TVPlayer Plus lets you stream 25 UK pay-TV channels for £5 per month
As much as we all love binge-watching TV box sets, sometimes you just wanna poke around and see if there’s anything interesting on live TV. Freeview offers a fair channel selection, but anything beyond that typically requires a lengthy (and often pricey) subscription with Sky, Virgin Media, BT or TalkTalk. TVPlayer wants to sit somewhere in between, and having long provided free streams of UK Freeview channels through its mobile apps and online, has today launched its own “Plus” subscription package. For £5 per month, TVPlayer Plus lets users access an additional 25 “premium” channels, including the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Eurosport, Sony Entertainment Television and the Sony Movie Channel.
Also included in the package are a few channels aimed at little ones, such as Cartoon Network, and others for more specialised interests, like the History Channel, Good Food and Eden. Depending on your tastes, it might be a cheap, contract-free way to expand your entertainment options, with catch-up services available on select channels, too. TVPlayer also plans to launch more genre-focused channel packages in due course, should this initial sweeping selection not even tempt you to check out the free seven-day trial. For now, the Plus tier is only available online and through TVPlayer’s iOS app, but Android devices, Amazon’s Fire TV and Samsung Smart TVs will also support the low-cost subscription option soon enough.
Source: TVPlayer
WageSpot app wants you to see the salaries of everyone around
If you’re on the hunt for a job, chances are good that getting a decent raise is part of your plan. Or at the very least, it’s worth doing some research to figure out what others doing similar work are getting paid, so you can make sure you’re getting what you’re worth. There are a host of services for doing such research, particularly Glassdoor, but a new company called WageSpot thinks it can do an even better job of bringing its users smart salary data. The main focus for the WageSpot Android and iOS app that launches today is location-based salary data — not only can you see what other engineers are making, you’ll be able to see what ones in your city are making, and you can zoom in down to the individual level and literally see how much others near you are paid.
Slideshow-325493 WageSpot’s founders called it a “Zillow for salary data,” and that’s not a bad description. That’s because WageSpot’s main view is a map full of dots, each of which is an individual who entered their salary and job information. You’re encouraged to do the same when you sign up, because without a community of users sharing data, the service will be essentially useless. You can be as public or as private as you want — by default, you need to share your job title, salary and location, but you can also add a photo, name, age, gender and so forth. For the most part, though, you can participate in WageSpot while keeping truly personal information private.
Beyond the map view, you can slice and dice this information in a variety of ways, so the more info that people fill out in their profile, the more useful WageSpot can be. For example, you can search for everyone in your particular industry and sort it by age or gender, or by other measures like job satisfaction or years of experience. WageSpot definitely keeps the focus on location, though. There isn’t a traditional “search” view, but instead that wide set of filters that you can use to show only the most relevant results to you on the map.
There’s also a pretty detailed stats view in the app that lets you compare your pay against others across different industries at the country, state, city or specific zip code level. RIght now, since the app has only just launched, there isn’t much data to be found — WageSpot has been populated with publicly available information for things like government jobs or CEO salaries, and the company also added some less relevant info like salaries of professional athletes as a fun way to populate the maps. It doesn’t really add much useful info for the average person, but it’s kind of fun to browse around and see absurd $30 million salaries for starting pitchers in LA.
The catch for WageSpot is going to be populating its service with relevant data from users, something that gives Glassdoor and other competitive services a huge leg up. But after playing around with both the WageSpot and Glassdoor apps, it does seem that WageSpot is doing some things right here — its app is much, much simpler to use, and there’s something fun about browsing hyper-local data around you. In the same way it’s kind of fun to look at houses you could never afford near you on Zillow, it’s interesting to see what others near you are making. And the barrier to entry is low — while it does feel a bit weird sharing your salary publicly, anonymity should make it relatively painless.
Whether or not the combo of data that could help your job hunt and simple curiosity to see what others near you are making will be enough to draw people in remains to be seen. If you want to check it out yourself, WageSpot is out now for iOS and Android. The company is also launching a Kickstarter with a $10,000 goal to fund its access to the all-important Google Maps API, but the app will remain free for the foreseeable future.
Source: iTunes Store, Google Play
Razer Music is a content sharing and creation portal for musicians
Ever notice that conspicuous green glow radiating off of Deadmau5’s desk during his Twitch streams? There’s a reason for that. It turns out the artist has been working with Razer to help launch a new music service — one tailored specifically to promote and educate artists that use the company’s gaming hardware for music production. It’s called Razer Music, and it launches today.
Razer describes the Razer Music as a digital content platform for musicians — a community portal teeming with video tutorials, detailed articles and production tips from well-known musicians who have made a habit of using the Razer Blade gaming laptop to create their work. It’s more of a resource for budding musicians than consumer-facing service. At launch, the site will host content from Deadmau5, Metro Boomin, Feed Me, Dyro and others, with updates from Project 46, Carnage and other artists coming in the near future.
It doesn’t seem like you’ll need to be a Razer customer to take advantage of the company’s new music portal, but if you are, there’s a bonus: anyone who owns a 2015 Razer Blade laptop will be given a licence of Image-Line’s FL STudio Producer Edition music production software for free. Not a bad bonus, as far as pack-in software is concerned. The rest of us will have to be content with the site’s core offering of music production education, show and tour dates for featured artists and downloadable sample tracks. Check out Razer Music at the source link below for more details.
Source: Razer Music
ICYMI: Crowdfunded rocket, swimming robotic bees and more
Today on In Case You Missed It: Harvard researchers taught a swarm of robotic bees to swim, propelling themselves through the water with their tiny little wings. A new Kickstarter project aims to crowdfund a rocket to the moon, if it can get funding up to one million dollars. And the German Autobahn 8 played host to a self-driving big rig truck as part of a test drive by automaker Daimler.
We hope you enjoy the video of the leafblower taking apart Post-It art inside an office nearly as much as you enjoy the pixelated renderings of the superheroes it is destroying.
If you come across any interesting videos, we’d love to see them. Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd.
Twitter’s curated Moments slows down the newsfeed for new users
Twitter moves at the speed of human consciousness. With our attention span more and more resembling that of a gnat, that’s pretty quick. That’s partially the reason that the social network is finding it difficult for new users grasp. Breaking news on the service has a life cycle of about an hour or two before the collective moves on to another topic. Meanwhile Facebook will keep a topic in a person’s newsfeed for days with its algorithm. While Twitter’s not going to start controlling your feed (at least not yet) what it has done is add Moments, a new feature at makes keeping up with the trending topics and news items easier. Slideshow-325522
“We started by saying, ‘what would it take for folks who want Twitter to work for them to see great content immediately with no work?’” said Madhu Muthukumar, Twitter product manager. The internal answer ended up being Moments (a venture formerly known as Project Lightning), a feature that curates the day’s trending topics and news items into slideshows of image and video tweets with the occasional text posting. “It’s a way to explore content on the platform and not feel like you have to commit to following these people,” said Muthukumar.
Beginning today a new tab with a lightning bolt will start rolling out to the latest iOS, Android clients and on Twitter.com in the United States. Tapping that bolt will drop you into today’s biggest news or topic. The lead topic is usually highlighted with a video or animated GIF. Taping on it drops you into a timeline of multimedia and text tweets about the topic from trusted sources. Swipe left to see additional posts with a while line at the bottom that can scrub back and forth within an story. When you’re down you can share the Moment, close it, or select another story.
Like Vine, you can double tap on a tweet within a moment to fav it. Or you can single tap to bring up the retweet and fav options. In addition to sharing individual posts, an entire Moment can be shared and embedded.
Users can also tap a follow button in a tweet based on a news event that drops relevant tweets from accounts you may or may not follow into their timeline. It’s like you’ve followed a curated list for a limited time. When the event ends, the accounts are unfollowed. It’s a good way to keep track of the information coming out of a sporting event or news item without delving into hashtags that can be hijacked or having to follow accounts that are only useful to you for a limited time.
At launch the feature is curated by a small team at Twitter and select partners including MLB, Buzzfeed, Getty Images and NASA. But, the company also plans on giving everyone the ability to build Moments. They can be shared on your feed or on your site or Facebook page. It’ll be Twitter’s version of tiny blog posts with users curating their own feeds with politics, cute animals and news. Mostly, it’ll be cute animals. But curating and sharing is easier than writing and that could appeal to folks that just want to show the a bunch of cool stuff with very little effort.
New Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made a point during a recent quarterly earnings call to talk about how confusing the service could be for new users. This included talk of questioning the reverse chronological order of stream. Moments doesn’t upend how Twitter works, but it does offer an alternative way to interact with service. A way that doesn’t intimidate new folks and gives long-time users the option to step back from the noise and see what’s happening in the world.
Twitter hasn’t created a less-than-stellar algorithm the way Facebook did. Instead its trying to create a Flipboard-like experience in its official apps. Moments is a set of training wheels that keeps new accounts from bailing once they realize that Twitter is the Tour de France of information. It’ll be up to those new folks if they want to graduate to the real race or if they’ll stick with leisurely pace of curated posts. Either way, if they stay, Twitter wins.
Source: Twitter
Here’s how to watch Microsoft’s Windows 10 devices event
First was Apple, then Google and now it is Microsoft’s turn to show us fresh devices ahead of the holiday season. As for what we can expect from today’s event, Microsoft is rumored to have a few Windows 10 phones on tap, along with details about the Windows 10 Mobile rollout and, most importantly, a new Surface Pro — the fourth generation of its top-of-the-line hybrid laptop/tablet series. That said, there might be a surprise or two during the keynote, so you’re going to want to keep your eyes peeled. You can watch the stream here at 7AM PT/10AM ET, and we’ll also be liveblogging the festivities from New York City this morning.
[Image credits: Robert Scoble/Flickr]
Source: Microsoft
Amazon-owned Twitch finally overhauls its Fire TV app
You’d think that since Amazon owns Twitch, Fire TV devices would be the lead platform for its apps but that isn’t the case. However, the latest update for the streaming service favored by gamers on Bezos’ set-top box is pretty significant and mirrors a lot of what’s available on the console and mobile apps. It even outdoes them in a few ways. Of course you can watch plenty of live streams and the top games being played, but the update also brings in profile pages so you can check out exactly who those broadcasters are and check out their archived videos while you’re at it.
There’s apparently a quick-selection tool for emojis too, so accessing Kappa and FrankerZ at a moment’s notice should be pretty easy. Oh, the Twitch blog post says that 1080p support for newer Fire TV devices is on the table as well, in addition to being able to log in with your own account. It all sounds pretty basic, but the app was really lacking up to this point. Interested? Hit the Amazon Appstore to check it out for yourself.
Source: Twitch
Live from Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4 and Lumia event!
Hello! We hope you’re not sick of big keynotes, because Microsoft is about to kick off a press event in New York, and if that invite up there is any indication, some shiny new hardware is in order. If nothing else, we can safely assume that includes the long-awaited Surface Pro 4 — it is their flagship product, after all, and the last-gen version has gone a year and a half without an update. Microsoft is also likely to officially introduce Windows 10 Mobile alongside some new smartphones, including the 5.2-inch Lumia 950 and the 5.7-inch 950 XL. We also wouldn’t be surprised if we got a close-up peek at the lower-end Lumia 550, which has also been revealed in leaks. And hey, if we’re lucky maybe we’ll even learn more about when HoloLens is finally going on sale. Only one way to find out: Bookmark this liveblog link, and check back at 10AM Eastern on Tuesday, October 6th for up-to-the-minute coverage.
Microsoft demos ‘Project XRay’ mixed reality game for HoloLens
One of Microsoft’s most exciting products to date is HoloLens, and today the company revealed a new mixed reality game for the headset called Project XRay. The title was developed internally, according to the Executive VP of the Windows Devices group, Terry Myerson. Similar to the Minecraft experience on HoloLens, Project XRay also looks incredible — particularly because you can turn most any room into your own gaming canvas. Here, though, you’re wearing a holographic weapon on your arm, which you’ll need to defend yourself from a robot attack. Once they start crawling out of the walls, you can shoot lasers at them — yes, lasers. “Holograms behave just like real objects; they can interact with environments and with each other,” said the Microsoft representative on stage about Project XRay.
In other news, Microsoft announced that HoloLens will reach developers in 2016 for $3,000. For now, we’re really hoping we’ll get to experience Project XRay ourselves once the event is over.
Get all the news from today’s Microsoft event right here.
Windows 10 is now installed on 110 million devices
With Windows 10 being a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users, it’s no surprise that many have jumped at the chance to see what Microsoft’s latest OS has to offer. In fact, only a day after its release, the company counted 14 million installs, which sky-rocketed to 75 million less than a month after that. At the “Windows 10 devices” event today, Microsoft’s Terry Myerson provided a brief update, announcing that figure has now reached a whopping 110 million. That’s quite the number, especially considering Windows 10 has only been out for around 10 weeks. The overwhelming majority of installs are coming from regular consumers, too, with just over 8 million attributed to business PCs.
Get all the news from today’s Microsoft event right here.
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