R.I.P Nike Fuelband?: Nike could be killing off their fitness wearable, instead focus on fitness Software
R.I.P Nike Fuelband. Here lies Nike’s fitness wearable, probably. According to sources who spoke with CNET, Nike has laid off 55 of the 70 strong Nike Fuelband hardware team, prompting the rumour that Nike may be shuttering development of its only fitness wearable. This is likely a move to refocus Nike’s aspirations, who just recently announced a Fuel Lab in San Francisco that aims to provide more digital services to athletes.
This move don’t come as much as a surprise as Nike has insisted on leaning on its close working relationship with Apple (Apple CEO, Tim Cook, is on Nike’s board). So much so that the Nike Fuelband (assuming this news is true) will be buried as an iOS-exclusive wearable and never having experienced the nigh-on 80% of smartphones that are Android based devices. Other pundits suggest that the Fuelband’s undoing was more likely due to its relationship with Apple and the rumoured Apple wearable that we’ve all heard so much about. A partnership between and Nike software and Apple hardware would be far more lucrative for the sports wear giant, however that’s all still a pipe dream at this point.
What do you think about the news that Nike is likely going to dump their fitness wearable? Let us know your opinion in the comments.
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CyanogenMod 11S – OnePlus One UI showcased
Carl Pei of OnePlus took to the official OnePlus forums to put a bit of clarity around all the OnePlus rumors that have been making the rounds around the Internet recently, and by doing so revealed some images of the device UI.
There has been a lot of speculation and excitement about the operating system of the OnePlus One. As you know, we’ve been working with the Cyanogen team on this product for quite some time, starting from when OnePlus was just an idea. Both teams have been deeply involved in both the software and the hardware parts of the experience, and it’s been an amazing ride so far.
Although we’re still running pre-production versions of CyanogenMod 11S, I’d still like to share with you some of the things that the Cyanogen team has been working on.
The new stuff is pretty cool, so here’s a taste of what’s to come.
If you don’t like the new default UI of CyanogenMod 11S, then you can always just select the previous theme in the settings menu to return to the standard CyanogenMod look and feel we’re all used to.
Thoughts?
SOURCE: Phandroid
The post CyanogenMod 11S – OnePlus One UI showcased appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Beats Music update lets you subscribe from inside the iOS app
Odds are that you weren’t riveted by Beats Music when it first arrived, but the streaming service has just delivered a pair of big updates that may give you a good excuse to tune in. For the iOS app, the biggest improvement is visible when you’re signing up — you can now subscribe from within the software rather than heading to the web. The move makes it that much easier to keep the music flowing after your trial is over, and may just help Beats grow its fledgling customer base.
Not that Beats is neglecting its Android app by any means; you get a “brand spanking new widget” for your home screen if you’re running Google’s mobile platform. Both the Android and iOS releases also share some common improvements, including the ability to find Facebook friends who use Beats, better social network linking and thousands of new tracks in the Sentence playlist generator. There’s no guarantee that either refresh will have you rethinking that Rdio or Spotify subscription, but it’s hard to knock upgrades that make it easy to start listening.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Software, Mobile
Via: Recode, Droid-Life
Source: App Store, Google Play
‘Beats Music’ Updated With In-App Subscriptions, Offline Mode and More [iOS Blog]
Beats has updated its Beats Music streaming music app with in-app subscriptions, Facebook friend search, an offline mode and more. The move allows users to subscribe to the Beats Music service via their iTunes account.
What’s New in Version 1.0.7
You asked for it, and we listened! Some highlights in this release include:
– In-app subscription and account management via your iTunes account
– Find Your Friends — find and follow your Facebook friends on Beats Music
– Improved Facebook and Twitter account management
– Thousands of new tracks available in The Sentence
– Artist Offers — discover new content and merchandise from your favorite artists
– Offline Mode & Downloading improvements
– Music Player performance fixes
Previously, users had to subscribe to Beat Music on the service’s website, allowing Beats to bypass Apple’s 70 / 30 split with developers, which would result in the Cupertino company netting $3 a month from Beats Music’s $10-a-month fee for every subscriber Beats adds within the app.
Beats CEO Ian Rogers tells Re/code that the company made its decision to add in-app subscriptions, and therefore submit to the 70 / 30 split, when it found that more than half of its users used iPhones, making it difficult to get an iOS user to subscribe with no in-app subscription option.
Other music streaming services like Rdio and Rhapsody also sell subscriptions in-app, although Rdio’s in-app subscription price was raised from $10 a month to $15 a month to make up for Apple’s cut. Spotify, however, does not offer in-app subscriptions, though it does offer a free, ad-supported mode available in its app.
Beats Music is available in the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Daily Roundup: Xperia Z2 review, Oculus VR lets a terminal patient travel and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Sony Xperia Z2 review: a big, powerful slab of a phone
The Xperia Z2 is just as waterproof as the original Z1 and it packs a slightly larger display and better battery life — not to mention it’s several grams lighter. But at 5.2-inches, Sony’s curveless flagship might be too big for its your britches.
Oculus Rift helps terminally ill woman take one last stroll in the sun
Sure, exploring the world of Minecraft with an Occulus Rift is fun, but pure entertainment isn’t the VR headset’s only use. Roberta Firstenberg may be a home-bound terminally ill cancer patient, but Oculus let her take a virtual trip to Tuscany before she passed.
Wu-Tang fans hope to liberate ‘Shaolin’ for $5 million but have a ways to go
Yes, the Wu-Tang Clan is selling the only copy of its upcoming album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, for $5 million. Don’t have that kind of cash? Not to worry, a group of fans put together a Kickstarter in hopes of putting its latest jams in the hands of ordinary people.
NASA just crashed a satellite into the moon on purpose
Remember NASA’s LADEE satellite? Well, it’s no more. According to the agency, the vehicle didn’t have enough power to maintain orbit… so they gave it a proper galactic burial and slammed it into the lunar surface.
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Filed under: Misc
[Download] YouTube version 5.6.32 makes quite a few changes in a small Increment
It must be Christmas because the Google apps updates just keep coming. Or maybe it’s just Easter. Either way, Google has pushed yet another update for the YouTube app just days after updating it to version 5.6.31. This new iteration, YouTube version 5.6.32, looks like it adds quite a few tweaks despite only being a 0.0.01 increment. The new additions include quite a few changes to interactions with playlists as well as tweaks to comments like replying to and deleting them. The full list of changes from the Play Store page include:
- YouTube Mix automatic playlists for music videos
- Reply to comments
- Improved video quality for Android 4.2 and above
- Delete your own comment
- See if a comment was shared privately or publicly
- Share and like playlists
- Your liked and personal playlists appear in the left-hand guide drawer
The update is showing on the Google Play Store now, but if the update hasn’t hit your device yet and you want to get your hands on the latest and greatest, we have the APK file available for download below:
YouTube version 5.6.32 APK download
Don’t forget to let us know how you find the latest update in the comments!
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NoiseHush Freedom BT700 Bluetooth Headphones Review; Great Sound at a Great Price
When it comes to listening to music, watching a movie/tv show or taking calls, a solid set of headphones or ear buds can make all the difference in the world. There are a number of solutions out there that can best showcase your personal style, your personal needs and your satisfy your bank account (your significant other). You need a good mix of sound quality, functionality, style and comfort. At least, that is what I mainly look for. I am not particularly found of in-ear ear buds and tend to lean towards the over-the-ear variety of headphones/headsets. Headphones being the variety that blast sound to your brain, where as headsets can be used for video calls, phone calls and the likes. Taking those things into consideration along with the price point that something is being offered is another factor to consider. Spending $300 on a set of headphones because of a hyped up brand name doesn’t appeal to me much. So lets take a look at a pair that has some great sound with a great price point too. Meet the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s
What’s in the box
- NoiseHush Freedom BT700 Headphones
- Micro tipped USB cable
- User manual
The NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s are Bluetooth and do not have a physical audio jacks.
Spec rundown
- Bluetooth Version: CSR V2.1 +EDR
- Transmission Power: Calss 2
- Frequency: 20Hz – 20kHz
- Speaker Driver: 40mm Neodymium
- Impedance: 32 ohm +/- 15%
- Sesitivity: 104 +/- 3db
- Charge time: 2.5 hours
- Music listening: 20 hours
- Talk time: 20 hours
- Standby time: 300 hours
All the headphones controls are located on what is designated as the left ear cup. You find your multifunction button, which is your power, music and calls control button, located towards the front.
Just above that multifunction button you have a small microphone hole and then your LED light indicator that displays charging information and connectivity.
In the bottom center is where the covered charging port is located to charge these puppies up. It is covered with a simple little rubber flap. Behind that is your music controls. The placement of the music controls is near perfect to reach and adjust with your left hands thumb.
The music controls allow you to quickly change tracks forward, backwards, pause, play and adjust the volume. Once you remember which direction is which. A simple push or pull on the dial changes the track. If you press it in, it pause/plays the track. To change the volume you lung hold the dial and the volume will adjust in increments.
Each ear cup sits on its own part of the steel frame and is threaded through the covers on the sides of the ear cups. As you can see the ear cup is what moves, not the steel frame. Your connection to the right ear cup is run from the the left ear cup up and over the band and is connected via the red, I believe it is nylon, braided cord.
The head band is a soft, almost leather, feeling material. It is actually called PU Leather (polyurethane) It is super soft and is two pieces sewn over the steel frame. It looks really good and feels really nice.
The ear cups are a traditional round variety and offer a soft outer material that rests on your years and a decent about of padding to keep the inner plastic that is under the cloth from sitting directly on your ears. The steel frame offers just enough ‘push’ on your head to keep the headphones from slipping around but not enough to make your head and ears hurt from the pressure of long term wearing.
How do the HoiseHush Freedom BT700′s perform
performance will need to be broken down into a few little sections since these are Bluetooth only, have a battery inside and of course can make calls.
- Battery: NoiseHush claims that the Freedom BT700′s offer 20 hours of music, 20 hours of talk time and 300 hours of stand-by time. I don’t have enough friends, or time, to sit around on the phone for 20 hours to see how well that claim works outs. I do have plenty of time to rock out while I write for you guys. I charged them up fully, ran them at MAX volume and ran them until they died. I didn’t start a timer, but I did make notes when I powered them on and off. I was able to get 15 hours out of them before they died.Mind you, this was straight Google Play Music streaming at max volumes with the EQ enabled and amped up. With regular settings and medium volume I would imagine they would easily hit the “up to 20 hours” claim. Considering that an average person won’t be rocking out for 15 hours straight in a normal day, this is very acceptable. The last 30 minutes or so though are probably the most annoying. Ever 5 seconds or so there is an annoying triple beep to let you know they are almost dead.
- Call Quality: I usually find that with any Bluetooth device that allows for calls, voice or video, that people on the other end tend to either sound funny, or they remark that I sound like I am in a tunnel. My wife is the first, and usually the only person, I talk to on the phone. She is quick to tell me to take it off speaker or what have you. This is always without me even saying that I am testing something out before hand. She was none the wiser this time. She sounded clear and I was able to hear her without issue and she had no issues hearing me. I was in a quiet environment though, so a loud environment might be different.
- Sound Quality: The sound quality of your music or videos is another extremely important aspect of a pair of headphones. You want clear mids and highs that aren’t over powering and clean bass that doesn’t distort or drown out the rest of the music. Often times you will find that headphones lean one way or the other, or just don’t have enough oomph at all. Then there is the worst, the ones that distort your tunes when turned up too loud. With the Freedoms I was pleasantly surprised that the mix of mids and highs were meshed well with the bass. Nothing seems to over power any other element. I do try to make things break, at least a little, when I can. Listening to some Disturbed through Play Music and pushing the EQ up with bass at the max I still wasn’t able to get the Freedoms to pop or distort. I bounced over to some 2Pac and California Love, again, without any distortion or crackle at all at max volume. (Yes, I am going to blow out my ear one day. I am OK with that.)
- Comfort: The comfort question is a tricky one. Mainly because everyone is different. Every ones ears are shaped different and everyone is used to a certain style. For my smaller ears, these cover my whole ears. With my earlobe on the bottom of the cushion and the top of my ear not quite clearing the top. I have sat here doing the things I do, walking around the house and taking walks with these on for the better part of 8 hours and have found myself adjusting them only occasionally. Not so much because my ears hurt, or they felt hot, more so to adjust their position. They are very comfortable for my ear and head size.
What I like about the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s
The call and sound quality are stellar, especially for the price point. They offer a great mix of mids, highs and bass without drowning each other out. The headband is wrapped in a soft material with a cushion coupled with the soft ear cups makes them very comfortable to wear for long periods of time. (At least for me). The controls for calls and music work as they should with Google Play Music, Spotify and the Sony music player found in the Xperia Z. The battery life is more than adequate to get you easily through more than one day of rocking out.
What I don’t like about the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s
The dislikes all come down to personal preference. I would like them a bit better if the ear cups were more ‘ear’ shaped and not round. More like their I7 Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Overall thoughts
If you need a solid set of Bluetooth headphones that can, most likely, out last your device and your day, the NoiseHush Freedom BT700′s are easily a contender and ones you should take a closer look at. They look great in wither White, that I have here, or in Black. They sound great and give you a well rounded mix of wireless freedom and brain thump. Get this, they are only $45 on Amazon right now. No, that wasn’t a mistype. $45. Well, $44.95 and $44.99 respectively. Even at their listed price on the NoiseHush website for $79.99 they are a great value.
Feel free to pick up a set at your earliest convenience.
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Facebook Updates ‘Paper’ App With Birthdays, Events, Photo Comments and More [iOS Blog]
Facebook has updated its news creation and curation app Paper with birthdays, events, group updates, photo comments and much more, filling in the app with features from the “main” Facebook app that users have requested since its debut.
Thanks again for your feedback on Paper. We’ve been working to build features you’ve asked for, and we’re excited to share version 1.1. Here’s the scoop:
– Birthdays and events: Never miss a chance to celebrate! Just tap the notifications globe and scroll down to see important dates ahead.
– Photo comments: When words aren’t enough, now you can add photos to comments to show how you feel.
– Group updates: Don’t miss posts from your favorite groups. Swipe down to open the Main Menu. Tap the More Options icon to the right of the Search box. When you see your groups, check the new unread counts to catch up on the posts you’ve missed.
– New story buttons: To keep up with the latest stories in a section in fullscreen view, or to catch the newest stories in the next section, tap the new story arrows when they appear.
– More article covers: 9 new article covers join our collection, making easier to spot your favorite sources on Paper. Keep an eye out for Fox News, Bloomberg News, Mashable, FT, kottke, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair and Hacker News.
– Basic accessibility: All of your sections now support basic accessibility features, and we’re working to extend accessibility throughout the app.
In addition, Paper product manager Michael Reckhow tells The Verge that despite Facebook’s plans to strip Messenger out of its main Facebook app, the Paper product team does not have plans to remove messaging from its app, saying that the team wishes to keep the app independent from the goals and strategies of the main Facebook app.
Paper isn’t the only app Facebook has been working on updates for, as the company yesterday announced a new feature called Nearby Friends for its main app. Similar to Apple’s Find My Friends, the optional feature allows users to see if their friends are nearby so that they can meet up.
Paper – stories from Facebook is available for free in the App Store. [Direct Link]
Facebook is available for free on the App Store. [Direct Link]
Nike Fires Majority of FuelBand Team, Plans to Stop Making Wearables [iOS Blog]
Nike plans to no longer make wearable hardware, as it has fired the majority of its 80-person team responsible for the FuelBand fitness tracker and will instead focus its efforts on fitness software, according to an unnamed source that spoke to CNET.
The shoemaker isn’t throwing in the towel on technology. Rather, it’s turning away from hardware and realigning its focus exclusively on fitness and athletic software, a strategic shift that would still benefit the company in the long run, analysts said.
While the competition in the fitness wearable category has increased with entries from Jawbone and Fitbit, Nike spokesman Brian Strong told CNET in an email that the company continually aligns its resources with business priorities and that it has made changes to its team as its Digital Sport priorities have shifted toward software. Nike is also opening an incubator called Fuel Lab in San Francisco to allow developers to create products that incorporate its workout metric NikeFuel and plug into a Nike+ API that’ll come this fall.
Nike’s move away from wearables also comes as Apple’s long-rumored iWatch is expected to come to fruition. Apple CEO Tim Cook is an avid wearer of the FuelBand and has sat on the Nike board for the last nine years, which has helped the two brands foster a strong relationship.
A possible partnership between Apple and Nike wouldn’t be out of the question as the athletic company was one of the first to show support for the iPhone 5s’ motion coprocessor, debuting the Nike+ Move app alongside the iPhone 5s at Apple’s media event. Apple also helped Nike enter the wearable market in 2006 with the Nike+iPod shoe package.
Apple has also hired former members of the Nike’s Digital Sport team, picking up former FuelBand consultant Jay Blahnik last August and Nike design director Ben Shaffer last September.
Apple is expected to release the iWatch later this year alongside iOS 8 and the iPhone 6.
Hide your stash, heat-seeking drones are helping thugs hijack UK weed crops
Criminals are dicks. That much we all know is true. But now these dicks are using heat-sensing drones to pull off “sophisticated” heists of weed farms (yes, that weed) in the United Kingdom, as local paper Halesowen News discovered. Consider this quote from one enterprising crop hijacker:
It is not like I’m using my drone to see if people have nice televisions. I am just after drugs to steal and sell. If you break the law, then you enter me and my drone’s world.
It’s solid logic, really. Marijuana has yet to be legalized in the UK, so growers are technically in the wrong for bothering to grow their own, get high and overeat while watching terrible telly. Or, fine, they’re probably selling that weed, too. And also, these opportunistic crooks are using drones to hunt down these cannabis crops! So, I guess we should applaud their enterprising spirit? I don’t know how to feel.
Unfortunately for the victims, these raids can sometimes turn violent. Though the smug thug speaking to Halesowen News admitted that his crew usually just outright steals from or imposes a tax on their targets since “the people growing [weed] are not gangsters.” See? He’s a thoughtful dick. The local members of Parliament aren’t unaware of the situation either, but it also doesn’t appear as if a solution is underway. Tom Watson, chair of a Parliamentary group on drones had this to say about the spike in weed-jacking incidents: “This … story shows the proliferation of drone technology which can be used for both good and bad.” That’s some deep insight from the local government right there, folks. People can do good and bad things… and all in the name of weed.
[Image: Shutterstock]
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Halesowen News
AIVAnet 