Portland unbans UberX
Citing violations of its hired transportation rules, the city of Portland, OR sued Uber last December and temporarily halted the ridesharing company’s operations within city limits. Now, after months of haggling with civic and community leaders, Uber has relaunched a “safer and more reliable” version of its UberX service in the Rose City. Under the agreement, Uber X drivers will have to pass background and driving history checks while their cars must pass a vehicle safety inspections conducted by a certified mechanic. Each UberX fare will now include a $1 Safe Rides Fee but should remain pretty reasonable if the table below is accurate.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: Uber Blog
Samsung’s round smartwatch in sight after announcing SDK for “Next Generation Gear”
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We’ve known for some time now that Samsung has been working on a round smartwatch – the name ‘Orbis’ has been tossed around a lot when talking about Samsung’s round smartwatch. But today, we’ve gotten what is as good as official confirmation from Samsung itself that it’s working on a round smartwatch thanks to its announcement that it will be making available its latest software development kit (SDK) for its “Next Generation Gear”, accompanied by screenshots of a round smartwatch device.
Given that Samsung is releasing its own SDK suggests that the new round Gear device will be running Tizen once again, but this time it has the backing from several suitors including CBB, Yelp, Baidu, FidMe and Apposter to help it look more attractive to developers. Presumably this move is aimed at helping to drive more third party development on Samsung’s wearable platform, one of the traditional weakness of Samsung Gear line-up to date (except the Samsung Gear Live of course, which runs Android Wear). It’s an interesting move, and we’re excited to see what comes of it and what the device ends up looking like.
What do you think about Samsung’s round smartwatch? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Samsung via Phones Review
The post Samsung’s round smartwatch in sight after announcing SDK for “Next Generation Gear” appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Navy researchers make bulletproof glass out of clay
The US Naval Research Laboratory announced a major breakthrough in materials science on Thursday. After decades of research and development, the NRL has created a transparent, bulletproof material that can be molded into virtually any shape. This material, known as Spinel, is made from a synthetic powdered clay that is heated and pressed under vacuum (aka sintered) into transparent sheets. “Spinel is actually a mineral, it’s magnesium aluminate,” Dr. Jas Sanghera, who leads the research, said in a statement. “The advantage is it’s so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass. It provides better protection in more hostile environments — so it can withstand sand and rain erosion.”
What’s really cool is that unlike most forms of commercially available bulletproof glass — which is formed by pressing alternating layers of glass and plastic sheeting together — Spinel doesn’t block the infrared wavelength of light. That means that this stuff can protect a UAV’s surveillance camera or the lens of a HEL-MD laser without hindering the device’s operation. Plus, Spinel weighs just a fraction of a modern bulletproof pane. “If you replaced that [pane] with spinel, you’d reduce the weight by a factor of two or more,” Sanghera continued. The NRL now plans to share the Spinel production process with the rest of the defense industry.
Via: Popular Science
Source: Naval Research Lab
Creep your friends out with this online GIF tool
GIFs are usually a source of delight and wonder. Artist Vince McKelvie, however, has taken that wonder and warped it beyond recognition. In his new site, click drag click, you can create animated terrors by plugging in a URL of a photo or GIF. Then, just select and drag the image around to start the insanity. When you’re done defying the laws of nature, your creation is uploaded to the site’s stream of equally creepy images manipulated by people just like you. From there you can share it to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to give all your friends nightmares.
Via: Boing Boing
Source: click drag click
Oppo’s upcoming bezel-less smartphone shown off in yet another video
What has perhaps become one of the most leaked smartphones in the past few years, Oppo’s upcoming bezel-less smartphone is shown off yet again in a new video. In this three minute long clip, we get our best look at the phone’s user interface, chassis, and most importantly, the tech used to achieve this bezel-less look.
The technology used by Oppo was detailed a few weeks ago in a leaked schematic, explaining exactly how the company achieves the illusion. There’s actually an extremely thin border that surrounds the display, making it seem like there are no bezels on the right and left sides of the device.
Aside from this near bezel-less look, the unofficially named Oppo R7 is turning out to be quite the premium device. A few previous rumors suggest that it could feature a 5.5-inch display, a 64-bit octa-core MediaTek MT6795 processor, a 20.7MP rear-facing camera and measure just 4.85mm thick.
One thing to keep in mind is that none of this is yet confirmed by the company, so we should approach this with some hesitation. However, now that there are two video clips among a plethora of leaked photos, we can be certain that the device is real, and that it might eventually make its way to market.
Google continues pushing for mobile friendly webpages
Google recently announced on their blog a plan to change how you see search results. They made a reference to an issue that all smartphone users know all too well. The webpage that does not support mobile views and becomes a burden to navigate.
Usually, I quickly leave these pages because I feel that if they can’t manage to operate a mobile site, it probably isn’t a good organization/group for me to be looking into. Apparently I am not the only one as people are less likely to return to a webpage that doesn’t support a mobile view than those that do according to Google.
As part of Google campaign to increase mobile friendly sites, Google has released multiple tools to help webmasters create websites that are considered mobile friendly by Google so that they viewers can enjoy the website’s content on their mobile devices in addition to a traditional laptop.
“Webmasters can check if their site is mobile-friendly by examining individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or checking the status of the entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. Once a site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process those pages (and webmasters can expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index). “
Links to those tools and more information can be found on Google’s blog post.
The post Google continues pushing for mobile friendly webpages appeared first on AndroidGuys.
These tiny gecko-inspired robots can lift over 100x their weight
Beware the tiny robot uprising, which at this point are taunting us with the equivalent of superhuman strength. Researchers at Stanford have created several tiny bots that can move things more than 100 times their weight, reports New Scientist. They’re the latest example of the university’s research into mimicking the climbing abilities of geckos. The robots feet contain adhesives that manage to hold onto the wall even when they’re carrying heavy loads, and easily detach when they need to move. And as you can see in the video below, the bots’ movement is also inspired by nature, going forward one step at a time like an inchworm. One nine gram robot can lift something that weighs a kilogram (in the video it’s hoisting Stanford’s 2006-era “StickyBot”), while an astonishingly small 20 milligram bot can lift something 500 milligrams (a small paperclip).
The most impressive robot, dubbed μTug, is a 12 gram beast that can drag something 2,000 times its weight. As a Stanford researcher tells New Scientist, that’s about the same as a human moving a blue whale.
Filed under: Robots
Source: New Scientist
Quirky wine rack could refill itself using Amazon Dash
Do you wake up in the middle of the night, soaked in cold sweat and frantically worrying, “Oh God, is my wine rack sufficiently full?” Well, fear not, because this automated wine rack from Quirky not only keeps tabs on your vital vino supply, it could even automatically restock its cellar when you run out of wine. The Poppy Reserve, as it’s called, is a two-part system consisting of a smart rack and its associated app. The semi-autonomous wine rack comes packed with temperature, weight and humidity sensors. That way it can monitor how much wine you have left as well as whether they’re being stored under the proper conditions.
The Poppy Reserve app could serve as equal parts sommelier and wine assistant with the ability to track your favorite brands, styles or reserve years as well as suggest new ones to try. And by assigning specific bottles to each numbered rack slot, the system could even incorporate Amazon’s Dash Replenishment Service to automatically replenish your stock when a bottle runs dry. Though, given that this project is still firmly in the vaporware phase of its development, it’s also fair to say that it could eventually incorporate laser cats and rocket thrusters. The idea is currently under Expert Review at Quirky, though there are no set plans to produce it.
Source: Quirky
New technology will turn your phone’s display into a biometric scanner
We should all be familiar with biometric scanners in smartphones by now. While sometimes it can ultimately work against us, biometric recognition is making its way into the mainstream, offering an easy way to gain access to our mobile devices. So far, we’ve only really seen fingerprint recognition as the main form of biometric security on today’s smartphones, but that may change sometime (relatively) soon.
A team of researchers from Yahoo Labs have created a new technology called ‘Bodyprint’ that turns your smartphone’s touchscreen display into a biometric scanner. Since mobile devices’ touchscreens have lower input resolutions compared to those found in the iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6’s home buttons, Bodyprint requires you to scan a different part of your body, whether that be your ear, fist, five fingers or palm.
In the video shown below, Bodyprint is being used to verify the user before answering a phone call with ear recognition. Obviously, much like using traditional fingerprint sensors, Bodyprint has the potential to be used in many more applications throughout the mobile OS.
This new tech was demoed at the 2015 Computer-Human Interaction Conference (CHI) in Seoul, South Korea not too long ago. During a small test composed of 12 people, Bodyprint correctly identified both owners and their body parts 99.98% of the time. While that’s an impressive feat, the research team knows they have a lot of work to do before this technology will make its way to our mobile devices.
Does not Commute speeds its way into the Google Play Store
Mediocre, the developers who brought us Granny Smith, have just launched a new strategic racing game called Does not Commute into the Play Store.
The aim of the game is to get everyone to their designated places on time. In the beginning, you start out with a set time limit as you begin to control your first car to its destination. Once your first driver makes it from point A to point B, you move on to the next driver. Once you move on, you’ll need to avoid all of the other drivers you previously guided to their destinations. It’s easy at first, but once more than 5 or 6 drivers are added to the mix, things can get very frustrating.
You only get 60 seconds to navigate everyone to their destinations, but you can pick up time bonuses hidden throughout each map. You can also rewind cars if you crash, but that will take off one second from your total time. You’ll also be rewarded power-ups along the way, like power steering and turbo.
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The game is free to download and doesn’t have any ads. To get the ability to continue from any checkpoint, however, that will cost you $1.99 via an in-app purchase. We really urge you to download this game if you’re a fan of Granny Smith, Smash Hit or any other awesome game that comes from Mediocre. Head to the Play Store link below if you’re interested.
AIVAnet 