Top 10 smartwatch companies [Infographic]
The smartwatch industry is about to explode; it’s the calm before the storm, and everyone is anxiously awaiting the launch of Android Wear to see how Motorola and LG can implement the smartwatch operating system. Smartwatches are nothing new, however, and have been around in consumer electronics right back to calculator watches. Functionality has enhanced… Read more »
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EE opens its broadband packages to all
After initially limiting connections to mobile customers, EE is throwing its broadband packages open to everyone. With BT and Virgin Media firmly in its sights, the company has slashed the cost of its internet bundles, allowing customers to sign up for a 17Mbps connection for just £2.50 a month. Don’t expect them to stay that low, though, as EE will hike prices after the 12-month promotion expires. Once it does, the £2.50 and £7.50 tiers rise to £9.95 and £12.95 respectively. Getting fibre broadband is also cheaper for a time, starting at £5 for a 38Mbps connection, but increases sharply to £19.95 after just three months.
EE doesn’t run its own lines, so you’ll be required to pay the £15.75 monthly line rental on top. However, it’s attempting to sweeten the deal by throwing in free weekend calls and removing download caps. For those signing up to its top-tier fibre package (£20 per month for the first three months, rising to £34.95 thereafter), EE stretches speeds to 76Mbps, throws in unlimited landline calls, 1,000 mobile minutes and international calls to 30 countries. If you’re already midway through a contract, EE wants to lure you away by offering a £100 buyout of your existing deal, but only if you upload a copy of your final bill to the EE website.
Filed under: Internet
Via: The Telegraph
Source: EE Broadband
Oculus game teaches journalists how to survive in war zones
You’re sat in the back of an armored personnel carrier when, suddenly, something hits you and the lights go out. Stumbling out of the darkness, you emerge onto the battlefield armed with just a video camera and a first-aid kit. Laying in front of you is a wounded soldier screaming for help, but would you know what to do? This is Stringer, an Oculus Rift title designed not as an alternative to Battlefield or Call of Duty, but to teach journalists sent into war zones how to survive.
The figure behind the project is former soldier turned journalist Ben Sainsbury, who was inspired by the story of a war correspondent who died because they lacked even basic first-aid training. Afterwards, he learned that writers that are sent into combat zones rarely receive any sort of survival awareness, let alone know how to properly tie a bandage. That’s why, alongside Ali Kokulu, he began developing a game that would give civilians a safe taste of life on the front line, and hopefully teach them some very basic first aid. Unfortunately, work on the game has currently stopped, but we can imagine that plenty of people would fancy giving this a try — after all, this is just the sort of immersive experience that VR was built for.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Motherboard
A surfboard attached to a firehose is a… hoverboard?
A few years ago, JetLev developed a jetpack that let users float in mid air, so long as they were on the water. Using that same principle, French jet ski champion Franky Zapata developed the Flyboard, which let you follow behind a speedboat with a set of water-powered rocket boots. A few years later, and Zapata is back with the Hoverboard, which does the same job, but attached to a board with a single nozzle hanging out back. Now, aquatic daredevils and perform tricks and stunts to shame nearby surfer dudes. If there’s one downside, it’s that you’ll spend the better part of $6,000 on one of the units — not to mention owning or having access to your own speedboat.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Zapata Racing
The Motorola Moto 360 may retail for £199.99 in the U.K.
The Motorola Moto 360 smartwatch has garnered some attention in the past week after being inadvertantly (or advertantly) shown off on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show. It wasn’t supposed to be the star of the show, but it was nonetheless spotted on the wrist of The Verge’s Chief Editor, James Topolsky, suggesting again that the device is going to be announced in the very near future. For some time, we’ve been wondering how much the Moto 360 is going to cost at launch, and popular U.K. retailer, Mobile Fun, has recently suggested that the Moto 360 may retail for £199.99 in the U.K.
After rumours that the Moto 360 was going to cost €249 in Europe, the pricing for the device is starting to become a bit clearer. Both the U.K. and Europe pricing seem to suggest that an equivalent price in the U.S. would be $340 USD, however we know pricing can vary region to region, particularly as the Moto 360 is likely being manufactured in America itself. And seeing as Motorola itself has suggested the Moto 360 is worth about $249 USD (albeit for tax purposes), you can bet that the price is going to be that ballpark region.
Is the Moto 360 looking like a sure purchase for you? Are these prices what you’re expecting for the Android Wear smartwatch? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Source: Mobile Fun via TalkAndroid
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Apple recalls older European iPhone chargers due to overheating risk
Apple recently launched a takeback program for faulty, third-party iPhone chargers, but should’ve looked inside its own glass house first. It has just issued an advisory that Apple-branded iPhone USB adapters sold between October 2009 and September 2012 could pose a safety risk by overheating. The affected model number “A1300″ came with European versions of the iPhone 3Gs, 4 and 4s. The good news is that you can get it replaced free of charge with a redesigned adapter (A1400) at an Apple Store, authorized service provider or through Apple technical support. Apple has a full list of the affected countries (including most of Europe but not the UK), along with information about how to swap it at a dedicated support page. In case you’ve already purchased a third-party replacement adapter, Apple will also give you a full refund.
Filed under: Cellphones, Apple
Via: 9to5 Mac
Source: Apple
CloudFlare donates tech to stop politically-sensitive sites from being knocked offline
If protecting yourself from hackers wasn’t tough enough, there’s another crippling internet attack that knocks websites completely offline while you’re a target: a denial of service attack. That’s why a company called CloudFare has launched Project Galileo, a free service that helps “protect politically and artistically important organizations and journalists against attacks that would otherwise censor their work.” CloudFlare has been in the business of protecting sites for quite some time, operating as a content delivery network that offers DDoS protection, but only to paid customers.
Websites that have come under attack before or feel that they could be targeted can apply, but they must be vetted first. In order to separate itself from the decision-making process, CloudFlare has formed an advisory board comprising of 15 organizations including American Civil Liberties Union, the EFF, Freedom of the Press Foundation and Mozilla. They’ll decide if a website acts in the public interest and allow it to receive enterprise-grade protection against hacker and DDoS attacks. CloudFlare intends to keep the recipients a secret though, stopping attackers from giving its servers a thorough workout.
[Original image credit: Russell McNeil, Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Source: CloudFlare
High-speed maglev toys are coming in 2015
That’s what Takara Tomy’s promised us at this year’s Tokyo Toy Show in Japan. It had two very different maglev-powered toy sets to show off: an on the rails maglev train shuttle that apparently reaches up to 600km (well, in relative speed to its scale). To our dumb eyes, we’d rate and pretty damn fast. The train contains its own magnetic component, levitating it off the plastic-magnetic track and reducing that buzzkill of toy car physics: friction, ensuring it can skate around the track at a pace: the magnetic field produces both an upward and forward thrust. There was also a free-driving car prototype, but it required a sheet of metal to show of its driving skills and was a bit more… bare-bones.
You can see in the background where Tomy’s hoping the design will eventually arrive at. While the train model is set to land in 2015, with a bundled set priced at around 10,000 yen ($98), there’s no such price for the car. Where you’d typically find the wheels of a car, there’s four electromagnets, that rotate at a high speed and (get your Fleming’s right-hand rule ready) offer a sustained magnetic field — enough to keep the car slightly above its aluminum race track. And if this toy-maker can do a race-car, surely Mattel will finally be able to deliver on that hoverboard we were all (kind of) promised.
Filed under: Transportation
Did Google just leak the existence of Android 5.0?
Google isn’t normally a company gives away much information before they are ready to do so, and they seem to have become masters at teasing future products with relatively inane details. One tactic that they are known to use is showing the number of the next major Android software build in the clock of Google app screenshots. The latest example of this has been when Google showed off their new World Cup features in Google Now. Perhaps only subtle enough for the people who know Google’s tactics, the clock in these screenshots shows the time “5:00″ which suggests the next build of Android will be Android 5.0.
Previous times that Google has used this method of teasing has included Gingerbread (2:30), Ice Cream Sandwich (4:00), and Jelly Bean (4:20). Current screenshots that Google uses features the time 4:40 of course representing the current build of Android, Android 4.4 KitKat. We’ve long wondered whether the next version of Android would be 4.5 or 5.0, but this latest tease from Google surely confirms that it is going to be Android 5.0, and with Google I/O just a few weeks away, it seems almost inevitable that we’re going to see something related to Android 5.0 at the event.
What do you think of the next build of Android being Android 5.0? What do you think it’s going to be called? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Twitter via TalkAndroid
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Aaron Paul is messing with people’s Xbox Ones
If you sell a voice-activated console, it’s probably wise not to have people in your advert uttering the key phrase. Someone at Microsoft missed that point when they asked Aaron Paul to bark “Xbox on” at his TV to promote the Xbox One. More than a few people have commented on Twitter that the Breaking Bad star has inadvertently activated their consoles thanks to Kinect’s well-tuned microphones. Cheaper faster and now immune to celebrity interference? The reasons to buy a Kinect-free Xbone are stacking up.
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
Source: BBC News
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