Moto G (3rd Gen) allegedly spotted on Flipkart listing
While we haven’t heard any definite news from Motorola on any of their upcoming devices, Flipkart, a exclusive online retailer for Motorola devices, has listed the Moto G (3rd Gen) on its website.
The listing doesn’t go into much detail, and it has since been taken down. However, it did say that the new Moto G will sport 8GB of built-in storage, and since it is known to be a budget device, that amount is to be expected. It also shows a AP3560AD1K8 model number. But, considering this isn’t official information coming from Motorola, nothing is a verified fact–at its core, it’s another rumor.
What this listing does line up with is a tweet from Motorola President Rick Osterloh, where he said the company tries “stay on a roughly annual cycle” for product releases. We can only assume that includes the Moto G, and this listing further verifies that statement.
We know a new Moto G is coming, but probably not until after another Moto X release in September, if the company is staying on that “rough annual cycle”. Either way, the prospect of another Moto G getting tested is exciting. After all, Motorola’s new devices have been exemplary products.
Would you buy a new Moto G or are you holding out for a new Moto X flagship?
source: Gadgetraid
via: NDTV
Come comment on this article: Moto G (3rd Gen) allegedly spotted on Flipkart listing
Oculus Rift Development on OS X ‘Paused’ to Focus on Strong Windows Launch
Following the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook last year, not much news came out regarding the virtual reality headset’s availability to its non-developer fanbase. Recently, however, Oculus confirmed the Rift will be up for pre-order later this year, with the first units shipping sometime in the first quarter of 2016.
A glimpse inside the consumer model of the Oculus Rift
Atman Binstock, Chief Architect at Oculus and technical director of the Rift, today wrote a blog post on the company’s website providing more details on the exact rig configuration PC players can expect to need when playing games on the Rift. Towards the end of the blog, Binstock also notes that development for the Rift on both Mac and Linux has “paused” to deliver as strong a launch as possible on the headset’s sole platform – Windows.
“Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline.”
The Rift has had a long and bumpy road ever since it was introduced in 2012 with a developer kit version being sold both on the company’s website and as a $300 reward tier on its widely known Kickstarter campaign. Ever since, the Rift has shown up at numerous gaming conventions and electronics shows, but not until this year was any sort of hint given concerning when a mass-marketed consumer version would finally be available.
Although the lengthy development process for the Oculus Rift is more than understandable – the consumer version plans to have improved head tracking, a wireless headset, and even integrated audio – today’s news of a delayed launch on Mac and Linux will undoubtedly be disappointing for many fans. For those interested in seeing what sort of system requirements the virtual reality headset will require on Windows PC’s, check out Binstock’s full blog post here.
Blur Premium Privacy Protection: Lifetime Subscription, $49.99
Unless you’re a drug dealer or criminal mastermind, I’d imagine you value your phone number, e-mail address, and credit card information. Throughout the course of interacting in the online and physical world, you’re often pressed to fork over that information even when the recipient doesn’t always engender a lot of faith in you. There’s nothing like a creep-o encounter on Craigslist to make you question your faith in humanity.
What if you could pick and choose who you give your real phone number to and who you supply with a dummy number that routes to you? What if you could save your inbox from the bombardment of junk e-mails when signing up for a new service? Blur Premium Privacy Protection reinstates privacy in your life by doing all of this and more.
Blur creates temporary masked e-mail addresses, phone numbers and credit card details so you’re completely in charge of your personal information. Who doesn’t want to be invisible to hackers? Blur also helps you manage and organize your passwords with included encryption. Your login information can be stored on mobile and desktop for one-click access.
Meet a potential partner at the club and not sure if you’re ready to give them your direct line? Masked phone number. Traveling and uncomfortable with exposing your true credit card digits? Create a time/balance-managed alternative number (valid anywhere CC’s are accepted). A subscription to a private solution like Blur usually retails for $195 but AndroidGuys can claim lifetime security for just $49.99!
See more at deals.androidguys.com
The post Blur Premium Privacy Protection: Lifetime Subscription, $49.99 appeared first on AndroidGuys.
He made Tom Cruise ‘forget the mouse.’ Now it’s our turn.
In a way, John Underkoffler’s like Hollywood’s own Wizard of Oz. He’s the man behind the curtain responsible for infusing blockbuster fantasy with real-world tech. He created the futuristic UI in Minority Report, worked on the timeline for Hulk’s transformation and found a Soviet fusion reactor to blow up Stark Industries in Iron Man. He also recently received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for his work as an interface designer both in films and in the real world.
While his work as a technologist in films has been iconic, he’s drifted away from that world. He now runs Oblong Industries in LA, where he stays laser-focused on creating UI that’s more human than machine-like. I caught up with the designer for insight into the world of UIs and the delicate balance between fact and fiction in sci-fi films.
What is the significance of a technologist in sci-fi filmmaking? What does that job entail?
At the end of the day, I’m responsible for proposing ways in which real science and technology might be threaded through the narrative, so it’s not merely decorative, which is what usually happens. But it actually becomes an element of the story or is a critical supporting factor in it. That was the case with UI in Minority Report. We were able to push the narrative forward through the depiction of the UI and what it enabled the “PreCrime” cogs to do. In Hulk, Ang Lee realized that all of the characters were scientists and that was the storyline, so it was about proposing plausible mechanisms by which the Hulk might actually work in a real world.
At what point do you come in to the process?
If science and technology are going to be a part of the story, someone like me comes in right at the beginning as the script is taking shape. Working on Hulk, for instance, there was a lot at the script level that needed context and had to be figured out. The main thing that Ang [Lee] was interested in was the history — what series of experiments or mishaps actually gave rise to the Hulk? That process took six months until we figured out how all the pieces would fit together. What we ended up with is a kind of Frankenstein story, which is completely laid out in the opening credits.
An employee demos Oblong Industries’ Minority Report-like user interface.
In the fantastical world of sci-fi films, how important is it to be grounded in reality? What is the equation between fact and fiction?
Audiences do have a fairly sophisticated understanding of science these days. If you show people something that looks like an extrapolation of what they already know, something that incorporates elements that are by now familiar, then there’s a real plausibility that ties it all together and you’ve got this huge booster behind the story. Then you’ve hooked into the warp and weft of the actual world. Those results are always much more exciting.
In Iron Man, the very first one for instance, there was a need for a giant, dangerous thing for the final fight scene. And presumably, whatever it would be, needed to explode and cause massive havoc and be the punctuation mark at the end of the story. When I was looking around, I thought you know, Tony [Stark] is interested in energy, obviously; he’s got this thing on his chest that’s not an infinite energy source, but it’s really important to power his suit. So I said, let’s take a look at the tokamak, a ring-shaped fusion-containment device that originated in the former Soviet Union, but it’s now a focal area as an energy source for nuclear fusion. It’s resonant; it’s Toroidal [a doughnut-shaped object] just like the thing on Tony’s chest. So, of course, he would have a giant tokamak fusion reactor at Stark Industries. In a way, that illustrates how you’re looking at all the properties of some real-world technology — the color, the shape, what it sounds like, what’s the scale, how do you connect to it — when enough of those elements belong in a story, you know you have a very important piece.
“Now more than ever, film productions are looking to technologists to paint the big canvas of the future.”
How much do you think technology in film influences the evolution of technology in the real world?
Hugely. There’s a long legacy. Famously, Arthur C. Clark invented the communications satellite in a fictional setting. What’s interesting is, these days the feedback cycles are shorter. There were 30 years between Star Trek communicators and the Motorola flip phones. Now it might be a few years. And it goes in both directions. Now more than ever, film productions are actively looking to technologists to paint the big canvas of the future where they want to set their story.
That’s definitely evident in sci-fi films, especially over the last decade or so. Filmgoers also seem to have the palate for the complexities of science and technology that have become integral to that genre. What do you think brought on this evolution?
I think the catalytic moment had to have been Minority Report, with all the clarity that we could muster in the medium of film — what a new UI might look like? Why is it important? And why is it a critical element in enabling someone to do a really important job? We’ve seen dozens of recapitulations of the gestural UI since then — in movies, music videos, TV shows, advertisements and even company vision videos. Then there’s also a really exciting spectrum of non-gestural UIs. All of that taken together has raised the basic literacy levels and a demand among audiences. There’s a certain new threshold of plausibility.
What about ideas that aren’t plausible? Have you ever worked with a concept that’s a little too far out?
One of the things that was really interesting about Aeon Flux and director Karyn Kusama, who is absolutely fantastic, is that there was an idea that was deeply appealing, but it was far enough out there on the edge of science. In that world, there was a kind of technological communication that was purely chemical. The idea was that spies would send messages to each other in the form of vials or capsules that they would ingest. It would go through their bloodstream and reach the brain. It would reconfigure or be stimulated in a way that they’d be injecting ideas or visuals into the brain. I thought that was really beautiful.
Even though the world of films sounds incredibly exciting, you’ve stepped away from it to focus on your work at Oblong Industries. How would you summarize your work at the company?
We’re still using the same UI to talk to our computers that we did decades ago. It’s largely irrelevant that the screens are bigger and there’s more pixels and color, but the language that we have available to speak to those machines hasn’t changed. It’s the same pointer-based system in a 2D plane, overlapping windows, little icons, pull-down menus and that sort of thing. It feels endangered. It’s really a fantastic opportunity to build something new, but also something that’s necessary and has a logical extension of what we’ve got. So we’re building UIs that let humans talk to the machine in a much more literate way. What’s important is that to make it work and make it more sophisticated, the UI has to be much more human than machine-like and that’s the beauty of this thing.
“To make it work and make it more sophisticated, the UI has to be much more human than machine-like.”
But what are the implications of that?
I don’t understand this recent panic over the last nine months about AI as if suddenly something has changed and the machines are coming. I don’t actually believe strong AI like that will ever come around. I think the UI have to be designed much more on human terms than the machine’s terms. Arguably, the UI we have now is closer to the machine than it is to the human. Instead, at Oblong we’re building interfaces and HMIs [human-machine interfaces] that take place in the real world. Human pointing is at the center of that. If your walls are covered in screens, then you can pick up one of our pointing devices and point at any of the screens. Your ability to address pixels, communication, data information and applications does not end with the physical boundaries of one screen as it does today. If you think about how a mouse works, you can’t get it off the edge of the screen. We’re saying forget the mouse; the human is important. The human can use fingers, a device or a phone to point and we can make the machines obey that gesture.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
[Image credits: John Underkoffler (lede image); Nicholas Kamm/AFP/GettyImages (gesture-based UI); Marvel (Iron Man)]
Filed under: Internet
The best video camera
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology to buy. Read the full article below at TheWirecutter.com
If you’ve ever tried to record your kids soccer game or music recital, you’ll know that there are some settings where a smartphone just won’t do the job. For shooting video from a field away, catching clips longer than 30 minutes, or shooting when the lights are low, what you need is a dedicated video camera. And for that, the camcorder we recommend for most people is the $550 Panasonic HC-V770K.
After more than 30 hours of research and testing over the course of two rounds of analysis, we found that it beats out any other camera in its price range: it captures video that has more detail, better color, and better sound than all cameras in a similar priceand even better than those that cost much more. It produced the sharpest footage in bright light, plus it had the best stabilization and the least noise in low light. It also featured the best touchscreen controls of the bunch and, with a long 20x optical zoom, you can capture the action from across a huge spacetry to do that with a smartphone.
How we decided
Front to back: Panasonic HC-V750K, Canon VIXIA HF R500, Sony Handycam HDR-CX330.
Although fewer people are buying dedicated camcorders these days, the video camera market still an array of different priced and featured models. In our research, we discovered that spending above $900 got you a professional or 4K model, which most average people don’t actually need for their kids’ piano recitals or soccer matches. Dipping much below an MSRP of $300 saw a major decline in video qualityespecially in low light. From this range of prices, we were able to skip models that are identical to less expensive versions except for adding features of dubious usefulnesslike internal hard drives, when it’s cheaper just to use a large SD card, or Panasonic’s recent introduction of a second camera that points at your face while you record.
Previously, we’d recommended the Panasonic V750K, but in 2015 Panasonic replaced it with the V770K, a model that’s identical to its predecessor in almost every way. The only changes that we could ascertain are a switch from HDMI mini to HDMI micro and a new HDR video mode. Since the V770K has the same internals as the V750K, we knew that it would have the same test results. Which means the same performance in bright daylight for detail, color, and motion; while walking and zooming to account for stabilization; in dim light indoors, and in the middle of the night. The unchanged exterior meant the same high quality handling and ease of usebecause what good is a camcorder if you can’t figure out how to use the thing?
Our pick
The Panasonic V770, like the V750 pictured here, has a large, easy to use touchscreen, and well laid out controls and ports.
Hands down, the $550 Panasonic HC-V770K is the best camcorder for most people if you want to spend less than $900. Under bright daylight, it will capture the sharpest detail and deepest, most saturated color, so that recording of your kid’s first football game will capture every blade of grass. The identically specked V750K had the best stabilization system of all those we looked at, so when you’re trying to track the action while zoomed in to a full 20x and shooting across the field, you won’t see too many shudders and shakes.
It also holds up when recording in the dark, like shooting at night, or indoors with lights down low (school plays, anyone?) Compared to the other video cameras we tested it had the cleanest and sharpest footage, even when shooting in the middle of the night. And with an excellent audio system, you’ll actually be able to make out what’s being said onstage, rather than the whispered conversation in the audience in front of you (a common problem with smartphone footage).
The physical control layout and range of ports available on last year’s V750 are virtually identical to this year’s V770.
Add in Wi-Fi, a slow motion recording mode, a two hour battery life (with an optional larger capacity battery for longer shooting), and the ability to squeeze 25 hours of footage on a 64GB SDXC card, and you have the best bet for most people.
The Runner Up
If spending north of $500 seems a bit too rich for a camcorder, the Canon VIXIA HF R600 is often available for around the $250 mark. Compared to the Panasonic, its colors won’t be as bright, the stabilization quite as smooth, and it’ll struggles slightly in low light. But given that you can buy it for a remarkably low price most of the time, it’s an excellent alternative. It’ll still be notably better than your smartphone, and packs a 32x zoom, small size, and easy to use touchscreen.
Use what you’ve got
The V770’s stereo microphone provides excellent separation, and narrows down as you zoom to keep the audio matching the framing of the video.
Do you have an iPhone? A DSLR? A point-and-shoot? All of these have video modes, and might be enough for what you need. The advantage to a camcorder comes with having a long zoom (which smartphones don’t), and the ability to record longer than 30 minutes at a time (which most cameras can’t do). If you don’t need those, try using the camera you already have.
Where’s 4K?
As with TVs and monitors, the next big thing in camcorders is 4K video. But as of right now, they generally cost $900+, require some serious hardware to edit, need a high quality screen to watch, and all told, it isn’t what most people need. Yet. But that might change over the next few years, so keep your eyes peeled.
In closing
If you want a camcorder that will record deep, bright colors; capture incredible detail; keep your shaky hands stable; and capture great looking footage even in low light, then the $550 Panasonic HC-V770K is the way to go.
This guide may have been updated. To see the current recommendation please go to TheWirecutter.com
Filed under: Cameras
Oculus pauses Mac and Linux development, offers PC specs
The retail version of the Oculus Rift finally has a confirmed release window of early 2016, meaning virtual reality fans have just less than a year to create their ideal gaming environments. A crucial part of any VR setup is the rig powering the headset, and Oculus today released its recommended, minimum PC specs, including an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD 290 video card, an Intel i5-4590 processor, 8GB RAM and Windows 7. Check out the full PC recommendations below. Meanwhile, Oculus has “paused” development for OS X and Linux systems “in order to focus on delivering a high-quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software and content on Windows,” Chief Architect Atman Binstock writes. Oculus doesn’t have a timeline for jumping back into Mac and Linux development.
Regarding the PC specs, Binstock offers the following context: “Given the challenges around VR graphics performance, the Rift will have a recommended specification to ensure that developers can optimize for a known hardware configuration, which ensures a better player experience of comfortable sustained presence. … This configuration will be held for the lifetime of the Rift and should drop in price over time.”
Here is Oculus’ full PC recommendation:
- NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
- Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
- 8GB+ RAM
- Windows 7 SP1 or newer
- 2x USB 3.0 ports
- HDMI 1.3 video output supporting a 297MHz clock via a direct output architecture
Source: Oculus
Hulu pulls a Netflix, rescues ‘The Mindy Project’ from cancellation
Were you bummed when Fox announced it cancelled The Mindy Project after three seasons? Fret not, Hulu announced today that it’s picking up the series, starting with a 26-episode fourth season. The show, named for star Mindy Kaling, already streams on the TV subscription service as one of several Fox series available there, so the news isn’t too surprising. There’s no word on a premiere date just yet, but when it arrives, it’ll be one of the many Hulu original series. Cancelled broadcast shows are getting revived online regularly these days, as Yahoo nabbed Community and Netflix is no stranger to picking up discarded series.
[Image credit: John Fleenor/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images]
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Source: Hulu
Yet another WhatsApp update arrives, bringing even more Material Design
Just yesterday WhatsApp made its Material Design-packing app update available on Google Play, after offering it exclusively for download from its website since April. It seems that this was only the beginning, however, as the WhatsApp website has now put up an even newer version of the app for your downloading pleasure.
Version 2.12.87 isn’t a massive jump from 2.12.84 but it does bring a few more cosmetic changes that help further refine the new Material Design look for the app. This update brings a new default wallpaper that fits much better with Google’s design aesthetic than the previous one. Moving past this, the calling screen has been dramatically enhanced (top right screenshot), ditching the black and red design in favor of a dark green background with a lighter shade of red for the end call button.
Some of the other changes include removing some of the older menu icons that looked out of place with MD, refining the search bar, and adding support for receiving iOS different skin toned emojis (though you obviously can’t send them).
Bottom-line, WhatsApp is continuing to clean up the look of its app and move forward with Google’s latest guidelines. Anything else besides the cosmetic improvements? While WhatsApp doesn’t give us any specifics, we imagine there a number of bug fixes and performance improvements here as well.
To grab this new and improved MD update, you’ll want to head on over to WhatsApp’s website.
5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week! – Android Apps Weekly
Sponsor: NYTimes
[Price: Free with subscription]
The NYTimes recently went through a lot of trouble to overhaul their application. Included in the massive update was a complete design overhaul that follows the standards of Holo and Material Design and it does look great. Add to that the world class news coverage, a few good features like Twilight Mode and the ability to customize your news reading experience, and you have an application that’s definitely worth checking out. It is subscription based but you can try out the application for free and read a few articles every month without buying anything so it can’t hurt to try it out. We’d like to thank The New York Times for their support of Android Apps Weekly.
Welcome back to Android Apps Weekly! Here are your headlines for this week:
- Corbin Davenport has made headlines before by getting emulators to work on Android Wear and he’s at it again. This time he used a Mini vMac II emulator and managed to get the old Macintosh II OS running on Android Wear. As you can guess, it’s buggy and terrible, but it does work and that’s awesome.
- Earlier this week, Google announced that they are going to shut down editing in Map Maker. This comes in the footsteps of the now infamous edit that shows an Android peeing on an apple. This decision is likely to prevent things like that from ever happening again.
- Sega made an announcement that they will be removing games from the Play Store that do not meet their standards. It’s really just some housekeeping but some believe that the games aren’t good enough while others believe the games aren’t making enough money. We don’t know which games are getting canned yet.
- The Google Play Store got a new feature this week. Developers can now allow users to pre-register for apps and games that aren’t out yet. If you pre-register, you’ll get a notification when that app or game becomes available. There are a few titles using it already and this can help generate buzz for their new content.
- In our last headline this week, Nintendo has announced that they will be releasing five games by the end of 2017 with the first coming out this year. We have no clue what kind of game it’s going to be but Nintendo did say that they weren’t porting old games to mobile. I guess we’ll see how this pans out when the first game gets released.
For even more Android apps and games news, updates, and releases, don’t forget to check out this week’s newsletter. There you can find the full range of stuff that happened over the course of the week. If you’re so inclined, you can even sign up with your email address and we’ll send you the newsletter to your inbox every single Friday so you can stay up to date.
Subscribe to our Android Apps Weekly newsletter!
HeroCraft Z
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
HeroCraft Z is a new RPG released by NGames. It features decent graphics powered by the Unity3D engine, a full campaign mode, and the ability to assemble and build your own team. There are some online components as well that include a PvP arena. You can collect over 50 companions with various abilities for strategy. It’s a Freemium game through and through, but it is free to play and isn’t half bad.
Snake Rewind
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
After a few weeks of waiting, the highly anticipated Snake Rewind game is now available on Google Play. As you’ve heard, this is a revamp of the classic Snake game that adorned the cell phones of old and the mechanics remain largely intact. The controls are a bit wonky as they rely on position based tapping and there are in-app purchases which feels a bit weird, but overall it feels like a positive experience and a good source of nostalgia with a cheap price tag.
Bleep
[Price: Free]
Bleep is a new messaging application from, believe it or not, BitTorrent. The idea here is privacy. Messages are stored on user devices and not in the cloud like normal while every message sent is encrypted and the encryption keys are store on user devices and not in the cloud. There are various ways to sign up, the UI isn’t half bad, and you can invite people using your public key similar to Blackberry Messenger. If you need privacy, this is a great way to do but do beware of those release day bugs.
Trumpit Photo Messenger
[Price: Free]
While Bleep focuses on security, Trumpit totally doesn’t. The premise of this photo messaging app is that photos you send shows up on the recipient’s device above the lock screen. They can then interact with it if they want or swipe it away quickly and go back to using their phone. It’s a fun premise, especially if you love sharing photos with people. Of course, I can see this going very badly if you know someone who likes to take inappropriate photos. In any case, it’s totally free and worth a shot. Just beware of any release day bugs.
Seabeard
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Last up is a game called Seabeard which is a new game that saw some moderate success on iOS. Our own Andrew Grush likened the game to a kind of mix of Zelda: Windmaker and Animal Crossing. It features colorful, cartoon graphics a lot of content for you to do, and plenty of other features. It’s been noted that in-app purchases are a tad heavy but with a little bit of patience, you can get passed that obstacle. It’s free to play and it’s available right now.
Wrap up
If we missed any great Android apps or games news, tell us about it in the comments below!
A new VR game lets you be a bullet
With multiple Virtual Reality (VR) units getting ready to hit the markets in the next year or so, we’re going to start seeing games and applications that will take advantage of this newer medium. Today we’re seeing a VR shooter game that gives the user a different perspective on the genre.
Instead of taking on the perspective of a shooter, Drift allows the user to take on the perspective of the fired bullet itself. The premise of the game is simple. Once the bullet is fired, your viewpoint shapes the trajectory the bullet takes. Time is slowed down and just by looking left or right, you can later the path the bullet takes. Your goal is to take out the guy in green and should you fail, red trails of your failed attempts show up your next go-round.
As you play the game, you are able to gain bonuses, unlocking achievements and improve the slow motion aspect, giving you more control. If you have a Gear VR you can give it a whirl now, and a better quality version of the game for the Oculus VR PC version is in the works. The group behind Drift also plans on new environments that will “make a more complete and challenging experience.” If you’re still not sold on the idea, we have a video for you below.
Click here to view the embedded video.
source: Challenge Post
via: Engadget
Come comment on this article: A new VR game lets you be a bullet
AIVAnet 