Here’s what you missed on the first official day of CES
The doors opened; the masses piled in; and it began: Yesterday was the first official day of CES. It’s perhaps the most frenzied day of the week, with hundreds of companies vying for attention within the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. So, what happened on the show floor yesterday? Check out the gallery below and find out.
[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
CES 2015: Palm brand to be brought back as U.S. subsidiary of TCL/Alcatel Onetouch
Now we finally know why Alcatel Onetouch bought the trademarks to the Palm brand. As announced at CES 2015 by TCL, a Chinese company known to some as Alcatel and others as RCA, the Palm brand will form a subsidiary that will sell devices under the Palm name in the U.S. Naturally, it would seem this […]
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Imagination unveils an Android imaging framework for its PowerVR GPUs
Imagination Technologies, the company behind PowerVR GPUs and the MIPS processor, has announced a new imaging framework for Android that will allow handset makers to add the latest computational photography and computer vision features into their camera apps via the GPU.
Many of the smartphones on the market today offer camera apps with advanced features like HDR, panoramic stitching, and gesture recognition. However in many cases these features use the CPU to process the imaging data. However GPUs can also handle such work, in fact many image processing algorithms are better suited to the parallel nature of a GPU.
We are making it easy for our customers and their OEMs to differentiate their camera applications.
The new PowerVR imaging framework binds the GPU with other system components, such as the camera sensor and the CPU, into a “programmable image processing pipeline” that can be used by Android apps, like the bundled camera app.
What this means for the consumer is that smartphone makers can add new vision features to their smartphones without having to add special dedicated image processing hardware. As Peter McGuinness from Imagination puts it, “With the imaging framework for PowerVR, we are making it easy for our customers and their OEMs to differentiate their camera applications using their existing SoCs, all without adding to the hardware cost.”
The way Imagination has done this is by adding a set of extensions to the OpenCL and EGL APIs so that an app can directly sample YUV data coming from the camera. As a result OEMs can implement many of the imaging algorithms like noise reduction and HDR in the GPU, rather than the CPU.
Of course for a smartphone to use this GPU computing power, it will need to have a PowerVR GPU, but I guess that is the point that Imagination are trying to make!
Yelp: the FTC won’t penalize us for review complaints
Yelp maintains that it doesn’t game the reviews on its site or try to extort businesses that refuse to pay for ads. In fact, it’s just published a blog post to air that the Federal Trade Commission has finished a year-long deep inquiry into its business practices and has chosen not to take any action against the website. Yelp even claims this is the second time the FTC has investigated the company and finished without penalizing it in any way. Part of the blog post reads:
The FTC looked into our recommendation software, what we say to businesses about it, what our salespeople say about our advertising programs, and how we ensure that our employees are not able to manipulate the ratings and reviews that we display on our platform. After nearly a year of scrutiny, the FTC decided to close its investigation without taking further action.
As you might know, there have been many complaints against the home to crowd-sourced reviews for restaurants and other local businesses for years. If you search “boycott Yelp” on Google, you’ll see a lot of businesses campaigning against the service for allegedly manipulating reviews, refusing to remove fake ones, and demanding money from them, among other things. According to the Wall Street Journal, the FTC received as many as 2,000 reports against Yelp citing the shady practices listed above between 2008 and 2014.
The company says that number’s pretty insignificant “especially when viewed in context of the tens of millions of reviews” on its website. It’s unclear, though, if the commission dismissed the complaints against the service, because it has found that Yelp really didn’t do anything wrong, or if 2,000 complaints are just too few compared to the sheer volume of published reviews. In addition to surviving FTC investigations without getting any penalty, Yelp has also escaped a lawsuit (listing similar complaints against its practices) unscathed in late 2014.
Filed under: Misc
Source: The Wall Street Journal, Yelp
LoopPay Looking to Make Payment-Enabled Cases for Samsung Devices
LoopPay, the popular mobile payment company, is partnering with XPAL Power and Trident Case to make payment on a Samsung device much simpler. This news was announced at CES yesterday and should help Samsung more efficiently and conveniently incorporate mobile payments on their devices. LoopPay’s partnership with XPAL will involve making a back cover for the GS5, due out sometime in early 2015, with an electromagnetic field emitter inside to imitate a card swipe without actually swiping. The partnership with Trident Case will involve putting the same chip inside a Galaxy Note 4 case, which should be out around late 2015.
This news follows rumors that LoopPay is already in talks with Samsung for putting the tech natively inside the upcoming GS6 and Note 5.
Source: Android Authority
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Fuhu announces nabi Square HD, 4K action cam for your children
The folks behind the nabi Tablet for kids has been busy – their latest product is a 4K action cam, but just like the tablet, this camera is built for your children. Introducing the Fuhu Inc. nabi Square HD.
The nabi Square HD is a 4K action camera that is, as the name suggests, a cube of a device that has been built to withstand the rugged lifestyle of your active children, capturing it all in 4K video. Mount it to their bicycle, scooter or skateboard, it can take the bumps, here’s hoping your child can too. (more…)
Apple’s market share continues to rise across Europe, US and China
A new report from Kantar Worldpanel shows that iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sales continued at a brisk pace leading up to November 2014. The new iPhones accounted for 47.4 percent of smartphone sales in the US, an increase of 4.3 percent from the same time in 2013. The iPhone 6 was recorded as the best-selling smartphone three months in a row, achieving a market share of 19 percent. Verizon and AT&T made up 57 percent of iOS sales during this time.
A similar growth was witnessed in Great Britain as well:
Apple’s market share gain, triggered by the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launch, continued into November when it reached 42.5% of British sales for a growth of 12.2 percentage points year-on-year mainly at the expense of Android.
Across Europe (Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain), Android remained the dominant OS with a market share of 69.9%, although this is 3.2 percentage points lower than the same period in 2013. “Great Britain saw the strongest share decline for Android at 6.7 percentage points”, said Dominic Sunnebo, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Europe.
Apple saw a minor increase in its market share in China, which is now at 18.1 percent. China Mobile continues to be the top carrier in the country, accounting for 63 percent of Apple’s overall sales.
Source: Kantar
Mad Catz Shipping out L.Y.N.X. Controller
L.Y.N.X., the cutting edge hybrid controller is now officially on sale online and shipping out as of today. The controller is $300 and can go from a tablet stand to a compact shape for storing in your front shirt pocket in just a few simple steps. The controller should work with a PC, set-top box, or phone for all of your gaming needs. As far as aesthetics go, the L.Y.N.X. has a menacing beauty to it that almost demands being held.
The controller is a response to the growth in the mobile gaming industry and the predicted explosion to come in 2015. Mad Catz had this to say about the release: “We believe the L.Y.N.X. represents a generational leap in mobile game controllers. Today, gaming is commonly format agnostic, with most of us playing games across a variety of platforms and locations. The L.Y.N.X. is designed to offer a premium gaming experience in almost any situation.”
The L.Y.N.X. will debut at CES this week and can be seen via appointment at the Mad Catz suite.
Purchase here: Mad Catz
Source: BusinessWire
Come comment on this article: Mad Catz Shipping out L.Y.N.X. Controller
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