Apple buys SnappyLabs to improve your high-speed iPhone photography
The iPhone 5s can already capture photos at a brisk 10 frames per second, but that apparently isn’t fast enough for Apple. The company has confirmed to Recode that it has acquired SnappyLabs, a one-man outfit best known for its popular (and now withdrawn) iOS camera app SnappyCam. Cupertino isn’t outlining its plans following the buyout, but the software’s party trick is its extremely high-speed photography; it takes full-resolution shots at up to 30fps, and scales up to 60fps. You don’t need an oracle-like insight to predict that future Apple devices could snap pictures at a rate that puts many professional cameras to shame.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple
Source: TechCrunch, Recode
Couchelo, The Mobile Platform That Helps You Score That Furniture Piece You’ve Always Wanted
Have you ever wanted to find a specific piece of furniture or homeware that fits into the theme of your room, but can’t find it at your normal go-to stores or online? Well, in true mobile fashion, there’s an app for that, and its name is Couchelo. The Sydney-based startup is headed up by its three Co-Founders, William Fan, Fei Yao and Si-Si Dai who have identified a growing trend, one which involves unique pieces of furniture, such as vintage or upcycled gems, that are almost impossible to source unless you happened to stumble across a local flea market or bric-a-brac store.
Couchelo wants to be go-to furniture marketplace to bring together a community of creative artisans and craftsmen. “A lot of the really nice stuff you’d find is through walking around the boutique stores and flea markets in Rozelle, Redfern and Balmain, and there are just as many in Melbourne. These sellers don’t use existing online platforms like eBay or Gumtree because they’ve become too commercial, and there’s just no community aspect”, says Co-Founder William Fan. That’s where Couchelo steps in, by providing a mobile platform that allows individual sellers to advertise their unique and creative pieces locally and for buyers to have a simple, streamlined interface to browse and discover their dream find.
The Couchelo team (from left to right): Si-Si Dai, William Fan, and Fei Yao
The app takes your geolocation details and shows you the search items that are closest to you so that buyers are not only assured that you won’t have to journey too far to get theirs hands on what they want, but the sellers can be sure that it is convenient for people to connect and physically find out more. “Furniture, unlike fashion, is something that you need to see and feel in person before committing to the purchase,” says Fan.
Couchelo has been warmly received by many furniture and homeware suppliers who otherwise have no unified platform to connect with their prospective buyers. “Some sellers are already using social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to sell their items, we’re just making it easier to bring this community of furniture enthusiasts together.”
Couchelo’s iOS is currently in a closed beta test which will hopefully result in the launch of the app in Sydney and Melbourne very early in 2014. The team has also planned an Android app in the works which will be released some time after the iOS launch.
If you’re interested in finding out more or receiving updates on Couchelo’s progress, you can sign up to their snazzy website at www.couchelo.com or you can follow their Facebook page and Twitter account.
Road Warrior Bluetooth speakers plan to amp up your tailgating with 200 watts
If the average portable Bluetooth speaker doesn’t pack enough audio punch for your liking, Ion’s just revealed a titan that just might meet your needs. Dubbed the Road Warrior, the firm’s 200-watt wireless stereo system packs a duo of ten-inch woofers paired with two one-inch tweeters. In addition to Bluetooth streaming capabilities, the box also boasts an AM/FM radio and an 1/8-inch jack. When it comes to power, the package can rely on its built-in battery, a wall plug or the 12 volt outlet in your auto. The kit was designed for occasions like tailgating events and cookouts, so it’s fitting that the speakers are contained in a cloth-covered box reminiscent of car audio gear. A price tag and release date are MIA, but expect more information as CES — and 2014 — continues.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Peripherals
Tao WellShell offers up isometric resistance, tracks fitness, rhymes
Two days before the official kickoff of CES 2014, and it already seems safe to declare this the year of the fitness device. Tao Wellness’s rhyming WellShell wants to be a bit of a one-stop shop for all things portable fitness. The handheld’s primary function is isometrics – offering you resistance as you workout, while helpfully coaching you with built-in audibly encouragement. The device is built for 50 different isometric exercises, recording results by way of your Android or iOS device. It can also track your steps, caloric intake, heart rate and sleep patterns – so pretty much everything but the cool down massage.
Filed under: Peripherals
Source: Tao Wellness
Griffin updates its PowerMate and StudioConnect hardware for 2014
If you think that the best part about making music is twiddling the knobs, then Griffin’s CES announcements will be right up your alley. You see, the company is updating both its StudioConnect portable iPad studio and the PowerMate jog dial for movie and music editors. The StudioConnect HD now features a pair of XLR inputs, USB and five-pin MIDI support, dedicated monitor controls and can handle both 30-pin and Lightning-based iPads. The PowerMate Bluetooth, unsurprisingly, breaks free from the tyranny of cables, offering iMovie and GarageBand users the chance to cycle through files without the need of a mouse. Naturally, the clickable wheel is also highly customizable, enabling you to craft a wide variety of utilities that can use the hardware. The StudioConnect HD will, a little annoyingly, not arrive until the fall, where it’ll set you back $200, while the PowerMate will be here in the summer, priced up at $60.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Tablets, Apple
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: Mission Mars One, MulchFest 2014 and a pickup truck made of ice
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Ever wish you could just get away from it all? Mission Mars One is a prime opportunity to secure a one-way ticket away from Earth. The Dutch nonprofit organizing the mission just finished screening its first round of applicants, and it will soon move on to the second round. The Mars mission is still more than a decade away, but here on Earth, we’re seeing plenty of life-changing innovations. In June, a paralyzed teen will make the ceremonial first kick of the World Cup using a mind-controlled exoskeleton. Ghana has some of the worst sanitation in the world, but MIT’s Susan Murcott is looking to provide clean drinking water to people with an amazing $6 water filter that’s made from a big ceramic bowl. Embedding batteries in the human body for medical applications is a tricky task, but a team of scientists just created biological batteries made from cuttlefish ink that can be consumed in a pill. And on the design front, Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava is facing legal action from his home city of Valencia over the beautiful, but deteriorating €100 million Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia opera house.
Bicycles and cars don’t mix, and adding dedicated bike lanes to existing streets can be very difficult. So architect Norman Foster came up with a novel idea: Create a three-story-high bicycle skyway to cover 135 miles in London. (It may be a long time before that vision becomes reality.) A couple of Chinese companies have developed one solution to the country’s transportation and emissions problems: A new series of robotic car-sharing stations will dispense small electric vehicles like candy. Meanwhile Ford gave us a sneak peek at its very first solar-powered car, and British adventurer Maria Leijerstam set a world record when she rode a custom recumbent bike from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole in just 10 days. And the Canadian ice sculpture company Iceculture added about 11,000 pounds of sculpted ice to a pickup truck frame, producing a completely roadworthy truck that’s made almost entirely from frozen H2O.
The world is still recovering from last week’s New Year’s celebration, but the planet isn’t nursing much of an environmental hangover, thanks to several green initiatives. In New York, the Times Square ball drop featured a 12,000-pound geodesic sphere made of more than 30,000 energy-efficient LED lights. As if that wasn’t enough, the LEDs were powered, at least in part, by stationary bikes that were parked in Midtown Manhattan. In other holiday news, New Yorkers looking to get rid of their Christmas trees can recycle them at MulchFest 2014 next week. And looking back at some of the highlights of 2013, the readers of Ecouterre and Inhabitots have spoken, selecting their top eco-fashion and green parenting stories.
We’re live at CES 2014!
Meet our home — or, rather, homes — for the next eight days or so. Above you’ll see our stage coming together. For the third straight year, we’ll be livestreaming interviews with some of the industry’s biggest and most innovative companies — and doing the odd podcast. Below, you’ll find shots of our trailer in the beautiful Las Vegas Convention Center parking lot, ground zero for the week’s blogging activities. If things appear a bit empty, it’s because, well, not everyone is actually here yet. With Hercules slamming the Eastern seaboard and general flight delays all over the place, making it to Las Vegas has been something of a harrowing experience for team Engadget. But fear not, come Monday, we’ll hit the ground running as the Official Online News Source of International CES 2014!
Filed under: Meta
HTC notches second consecutive quarterly loss despite Beats sale
HTC just posted another operating loss of NT$1.56 billion ($52 million), and it could have been worse had it not just booked an $85 million profit selling its remaining Beats stake. Though the Taiwanese company trimmed last quarter’s loss of NT$2.97 billion ($101 million), total revenue actually fell a touch to NT$42.9 billion ($1.6 billion). That marks the ninth consecutive quarterly drop in sales, according to Bloomberg, despite the recent addition of the HTC One Max to the lineup. Unfortunately, the company’s also been dealing with sales bans and patent setbacks, which are not helping the declining interest in its handsets. The alleged successor to its much loved but not much sold HTC One should be arriving soon, and at this point it looks like a crucial release.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Source: Bloomberg
Chevrolet debuts Corvette Performance Data Recorder: records audio, video and overlays telemetry (hands-on)
Chevrolet spent some time before CES showing us how it plans to offer Corvette owners a new instrument to hone their track skills: the Performance Data Recorder (PDR). The system, which was designed with British auto engineering company Cosworth, will begin shipping in 2015 Corvette Stingrays as a factory add-on. In its simplest form, the PDR captures video with user-selectable levels of vehicle telemetry overlaid on the 720p output. In its most complex, the session data can be dissected by the included Cosworth Toolbox software on your PC.
The PDR consists of three main bits: audio and video recording, telemetry capture and an SD card slot in the glove compartment where the data is sorted. The driver then selects one of four modes: Track, Sport, Touring or Performance and with the click of a button on the car’s 8-inch display, sets the start/finish line and begins recording the lapping session. Once started, the system starts grabbing info from a dedicated GPS receiver that captures data points five times more often than a normal GPS, a 720p camera mounted at the top of the windscreen begins recording and then hooks into the car’s Controller Area Network (CAN) for access to all the vehicle’s performance data. During our time in the driver’s seat, we used Track mode as it records the most metrics including speed, throttle position, brake force, rpm, g-force, lap time and even a location-based map. Once you come to a stop, you can quickly replay the video in-car or take it offline and examine every nuance of the drive on your desktop.
When loaded in Cosworth Toolbox, the data is superimposed on a Bing map of the track and can be compared to a reference lap in real time to help find where you’re losing precious seconds with corner traces, vehicle speed and cornering forces. Obviously, the PDR won’t sell Corvettes — they do that perfectly well all by themselves — but for a novice or pro driver looking to help improve their skills, it seems Chevrolet has put together a very compelling suite of tools.
Billy Steele contributed his driving skills to this report.
Filed under: GPS, Transportation
Samsung’s new Smart Home service outlined, wants to connect to third-party services and products
We heard whispers that Samsung was planning big for CES, and we’re not just talking TV panels. It’s now revealed Smart Home, which attempts to tie together Smart TVs, home appliances and handheld smart devices into one single platform. Perhaps more importantly, the company says it’s going to collaborate with third-party partners to extend the platform to products and services beyond only those with Samsung branding.
At the middle of it all, there will be a single app that (as the picture above suggests) will get its hooks into all your wearables, phones and white goods with a cloud-based server keeping your data moving. Device Control will let users adjust lighting and temperature management through your smartphone. Meanwhile, Smart Home will also included embedded voice commands: if you say “going out” into your Galaxy Gear, then the system will automatically turn off your smart lighting and “selected appliances”, so presumably not your fridge. The, once out, Home View will let you tap into devices with cameras inside your house, offering up some not-so-covert video streams to your Galaxy phone. Alongside the new system, the company announced a new software protocol too, hoping to forge a new ecosystem — with Samsung in the middle of it all. Expect to hear more later this week.
Filed under: Household, HD, Mobile, Samsung
Source: Samsung
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