The Big Picture: The Congo’s solar-powered traffic robocops
While Detroit waits for its Robocop statue, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s one-upped The Motor City and installed a quintet of robots to keep an unblinking eye on any traffic-law violators. The Guardian reports that these solar-powered aluminum bipeds are armed with cameras to monitor the vehicle-piloting populace, and hand-mounted red and green lights to help regulate the bustling flow of city Kinshasa’s some nine million residents. Each new, female-engineered unit runs $27,500 (cheaper than some SWAT ‘bots), and the country hopes to add another 30 to the force in an expansion effort for monitoring its highways.
Source: The Guardian
Apple provided restricted early access for developers to build Apple Watch apps
Apple has allowed certain partners early access to test apps that will be available when the Apple Watch launches on March 9. A Bloomberg report reveals that Apple had everything, including internet access and personal items like notebooks, under lockdown. The company even went as far as to secure said apps on hard drives at Apple. According to the report:
Internet access is blocked inside the rooms, and no outside materials can be brought in to the labs with the test watches, a person who attended said. The companies, sometimes sharing a room, must bring in source code for their apps on a computer hard drive that can’t leave Apple’s headquarters. To prevent information from leaking out, Apple is storing the code and sending it to the companies closer to the watch’s introduction date, the person said.
Companies have already been working on their own offerings for the Apple Watch. Instagram will release an app that will notify watch wearers when someone uploads a photo, while Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide will enable guests to unlock hotel doors. With this level of secrecy, it’s clear Apple is taking the upcoming launch seriously.
We’ll have to hold off until more information is released on these apps. For now, we at least have only a handful of days left to sit through before the March 9 event.
Source: Bloomberg
Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google team up to support marriage equality
A total of 379 companies, including tech’s biggest names, are trying to convince the Supreme Court to rule in favor of nationwide marriage equality. These corporations, including Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have filed an amici curiae or a friend-of-the-court brief prior to the high court’s April hearing that will decide the future of same-sex marriage in the US. The court is slated to discuss whether same-sex couples have the constitutional right to get married anywhere in the country. In case that doesn’t pan out, the court will also discuss whether same-sex marriages performed in states where it’s legal must be recognized even in states where it’s not. If you read the filing, you’ll see the companies emphasize repeatedly how marriage equality benefits American businesses.
They listed a number of ways how, such as that it will allow them to offer everyone the same benefits to entice top talent. It can also prevent employees from leaving and moving to states that recognize their marriage. Diversity in the workplace, brought in part by members of the LGBT community, is “crucial to innovation and marketplace success,” the companies’ wrote.
We’ve pasted parts of the filing below that explain their stance in greater detail (emphasis ours):
Some of the states in which amici (the 379 companies) do business make marriage equally available to all of our employees and colleagues; others prohibit marriages between couples of the same sex and refuse to recognize existing same-sex marriages. This dual regime burdens amici. It creates legal uncertainty and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative complexities on employers, and requires differential employer treatment of employees who are similarly situated save for the state where they reside.
State laws that prohibit or decline to recognize marriages between same-sex couples hamper employer efforts to recruit and retain the most talented workforce possible in those states. Our successes depend upon the welfare and morale of all employees, without distinction. The burden imposed by inconsistent and discriminatory state laws of having to administer complicated schemes to account for differential treatment of similarly situated employees breeds unnecessary confusion, tension, and diminished employee morale.
A diverse, inclusive workplace environment increases the total human energy available to the organization. People can bring far more of themselves to their jobs because they are required to suppress far less. Inclusive companies are more open to new ideas and opportunities, while less prone to overconfidence when approaching challenges. Companies that are diverse and inclusive obtain better profits and other outputs, thanks to improved team collaboration and commitment.
Aside from the Big Four, other tech companies in the list include Amazon, Comcast, Cisco, DocuSign, Dropbox, eBay, EA, GE, HP, Intel, Oracle, Qualcomm Incorporated, Symantec, Twitter, Verizon, Xerox and Zynga. There are multi-national corporations from other industries, as well, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Walt Disney and United Airlines. You can see the full list in the amici curiae document, along with links to the studies the group used to back their arguments.
[Image credit: Shutterstock / govicinity]
Filed under: Misc, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook
Via: The Verge
Source: Morgan Lewis
Canadian man faces fines and jail time for refusal to unlock BlackBerry at airport
Here’s a little something that hit close to home for me personally. Alain Philippon, 38, of Ste-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec who arrived at Halifax’s Stanfield International Airport from Puerto Plata has been charged under section 153.1 (b) of the Customs Act for hindering or preventing border officers from performing their role under the act based on his refusal to provide his BlackBerry password to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers upon his arrival.
HTC releases two One M9 teaser videos
As you might start to expect after officially announcing their latest flagship phone at MWC this week, HTC has released a couple teaser videos for the HTC One M9. One of which is narrated by the man behind the Iron Man mask himself, Robert Downey Jr.
Both videos are, as mentioned, simply teasers. The first gives a few close ups, then simply shows the new 5-inch phone floating in space. Aside from this being an official video from HTC, it feels an awful lot like the fan renders of the One M9 we saw a little while back. Just the phone without many unnecessary embellishments.
Video number two is another story. HTC worked with Robert Downey Jr. for a few pieces in the past. This time, Downey Jr. does not make an appearance, simply narrating the ideals of HTC as a brand, eluding to the benefits that an HTC phone can have on one’s life.
In the end, these are fairly benign videos from HTC, lacking some of the Androidify cartoon fun found in the recent Android commercials, or even the in-depth details of Samsung’s hands-on pieces, but is great great to see them trying.
The videos are unlisted on HTC’s YouTube account, so you’ll have to watch them here for now.
What do you say, is the HTC One M9 the phone for you?
VLC for Windows Phone sheds the beta tag in latest update
VLC picked up an update that sees the media player shedding the beta tag. The app is now just called VLC for Windows Phone. The update also brings minor UI changes.
Lumia 535 getting new OS and firmware update, likely addresses display touch issue
As promised a few days ago, Microsoft is now rolling out a new update for the Lumia 535, at least in select markets. This download is supposed to fix a persistent touchscreen sensitivity issue that has been reported by many owners of the smartphone since it was released in the second half of 2014.
An inside look at Game Streaming on Xbox One with Windows 10 – GDC 2015
The Xbox app on Windows 10 is the foundation of Microsoft’s vision to give consumers gaming wherever they desire. We just got an inside look at the March’s preview edition of the Xbox app for Windows 10, and we’re going to share our thoughts.
AppleCare reportedly takes over support for Beats Music and Apple Pay for business
Apple has reportedly brought support for Beats Music under its AppleCare wing today, while also doing the same with Apple Pay support for businesses.
The report comes from the folks at 9to5Mac, which states:
Starting today, AppleCare will begin providing support service for Beats Music customers as well as businesses interested in accepting Apple Pay, according to sources. Support for the streaming music service previously went through a separate system from Apple’s other products and services. AppleCare staff has also been advised on helping businesses with accepting Apple Pay as the company pushes its new mobile payment service.
This comes after news broke earlier today that Apple is targeting sometime around WWDC 2015 to launch its music subscription service based on Beats Music. The new service will reportedly integrate the functionality of the current Beats Music app, such as streaming and curated playlists into the iOS Music app.
Source: 9to5Mac
WHOOSH! Screen Shine Go review
Take a look at your phone. It’s okay, I am not going anywhere. Apart from the fingerprints, smudges and pizza sauce from your lunch earlier, you just stared at something that is 10 times dirtier than your toilet seat. Now I don’t know about you but I am really rethinking about having checked my emails while I was eating lunch today. Now before you go and take all of your cleaning supplies out of your cabinet, I may have a solution for all of your smartphone cleaning needs, the WHOOSH! Screen Shine Go.
What’s In The Box
Well, it’s not so much a box as it is a sealed pouch, but I digress. What you get when you order a WHOOSH! Screen Shine Go is of course the bottle, which hold 30 mL of cleaning fluid, and an orange anti-microbial cleaning cloth. Other than that, they kept it nice and minimal and did not include any unnecessary paper in the packaging.
How Did It Fare
The WHOOSH! Screen Shine Go, which I will now be addressing as just the WHOOSH! Go, did a great job in cleaning my phone. I honestly had not cleaned it with dedicated cleaner fluid in a very long time and I had forgotten how the screen looked without all the oil from my hands keeping it down. The screen looked, for lack of a better term, clean. The screen had not looked that nice since I opened the box and took it out when I first bought it. The fluid also has a natural proprietary polymer formula that “ literally repels and resists dust, smudges and fingerprints.” While nothing is going to be able to keep your phone 100% smudge proof, I did notice that the WHOOSH! Go made it so that there were less smudges whenever I needed to use my phone.
Environment Friendly
Now, what really makes the WHOOSH! Go such a great product other than it’s great cleaning abilities is that you are getting to help the environment while you do it. WHOOSH! states that their cleaning fluid is “100% natural, non-hazardous, non-toxic and environmentally friendly”. Now you do not have to worry about accidentally getting the cleaning liquid on anything since it is completely harmless.
Final Thoughts
I really liked the WHOOSH! Go. Not just because it did a great job in cleaning my smartphone and helping it look newer, but because it did so in a natural way. If you have not ever used a dedicated smartphone cleaner, or you just need to replace your current one, the WHOOSH! Go is definitely a good option. You can learn more about the WHOOSH! Go by going to their website or by heading over to Amazon.
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