Nest press conference scheduled for June 17th, new products inbound?
Google spent a massive $3.2 billion in January 2014 to acquire Nest Labs, the company that creates smart thermostats and smoke detectors. While Nest has only launched two products so far, that may change sometime soon. The company has just sent out invitations for a press event scheduled for Wednesday, June 17th, during which we may get to hear about the first products to come from the company since the big Google acquisition. Unfortunately the invitation doesn’t provide much information on the event, so right now all we can do is speculate.
While Nest has only launched a few products since its inception, the company has still been making headlines over the past year for its numerous big acquisitions. Nest bought security camera startup Dropcam last June for $555 million, then soon after purchased Revolv, the home automation company. Since Nest bought these two companies, we have yet to hear any new product announcements or updates, so perhaps that’s what we’ll see on the 17th.
Like I said before, this is just speculation for now, though it does seem like the right time for Nest to introduce new connected home products. We’ll be sure to let you know what the announcement entails when the 17th rolls around.
Apple Continues Decorating Moscone West for WWDC Ahead of Monday’s Keynote
Each year ahead of the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple puts up logos, signs, and banners across Moscone West in San Francisco, where the event is held. Decorations began going up on Tuesday, and work will continue throughout the weekend to prepare for Monday’s keynote event.
As of this afternoon, Apple has finished placing two Apple logos on the outside windows of Moscone West, and yesterday, the first interior banner went up. The initial banner uses the same graphic design elements that are present on the company’s WWDC 2015 website, along with the tagline “The epicenter of change.”
The next interior banners to go up may give us some hints on what we can expect from OS X 10.11 and iOS 9, the two new operating systems that will be unveiled at WWDC. With OS X 10.10, we saw banners depicting Yosemite on the Friday before the event, so tomorrow’s banners could divulge the name for OS X 10.11.
Apple’s trademarked the names of several California landmarks and locations, and some of those names include Redwood, Big Sur, Pacific, Diablo, Miramar, El Cap, Monterey, and Sierra, among others.
We also expect to see iOS 9 banners going up in the near future, but those banners divulge less information because there’s no associated name and Apple will keep signs that highlight upcoming features covered until after the keynote event. Decorations will also be added to sign posts, the Metreon across the street, and other locations as we approach the kickoff of the conference.
Along with details on iOS 9 and OS X 10.11, this year’s keynote event will also see the debut of Apple’s new streaming music service and a revamped version of iTunes Radio. The Apple Watch will be a major focus with the debut of native apps, and we may also see the introduction of a rewards program for Apple Pay.
Early rumors suggested Apple would debut its a new Apple TV set-top box and a new subscription television service at WWDC, but the two products are not ready to launch and will no longer be included in the event. For additional details on what to expect at WWDC, make sure to check out our WWDC roundup and our more in-depth roundups on iOS 9 and OS X 10.11.
High-yield yeast converts 97 percent of a plant to biofuel
The Department of Energy’s BioEnergy Science Center announced a major breakthrough in the biofuel field yesterday: a newly developed strain of yeast capable of producing more than three times the amount of fuel from plant matter as the current record holder. The Center has teamed with Mascoma LLC to develop the new strain, dubbed C5 FUEL. Existing biofuel yeast strains generally only convert about 30 percent of a plant’s sugars and cannot effectively convert tough xylose sugars. C5 however can ferment up to 97 percent of plant sugars into ethanol, including the xylose that other strains can’t break down. What’s more, it does all that in just 48 hours as opposed to the multiple days or weeks that other strains require.
The BESC team presented its findings at the 31st International Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Minneapolis on Thursday morning. They hope that the discovery will help make ethanol-based biofuels more accessible to the consumer market. “Driving down the cost to develop, verify and consolidate bioprocessing was at the heart of the BESC effort when we began in 2007, and this achievement allows us to advance to the next challenge,” BESC Director Paul Gilna said in a statement. “This accomplishment represents a clearly impactful example of how our partnering with industry can accelerate the translation of our research capabilities and findings into commercial products.” Up next, the BESC hopes to perform the same biochemical gymnastics with thermophilic bacteria, which would produce fuel directly from biomass in just one step.
[Image Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images (Top) – ORNL (inline)]
Filed under: Science
Source: Oak Ridge National Lab
ESPN’s X Games to use GoPro footage during live broadcasts
ESPN is never afraid to experiment with new technologies. Earlier this year, it used drones to capture footage of athletes as they performed during the winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado. That recorded content, however, was limited to being used for replays or post-show highlights, if at all. But, over the past few months, ESPN has been working with GoPro to bring a new, real-time camera angle to its broadcast of this year’s summer X Games, scheduled to take place in Austin, Texas from June 4th to June 7th. For the first time ever, the sports network will be using video from GoPros in live broadcasts of the event, giving viewers at home a first-person look at the action while it happens.
ESPN began testing GoPro’s system, dubbed HeroCast, at the Aspen X Games back in January, but it felt that now was the right time to integrate it into its telecast. “We wanted to create [a system] where GoPro captured audio and video could be transmitted, from wherever it was put, to the production control room live and with high-quality,” says Rich Feinberg, ESPN’s vice president of production, about the partnership with GoPro. “It’s about putting the fan in the seat of the athletes.” Where exactly the cameras get positioned depends on the type of event — they could be on a competitor’s helmet, for example, as well as a bike, board, course or ramp.
“It’s about putting the fan in the seat of the athletes.”
Interestingly enough, GoPro says the cameras that will be part of these live broadcasts are simply modified versions of its Hero4 action shooter. Of course, the company’s no stranger to the field of extreme and mainstream sports. A few months ago, it signed a deal with the NHL and NHLPA to deliver real-time content during national and regional broadcasts of hockey games. In the case of the X Games, though, GoPro wants to make it clear that it is broadcasting, not streaming, the footage — and thus it relies on a more advanced wired setup.
According to an ESPN spokesperson, the network plans to look at the HeroCast as a tool in its growing arsenal of non-traditional broadcast mediums. While it can’t say specifically that it’ll use it for more events going forward, it certainly sees it as a proper fit for the X Games Austin. The first broadcast with the system will be for tonight’s Harley Davidson Flat Track Racing, which is set to begin at 8:30pm ET on, you guessed it, ESPN.
[Image credits: ESPN]
Filed under: Cameras, Home Entertainment, Wearables, HD
Facebook Messenger only shares your location when you tell it to
Sharing your location with the person you’re chatting with in Facebook Messenger isn’t a new feature, but the way its done has changed… thankfully. The app no longer shares your location by default, nixing the stalkerish function that updated folks on your friends list with your movements. Instead, Messenger only sends that info when you tell it to. By tapping on a map pin, those details can be sent as a separate message in a chat window. The app places a small map in your convo as its own note, pointing to either your current spot or a rendezvous point for future reference.
Before this update, the mobile software pinged your phone every time you sent a message and shared that info with your pals. That method of sharing made things like this creepy Chrome extension possible. Of course, Facebook never hid the location-tracking chops of the app, and now it only shares your location with friends when you tell it to. According to TechCrunch, this update is just the beginning of what the folks in Menlo Park have planned for GPS inside the app, so we’ll be curious to see how the next stage plays out.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Facebook
Source: Facebook
Sharp Aquos Xx – The bezeless phone
After shaking up the tech industry last year with the first almost bezel less (except at the bottom) phone, Sharp, the Japanese phone manufacturer, is already set to bring the next phone into its portfolio. Sharp just announced the Aquos Xx, a phone with no bezels on three of its sides.
The phone with looks amazing and boasts a pretty high end specifications to compete with the top-tier smartphones. The Sharp Aquos Xx packs a full-hd (1080*1920) 5.7 inch LTPS screen resulting in screen density of 386ppi. The LTPS screen panels are highly vivid and has great outdoor visibility.
Performance wise the phone packs Qualcomm’s tru-octa core 64-bit Snapdragon 810, 3GB of RAM, Adreno 430 GPU which will be more than sufficient enough to handle all the high graphics game available in the market, and 32GB of on-board storage with the option to expand via micro-SD card . The battery is 3200 mAh non-removable and should provide plenty of on-screen time.
In the optics department, the phone packs a 13.1 megapixel rear facing camera and a 2.1 megapixel front facing camera. In my opinion, the front facing camera is a downside, as we are now in mid-2015 and almost every phone packs at least a 5mp front facing camera. But the software does pack a great amount of customization. One of the rear camera’s ability is that it can record slow motion videos upto 2100 frames per second but only at FWVGA resolution. though the camera can only record upto 120fps, its the software that make it into 2100fps .
To make it even more compelling, Sharp has also put a lot of extra features in its new Aquos Xx. The phone is water and dust resistant (IP57-certified), and packs DTS-sound certified speakers. Sharp Aquos Xx is said to be running stock version of Android Lollipop 5.0 . I
The Sharp Aquos Xx is set to release on Japan’s Softbank. For now there is no word on pricing and release date.
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