HealthTap Prime lets you video call a Doctor whatever the hour
Unless you’re rich, run a hospital or have medical professionals in the family, it’s not likely that you have instant access to a doctor whenever you need. That’s why HealthTap is joining the growing field of telemedicine apps that, for a monthly fee, will let you video chat with specialists as and when you require. HealthTap Prime will cost you $100 per month for the first person, with each additional person in the family requiring a $10 monthly surcharge. There doesn’t appear to be any limits on how many times you can contact a doctor with the service, but if you didn’t stop calling to ask if something looked infected, then expect to land on some sort of blacklist.
Filed under: Internet
Source: HealthTap
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Get in the loop with All Events in City [App of the Day]
There’s always that weekend where you’re free but there’s just nothing going on that you know of. Well there’s a handy little app out there called All Events in City that automatically finds your city, or you can manually choose one, and it will give you a list of events and all sorts of things… Read more »
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Flickr’s new licensing program opens up opportunities for the chosen few
It looks like Flickr’s trying to keep pace not only with Instagram, but also with photography community 500px. The Yahoo-owned image hosting site has just launched a new program, which gives some users the opportunity to earn money from their snapshots through commercial licensing with publications and photo agencies. In addition, Flickr promises to give the the program’s members ample exposure by featuring their work prominently on Yahoo’s portals and other properties like Tumblr. The service’s new marketplace page also names The New York Times, Reuters, Gizmodo, Monocle, BBC and Getty Images as its program partners.
According to TechCrunch, though, this has caused friction between Flickr and Getty, as the latter used to curate Flickr content itself, and this program turns curation into an in-house task. Flickr didn’t say how much the licensing fees are and what percentage users will end up taking home on its blog post, but it did mention that the company will invite select users through Flickr Mail. If you don’t get an invite but would still like to give it a spin, you can submit your profile for consideration by signing up for updates on the marketplace. When that’s done, you can carry on crossing those fingers in hopes that Flickr finds you worthy.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Flickr
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Experimental display lets glasses wearers ditch the specs
Engadgeteers spend a lot of their day staring at a screen, so it’s no surprise that nearly all of us are blind without glasses or contact lenses. But wouldn’t it be great if we could give our eyes a break and just stare at the screen without the aid of corrective lenses? That’s the idea behind an experimental display that automatically adjusts itself to compensate for your lack of ocular prowess, enabling you to sit back and relax without eyewear. It works by placing a light-filtering screen in front of a regular LCD display that breaks down the picture in such a way that, when it reaches your eye, the light rays are reconstructed as a sharp image. The prototype and lots more details about the method will be shown off at SIGGRAPH next month, after which, its creators, a team from Berkeley, MIT and Microsoft, plan to develop a version that’ll work in the home and, further down the line, with more than one person at a time.
Filed under: Displays, Microsoft
Source: MIT Technology Review
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Would you want a flexible, leather phone? A concept by Jonas Daehnert
Yes, we know; the concept is for a Windows Phone. However, with the advent of flexible smartphones almost upon us, it’s increasingly interesting to visit concepts that we may well be seeing more of in the future. The leather phone concept pictured above was created by designer Jonas Daehnert and incorporates the flexible display technology that is so wonderfully elusive and marries it with a stitched leather casing that looks a lot more genuine than the faux leather that Samsung has become so fond of.
Many of us wouldn’t mind a case made of leather, so why not make the whole phone out of the stuff? A leather phone would obviously have its benefits, including being durable and just as flexible as the display it encases. It’s definitely an intriguing concept, particularly when you think of what these more flexible devices will be made from, especially when it will need to provide at least the same level of flexibility as the display itself. Leather sure doesn’t seem like a bad choice.
Would you consider a phone that is made of leather? What other material would you suggest for a flexible display phone? Let us know your opinion in the comments.
Source: Phone Designer via Concept Phones
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Leo’s Fortune Review: An absolute platforming/adventure Treasure
Platforming games are a dime a dozen these days. With each passing week, a new platformer is released though many of them fail to inspire the kind of engagement that platformers of old, like Sonic the Hedgehog or the Mario Bros, have achieved. Leo’s Fortune, though, is one new platformer that I think does have what it takes to stand out from the swathes of generic clones, so let’s see what exactly is different.
The premise of Leo’s Fortune is simple: you play as Leopold, who is chasing the thieves you have stolen his fortune. Luckily, the thieves have left a trail of coins for Leo to follow, but to do so, must traverse various challenging landscapes. Throughout the game, there will be cut-scenes and exposition from Leo to flesh out the narrative, and while it is mostly pretty vague, does give you at least a sense of how important the “fortune” is that you and Leo are chasing after.
The game is structured in chapters, each subsequent chapter progresses the story. The good thing about Leo’s Fortune is that there are no IAPs to speak of, so the price of entry is all you have to worry about and all the content you paid for is there.
Playing as Leo, who can most accurately be described as a Tribble from Star Trek with cartoony eyes, you traverse the side-scrolling landscape by way of sliding, jumping, floating and dropping to get around obstacles and avoid traps. The default control scheme in Leo’s Fortune let’s you control Leo’s lateral (side-to-side) movement with your left thumb and vertical movement with your right thumb. It’s a pretty intuitive system that is easy to pick up and very forgiving. If that’s not your cup of tea, there are also on screen buttons and also gamepad compatibility, but I never found the need to explore those as I was perfectly happy with the default controls.
The graphics are easily the highlight of Leo’s Fortune. Chief among the visuals is the detail put into Leo’s model; whatever he is doing, his mop of short hair follows, whether he is sliding around or inflated to float away from danger. This is complimented by absolutely fantastic level design and background landscapes, all of which differ from chapter to chapter, giving each chapter a distinct theme and follows the story laid out by Leo’s exposition.
A close second to the visuals of Leo’s Fortune are the sound effects and music. The background music that plays while you are traversing the various landscapes is majesty and moving, really giving a sense of journey and purpose, and absolutely fits the game without being distracting or overly intrusive. The second part of this is Leo’s voice, which is a fantastic, Russian-accented man’s voice who is somehow just perfect for delivering exposition. During platforming sections, Leo will also make hesitant noises as difficult sections approach and triumphant sounds when you get past said sections, really making him an endearing part of the game.
Leo’s Fortune is right up there with my other favourite mobile platformers, Rayman Jungle Run and Type:Rider, as it really covers all the bases that you need covered from an enthralling platformer. The gameplay is varied and challenging, the character is loveable, the graphics are top notch and the soundtrack is fantastic. It may cost $4.99, but if there’s one platformer you should get in 2014, it should be Leo’s Fortune.
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UK to let driverless cars loose on roads by January
Anxious to start… not driving in the UK? Though late to the party, the government has announced that driverless cars will hit the streets in three UK cities starting in January 2015. The Department of Transport also launched a £10 million ($17 million) fund to spur research and reach the deadline. Once the three cities are selected for trials, two different types of self-driving vehicles will be tested: fully autonomous cars with no driver, and self-driving models that can relinquish control to a human pilot. All of that will be laid out in new road laws now being formulated to accommodate such vehicles.
US states followed a similar trajectory back in 2011 by first passing new road laws, then approving self-driving vehicles for road use, as long as they were accompanied by a human driver. There are now quite a few companies in the self-driving game, which only kicked off in earnest once Google jumped in. New projects have launched from Volvo, Audi and Google (again). A UK company called MIRA specializing in such vehicles told Sky News that though it also had driverless tech, “we lag behind actually getting (it) into some real field trials.” Now, the science minister said, “Britain is brilliantly placed to lead the world in driverless technology.”
[Image credit: AP/Michael Sohn]
Filed under: Transportation
Via: BBC
Source: Telegraph
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Amazon runs the numbers to convince you that e-books should be cheaper
After unsuccessfully trying to charm authors, Amazon is now appealing to its customers during the ongoing war with Hachette. The retailer has revealed the reasons behind the spat, i.e. cheaper e-book prices, and the noble intentions behind it. Using its vast archive of data, the company believes that titles that, surprise, surprise, are priced at $15 won’t sell as well as those that are priced at $10. As obvious as it sounds, the company’s data says that for every 100,000 copies of the book that are bought for the higher price, 74,000 more copies would be bought at the lower figure, making a total profit of $1,738,000. Given that e-books incur no printing, warehousing or transportation costs, Amazon feels that it’s a fair trade off.
The company is also opening up about its proposed revenue split with publishers, saying that both Hachette and the author would receive 35 percent of the profits, or around $60,000 in the example above, with Amazon taking the remaining 30 percent ($52,000 as commission. The Kindle team, however, doesn’t believe that the publishers are playing fair with their talent, keeping a bigger portion of that pot for themselves. Another way that Amazon would like to drive a wedge between publishers and authors is by pointing out that the cheaper books have a much better chance of appearing on the bestseller lists — so authors should be insisting their books are sold for $10. Of course, Amazon didn’t say how many titles in its e-book library regularly make 100,000 in sales, so perhaps this is all a bit of very wishful thinking.
Filed under: Amazon
Via: Werner Vogels
Source: Amazon
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‘Mario Kart 8’ couldn’t save Nintendo from a $97 million loss
Mario Kart on the Wii U is really good. Unfortunately it’s just one game — and it looks like it won’t be enough to rescue the Wii U’s sales. Nintendo apparently agrees, stating that its 9.9 billion yen loss was due to a lack of hit titles outside of the flagship racer. Matter-of-factly, Nintendo said:
“The operating loss was 9.4 billion yen because total selling, general and administrative expenses including fixed expenses exceeded gross profit. “
Which is, well, exactly how you work out an operating loss. The company is now betting on the power of Super Smash Bros. as well as the best-selling Pokemon series to improve results later this year. Wii U console sales have improved in the Americas and Europe: 510,000 units were sold worldwide in the last three months, compared to 160,000 in the same period last year. In Japan, however, Wii U sales have decreased year-on-year. Revenue was 8.8 percent higher than the same period last year and Nintendo is hoping its plans for a series of console-connected toy figurines along the lines of the hit Skylanders series will help to improve that bottom line.
Mario Kart 8 managed to sell 2.82 million copies so far, meaning that relative to Wii U console sales, most players already had the games console to play it on — and that it wasn’t quite enough to convince other consumers to buy what could possibly be a second console.
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Sky’s Now TV streaming app comes to the Xbox One
Well that didn’t take long. Less than a week after it rolled out the app to the PlayStation 4, Sky’s now brought Now TV to the Xbox One. With today’s launch, Sky now has Microsoft and Sony’s new and old gaming consoles covered, as well as a number of smartphones and tablets, giving it a firm footing on which to challenge Netflix. Now that Microsoft doesn’t require a subscription to access Live apps, you only need to stump up the cash for one of Sky’s movie, sport or entertainment packages to get streaming on your next-gen Xbox.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
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AIVAnet 