Autographer wearable camera now lets you take hands-free photos underwater
If you just can’t get enough of documenting every waking moment of your life, then the Autographer life-logging camera, launched last July, has its appeal — it’s designed to automatically snap pictures based on what it deems to be the perfect shot at any given moment, no user interaction required. Now, however, you can take shots not just on dry land but underwater as well. That’s because Autographer has teamed up with Aquapac, a maker of waterproof casings, to develop a special Waterproof Kit for the wearable camera. The Kit is fully submersible for at least 30 minutes to a depth of 30 feet, which means it’s ideal for scuba diving. Other features include a LENZFLEX lens that’s designed to be clear of water droplets and you can now secure the camera to the neck, chest or arms, which makes it a little easier to maneuver. You can pre-order the Aquapac Waterproof Kit right now for £30 from the Autographer site.
Filed under: Cameras
Source: Autographer
IRS says bitcoins are taxable property, but not currency
People love referring to Bitcoin as a “cryptocurrency,” but the Internal Revenue Service looks at it a little differently. According to a new IRS statement, Bitcoin should be considered property, not currency. What does that mean for US Bitcoin aficionados? Quite a bit, actually.
Considering your growing Bitcoin stash. If you’re the type who mines for Bitcoins, the market value of what you receive counts as part of your gross income… just in time for tax season, naturally. Conducting commerce with Bitcoin may have become much trickier on the small scale, too. You have to deal with capital gains and losses for Bitcoin transactions if the value of those Bitcoins fluctuates (doesn’t it always?). Bloomberg explains what this means well:
Under the ruling, purchasing a $2 cup of coffee with Bitcoins bought for $1 would trigger $1 in capital gains for the coffee drinker and $2 of income for the coffee shop.
Reporting those gains and losses may not too troublesome for big infrequent exchanges, but businesses that deal with plenty of smaller ones could have plenty of record keeping to do. And if you’re a business who (for some reason) pays employees with Bitcoins, that virtual wage is subject to income tax withholding. If those employees didn’t get W-2s before, voilà – they need ‘em now. Long story short, Bitcoin owners, start keeping track of everything lest the taxman take issue with your methods and come poking around.
Via: Bloomberg
Source: IRS (.pdf)
Chomp Co-Founder and Maps Director to Leave Apple in April [Mac Blog]
Cathy Edwards, who works as a Director of Evaluation and Quality on Apple Maps, is planning to leave Apple in April, reports TechCrunch. Edwards initially co-founded and served as chief technical officer at app discovery platform Chomp, joining Apple after her company was acquired in 2012.
Apple purchased Chomp in early 2012 to bolster its App Store search and discovery algorithms and incorporated the company’s technology into its App Store in August of 2012, adding a card-style search results format that is still used today.
Following the acquisition, Edwards served as Head of Search and Management, taking on the responsibility of search systems across multiple Apple products. Later, just after the disastrous launch of Apple Maps, Edwards took on the role of Director, Evaluation and Quality, Apple Maps.
She joined that role at a pretty thankless time, if you recall the chaos of Apple Maps-gate. Edwards’ role at Apple Maps has focused on “Building out an organization focused on QA automation, statistical quality analysis and analytics within Maps,” according to LinkedIn. Essentially, her work was about making sure that Apple Maps didn’t suck, something that remains a goal for the company. “We’re hiring, come join us!” ends the description. This remains her role up to today.
It is unclear why Edwards is leaving Apple or what she plans to do next. TechCrunch suggests that the departure may be contractual as it is now two years since Chomp was acquired. It is unknown if other former Chomp employees will be leaving the company as well.
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The New HTC One M8 is Official, Available to Order Online Now
Earlier this morning HTC hosted an event to announce the anticipated HTC One (M8). The follow up device to the HTC One (M7) that the released last year. Unfortunately we missed the live stream. It is hard for these manufacturers to really surprise people anymore when there are always a multitude of leaks leading up to the final announcement. However, speculation and leaks can sometimes be wrong. Most weren’t though. So what is the HTC One (M8) packing? Here is a spec list for you to mull over.
5-inch full HD, 440 PPI display
-Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core CPUs
-Duo camera
-Primary camera: HTC UltraPixel™ camera , BSI sensor, pixel size 2.0 um, sensor size 1/3”, f/2.0, 28mm lens
HTC ImageChip 2. 1080p Full HD video recording with HDR video
Secondary camera: capture depth information
-Front camera: 5MP, BSI sensor, wide angle lens. with HDR capability, 1080p Full HD video recording
Gallery with UFocus™, Dimension Plus™, Seasons, Foregrounder, Image match
-Dual frontal stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers
-2GB RAM
-16 or 32GB models
-Micro SD slot
-Bluetooth 4.0/WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4 & 5 GHz)
-Motion Launch
-Extreme Power Saving Mode
-Sense 6
-Zoe
-Sense TV
-Gunmetal Gray Hairline Finish
-40% longer battery than M7
-Size: 146.36 x 70.6 x 9.35 mm
-Weight: 160g
-2600 mAh embedded rechargeable Li-polymer battery
We were aware of most of the specs listed above. The smaller details, like the focus being a mere 300 milliseconds as compared to the original of 600 milliseconds is a nice improvement. Along with the camera modes like Dual Capture, Selfie (yes, it is more than a term now, and customizable manual modes. They also talked about how they tweaked the speaker chambers and software tweaks to improve the sound quality from the front facing speakers.
Along with all the “upping” they did to the camera and software from the previous model, HTC also announced that they are opening up the Blinkfeed homescreen to developers with the release of the SDK. Foursquare will be one of the first partners to take advantage of the SDK. Fitbit is also coming in to the picture too. There will be plenty of apps to follow.
Where HTC really stepped up the game though is not even just the announcement of the device, but also announcing that is available today. You can order one from HTC right now in fact. You will choose one of three carriers, AT&T, Sprint or Verizon. T-Mobile does’t appear to be listed. They also have the developer edition. The dev edition will set you back $649.99 in Grey. AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are all $199.99. Verizon has the additional Glacial Silver color option where as Sprint and AT&T only have the Grey color option.
Anyone out there hitting their carriers online stores and getting an order placed?
Spec outline via 9to5Google
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HTC One M8 Google Play Edition “Coming Soon” for $699
Just like last year, HTC will be making the stripped down stock Android version of the recently announced HTC One M8 available through the Google Play Store. The GPE One M8 is listed as “Coming Soon” and is carrying a hefty price tag of $699.99. That would be $50 more than a developer edition of the device. Oddly enough, the Dev edition has since been pulled off the HTC order page too.
We know the previous GPE HTC One ended up being a little bit of a problematic device for some. HTC has put a lot of work into the additional hardware and functions again this year in the BoomSound and Duo Camera, all of which are pretty heavily reliant on HTC’s software to work properly. We can only hope that they have things sorted well enough to make the GPE One M8 be everything it is, but just with stock Android.
There aren’t any noticeable spec changes from the official specs that were just announced. It will be unlocked and be supported on T-Mobile and AT&T networks.
Source: Google Play Store
Via AndroidandMe
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“Blah, Blah, Blah. Go Ahead, Ask the Internet” HTC One M8 Commercials Start Rolling Out
Quite possibly one of my favorite aspects of a new device announcement is how the manufacturer, or event he specific carriers, plan to market the device in online video ads and TV spots. A few short hours after the announcement of the new HTC One M8, two commercial variants have hit YouTube from HTC staring actor Gary Oldman. The first commercial is a typical 30 second spot, while the second is a bit longer at the 1 minute mark. Here is the first one;
Kind of makes you giggle a little. The second one has an odd creepy factor to it where Gary Oldman says “Ask the Internet.” with a long pause “I’ll Wait.” All while he is just sitting there.
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The HTC One (M8) gallery
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’d know that HTC just unveiled the HTC One (M8). Let’s take a look at all of the beautiful press images HTC posted today!
The post The HTC One (M8) gallery appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Sony turns down Android Wear in favor of its own smartwatch tech
When Google unveiled Android Wear, many eyes turned to Sony — would it ditch proprietary wearables like the SmartWatch 2 in favor of more standardized fare? Unfortunately not. Sony tells CNET that it plans to keep using its custom technology for the foreseeable future. The company says it has already put a lot of “time and resources” into the SmartWatch platform and doesn’t want to switch directions. The decision isn’t surprising when Sony isn’t listed as one of Android Wear’s early launch partners, but it may disappoint those who wanted to see the firm’s sense of style combined with Google’s reference platform.
Source: CNET
NVIDIA’s next-generation GPU is called Pascal, and it’s smaller, faster and more efficient
What comes after Fermi, Kepler and Maxwell? Pascal, according to NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang. That’s the name of the company’s next-generation GPU, and Huang says it’ll be smaller, faster and more efficient, naturally. “As we compute more, we have to move more data around,” he said, speaking at NVIDIA’s GPU technology conference in San Jose today. “It’s the data bottleneck.” He’s talking about how the speed at which data is exchanged between the CPU and GPU limits the processor’s ability to perform. He’s also talking about how NVIDIA hopes to solve the issue, introducing NVLink, a chip-to-chip communication technology that promises to speed up PCIe communication by a factor of five (but up to 12). Although NVLink seems to be designed to speed up GPU and CPU communication, Huang says it also improves data transfer between GPUs — meaning that graphics cards linked in SLI will see a performance boost, too.
Of course, speed, power and efficiency usually come at the price of physical size. NVIDIA says it’s working on that. “The GPU is already the biggest chip in the world,” Huang says. “The interface is already extremely wide. How do we solve that problem?” His answer is 3D memory packaging. “We’re going to, for the first time, build chips on top of other chips.” By using a chip-on-wafer 3D integration, NVIDIA can build smaller GPUs that are four times as energy efficient as today’s chips. The company is also working on other technologies to improve its next-generation GPU, including a unified memory system that will eliminate the need for developers to split resources between CPU and GPU memory. Exciting? Sure, but don’t expect to pick up a Pascal-powered laptop any time soon: NVIDIA doesn’t plan to ship the GPU until 2016.
Filed under: NVIDIA
Source: NVIDIA
New HTC One available in the UK today
Now you’ve heard the skinny on HTC’s latest flagship; the next step is figuring out where in the UK you can grab one. As Carphone Warehouse let slip last week, availability starts from this very moment. At six Carphone Warehouse stores across London, the retailer’s offering the new One for £550 unlocked, or for £42 per month with no upfront payment. Head past the break to see where you can get it elsewhere.
- Five Vodafone stores in London have the new One today, with other locations selling it from March 27th. It’ll cost you nothing upfront from £42 per month on Voda’s 3G plans.
- Three’s also down with immediate availability for a one-off £49 payment on four different plans ranging from £38 per month (600 minutes and 2GB of data) to £44 for unlimited everything (no tethering, though, remember).
- Retailer Phones 4u has the M8 in London stores from today, and elsewhere on March 27th, for £530 unlocked or from £42 per month on 4G plans with no upfront cost.
- EE’s happy to wait a day, with the new One up for grabs online and on the phone tomorrow, and in stores from March 27th. It’ll be available on a range of tariffs, but one example is £30 upfront, then £38 per month on a “double-speed” plan. Before April 10th, any M8 plan on EE comes with double the data allowance, and if you order online, one return plane ticket to any of a bunch of European destinations (obviously).
- Last but not least, O2′s joining the party today, too, with a number of UK stores ranging it right now and all others tomorrow. It’ll set you back £610 on pay-as-you-go (eek!) or from £38 per month (2GB of data, unlimited everything else) with £50 down straight away.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
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