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8
Jan

Live from the Engadget CES Stage: Mozilla COO Jay Sullivan


It’s true that CES is primarily a hardware show and Mozilla is primarily a software company, but the team behind Firefox no doubt has plenty to discuss — including, most likely, some hardware, too. Join us as we talk to COO Jay Sullivan about the browser wars, online tracking and Firefox OS’s place in the world of smartphones.

January 7, 2014 4:00:00 PM EST

Follow all the latest CES 2014 news at our event hub, and check out our full stage schedule here.

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8
Jan

Oculus Rift’s latest prototype features positional tracking, an OLED screen, and kills motion blur (hands-on)


SONY DSC

The newest version of the Oculus Rift headset is another major step toward the retail version promised for some point in 2014. It takes the existing HD headset we saw at E3 2013 and swaps an LED screen for OLED. It adds an external camera, and positional markers on the headset, to track your position depth-wise. Perhaps most importantly, it kills motion blur — one of the biggest issues with previous versions of Oculus VR’s incredible Rift headset.

The latest prototype, dubbed “Crystal Cove,” is here at CES 2014, and we’ve just gotten out of an EVE Valkyrie cockpit to tell you all about how much of an improvement this new guy is over the previous model.

Leaning forward in the cockpit of an EVE Valkyrie dogfighter, there’s readable text on a smattering of control panels. The forward thrusters, it turns out, are about to be engaged, hurtling us into space amongst a volley of other spaceships out for blood. Oculus VR director of dev relations Aaron Davies has us pause so that he can toggle one of Crystal Cove’s newest features: “low persistence.” We turn from left to right, unable to read the blurred text in front of us. He flips a switch, and voila: no motion blur. Well, very little. It’s a far cry from the first Kickstarter dev kit we used many moons ago and, despite the importance of positional tracking, makes a tremendous impact on the usability of the Rift.

In the same breath, let’s not discount how amazing it is to move our head forward and have that action replicated one-to-one in-game. This means that the gauges in our cockpit more than just window dressing: that’s the HUD. Another demo, specially made for Crystal Cove by Epic Games, had us sitting in the Unreal Engine 4 demo with the…er…magma lord (?) that previously terrified us at E3. Looking down between where he’s seated and our own position, a little world of creatures in a castle are available for torture should we push the face buttons. Push A, fire rains down and decimates the little guys. It’s a bit like The Seventh Seal, but less existential. Thus far, position tracking is handled by adding a camera to the equation which tracks a handful of sensors on the front of the Rift. CEO Brendan Iribe made sure to note that the camera is not final and may never ship with the final product. It’s just the easiest solution for now. See those little white dots all over the headset? Those are the sensors.

And all of this looked far, far crisper than previous units — that’s due to the new OLED screen inside and a 30 millisecond lag time (down by half from the previous dev kit). As far as when all these new bells and whistles will arrive in developer hands is another question altogether — we’re told by Oculus that the Crystal Cove prototype is just that: a prototype. With around 46,000 dev kits out in the wild already, it’s probably unfair to ask all those folks to re-buy kits. That said, we expect it won’t be long before new dev kits are available, and not long after that for the world of VR to expand dramatically. If 2013 was the year of proof-of-concept for Oculus Rift and modern virtual reality, 2014 seems poised to be the year when it comes into its own. With Crystal Cove, that possibility is greater than ever.

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8
Jan

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s CES 2014 keynote liveblog


No-one was sure what to expect when Google’s Marissa Mayer took over at Yahoo, but it’s clear that she wasn’t there for an easy ride. In less than two years, the company has bought a clutch of other outfits, including Tumblr for $1.1 billion, redesigned its logo and brought some much-needed love to Flickr. Now she’s here at CES, ostensibly to talk about the “next wave of innovation,” which we hope includes some dirt on Yahoo’s future direction. Care to join us for the play-by-play?

January 7, 2014 4:00:00 PM EST

Hello and good day to everyone. We’re now comfortably sat in the LVH Theater, waiting for proceedings to kick off. Words are being provided by me, Dan Cooper, and pictures by the tremendously talented Alexis Santos.

If you’ve got any predictions on what you’re expecting Marissa Mayer to say today, or anything you’re hoping for, why not tweet me at @danielwcooper and any entries I see that are, you know, publishable, I shall share with the world.

You can also compliment Alexis’ photography skills at @alexissantos.

Today’s pre-roll music is HAIM’s Forever. We’re trying to rock out as best as we can in these fairly constrictive theater seats, to show our commitment to the rock.

Understandably, the whole stage is shrouded in purple light. Maybe Prince will be the musical guest.

As you can see Mayer is playing to a capacity crowd today.

Music is now Avicii’s ‘You Make Me.’ And no, *You* needed Shazam to tell you that.

here we go folks. There’s a pre-roll video with a deep voice talking about how great CES is. According to this, it’s pretty great.

Gary Shapiro, president of the CEA (i.e. “Mr. CES”) is now on stage to introduce the keynote.

‘Marissa Mayer was just 37 when they named her as CEO of Yahoo, before that she was at Google for 13 years.’ Now Shapiro is rounding up her achievements so far, both as one of the first Googlers and now her Yahoo career.

Playing Yahoo’s ‘Don’t stop dreaming’ commercial.

and now Marissa Mayer has taken to the stage.

Mayer: “Yahoo’s mission is to make the world’s habits inspiring and entertaining.”

Mayer is talking about Yahoo’s “mobile-first” strategy, with smartphones growing 27% each year, and tablets 78% year-on-year.

Mayer “This shift is not just about the direction of devices, but the amount of time we spend with them, which has increased in the last three years”

Yahoo recently surpassed 400 million monthly mobile users, and that excludes Tumblr.

The future of search is contextual knowledge — leveraging your own data to help you.

Which is why Yahoo is purchasing Aviate.

Aviate will help the company suggest data and apps based on contextual clues, so it’ll offer you a GPS app when you get into your car, or if you always check your stock when you wake up, Aviate will offer that up to you automatically.

She’s now moved onto search more generally, having added 869 search partners, and conducting 600 experiments to help improve search within the last year.

Mayer: ‘People come to Yahoo to communicate with their friends and family. Part of this innovation is the inbox — the most magical place in the world. Your inbox carries the keys to your life. Our teams have been focused on organizing the inbox and making it more personalized, thoughtful, precise and secure.” She’s referring to the recent activation of SSL on Yahoo’s email service.

She’s now turning toward Media, and how Yahoo’s media streams have been upgraded and strengthened, which includes broadcasting NBC Sports and Good Morning America.

Katie Couric, a recent addition to the Yahoo family, is now on stage, to whoops and cheers from the audience.

Katie Couric says that she got into the news business 35 years ago, a different time, where “harass” was two words instead of one. Her first job was changing the purple ribbons on teletype machines, which makes her feel “like the Geico caveman”

In short: the internet has revolutionized news broadcasting.

Couric: “The news is available when you want it, instead of when a program says you need it.” But more than that, anyone with a smartphone and a twitter account can now become a reporter.

Couric feels that the internet has helped to kill fact-checking and understanding, replaced with immediacy. She’s old-school, and she feels that Mayer respects this commitment to quality news broadcasting.

Couric is hoping to start a new news organization from a blank slate, and is looking forward to interviewing newsmakers, sportspeople, authors, entrepreneurs etc. She’s hoping to develop a new interview show, we guess.

That’s all from Katie Couric, who has left to enormous applause. Back to Mayer.

Mayer: ‘It’s increasingly difficult to find the news you need / want. This problem has led to the issue of tl;dr’

No surprises that the next person on stage is Summly’s Nick D’Aloisio

Who is announcing Yahoo News Digest, which presumably bakes in Summly’s technology under Yahoo’s banner.

The issue he’s sought to solve, is to prevent people from being overwhelmed by news. Yahoo News Digest hopes to solve that by digesting news twice a day.

Nick’s going to do a live demonstration. The splash screen has a big cover image, and beneath it you’ve got headlines that are clustered together.

There’s a summary that has been produced from multiple services, which bakes in extra contextual information. For instance, on the screen there’s a piece on a conflict in the middle east — and there’s a map you can access, tweets concerning the piece you can read or direct links to Wikipedia.

There are also things like infographics, stock tickers, scoreboards, and when you’re done reading the news, the app tells you that you’re done.

and that’s that from Nick and Summly.

Mayer has structured this presentation like Yahoo’s News Digest, racing through announcements in a tl;dr version. Now she’s talking about a way to combine magazines and the internet, called Yahoo Digital Magazines, launching with Yahoo Food.

Mayer is now introducing David Pogue, who will launch a Tech news verical in the coming weeks.

Pogue is riffing on his stock image, which resembles the cover of ‘Dianetics,’ and is now talking about the split between ‘Gearheads’ and ‘Normals’ when it comes to the tech readership in the US.

‘You know what a Snapdragon CPU is, you care about BUS speed… you have a Google Plus account.’ Pause for the audience to groan.

Oh, he’s sassing us. Aww.

Pogue is saying that the top and very bottom ends of the tech readership are well served, but those people in the middle are being ignored.

Pogue is now showing us through his articles, and pointing out that Yahoo! Tech isn’t run by advertising.

Pogue’s going to concentrate on Kickstarter reviews, too. It’s launching right in front of our eyes.

and with some strobe lighting, Yahoo! Tech is launched. Pogue exits, pursued by the strobe lights, and Mayer is back on.

We’re now moving onto video content.

Adam Cahan is now on to talk about video.

Yahoo is seeing a fundamental change in its users behaviour. With mobile, people spend a lot more time with their devices, and with tablets, people are now watching in bed for much longer.

So if your colleagues and friends begin staggering in bleary eyed because they’re not getting enough sleep, you can bet that they just bought a tablet.

Yahoo Smart TV is introducing ‘Smart Guide,’ which brings together personalization and recognition to help guide you through the TV minefield. The service is designed to learn from what you watch and help you find something that you’ll enjoy.

The company is also working on making ads smarter, using an example of an advert for FedEx that offers people the opportunity to track packages they have in transit. Which is a bit better than watching yet another advert for hair cream.

Cahan is gone, Mayer is back. Talking about the fact that users can now get Daily Show, Colbert Report and SNL clips on the service.

We’re now seeing a clip from SNL’s Weekend Update, but the clip has now stopped, and they’ve wheeled out the update desk to the floor. Oh, and Cecily Strong, who is sat on there.

Cecily Strong just suggested that Kristen Stewart would make a great Grumpy Cat in a live-action movie adaptation.

Keenan Thompson is now on, pretending to be the Rev. Al Sharpton.

“Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here either, but thanks to Marissa Layer, CEO of YooHoo for inviting me here”

“When you think the cutting edge of technology, you think Al Sharpton.”

“I lost a lot of weight using an App: Apple Maps. I got lost and had to walk around a lot”

The SNL duo have been wheeled off, and the audience is trying to regain most of its composure.

Mayer: Yahoo is simplifying its business and simplifying the way it delivers information. Now the company has been simplified down to Search, Communications, Digital Magazines and Video. These four areas are powered by two engines: Flickr and Tumblr.

Mayer: Earlier in the year, we gave users 1TB of storage and created a photo-centric experience, and this service now powers Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Mail.

Mayer: Tumblr is the platform that we’re using to launch our digital magazines. It’s something truly special, and it’s been a privilege to work with David Karp, who is now taking the stage, dressed in the regulation start-up outfit. Plaid shirt, skinny jeans, hoodie, etc.

Karp has seen that people Tumblr posting from mobile applications has tripled in the last year.

Karp is talking about engagement, which is business speak for people paying attention to Tumblr.

Karp is talking about how advertisers are using Tumblr to show off their stuff. He’s also mentioned that the average Tumblr post is shared on 15 Tumble Blogs. The average sponsored post, however, is shared and seen more than 10,000 times.

Karp’s announcement is that Tumblr’s sponsored posts are now powered by Yahoo’s advertising platform. Given how important advertising and new business is for Yahoo, it’s a reasonably notable move. That’s him done, and so it’s back to Mayer.

Scott Burke is now on, talking about advertising technology. A lot of the business press have been musing upon Mayer’s record as Yahoo! CEO being dependent upon the company growing its advertising base.

Burke is saying that Yahoo is launching a new unified, one-stop advertising solution for media buyers. I.e., if you want to buy adverts from Yahoo, you just need to go to this place and throw your money at the company, and boom.

He’s still talking about advertising. Hope you’ve been able to catch the rest of the great stuff we’ve been working on at CES this year. We’ve got some killer gaming news with Razer’s Project Christine and Oculus Rift, not to mention that Intel is working on a smart onesie.

Mayer “We want you to know that we take the entertaining part of our mission pretty seriously, so to play us out, it’s John Legend”

If you’re curious what that sounds like, I’m informed that this YouTube video will help replicate the experience for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bWonUm3OtQ. Just shine a purple light in your face as you listen to it.

Anyway, it looks as if things are now wrapping up here, so I’d like to extend my enormous thanks to the tremendously talented Alexis Santos (@AlexisSantos) who furnished us with some beautiful pictures today. Thanks everyone for reading, I hope you enjoyed it and that you stick with us through the rest of this week’s CES in Las Vegas.

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8
Jan

Live from the Engadget CES Stage: Sony President Mike Fasulo


Mike Fasulo hasn’t been in his position for long, but Sony’s new president/COO knows a thing or two about consumer electronics, having previously served as the company’s CMO/VP. We’ll grill him on what the company is offering up year — or at least as much as we can fit into half an hour.

January 7, 2014 4:30 PM EST

Follow all the latest CES 2014 news at our event hub, and check out our full stage schedule here.

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8
Jan

B&O’s Essence allows wall-mounted music control of your wireless streaming habits (hands-on)


Here at CES 2014, Bang & Olufsen is looking to make access to tunes as soon as you get out of bed “as easy as turning on the lights.” To do so, the high-end audio company has announced Essence: a circular music control dial that can be either wall mounted or fixed to a small metal plate for use around the house. The device features a rotating aluminum ring that doubles as a volume dial with track skipping, play/pause and power touch control on the face. In fact, it’ll pick up at the exact point you last listened. That bit of silver alongside minimal graphics and black accents keeps the unit inline with B&O’s upscale look. Measuring about two-inches across, the Essence is quite small and only extends a couple of inches off of the wall — when mounted in that fashion. Up to three of the controls can be used in a single room, if you’d like to spread out multiples.

In the event that you need that controller to be a bit more mobile, B&O had accounted for that. The company is calling it a “table-top” mount and it’s attached to a metal plate that’s about the size of an index card. As you might expect, the add-on keeps with the aesthetic while making the Essence a bit easier to keep track of. In order to connect to that gaggle of speakers — like the recently announced BeoLab 17, 18 and 19, for example — there’s a separate box that can remain hidden in a cabinet and connects to the controller via low-energy Bluetooth. In terms of compatibility, you can expect AirPlay and DLNA support as well as streaming from Spotify Connect, QPlay and a variety of internet radio providers at launch. It also plays nice with the BeoPlay smartphone app, too. Speaking of its arrival, the Essence will be available this spring for $995 and that so-called table-top option tacks on an additional $200. Despite showing off a smattering of color options for the back plate here in Vegas, we’re told only the dark grey option will be available at launch — which is a bummer, because the wood grain looks really nice. We’ve already had a look at the device for ourselves, so jump down in the gallery that follows for some snapshots.

Will Lipman contributed to this report.

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8
Jan

Live from the Engadget CES Stage: ARM CTO Mike Muller


Mike Muller isn’t just the CTO of ARM — he’s also a founder. Suffice it to say, the executive knows a thing or two about the mobile industry. We’ll be picking his brain tonight at 5PM ET.

January 7, 2014 5:00:00 PM EST

Follow all the latest CES 2014 news at our event hub, and check out our full stage schedule here.

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8
Jan

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.

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Source: Yahoo

8
Jan

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.

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Source: Sprint

8
Jan

Yahoo acquires Aviate to build context-sensitive Android apps


Yahoo buys Aviate

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.

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Source: Yahoo, Aviate

8
Jan

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.

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