The BBC can now tell you when your favourite artists are playing live

While Songkick’s live event listings are already featured in some of the most popular music services on the planet, none are as illustrious as the BBC. To help the Beeb with the giant task of cataloging and listing every artist that appears on one of its TV or radio programmes, Songkick has been brought in to do what it does best: supply BBC Music’s new performer pages with every upcoming concert across the UK. The good news is that the startup doesn’t just catalog A-list events, meaning you’ll be able to follow upcoming artists as they perform their first gigs. To access the BBC’s new Songkick-powered concert listings, head on over to the new BBC Music and simply select the artist you want to see (or just download the official Songkick app).

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet

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Via: Songkick Blog

Source: BBC Music

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Plastc wants to be the only credit card you’ll ever need

There’s plastic, and then there’s Plastc — an electronic card, which its manufacturers claim can store several credit/gift/loyalty card details and assume the form of each one. The device pairs up with an app via low-energy Bluetooth, which serves as unlimited storage for all your cards (Plastc itself can only store up to 20) and can also show your transaction history. Does this sound so familiar that it feels like reading old news? That’s because you’re probably recalling a similar device called Coin launched back in 2013.Just like Plastc, it can store various card details that you can switch up, depending on which one you want to use. The bad news is that Coin, which promised to ship the first units this year, moved its ETA to spring 2015 (though there’s a beta test going on), something pre-order customers obviously weren’t happy with. So, one has to wonder if an unknown company will be able to do what Coin couldn’t and release such an ambitious product on time.

See, in addition to being able to switch up card details through the e-ink touchscreen panel, Plastc can also show loyalty or gift cards’ barcodes and remotely wipe your data in case it gets lost or stolen. The panel displays your name, picture and signature along with your card number as a form of identification, and it even flashes a message to return the card back to you if you lose it. Its accompanying app, on the other hand, is supposed to come with a security pin and facial authentication.

If both Plastc and Coin do make it to market, though, the former might have the upper hand, as it’ll come embedded with a computer chip that makes it difficult to clone. The US will start encouraging retailers to only accept cards with those chips by 2015, making Coin obsolete almost as soon as it’s out. Plastc’s now available for pre-order from its website for $155 each — $55 more expensive than the $100 Coin — and might be out as soon as the summer of 2015.

Filed under: Misc, Mobile

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Source: Plastc

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​Warner Bros is building a holographic Batcave for the Oculus Rift

Like comic books? Then you’re probably familiar with the style of Bruce Timm, the father of the DC animated universe — a specific era (and style) of DC Comics animation projects that started with the 1992 Batman: The Animated Series. If you missed it, it was a fantastic series: Batman had an incredible voice, Robin didn’t deal in cheesy catch phrases and Mark Hamill was the Joker. Seriously. Now, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment is bringing Timm’s vision of Batman back as an interactive holographic video designed for virtual reality displays: they’re building an animated Batcave for the Oculus Rift.

Although Warner Bros’ announcement focuses largely on the Batcave experience, the announcement is more than your run-of-the-mill VR demo – it’s a testing ground for OTOY’s holographic video technology. The technology was announced at SIGGRAPH earlier this year as a next-generation entertainment solution. The format is designed to allow 3D rendered spaces with dynamic lighting to be streamed through the internet, loaded on local machines or viewed through HTML5-capable web browsers. Particularly large demos will leverage cloud processing, too. It’s still early for the technology, but the company hopes that it will be ready for the mass market in 2015, after there are more commercial VR headsets available to consumers.

In any case, the group is hard at work at recreating the Batcave, circa 1992 — and has apparently conscripted Timm to ensure that every detail of the dark knight’s underground lair is accurate to his original vision. Warner Bros. hasn’t announced when the Batcave will be open for tours, but it should be available to users of the Oculus Rift and Samsung GALAXY VR. It’s too early to say if OTOY’s vision for holographic video will be a long term success, but at least its first commercial project sounds like fun.

Filed under: Misc

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Source: OTOY

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San Francisco creates a new legal framework for Airbnb-style home rentals

If you’re wondering how many cities will eventually grapple with the legal issues surrounding Airbnb and other internet-based home rentals, you may not have to look much further than San Francisco. Its Board of Supervisors has passed a law that lets these services run, but regulates them to both prevent abuse and give the municipality its due. Hosts not only have to limit whole-home rentals to 90 days per year, but register with the city’s Planning Department (which costs $50), pay hotel tax and keep records that prove they’re respecting the time restriction. There should also be companion legislation in the future that prevents landlords from evicting tenants to turn their buildings into makeshift hotels. If implemented, it’ll let housing non-profits sue to stop these turnovers rather than wait for officials to respond.

Airbnb is fine with the new rules, and it will start collecting the hotel tax this month. The new regulation won’t satisfy everyone; no matter how well it prevents excessively long rentals and evictions, it won’t do much to protect neighbors from shady guests. However, it suggests that local governments can strike a reasonably happy balance between controlling rental rates and letting tenants earn some cash while they’re not using their homes.

Filed under: Household, Internet

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Source: SFGate

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Google Voice just got real

Google Voice was such a cool idea when it first came on the scene. You could make calls, and send text messages from your computer back when most people were still working off desktop machines. Immediately, questions arose about whether Google was going to make a go at the mobile market. How was Google Voice going to disrupt the big carriers (before the word ‘disrupt’ was cliche)? If Google got into mobile, would that mean phones would be free? Free voice calls? Free texting? Free data?!?

Well, it didn’t really happen that way. The powers that be wouldn’t allow Google to have control over all that, and internet advertising, and search (add email, maps, mobile OS, and RSS to that list – R.I.P. Google Reader).

But unlike Google Wave, Google Reader, and Orkut, Google Voice stuck around. It’s been chugging along for years, slowly building up steam and a loyal following.

Flash-forward to about a month ago when Google updated their Hangouts app and Google Voice was the main attraction.

Google Hangouts was integrated with Google Voice. You could finally make and receive calls with your Google Voice number from the Hangouts app using megabytes from your data plan instead of minutes from your voice plan. You could also use your Google Voice account to send and receive SMS messages from inside Hangouts.

So cool!

But, noticeably missing was MMS. Poor, lonely MMS was left out. We knew it wasn’t a Hangouts issue, so it must have been a Google Voice issue, or perhaps a carrier issue.

Well now the wait is over. In a recent post on Google+, Alex Wiesen, Tech Lead Manager for Google Voice, shared the following news,

We’ve been working with nearly 100 different North American carriers to enable this feature — including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Bell Canada, Rogers, Telus, and many more — and starting today all these integrations are live. So enjoy those incoming pics, say goodbye to fomo (fear of missing out), and stay tuned for more Google Voice messaging improvements!

That’s right, MMS is alive and well on Google Voice inside in the Hangouts app for nearly 100 different carriers, but not Verizon. What’s up with that, Big V?

It will be interesting to see what else Google has in store for Hangout and Google Voice. Will they continue to improve separately, or will they be so integrated that they become one in the same? Time will tell.

Source [Google+]

The post Google Voice just got real appeared first on AndroidGuys.

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