Sago Mini Space Explorer is Google’s free family friendly app this week
Google Play has been running a weekly promotion whereby it gives away a free family friendly app. This week, it has appointed Sago Mini Space Explorer as the game of choice. The game is developed by Sago Sago, which offers a range of 4+ rated child friendly apps on the Play Store.
Sago Mini Space Explorer usually retails for $3 (around £2.49). The game essentially involves exploring your way through space, where you can bump unto some cute alien buddies, zip around in a flying saucer and enjoy an interstellar picnic.
The app is aimed at toddlers and pre-schoolers, and doesn’t feature any distracting in-app advertisements or in-app purchases, which have been known to rack up expensive bills when left in the hands of unaware little’ns.
Click the link below to get your free copy of Sago Mini Space Explorer.
21-year-old charged with sextortion crimes
A 21-year-old from New Hampshire has been charged with a range of crimes surrounding a grisly extortion scheme involving underage girls. The Department of Justice accuses Ryan J. Vallee of hacking into several teenagers’ social media accounts, holding them hostage unless they sent him explicit images of themselves. If they didn’t comply, he would threaten the girls with “additional harm,” although after obtaining the pictures, he distributed them to others anyway. In addition, Vallee is said to have accessed the victim’s Amazon accounts and ordered “items of a sexual nature,” which were then sent to their homes, causing untold distress.
It’s the second high-profile digital “sextortion” case that’s cropped up this month after the successful prosecution of Lucas Michael Chansler. Chansler is a 26-year-old now serving 105 years in prison after posing as a teenage boy and tricking teen girls into giving him explicit images of themselves. He too, then threatened the victims with exposure unless they complied with his requests for more pictures. Thankfully, in both of these cases, the FBI, Secret Service and the Department of Justice are taking these incidents seriously.
[Image Credit: Alamy]
Filed under: Internet
Source: Department of Justice
ICYMI: Gaming mood lighting, a shooting drone and more
Today on In Case You Missed It: Virtual Reality by Oculus Rift is about to get way more tactile thanks to a newly acquired hand tracking tech company. Hue lights will now sync with an Xbox One game and oh man, the ambience on your next blood bath will be intense. And a YouTuber uploaded a video of a drone that fires a semiautomatic handgun, which makes crabby old men the world over pleased.
Today’s bonus video will make Star Wars fans drool: A ‘jedi’ wearing a GoPro gives us the force-master view of what fighting is really like.
And from the cutting room floor, we really wanted to show you the video of this color-blind man seeing colors like purple for the first time, but the Jedi beat him out. It’s still worth seeing though!
If you come across any interesting videos, we’d love to see them! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd.
Filed under: Displays, Misc, Gaming, Peripherals, Wearables, Internet
Sky’s Now TV gets a £32 monthly sports subscription
If you want to watch Sky Sports without a satellite TV subscription, Now TV is one of your best options. In addition to its daily and weekly passes, the broadcaster has now launched a monthly streaming subscription for £31.99. As usual, that gives you access to all seven Sky Sports channels: Sky Sports 1-5, Sky Sports F1 and Sky Sports News HQ. The package arrives just a few weeks before the new Premier League season and in the midst of England’s feisty Ashes Test cricket series against Australia. The broadcaster faces tough competition from BT though, which is still pushing BT Sport 1 as a free perk for broadband customers. Now that it’s snatched the exclusive rights to European football, however, its pricing model is evolving to look a little more like Sky’s. No matter which you way tackle it, acquiring both (legally) is still going to cost you a serious sum each month.
The NOW TV Sky Sports Month Pass is here! Check out more details here: http://t.co/keZZzlMb6v pic.twitter.com/q1kpM3qv8s
– NOW TV Sport (@NOWTVSport) July 16, 2015
[Image Credit: Marc Atkins/Mark Leech/Getty Images]
Filed under: Home Entertainment
Source: Now TV (Twitter)
Cute Nao robot exhibits a moment of self-awareness
See that Nao robot waving its hand up there? It’s not starting a dance routine: it just had a light-bulb moment, so it’s trying to catch a human’s attention. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor Selmer Bringsjord programmed the three robots to think that two of them were given a “dumbing pill.” In reality, that pill’s a button on top of their heads that can be pressed by the tester. When the tester asked the robots which pill they received, their processors crunched data in order to provide the right answer. Since two of them were unable to talk, only one answered out loud. “I don’t know,” the third robot replied, realizing the truth a short while later.
“Sorry, I know now,” the third Nao waved at the tester. “I was able to prove that I was not given a dumbing pill.” After all, it could speak! That means the machine was able to recognize and differentiate itself from the other two — it was self-aware at that particular point in time. That test is a simpler version of a puzzle called The King’s Wise Men, wherein the “wise men” have to guess what the color of their hat is (between two colors) if they can only see the other people’s hats. You can watch the experiment go down below. But if you’re in Japan, you can also see Bringsjord present his study on artificial intelligence in person at the IEEE Ro-MAN2015 convention from August 31st to September 4th.
Filed under: Robots
Via: PopSci
Source: Rensselaer AI and Reasoning Lab
Here’s a look at a Galaxy S6 Edge Plus dummy unit
The Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus rumors have been coming thick and fast this month and now we have our first look at a dummy unit for the S6 Edge Plus.
Posted alongside the Note 4 for comparison, we can see that the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus is indeed much closer in size to the Note series than Samsung’s latest flagship. This supports the claim that the phone will feature a QHD (2560×1440) display in the region of 5.7-inches. We can also see why Samsung may choose to drop the Edge name from its Note series, as the phone is simply a larger form of the existing Galaxy S6 Edge.
Technical details were not included alongside the dummy unit. The latest rumors suggest that the smartphone will be powered a hexa-core Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, a 16MP rear camera with optical images stabilisation and a larger 3,000mAh battery than the regular Galaxy S6. Storage options are expected to come in the familiar 32GB, 64GB and 128GB sizes.
The Galaxy S6 Edge Plus was expected to be unveiled alongside the Note 5 in Berlin at the usual IFA event, which takes place in September. However, other reports have suggested that Samsung may be moving up the launch date to August 12th or 21st, in order avoid a clash with the launch of the latest iPhones.
There’s plenty of anticipation surrounding Samsung’s next super-size smartphones. Are you pleased to see the Galaxy S6 Edge design make its way to a larger form?
Video demo: here’s how Samsung Pay will work in stores
Samsung touted its upcoming mobile payment service as a key feature of the Galaxy S6, but close to six months later, Samsung Pay is still not available anywhere in the world.
Samsung just kicked off a limited trial of the service in its home market, but the full release is only expected this fall.
With Apple Pay fully working in the US and now expanding to Europe, Samsung risks falling behind in a high-stake race that also includes Google’s Wallet, which is set to be replaced by Android Pay later this year.
Part of Samsung’s problem is consumers generally don’t know what to expect from Samsung Pay, and if they do, they may not be convinced that the service is worth waiting for. While Samsung has explained how Pay works in a blog post from March, there’s nothing like an actual hands-on demo to drive the point home.
The video below, courtesy of Times of India, shows exactly what steps paying with Samsung Pay will entail. The good news is paying with your Galaxy phone seems as straightforward as using a card. You just swipe up from the home button to bring up the stored cards, pick the preferred card, authenticate by touching the fingerprint scanner embedded in the home button, and put the phone against the magnetic card reader or NFC module.
Compatibility with NFC and classic magnetic card stripe readers is what Samsung hopes will make Samsung Pay a hit. Unlike Apple Pay or Google Wallet, which require NFC, Samsung Pay will work with just about any old card reader. That means Samsung Pay will have a wide base of adoption among retailers from day one, circumventing the chicken-or-egg problem that holds back the adoption of NFC.
Samsung paid $250 million to acquire LoopPay, the US-based company that developed the technology allowing the Galaxy S6 to work with magnetic stripe readers. But the potential returns of this investment are staggering, provided Samsung manages to sign up enough users.
Samsung is expected to launch in fall in South Korea and the United States, with more countries to follow. With Samsung rumored to throw a big launch event for the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 Edge+ in mid-August, there’s a solid chance we’ll hear an official announcement at that point.
Do you see yourself using Samsung Pay over the traditional cards? Would you consider buying a Samsung device just for this feature?
A Closer Look at Apple’s New iPod Touch Colors and Features
Apple earlier this week introduced the sixth-generation iPod touch, featuring a new A8 chip and M8 motion coprocessor, 8-megapixel rear-facing iSight camera and Bluetooth 4.1, in six colors: blue, gold, pink, red, silver and space gray. 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models are available through the Apple Store and Apple Online Store for $199, $249, $299 and $399 respectively.
Apple’s new sixth-generation iPod touch in blue and pink
The video below submitted by MacRumors reader Jacob Zacks takes a closer look at the new iPod touch colors and features. The existing silver color from 2012 has been complimented with space gray and gold models that match the new MacBook lineup, while the new blue and pink colors are much brighter and deeper than the fifth-generation iPod touch. The sixth color is (PRODUCT)RED and remains unchanged.
iPods have declined in sales and popularity since the iPhone was released, but the portable media player still fills a niche and was long overdue for an update. The sixth-generation iPod touch’s most important new feature is the jump to an A8 chip, which delivers up to 10 times faster graphics performance and ensures the device will be capable of running iOS 9 and future software updates.
A recent benchmark test clocked the new iPod touch’s A8 chip at 1.10GHz per core, slower than the 1.39GHz per core the iPhone 6 runs at, and confirmed it has 1GB of RAM. The new iPod touch is also the first iOS device to include the Bluetooth 4.1 specification, which is more reliable and offers less interference with LTE bands, improved power management and better data transfer.
Apple’s new iPod touch no longer has a loop attachment on the back
Whether this is the last significant update to the iPod lineup remains to be seen, but for now the iPod touch lives on with a vibrant lineup of new colors and under-the-hood improvements. Apple Stores have begun receiving in-store stock of the new iPod touch this week, with Personal Pickup now available in the U.S., and all models and storage capacities currently ship within 1 business day on the Apple Online Store.
BT’s new 4K sports channel will cost £15 a month
As promised, BT is bringing the first 4K live sports channel to UK TV screens next month, and it’s finally let us in on how much it’s going to cost. BT Sport Ultra HD will begin broadcasting August 2nd, kicking off proceedings with an FA Community Shield footy match between Arsenal and Chelsea. There are only a couple of other events throughout August — three Premier Leagues clashes and the Silverstone MotoGP — that’ll be available in 4K, but plenty more football, rugby and racing will be shown on the channel during their respective seasons. But how much is watching penalty box divers in unparalleled detail going to cost you? Well, BT’s introducing a whole new tier to its TV offerings to accommodate the new channel. The “Entertainment Ultra HD” package includes the BT Sport Pack, all Freeview channels, 47 “premium” channels, access to catch-up services, as well as BT Sport Ultra HD for £15 per month.
For comparison, the most expensive package right now is “Entertainment Plus” at £10 per month, so you’ll effectively be paying an extra £5 on top of that for 4K sport and 22 additional premium channels. It’s not simply a case of plumping for the TV package, though, as it’ll only be available to BT Infinity broadband subscribers. Infinity plans start at £9.75 per month (plus £17 line rental) for an up to 38Mbps connection, but BT has said you’ll need “a fast enough line” to support the 4K channel, so it may simply not be available to everyone. The Entertainment Ultra HD package will go on sale online on July 24th, at which point we might see an internet/TV bundle appear that takes some of the sting out of the investment.
The requirements don’t stop there, though, as naturally you’ll need a new set-top box that’s capable of receiving 4K broadcasts. This is where the new 1TB Ultra HD YouView+ box comes in. From YouView’s announcement, it appears to have the same feature set as existing YouView boxes, but with the extra ability to process 4K streams. Unfortunately, it’s no freebie, and Entertainment Ultra HD customers will have to fork over a £44 installation charge.
That’s a lot of pound signs and a lot of necessary subscriptions, but alas, these are the hoops one must jump through to get access to the UK’s first 4K sports channel. BT is offering some restitution, however, in the form of a £500 voucher to put towards the purchase of an LG 4K TV — just in case that’s the final missing piece of the puzzle you haven’t thought about yet.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Ultrasound can help wounds heal faster
It might sound a bit like quack medicine, but researchers from the University of Sheffield have proven that sound waves can help accelerate the skin’s healing process. In particular, the team has discovered that the vibration low-intensity ultrasound transmits through the skin can activate pathways that fibroblast cells can use to migrate to the wounded area. Those cells are play a crucial role when it comes to the body’s ability to repair damaged tissue. That’s similar to how a cat’s purr — its frequencies, that is — can stimulate the regeneration of bones.
The researchers believe the technique will benefit bedridden folks frequently suffering from bedsores and even diabetic patients with seriously painful cases of skin ulcers typically solved by amputating affected limbs. During their experiments, they found that wounds on diabetics and old mice healed 30 percent quicker; even better, it has no side effects, since it doesn’t do anything other than activate your own cells. In fact, the study’s lead author, Dr. Mark Bass, said that because ultrasound “is relatively risk free, “the technology could be “in broad clinical use within three or four years.”
[Image credit: Handout via Getty Images]
Filed under: Science
Via: Popular Science
Source: University of Bristol, Journal of Investigative Dermatology
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