L.A. Unified School District Suspends $1 Billion iPad Contract with Apple
Los Angeles school district superintendent John Deasy halted the district’s iPad contract with Apple in mid-rollout, reports the LA Times. The $1-billion multi-year contract would supply LAUSD students with iPads that were pre-loaded with curriculum from Pearson.
The contract was administered in phases with an initial $30-million investment to equip a pilot group of students with iPads. Additional payments totaling almost $1 billion would expand the project to additional students and build out the wireless infrastructure to support tablet usage at the district’s schools. Each phase was subject to approval with the option of canceling the project if it no longer met the district’s needs.
Deasy’s suspension follows criticism of the project rollout and its bidding process, which some claim was modified to favor Apple and Pearson. While issues with securing the iPads surfaced shortly after rollout, the contractual complaints were detailed in a district technology committee draft report that was obtained recently by the LA Times.
Among the findings was that the initial rules for winning the contract appeared to be tailored to the products of the eventual winners — Apple and Pearson — rather than to demonstrated district needs. The report found that key changes to the bidding rules were made after most of the competition had been eliminated under the original specifications.
In addition, the report said that past comments or associations with vendors, including Deasy, created an appearance of conflict even if no ethics rules were violated.
While Deasy responds to these criticisms, the technology program at LAUSD is moving forward with other devices and alternative curriculum being adopted by schools in the district. The district is expected to purchase up to 18,000 laptops with Apple and Pearson invited to bid on this new contract.
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Apple Launches Apple TV Channel for 2014 London iTunes Festival
Apple today launched its iTunes Festival channel on the Apple TV ahead of the festival’s start on September 1. Similar to previous years, the iTunes Festival channel contains information relevant to the upcoming London version of the popular music festival.
Ahead of the event, the channel allows you to browse information on the history of the festival, details on the Roadhouse, and the performance schedule for next month. When the festival begins, Apple TV owners can watch HD streams of both live and archived performances.
Apple recently filled its performance calendar adding well-known musicians such as Mary J. Blige and Tony Bennett to the festival lineup. These performers will join previously announced acts such as Maroon 5, Pharrell Williams and Lenny Kravitz. Tickets for the concert are available for free via a lottery system and through local radio station promotions.
Apple’s iTunes Festival iOS app is also showing as having an update available to support the upcoming concert series, but many users are reporting errors when trying to update their apps.
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Premium Channel ‘Showtime Anytime’ Comes to Apple TV
In addition to the return of the iTunes Festival channel for Apple TV today ahead of September’s concert series in London, Apple has also added a new Showtime Anytime channel to its set-top box.
The Apple TV channel is a companion to the Showtime premium cable network and offers limited free content to all users. Most content, which includes live and on-demand shows and events, is limited to customers who subscribe to the network through a participating cable provider.
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Los Angeles freezes its iPad program for schools
Los Angeles’ grand dreams of putting iPads in schools came into question a month ago, and they’ve now come to a screeching halt. Superintendent John Deasy has suspended a contract with Apple to both “take advantage of an ever-changing marketplace” (read: diversify hardware) and, crucially, to investigate recently raised ethical concerns. Allegedly, both Deasy and a top deputy have close links to executives at both Apple and curriculum provider Pearson, calling the whole iPad program into question; it suggests that officials were doing personal favors rather than taking kids’ needs into account. Deasy is quick to claim that his team was only working closely with Apple and Pearson on the pilot, not the contract, and offered a deal to another major vendor. Whether or not that’s true, the suspension suggests that the vision of an iPad in every LA classroom may never come to pass — it’s more likely that the broader device selection is here to stay.
[Image credit: Schooltechnology.org/Lexie Flickinger, Flickr]
Via: KTLA
Source: LA Times
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Messaging’s mission impossible: One inbox to rule them all
My phone buzzes. I glance at it and see a text message from my husband, who wants to know if I can pick him up from work. Later that day, my phone buzzes again. This time, it’s a Facebook Messenger notification from my mother, who wants to chat about an upcoming trip. At the same time, a friend pings me using Twitter’s Direct Messages. Next, a colleague strikes up a conversation on Google Hangouts. Realizing it would be easier to handle all of these with a computer, I flip open my laptop so I can chat with everyone simultaneously. Within the span of a few hours, I’ve chatted with four different people on four completely different messaging platforms. And the juggling doesn’t stop there.
It used to be that sending an SMS was enough. Now there’s a seemingly endless number of ways to stay in touch with someone. And it’s not just dedicated messaging apps like WhatsApp or Line either. Instagram added direct messaging this past December; Vine followed suit earlier this April; and even Pinterest joined the bandwagon recently by letting pinners chat with other pinners. And, of course, Twitter has had direct messaging for almost eight years now. While variety and choice are generally good things, all of these messaging services introduce a perplexing problem: We have too many inboxes.
Being able to send messages within different applications isn’t all bad, of course. If I think of an interesting photo or video I want to share with just my friends on Instagram, I can do so within the app easily. The same with Pinterest — I can continue the collaboration process of pinning designs and planning a home remodel, for example, without having to use another messaging service. And, of course, messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are a lot cheaper to use than traditional SMS — for US users at least, there’s no need to fork over exorbitant messaging fees every month or, if you’re on a limited plan, cough up pennies with every text.
But the problem is all of these messaging services and apps are siloed experiences. Messages can’t be shared outside of their respective ecosystems. Worse still, I have an obligation to use all of them because different people in my social circle use different apps. When I travelled to Malaysia earlier this year, WhatsApp was the app of choice amongst my friends. A couple of my other pals use Snapchat, so I have that installed on my phone too. A few other early adopter friends (most of whom are admittedly tech writers like myself) use Slingshot, Facebook’s Snapchat alternative, so I’ve got that as well. I also installed Path’s Talk app and Line to chat with a few people, though they were mostly to exchange fun stickers. I even downloaded that silly Yo app, even if I only ever use it in jest.
Forrester researcher Thomas Husson said in a report on messaging apps entitled “Messaging Apps: Mobile Becomes The New Face Of Social” that the “fragmented nature of the social media ecosystem is inherent to the fact that individuals have multiple identities.” Basically, people use different apps and networks for different reasons. For example, people tend to use LinkedIn to talk with potential business partners, while they might use Facebook Messenger only with friends or family. Further, some messaging apps tend to be more popular in certain parts of the world — Line, for example, has a stronger following in Asia — which, if you have friends all over the globe, would mean you’re constantly switching between services.
What’s the big deal, you might ask? Our smartphones and computers are certainly more than capable of handling these disparate systems, and besides, it’s not that difficult to switch between apps, right? Well, sure, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. I shouldn’t have to have a dozen different messaging apps on my phone to talk with all the people in my life. Chris Heuer, a longtime social media user and CEO of Alynd, a social business startup, expresses the same frustration over too many apps: “I think what’s missing in this whole discussion on messaging now is that the messaging is now often done within the context, instead of messaging being the context.” It’s the reason why he dislikes the fragmentation of Facebook Messenger away from the core Facebook app. “Now I have another app I have to open and that will waste more time I don’t have … I’ve got enough apps. I want less, not more.”
Several years ago, there was a similar problem with too many instant-messaging protocols. I used all of them — AOL, Yahoo, MSN, GChat and, yes, even ICQ. I remember installing all of these apps on my computer and keeping them all logged in at the same time because, for some reason, my friends and coworkers just couldn’t agree on the same IM platform. Then, something wonderful happened. All-in-one apps like Trillian and Adium came along to unite most of the disparate IM services under one program. At last, I could launch just one app to chat with everyone.
What we need, then, is an equivalent universal inbox for messaging. No, not just for all your email and text messages. For everything. We need a smart inbox that’ll sort messages by service, label them appropriately and will let you continue conversations within just one app.
There are a few solutions out there that come close to solving the problem. The Hangouts app for Android, for example, is able to handle both Google’s IM system and text messages. If you’re a loyal BlackBerry fan, you already know that the OS from Waterloo has a unified inbox that can house emails, texts and messages from Facebook and Twitter in one place. Disa.im is an Android app currently in alpha that promises to combine SMS, WhatsApp, Hangouts and Facebook messaging in one place as well. There’s also an app called Messages+ that promises to do the same thing, though it seems to fall short — it doesn’t support incoming messages for WhatsApp and we weren’t able to use it to send a message on Facebook.
Still, none of these really live up to the dream of that one, true universal inbox for everything. Which is, sad to say, probably more fantasy than reality. Not only because most of these apps are walled gardens, but also because some, like Snapchat and Slingshot, are based around messages that are meant to disappear after you’ve read them. Further, new messaging features and apps crop up all the time, making it tough to keep something like a universal inbox up-to-date.
The alternate solution, of course, is to insist on just one communication method for people to contact you. You probably won’t be able to keep in touch with as many people in your life, and it might be harder for people to reach you. But, perhaps, that’s the price to pay for sanity.
Hold on, my phone’s buzzing again.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Facebook
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Instagram’s Hyperlapse app turns shaky video into smooth time-lapse beauties
The videos you see on Instagram right now are rarely worth writing home about — after all, most people just slap filters on them and cast them out into the social ether. As it turns out, the folks at Instagram have cooked up a new to create truly beautiful shareable videos with a new app they call Hyperlapse. In traditional Instagram fashion, it’s a breeze to use: all of the heavy lifting is done behind the scenes, so all you have to do is record what’s happening in front of you and choose how fast (between 1x and 12x) you want the resulting creation to play back. The end result? Some incredibly smooth, downright entrancing time-lapse videos that don’t require a desktop to make.
Curiously enough, Instagram’s new (and as-yet unreleased) app happens to share a name with another awfully neat bit of image processing tech. Microsoft showed off its own Hyperlapse at this year’s Siggraph conference and it too smooths out the shakiness from videos captured from devices like GoPros and Google Glass. It won’t surprise you to hear that Microsoft’s approach seems just a bit more complex – Redmond’s Hyperlapse calculates the camera’s path and chews on the geometry of the scene to create a new, smoother path to align images too, and it requires considerably more hardware to get the job done too. Alas, Hyperlapse won’t hit the App Store for a few more hours at least (don’t fret Android fans, you’ll get it soon too), but we’ll keep you posted once it does.
Source: Wired
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Florida university lets students buy titles for its e-book-only library
It’s not uncommon for libraries to offer e-books in addition to dead-tree copies, but the newly opened Florida Polytechnic University takes its digital tome offerings a lot more seriously. The institution has decided to completely forego stocking its library with paper books and will instead rely solely on e-books, which its 550 students (the school is so new, it’s not even licensed yet) can browse on tablets, laptops or e-readers. Now, here’s the kicker: the students can browse any book they want using the school’s proprietary software, but they can access it for free only once — the second time someone clicks on it, he/she ends up purchasing it for the whole school. In fact, the university has set aside $60,000 for e-book purchases, leaving the library’s catalog in its student body’s hands.
Aside from that, the school’s also discouraging students from printing out documents even though printers are available in the library, in an effort to move away from using paper. Students who still prefer holding hard copies, however, can always just borrow a book or two from the school’s off-campus library, which it shares with another institution.
[Image credit: Multicm/Wikimedia]
Filed under: Misc
Via: io9, Business Insider
Source: Reuters
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Blue’s first headphones have a built-in amp for better mobile audio
Blue Microphones, as the company’s name suggests, specializes in recording equipment, from professional studio mics to desktop models to mobile accessories. Today, Blue is breaking into a brand new product category, though not really out of its comfort zone, with the launch of the Mo-Fi headphones. It’s a move you may have been expecting, given Blue announced its intentions at the beginning of the year, and has continued to tease this first foray into listening gear ever since. Put simply, the idea is to bring the kind of high-fidelity audio you’d get from a home sound system to other, more portable devices (as long as you’re willing to pay for it). Blue’s Mo-Fi cans are available in the US today for $350, and will be coming to the UK “soon” for £275.
The Proposition
Part of the reason high-end home audio setups are able to kick out superb-quality sound is due to their large amplifiers. The problem, as it were, with the devices most people listen to music on is that their amplifiers are tiny chips, not sizable pieces of dedicated hardware. The more power you want from these chips, the more distorted the output becomes, which affects the clarity and definition of what you ultimately hear. Thus, in an effort to improve the listening experience for smartphone, tablet and computer users, Blue’s Mo-Fi headphones feature a built-in, custom-made amplifier. This means the source device has to do hardly any of the amplification work, making for a much higher-quality output when the dedicated headphone amp has done its magic. It helps, of course, that the signal is then piped out of custom, 50mm drivers tuned specifically for the internal amp.
Getting into the headphone game was a relatively easy decision for Blue. As CEO John Maier told us, headphones and microphones share more or less the same technology, they’re just put together differently. As well as knowing its hardware, Blue has a ton of experience in audio processing, too, with microphones like the Nessie and Spark Digital able to enhance recordings automatically (no software required). It only makes sense, then, to leverage this expertise and attempt to create some great-sounding headphones.
The Tech Specs
You don’t need to be an audiophile to grasp the benefit of a external amplifier, but for those who’d like a breakdown of the key specs:
- Amplifier:
- 240mW output power
- 0.004% total harmonic distortion plus noise
- 10Hz – 20kHz frequency response
- Less than 105 dB signal-to-noise ratio
- Less than 20 uV of amplifier noise
- Drivers:
- 50mm fiber-reinforced dynamic drivers
- Sealed enclosure with tuned damping materials
- 42 ohms impedance
- 15 – 20kHz frequency response
Aside from the cans themselves, you also get a selection of cables in the box, all with gold-plated connectors. There’s a regular 3-meter cable and a 1.2-meter lead with volume and track-selection controls that work with Apple devices. Both cables terminate with a standard, 3.5mm jack, but can be modified with either of the included 6.35mm or airplane adaptors (the two-pronged type). You also get a velvety carry pouch, USB cable and wall plug for charging the internal 1,020mAh battery, which powers the amp for 12-15 hours of listening time.
How They Look
With an integrated amp, Blue’s trying to do something a little different with its Mo-Fi headphones, and they certainly look unorthodox, too. It might appear as if an overzealous engineer has taken Blue’s usual, retro design language and added a futuristic flare, but all the visual complications are purely in the pursuit of comfort. The elaborate, multi-hinged headband, which would usually be just one flexible semi-circular piece, keeps the earcups vertical and always parallel to one another, regardless of how wide you open them. This means no matter the size of the head wearing them, pressure is distributed uniformly over the entire earcup. This is both for comfort’s sake and isolation, as the snug fit means there’s no opening for outside sound to get in or your music to leak out. You can even adjust the tension of the hinges from a dial on the top of the headband, should you want to change how tightly the cans clamp down.
The earcups themselves are attached to moveable arms with smooth, friction-based joints that allow you to adjust the orientation of each one individually. They’re not only handy for getting the Mo-Fis fitted just right, but if you tend to slip headphones down around your neck, extending the arms fully will stop the earcups digging in to your throat area. While the intricate design is geared towards making the cans more comfortable than your average pair, I can’t say they actually are an improvement over others I’ve used.
For one, there’s too much give to the earcup foam, leaving the outer perimeter of my ears slightly squashed against the thin layer of mesh that covers the plastic speaker grilles. It’s not immediately painful, but it can be after an extended period of use. I usually prefer the cocoon of over-ears to any other style of headphone, but I find my ears reaching stifling temperatures far too quickly in the Mo-Fis. My main gripe with them, though, is they’re far too heavy at 466g (16.44 ounces). They might be built with portable devices in mind, but they aren’t portable themselves, due to both the size and weight of them. I’ve been wearing them consistently for some time, and yet my neck hasn’t gotten round to accepting the burden for any extended period of time without needing some restpite.
In terms of materials, the majority of the headphones are covered in an attractive, metallic-grey plastic; a faux-leather material covers the foam on the headband and around the earcups. There are also accents of faux-metal plastic around the earcups, and where the Blue logo sits at the end of each driver (a layer of rubber hides the driver as it merges into the earcup). A yellow LED beneath the Blue logo on either side indicates when the headphones are powered up, and blink when they’re running out of battery. The Mo-Fis might not be as pleasant to wear as I would like, but the build quality is almost faultless. All the complicated hinge mechanisms are solid, not flimsy, and every component fits together perfectly. It’s also important to note that the Mo-Fis I’ve been using are the final design but not the final build, so retail units will be finished to an even higher standard.
How They Sound
In short, the Mo-Fis easily produce the best quality sound of any headphones I’ve used. I’m no connoisseur, but I’ve used my fair share of different styles and brands ranging in price from ten bucks to around two hundred. Mo-Fis have three ‘modes’ you choose via a switch on the base of the left earcup. Two of them — “On” and “On+” — take advantage of the internal amplifier that substantially boosts music volume. Beyond that, though, the cans kick out a rich, well-defined sound that source devices are simply incapable of producing alone. You don’t even need super high-bitrate tracks to feel the benefit. The vast improvement in clarity and warmth is easily noticeable when streaming music online or playing normal-definition mp3s.
The + in On+ signifies outbound audio is being given a slight bass boost in addition to running through the amp as normal. The increased emphasis is only subtle — it’s intended for adjusting the levels of vinyl-era tracks and any others where bass frequencies are being lost to the overall melody. The final mode is “Off,” which means the amp isn’t powered up but the drivers are still capable of producing sound. You only really want to use this when you’re out of battery (the amplification is then taken care of by the source device), or if you are plugging into a sound system that has a superior amplifier.
The headphones also have a neat kill-switch feature: when you remove them and the earcups come close together, the amp turns off to conserve battery life. Otherwise, there’s no wireless or noise-canceling capabilities; both could negatively impact sound quality, which is at odds with what Blue’s trying to achieve. And achieve it has, because the Mo-Fi headphones sound great, even if they are too bulky and at times, uncomfortable.
Up Next
Blue’s only dipped a toe into the headphone market with its first set of cans, but CEO John Maier intends to go swimming. He believes there’s plenty of opportunity left in the headphone category, from sporty models right up to top-of-the-range, audiophile gear. Within six months, Blue plans to release another set of headphones with different drivers that’ll be higher-end than the Mo-Fis launching today. More models are also set to pad out the range by the end of next year. The company’s looking into other making other input/output devices, as well — anything that could suit its expertise. Microphones will continue to be a major focus, of course, and Maier says there are still niches within the category Blue is yet to address.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, HD
Source: Blue Microphones
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Verizon’s HD voice and video chat service nearly ready to launch nationwide
LTE isn’t just about getting incredibly fast data speeds on our smartphone or tablet. Sure, that’s been what the technology’s been primarily used for ever since it was introduced a few years ago, but it’s capable of providing crystal-clear phone calls as well through a service known as Voice over LTE (VoLTE). The catch is that it’s up to each carrier to provide the service. AT&T and T-Mobile have begun rolling out the capability in a handful of cities, but Verizon announced today that it’s nearly ready to flip the switch on VoLTE nationwide, and it’ll happen in a matter of weeks. Whether that means two or fourteen, Verizon won’t say. But when it’s ready, this functionality will be pre-loaded on new devices and pushed to existing phones in a downloadable update (provided the hardware is compatible, which many devices are).
Over the last year, Verizon execs have remained committed to pushing out its VoLTE capability before the end of 2014; a nationwide deployment in “the coming weeks” will certainly fit within the company’s roadmap. In short, VoLTE makes it possible for carriers to forego the traditional circuit-switching method of connecting phone calls and using the network’s robust LTE network to transmit your calls via IP instead. This means that instead of dealing with staticky calls patched through Verizon’s old-fashioned 1xRTT, you should now enjoy phone conversations with higher clarity and in high-definition. It will also introduce its own video calling capability, which the carrier believes will have better quality than current services like Skype or FaceTime.
Though it sometimes seems as though we don’t use our phones for actual calls anymore, high-definition voice is a critical trend in the US wireless industry; all four national operators have either introduced or promised a boost in call quality using HD Voice technology. For Verizon, it’s not just a competitive matter — it’s also a way to push its network forward into an LTE-only world. It plans to bring its first LTE-only handsets to market in early 2016, but all of the company’s services need to rely solely on LTE before that happens, which is no small task. (It’s getting close: Currently, execs say, up to 80 percent of total data traffic is running on Big Red’s LTE network.)
In order to make this happen without it becoming a huge burden, it needs to phase out older technologies like 1x and CDMA and use that extra room to boost capacity. The more people using VoLTE, the fewer people will rely on non-LTE services. Technically, Verizon reps say, the older tech will still run until the end of the decade, but its capacity will be gradually reduced and refarmed to cover LTE’s increasing needs.
We had a chance to hear VoLTE voice calls alongside old-fashioned calls, and there’s an incredibly noticeable difference between the two; the static is largely missing and voices are rarely muffled. But there are catches. First, VoLTE calls cannot fall back to 1x; if you leave an LTE area, be prepared to drop the call and redial. You can go into the phone settings and choose which mode you want to use right off the bat, but Verizon says that the phones will be smart enough to automatically decide — based on signal strength and other factors — whether to initiate the call on VoLTE. (In theory, if you’re in a fringe LTE area, the phone will know not to risk going high-def and will opt for 1x instead.) Time will determine how reliable that feature is.
Verizon plans to offer interoperability on HD calls, which means that it’ll work with any AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint device with the same technology built-in. The functionality is still being tested in the labs for now, but this will become incredibly important as networks continue rolling out the service.
One last catch relates to Verizon’s video calling: All calls will be billed as both minutes and data. Chances are you’re on a plan with unlimited minutes, so the former won’t matter; it’s the data that stings the most, especially since the network no longer offers unlimited data plans. Still, this is a start, and as the tech becomes even more proven and more capacity is added, perhaps the plans will change.
VoLTE technology isn’t just about HD Voice and video calls, but that’s all that Verizon is focusing on at the moment. It’s got more VoLTE-related features in the works for later, but the carrier is keeping those a closely-held secret for now; it first needs to ensure the network is ready before moving on to new projects. But, execs assured us, what we’re seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg.
[Image credit: AP (main image), Verizon (screenshots)]
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Verizon
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Swatch is finally coming around to this ‘smartwatch’ business
Spare a thought for the watchmakers of this world, who might start to feel the pinch as more people buy a smartwatch. According to the Wall Street Journal, Swatch is the latest old-school outfit to realize that it needs more than a janky, barely-readable touchscreen to appeal to its customers. The company has let it be known that it’ll add fitness functions to its Touch line of watches, although it wouldn’t reveal specific features that we’d expect to see. The new units won’t arrive until 2015, which still leaves plenty of time for companies like Samsung, LG and Motorola to steal a march on mainstream wearables. Still, Swatch’s parent company also owns Omega, and we’d gladly trade in a Galaxy Gear for a Seamaster Professional with James Bond’s cutting laser in the bezel.
Filed under: Wearables
Source: The Wall Street Journal
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