The Aquila tablet scans our world in 3D to help build better virtual ones
Your tablet can fire off emails and help you rotate beautiful, Escherian worlds, but can it capture the world around you in glorious 3D? Probably not, but the newly revealed (and Android-powered) Aquila from Mantis Vision and Flextronics can. Most of its spec sheet reads like any other top-flight tablet’s would — it’s got a 8-inch screen running at 1900 x 1200 and a punchy Snapdragon 801 chipset ticking away in there — but the telltale dual image sensors ’round the back make it clear this isn’t your average Android slate. By capturing regular color footage and infrared depth data, the Aquila can put together an awfully detailed spatial representation of your surroundings.
What’s that? ‘Mantis Vision’ sounds a little familiar? You’re probably remembering their work with Google on Project Tango which (what else?) saw one of their impressive 3D sensors crammed into one of Mountain View’s 7-inch tablets. Of course, Mantis Vision isn’t the first to try and marry tablets and 3D cameras — the folks at Occipital (you know, they made that RedLaser app back in the day) built an iPad-mounted 3D sensor called the Structure and launched it on Kickstarter around this time last year. Its success means there’s at least some demand for these sorts of tools, and Mantis Vision may just have the right hardware at the right time. Alas, this thing isn’t meant for Joe Q. Everyperson… yet. Right now, Aquila is targeting software makers who want to break into three dimensions in hopes that its M4VD system becomes the standard everyone works with. Developers can try and nab one of their own for $925 at Qualcomm’s Uplinq conference, but the technology could find its way into consumer-grade tablets by next year.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Mantis Vision
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Samsung Galaxy S5, Note 4 could receive Android L as soon as November
Samsung Galaxy S5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4, the strongest Samsung smartphones to date – are expected to receive the Android L update by the end of November, or in early December. By the end of this year, Samsung Galaxy S5 and the upcoming Note 4 will be running on the latest and the most advanced version of Android ever.
Although, SAMMobile further says that nothing is set on stone right now, so don’t get your hopes high. However, we would love to see Samsung adapting to the new version as soon as possible. Also if Samsung updates their flagship smartphones as soon as Android L becomes available, it will help them to build an even stronger relationship with their customers.
Are you eagerly waiting for the Android L update? Let us know in the comment box below.
Source: SAMMobile
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Xbox One’s newest Kinect game is a comic-book styled murder mystery
Lets say you’re already burned out on Destiny and are looking for something a bit, well, different than what the Xbox One currently has on offer. That might just mean that D4 (short for Dark Dreams Don’t Die), the latest game from the creator of cult-hit Deadly Premonition, could be the relief you didn’t even know you were looking for. It’s one of the scant few Kinect-enabled games releasing soon, too. The episodic title was first teased during Microsoft’s E3 event last year and has gone largely unheard from since. That’s recently changed, as Xbox Wire has an interview with its developer Hidetaka Suehiro, better known as Swery65, ahead of the first installment hitting the Xbox Marketplace today.
What’re you in for? A sort of noir murder-mystery where you can interact with the cel-shaded surroundings either with a controller or Microsoft’s do-all sensor. The latter of which apparently has you “grabbing” one of the characters by her shoulders and pulling her off a kitchen table. If you’ve sold off your old consoles, this’ll have to do for your adventure fix until Telltale’s The Wolf Among Us hits Xbox One.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Source: Xbox Wire
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Home Depot says hack put 56 million credit and debit cards at risk
When Home Depot confirmed that its in-store payments systems were hacked, the one juicy morsel it didn’t disclose was how many people may have been affected. Well, the company finally patched the issue and ‘fessed up: some 56 million payment cards are at risk, so please keep an eye on your statements if you’ve shopped at a North American Home Depot between April and September. Just to put this whole thing into perspective, remember the gigantic data breach that Target got slammed with over the holidays? That time only (!) 40 million credit and debit cards were at risk, though millions more customers may have had other personal information compromised. The culprit in both cases was a bit of malware that had been introduced to the companies’ payment systems, but despite earlier reports that the two strains were related, Home Depot says the stuff that hit it “had not been seen previously in other attacks”.
Via: AP
Source: Home Depot
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Catching up with DiWire Bender, Insert Coin 2013’s metal-bending wonder
Does that curious little contraption above look familiar? That’s probably because it’s DIWire Bender, the rather unusual desktop device created by Brooklyn design firm Pensa, which won our judges’ hearts at last year’s Insert Coin competition. We say unusual, because DIWire Bender boasts very specific skillset: bending metal wires for makers, crafters and just about anyone who could use it. We caught up with Pensa founder Marco Perry to talk about how the project’s been doing since the team took home $10,000 for winning Judges’ Choice. By the sound of it, its victory really got the ball rolling: the team’s Kickstarter campaign that launched right after Insert Coin, for instance, reached its $100,000 goal in just one day.
First, a bit of history: The Pensa team first thought of making a desktop metal bender when they realized that their 3D-printed furniture models can’t withstand their testing methods. Thus, DiWire was born. The machine allows you to create metal designs more quickly and efficiently, as you won’t have to twist and turn metal wires manually to make the patterns you want anymore.
After the successful crowdfunding campaign, Pensa began hiring beta testers to take the machine for a spin, including a team that won best rookie award at the First Robotics Competition. Also, Perry said that all the exposure the product got not only made its Kickstarter campaign a painless affair, but also helped drum up a lot of interest from various sectors “ranging from automotive, architecture, furniture, lighting, jewelry, orthodontics, surgical implants, robotics and STEM/STEAM.”
According to Perry, Pensa has finalized the machine’s design and engineering way back in late spring, and it’s begun gathering components for assembly in August. The company now plans to ship out the first DiWire Bender units as soon as this October. If you want to join our Insert Coin competition like Perry and his team did, you may want to put the final touches on your own hardware design. We’re accepting Insert Coin submissions until September 26th only, and there’s $25,000 on the line for the project(s) our judges and readers like the most. Once you’re done reading our submission guidelines, head straight to our entry form and turn those hardware masterpieces in.
Filed under: Misc
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Twitpic is being acquired, and apparently not shutting down next week
Good news? After a shocking announcement by Twitpic that it would close its doors as a result of action by Twitter, now the company has announced that’s not shutting down after all. There are no specific details, but in a tweet, it says “We’re happy to announce we’ve been acquired and Twitpic will live on! We will post more details as we can disclose them.” Your guess is as good as ours as to the buyer, but this may explain a recent dispute that saw Twitpic founder Noah Everett blocking efforts to back up the site’s pictures before they disappeared. All that matters now, is that your pre-Instagram photos are safe.
We’re happy to announce we’ve been acquired and Twitpic will live on! We will post more details as we can disclose them
– TwitPic (@TwitPic) September 18, 2014
Filed under: Internet
Source: Twitpic (Twitter)
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Sprint Won’t Offer new Moto X (2014)
Do you have Sprint? Do you like the brand new Moto X, with new custom backs, a larger screen, updated Moto Voice, Moto Display, and a bunch of other cool features? If you said yes to both, then too bad.
Yesterday morning a twitter user asked Motorola “When will the new Moto X be available to Sprint customers????” to which Motorola responded: “The new Moto X won’t be available on the Sprint network. Thanks for checking in.”
I love my first gen Moto X, and other sites have very positively reviewed the second gen Moto X, with even The Verge giving it the highest rating for an Android device on the site. If I was in a position to, I’d get the second gen Moto X in a heartbeat. It’d be very unfortunate to find I couldn’t because my wireless provider didn’t provide it. One twitter user even said “this is exactly why I’m leaving @sprint”.
What would you do?
via Twitter
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FlightAware Offers Tool For Tracking iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Pre-Order Shipment Flights
Apple began shipping out early iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pre-orders on Thursday morning, and FlightAware, a site that offers live flight tracking, has created a tool that allows users to track the flights carrying their iPhones after receiving a tracking number.
According to FlightAware, users can check the “departure scan” in their UPS tracking information which may match a departure time and flight listed on the tracking page. Currently, the page is tracking UPS flights from Shenzhen, China to Anchorage, Alaska and Anchorage to Louisville, Kentucky, all of which are standard flight rounds for shipping companies.
Currently, many iPhones that will be shipping out to customers overnight and in the morning are aggregated in Kentucky, a worldwide UPS air hub known as Worldport. Apple appears to have shipped the majority of iPhone units using Next Day Air.
The first iPhone 6 and 6 Plus shipments are expected to arrive on Friday, September 19, but oftentimes, some lucky customers receive their shipments early due to shipping company errors. Apple will also begin selling the devices in stores on Friday, but supplies are expected to be tight, especially for the iPhone 6 Plus.
MacRumors readers who are waiting for an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus may also want to join in on the dedicated Apple pre-order thread on the forums, where users share tracking information and socialize while waiting for their devices to arrive.
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Photographer Tests iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in Iceland, Demos Focus Pixels, Other Camera Improvements
With every iteration of the iPhone, Apple aims to bring significant improvements to the device’s camera. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are no exception, packing in several new features like Focus Pixels, Exposure Control, Panorama improvements, Slo-Mo video enhancements, and Optical Image Stabilization for the iPhone 6 Plus.
Professional photographer Austin Mann partnered with The Verge to test the cameras in both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus in Iceland and came away with some impressive results.
One of the major new features in the new devices is Focus Pixels, which is the result of a new image signal processor. As described by Apple, Focus Pixels provides the sensor with more information about an image, which results in faster autofocusing.
In a video, Mann demonstrated Focus Pixels, showing much faster autofocusing on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. As seen in the still below, taken from the video, the iPhone 6 Plus is able to refocus on a scene much more quickly after an object placed in front of the camera causes the lens to refocus.
According to Mann, Focus Pixels keeps objects in focus in photographs, but it really shines when capturing video because it vastly speeds up refocusing. Focus Pixels are also highly useful in low-light situations — where previous iPhones might have had trouble focusing in low light, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus work well, even better than some DSLRs.
Combined with optical image stabilization in the iPhone 6 Plus, the results are impressive. A comparison of an image shot with Phone 5s (top) and the iPhone 6 Plus (bottom) in low light is below.
Another improvement made to iOS 8 and thus the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is Exposure Control, which allows for manual control over exposure and thus more control over the way photos turn out. Two shots, one with exposure control (left) and one with no exposure control (right) are shown off below.
Also new to the iPhone 6/6 Plus and iOS 8 is time-lapse video and improved Slo-Mo video. In iOS 7, Slo-Mo allowed users to capture up to 120 frames per second (fps) at 720p, but in iOS 8, that’s been improved to 240fps, allowing for much improved slow motion video capabilities. Both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are also capable of shooting 1080p video at up to 60fps.
While Mann doesn’t spend too much time focusing on comparisons between the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 6/6 Plus, he does have a few shots that show much improved picture taking capabilities. Mann also doesn’t make comparisons between the 6 and the 6 Plus, the latter of which has optical image stabilization, but photos taken with the two devices are equally impressive.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus pack in new innovations that make the camera experience better and more fun. What I love most about these innovations is they focus on enabling iPhone users to better capture and share life rather than just beefing up tech specs. The Apple team clearly understands their user base very well and incessantly strives to create devices that solve technical challenges and simplify experiences and they’ve done that yet again with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Photographers are really going to enjoy this upgrade… with way better low light, a massive viewfinder and new tools like timelapse that work flawlessly I really couldn’t ask for much more out of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus camera.
Austin Mann’s complete overview of the camera in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is well worth reading, as it contains a multitude of gorgeous images he was able to capture with the devices.
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Apple Engineers in ‘War Room’ Tracking Down iOS 8 Issues on Social Media [iOS Blog]
Following the launch of iOS 8 to the public yesterday, Apple employees in Cupertino are working to locate and remedy iOS 8 bugs that are popping up. As described by one Reddit user, the company has a “War Room” at Apple where employees are tracking down issues on social media.
After installing iOS 8 yesterday afternoon, Reddit user Kiggsworthy tweeted about a problem he was having with Family Sharing. Shortly afterwards he was contacted by an Apple employee on Twitter, who requested details about the issue.
According to the employee, Kiggsworthy was experiencing a bug the team had been attempting to track down, but couldn’t reproduce, but his experience was able to help them solve the problem and push a fix to other users.
Turns out it was some subset of iTunes content that was uploaded over 8 years ago in a bad format that Family Sharing wasn’t playing nice with. They now know what bad content to look for and are going about putting re-encoded versions of all this media on their servers so that people will not get this error going forward.
I was telling him how surprised and impressed I was with this service, given how busy a day Apple was having, for them to just see something I tweeted (I don’t even have 300 followers) and follow up with me so quickly. He said that they had a “War Room” at Apple trawling through social media and everything they could find looking for anyone having issues (particularly with Family Sharing) so they could address them ASAP.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg writer Adam Satariano detailed a program that Apple runs for iOS devices, called early field failure analysis (EFFA), which helps the company fix bugs almost as soon as they originate. It appears there’s a similar program in place for iOS 8, with the company aiming to solve issues as quickly as possible.
Apple employees on the early field failure analysis team and those working on iOS 8 will likely be working overtime this weekend as the first iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices with iOS 8 installed will be in the hands of customers tomorrow.
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