friends at a restaurant or you hear something on Pandora, it will record that moment in time for future reference. It also comes in a plethora of colors to choose from!
There is no set price or date of availability, but Sony promises something soon!
Features of Sony SmartBand
- Lifelog app can see if you’ve been walking, running, cycling or travelling by train – and how you’ve slept.
- Look ahead in time to see just how much more you need to cycle to achieve your daily activity goal.
- Helps to track weather and alert the user
- Bookmark your special moments by pressing the Life Bookmark key.
- Press the Life Bookmark key on your SmartBand and everything going on at that moment will be caught and remembered forever.
- Waterproof
- Removable Core unit and a stylish and comfortable wrist band
- Sony fastening button and LEDs
- Vibrates when a call, message or other notification comes in
- Play, pause and skip tracks using your SmartBand
- Battery performance of up to 5 days.
The post Sony debuts Xperia Smartwear appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google Glass prescription lenses now available from Wetley
Users have been asking for prescription lenses for Google Glass for some time now, and Wetley is answering those pleas. They’ve launched a line of prescription glasses and sunglasses compatible with Glass, which you can see in the demo video below.
There are several different options to consider, so if you’re a Glass user looking for quality prescription lenses, make sure you check out their product page.
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