Consumers are out, business is in: Looxcie to focus on Vidcie enterprise solutions
Parting is such sweet sorrow. Shed a tear for Looxcie’s consumer aspirations, y’all, because the company has decided that the enterprise is now where it’s at. After launching its Vidcie business-focused POV camera system at CES, it seems that Looxcie views the b2b brand as its ticket to profitability. Of course, the company will still sell its consumer products, and you folks who bought a Looxcie 3 or HD won’t be left out in the cold, as Looxcie will still support those products and honor their warranties. The shift to focus on the enterprise isn’t terribly surprising, given the ample and established competition in the wearable camera market. Still, we shall miss Looxcie’s lipstick cams gracing our pages, won’t you? (Probably not.)
Filed under: Cameras
Via: SlashGear
Galaxy Gear 2 rumored with bendable display
Despite being the leader in its space, the Samsung Galaxy Gear has had quite a rough year. Limited functionality, incompatibility with current flagships at launch, bugs, and more have proved difficult for mainstream success. According to an unnamed industry insider, Samsung is working on a total redesign of the Galaxy Gear. Will this be Samsung’s chance to redeem itself?
The so-called Galaxy Gear 2 is said to have a flexible OLED display roughly the same size (1.63inches) with a redesign which removes unfavorable aspects of the current model.
Many are wondering if Samsung will allow compatibility with devices other than their own smartphones. How much does that matter; do you think Apple would make an “iWatch” that played well with other brands or OSes?
With 2014 set to give way to many wearable devices, Samsung’s next-gen Galaxy Gear will need to be considerably better than the current iteration. Another misstep here could be costly.
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Rumor: Nexus line coming to an end in 2015?
If true, this may be sad for many, but according to @eldarmurtazin on Twitter, Google will be killing off the Nexus line by next year in favor of Google Play Edition devices.
The Nexus program has been around since January 2010 when the HTC Nexus One was announced. All Nexus devices have been pure Google Android, with no custom skin on top of them. Highlights of the Nexus program have been that the devices have “usually” been unlocked, were “usually” sold directly by Google and have been the first to receive software updates.
While it may seem this is the natural progression, killing off the Nexus line once phones started shipping with stock firmware, in my opinion, I don’t think that Google is ready to kill it just yet.
One thing that people have praised the Nexus program for is that it has offered the choice of an off-contract at a reasonable price. Besides the Moto G, which isn’t in the same class as the Nexus 5, there is no GPE device that is that inexpensive. The HTC One is $599 from the Play Store and the Samsung Galaxy S4 is even more expensive at $649. Besides the only GPE tablet, LG’s G Pad 8.3, and the Moto G, there are no reasonably priced GPE devices.
Devices like the Moto X have proved that selling a cheaper device is possible, but who knows if Samsung, Sony and HTC will ever release a high-end GPE device that is also relatively inexpensive.
With comments from Android director of engineering Dave Burke (from the August 2013 article from The Verge) that states they’re “halo” devices meant to educate the rest of the ecosystem, I’m not sure I believe the death of the program.
“Basically what Nexus allows us to do is set the standard … [we can] demonstrate how Android runs and hopefully influence other device manufacturers to take what we’ve done and do even better,” he said in that interview.
There was also another reason for its existence, that Google needs hardware on which it can develop Android and Burke said “as an engineering team creating a mobile platform — we can’t do that in the abstract. We need to do it on a real device that we’re carrying with us.”
Well, anything is possible, but only time will tell if Google is putting an end to the Nexus. That being said… where’s that new Nexus 10?
via Twitter
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NSA Servers Collect Personal Data Sent by iPhone Apps
The U.S. National Security Agency specifically looks for data sent by mobile apps in order to capture personal data on targets, according to a new report from The New York Times and other news agencies.
Intelligence agencies can grab data as it travels across the Internet, looking specifically for data from smartphone apps including Google Maps — searches within the app allow Governments to locate users to within a few yards — and even Angry Birds. Much of the information being sent seems to be related to targeted advertising.
The secret report noted that the profiles vary depending on which of the ad companies — which include Burstly and Google’s ad services, two of the largest online advertising businesses — compiles them. Most profiles contain a string of characters that identifies the phone, along with basic data on the user like age, sex and location. One profile notes whether the user is currently listening to music or making a call, and another has an entry for household income.
In addition, apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all support sending some amount of location data and other information, allowing intelligence agencies significant opportunities to capture personal data in real-time on targeted persons without ever having access to phones, something that was part of a different intelligence strategy revealed in previous leaked documents.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been vocal in his disapproval of some of the NSA’s methods, meeting with the President to discuss NSA surveillance and more recently saying the NSA “would have to cart us out in a box” to have access to Apple’s servers.
For its part, the NSA says it only analyzes data on foreign intelligence targets and that significant protections exist for data collected on U.S. persons and “innocent foreign citizens”. The NSA has said in the past that collection of this sort of smartphone traffic has been useful in cracking cases.
“N.S.A. does not profile everyday Americans as it carries out its foreign intelligence mission,” the agency said in a written response to questions about the program. “Because some data of U.S. persons may at times be incidentally collected in N.S.A.’s lawful foreign intelligence mission, privacy protections for U.S. persons exist across the entire process.” Similar protections, the agency said, are in place for “innocent foreign citizens.”
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
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HTC M8 to Have On-Screen Buttons Instead of Capacitive Buttons
The HTC M8 has gotten its fair share of leaked information the past couple months, and leak king, evleaks, has been on top of a lot of those leaks. The passed couple days the leak junky gave us two pieces of wallpaper straight out of the HTC M8 gallery, which are colorful little pieces of eye candy. Now we are getting word that the successor of the HTC One will finally ditch those capacitive buttons that have graced every HTC phone since the beginning, and they will jump onto the on-screen button bandwagon.
M8 will be the first HTC device with on-screen buttons.
— @evleaks (@evleaks) January 27, 2014
Evleaks doing what he does best, and he is usually spot on. I remember last year when he dropped the very first image of the original HTC One, and a lot of us didn’t believe it. Something about the design just didn’t scream HTC, but we soon came to find out that it was the design, and ended up being the best designed phone of 2013. Anyways, let us know your thoughts about this information. Glad to see the capacitive buttons go away?
Source: evleaks
T-Mobile LG G-Flex Pre-Orders Begin, Scheduled for Feb 5th Release
T-Mobile’s LG G-Flex has finally received an official out date. Up until today they only had a registration page up for those interested in the curvy flexible device from LG. Now you are free to jump in and get a pre-order placed for the device, or just mark your calendar for February 5th to head into a store.
Cost wise you are looking at $672 outright with $0 down and monthly payments of $28 for 24 months to pick one up. T-Mobile is also kicking in 6 months of Netflix with your purchase.
Quick recap of the LG G-Flex Specs:
- Quad-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor at 2.26 GHz
- 2 GB of RAM
- 32GB internal memory w/ expandable micro SD slot
- 13MP rear camera
- 2.1MP front facer, 88 degree Ultra-wide-angle, f/2.0 aperture
- 6-inch screen (Res 1280 x 720, 245 ppi)
- 3,400 mAh battery (Yes, that is 100 mAh less than the competitors)
- Android 4.2.2 at launch
- Flexible screen and body with self healing back
Anyone thinking of picking this up? Feel free to pop over to T-Mobile.com to take a closer look.
Starwood swapping room keys for mobile phones at two hotels
Starwood plans to roll out refreshed SPG apps that can unlock your guest room later this quarter. The new tech, which the company refers to as “keyless key” in its intro video (embedded after the break), will soon let you bypass the front desk and enter your room using an Android 4.3 or iPhone 4s (or newer) device at the Aloft Harlem and the Aloft Silicon Valley. Existing locks must be upgraded in order to communicate with the Android and iOS apps via Bluetooth, according to a WSJ report, but Starwood’s CEO says that the “investment would not be substantial.”
Starwood currently offers a Smart Check-In solution at several Aloft hotels, but the existing system requires guests to obtain (and carry) a compatible membership card. It’s also quite limited, with only nine hotels currently participating. Meanwhile, if this initial smartphone rollout is a success, your phone could be the key to all W and Aloft hotels worldwide by the end of next year.
Filed under: Wireless, Software
Source: Wall Street Journal, Starwood Hotels
GTA: San Andreas now available for (some) Windows Phones weeks late
Rockstar Games’ promise of an early January launch for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on Windows Phone devices may’ve been a bit off — the game just arrived on the Windows Phone store today, as spotted by CNET. The game carries a $7 price tag and works on a handful of WP8 devices (the HTC 8XT and Nokia Lumias 1520, 1320, 822, 820 and 810); it’s got the same touch-based, contextual controls that the iOS and Android versions employ. Should the Caricature Compton of Carl Johnson’s San Andreas entice you, you can snag it right here.
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Mobile, Microsoft, HTC, Nokia
Via: CNET
Source: Windows Phone Store
The NSA is reportedly scouring Angry Birds and other apps for user data
According to newly leaked information from Edward Snowden, the NSA can access data from Angry Birds and other apps to learn everything from your gender to your location. The Guardian, ProPublica and The New York Times reported on the extensive leaks; get ready for a ton of new details below.
Depending on how much information a user shares (and how much the app developer allows for), the NSA and the GCHQ in the UK can collect details such as smartphone identification codes, current location, age, gender and marital status. In the case of Angry Birds, ad platforms give the agencies access to much more data than the game alone provides. It’s not clear just what personal information is revealed through Rovio’s app, but considering the game has been downloaded more than 1.7 billion times, this is relevant news for anyone who enjoys apps on a smartphone.
The leaked documents don’t only raise flags about the safety of mobile apps; one report also shows that by simply updating your Android software, you’ve generated hundreds of lines of data about your phone’s history. Moreover, the leaks detail the NSA’s efforts to hack individual handsets, with methods boasting cheerful names like “Nosey Smurf.”
Of course, all these revelations beg the question: has extensive information-collecting been helpful in fighting terrorism? According to The New York Times, a 2009 analysis of US and UK cellphone data turned up millions of “callers of interest.” In other words, describing the vast amounts of data collected as “unwieldy” would be a gross understatement.
Filed under: Cellphones
Source: The Guardian, The New York Times, ProPublica
LG G Flex and LG Optimus F3Q coming to T-Mobile on Feb. 5
T-Mobile just announced that it has two new devices launching just in time for Valentine’s Day, the LG G Flex and LG Optimus F3Q. Both will be available Feb. 5 and can be pre-ordered now. The 4G LTE LG G Flex, which has a unique curved design, is even more curved than devices we’ve seen in the past like the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, and features a 6-inch OLED HD 1280 x 720 display, 2.3 GHz Quad Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC ROM, 13 MP rear-facing camera, 2.1 MP front-facing camera, 3500mAh battery and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. As we’ve noted before, key features of this model are its curved display, curved battery, and a self healing back. It also offers a number of LG-exclusives such as KnockON, Slide Aside, Qslide Function, QuickTheater, and Dual Window. As for the LG Optimus F3Q, it’s designed for those that can’t live without a physical keyboard, which hopefully isn’t too many people anymore. The device comes with a 4-inch IPS TFT display and 5 MP camera, and also features some LG-exclusives, including QuickMemo(TM) and the QSlide function that allows users to float and use two apps over the main screen simultaneously.
T-Mobile notes that on its Simple Choice Plan, buyers will pay 24 equal monthly payments of $28 for the G Flex alongside their monthly voice, text and data charges, plus buyers get a 6-month Netflix membership.The Optimus F3Q will be $13 per month on the Simple Choice Plan. Hopefully, at least the LG G Flex gets an update to Android 4.4 KitKat soon, but if you’ve been looking for a new smartphone, be sure to check these out. T-Mobile
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