The best wireless exercise headphones
By Lauren Dragan
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read the full article here.
After considering a total of 145 sport-specific headphones and testing 82 of the best-reviewed options, our experts agreed that the JLab Epic Bluetooth is the best set of wireless exercise headphones for most people. The tough, lightweight Epic Bluetooth headphones fit in a wider variety of ears than the competition, offer better battery life than many other Bluetooth models we tested, and produce great sound for a lower price than that of most comparable cordless and water-resistant models. And because this set supports Bluetooth, it has no cord to get in the way of whatever you do to stay in shape.
Experience the Paris vigils using the New York Times’ VR app
The New York Times launched its virtual reality news app last month, and in the wake of the Paris attacks last week, it’s giving readers a glimpse at the heartbeat of the city. The NYT VR app allows viewers to experience the vigils taking place in Paris, offering people in other parts of the world a look at some of the stories unfolding in the days following the tragic events. While The New York Times’ use of VR is still in the early stages, it’s already showing its potential. NYT VR provides a platform where readers are better able to relate to events and stories by stepping inside them rather than simply reading about them. “Our mission as journalists is to answer questions,” an article accompanying the video explains. “In this case, we sought to answer the question of how a city gathers itself and begins moving forward.” If you don’t have access to a VR headset, you can watch the interactive piece via 360-degree videos on both Facebook and YouTube.
[Image credit: LightRocket via Getty Images]
Source: New York Times
Watch live streamers play developers at their own games for charity
Erin Robinson Swink, developer of the hand-painted space-physics game, Gravity Ghost, has a simple reason driving her passion for green energy and environmental advocacy: asthma. “I remember how awful it was needing an inhaler as a kid,” she says. Air pollution — driven in large part by burning coal — contributed to her respiratory disease.
Today, Robinson Swink is combining these two passions — game development and clean energy — for a three-day live-streaming event called Beat the Dev on Twitch. The show is live right now, featuring developers behind titles like Borderlands 2, Uncharted 3, Super Meat Boy, Octodad, Nuclear Throne, Journey, Darksiders II and 17 others playing their own games against a lineup of live-streamers. Donations made during the event will benefit The Sierra Club and its clean-air, green-energy advocacy efforts.
Tesla recalls 90,000 Model S sedans to check possible seatbelt defect
Due to a possible defect in the front seatbelt assembly, Tesla issued a voluntary recall for the 90,000 of its Model S electric sedans currently on the road. The company added that the cost of recalling so many vehicles is “immaterial” as it checks to ensure the restraints are safe. First revealed back in 2012, the Model S is no stranger to safety issues, including a number of fires, all of which Tesla has been quick to respond to. The potential problem with the seatbelts was first reported to the company earlier this month when a customer in Europe turned to speak with back-seat passengers and the assembly broke.
7 awesome gaming gifts
Winter is coming. And with it also comes the need to show the loved ones in your life just how much you care for them by spending, spending, spending on gifts. Trouble is, there are just so many options to choose from. What you really need is someone, some outside force to hold your credit card-holding hand. And boy, do we have some suggestions for you. Happy Holidays! You’re very welcome.
Chances are you know someone you hold dear who just loves video games. Heck, that person might even make a living from playing them online for an audience. Whatever the case may be, there’s no better way to treat the gaming enthusiast in your life this holiday season than with a fresh new console and some interactive art. Take a peek at our picks below.
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Image credit: SSPL via Getty Images
‘Zooshi’ from Fun Propulsion Labs showcases open source game development
Within the Google organization, there is a group of employees working to build sample games that demonstrate how available technologies can be used by game developers to create easy-to-build, performant, cross-platform games. This group comprises the Fun Propulsion Labs and their most recent creation, which supports Google Cardboard, has been released to the Play Store as Zooshi.
Although it is available in the Play Store for Android mobile devices, Google Cardboard, and Android TV, Zooshi also runs on Windows, OSX and Linux. The code is open source and available from the Fun Propulsion Labs’ GitHub page if developers want to dig in to the code to see how Google technologies can be used. Some of the tools used in this latest title include some new or recently updated open source game technologies like:
- Motive which drives the Animation system, giving life and movement to the characters and environment.
- CORGI, the Component Oriented Reusable Game Interface, which is an Entity-Component system designed to allow users to define complicated game objects as collections of modular, custom-defined behaviors.
- FlatUI which is a straightforward immediate mode GUI system with a light footprint that makes building up user interfaces a breeze.
- Scene Lab, a tool that allows designers to design levels and edit entities from right in the game without needing to use an external editor.
- Breadboard which provides an easy to use node based scripting system for editing entity behaviors that’s accessible to designers without deep knowledge of programming.
- FPLBase which is a cross-platform API layer, for abstracting low-level tasks like reading input and creation of graphical contexts.
If you want to check out Zooshi yourself, hit the link below to get it from the Play Store. If you are a developer or are interested in checking out the code and how to build games using open source tools, hit the source link for more details from Google.
Click here to view the embedded video.
source: Google
Come comment on this article: ‘Zooshi’ from Fun Propulsion Labs showcases open source game development
Verizon introduces a host of simple prepaid plans
Verizon has again been adjusting prices for their prepaid service plans. You can now choose from one of their five new prepaid plans and have no commitments to an annual contract, with no “hidden costs”.
Smartphones
For $60 or $45, you get a package that includes unlimited talk and 3Gb or 1Gb of data respectively.
$30 will get you unlimited talk and text with Wi-Fi only access for data.
If you need more data, sign up for Autopay and you will get credited with an extra 1GB of data every month on both $45 and $60 options, or you can top-up with the following deals through the verizon website, or by using their app:
- $5 for 500MB (good for 30 days)
- $10 for 1GB (good for 90 days)
- $20 for 3GB (good for 90 days)
Feature/basic phones
$15 per month will give you 300 voice minutes, texts or multimedia messages (in any combination), plus unlimited mobile web on a basic phone. $30, however, will take the limit off calls and give you unlimited talk, text and mobile web access.
Press Release:
Verizon introduces simple prepaid service plans
Choosing a prepaid plan just got easier. You can now select from five new prepaid plans for your basic phones and smartphones with no annual contract and no credit check. Simply choose the device you want and the plan that suits your needs, pay ahead of time and commit for as long (or as little) as you want — with no surprises or hidden fees — on the best network.
Prepaid smartphone plans
- $60 per month for unlimited talk and text with 3GB of data
- $45 per month for unlimited talk and text with 1GB of data
- Need more data? Sign up for Autopay and get an extra 1GB of data every month on the $45 and $60 smartphone plans
- $30 per month for unlimited talk and text with Wi-Fi only access for data
Prepaid basic phone plans
- $30 per month for unlimited talk, text and mobile web
- $15 per month for 300 voice minutes, texts or multimedia messages (in any combination), plus unlimited mobile web
Need more data?
It’s always easy to add more data to your prepaid plan whenever you need it. Simply use the My Verizon app or visit My Verizon online to add one of the following optional packages:
- $5 for 500MB (good for 30 days)
- $10 for 1GB (good for 90 days)
- $20 for 3GB (good for 90 days)
Visit the Verizon Prepaid Pricing site and pick the prepaid plan that’s right for you.
The post Verizon introduces a host of simple prepaid plans appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Cricket offers $100 credit for switchers in Black Friday deal
This morning Cricket Wireless announced their Black Friday deals for this year and one of them in particular is a doozy! Customers who bring their number to Cricket anytime between now and December 6th will get a $100 rebate Visa shopping card*.
*The shopping card can only be used at Cricket Wireless.
Although the card is only useful at Cricket, it can be used for paying your monthly service fee and if you’re on auto-pay with the Basic ($35, 2.5GB) plan, that could be almost 3 months of service for free. You can also use the card for devices and accessories, in store and online.
In addition to their Black Friday special, Cricket is also offering rebates on a handful of their devices and these rebates can be used in addition to the Black Friday deal for savings of up to $200 total savings!
All of the device deals are holiday pricing, so they are going to continue to be available until January 7th, but if you’ve been thinking about switching to Cricket, maybe now is the time! Speaking from my own experience, it’s hard to go wrong with Cricket. They are now a subsidiary of AT&T, so you get the coverage of Big Blue without having to payout to the death star.
Source: Cricket Wireless
The post Cricket offers $100 credit for switchers in Black Friday deal appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Google Play store reportedly coming to China in early 2016
For months now we’ve been hearing rumors, and even semi-official murmurings, about how Google intends to re-enter the Chinese market, bringing services like Google Play to the country. Back in September, The Information even suggested that we might see the new store as early as this fall. According to the latest report from Reuters, however, the effort won’t actually go live until 2016.
Google is already well in works on the effort according to sources “familiar to the matter” and will likely launch Google Play in the country after the Chinese New Year in February. We already knew that this version of Google Play would be “special” and different from the rest of the world, but Reuters’ sources give us a bit more detail on what to expect.
See also: Huawei and Google: it’s more than just the Nexus
Aside from obvious language localization, the Chinese Google Play store would also be hosted entirely within the country and would have no direct connection to the ‘regular’ Google Play store’s servers. This Chinese version would fully comply with Chinese filtering laws, which require certain “sensitive” terms to be blocked.
Google would also work to have local payment options baked in, like Alipay, WeChat Payment, and other local methods that would make the store more friendly for China.
But what about getting approval from China? According to Reuters, they don’t actually need explicit approval from the Chinese government to launch the app store, they just need to fully comply with Chinese law – something they refused to do when they first pulled out in 2010. From the sounds of it, Google is now willing to fully cooperate, likely understanding how much of an opportunity China is for the company.
See also: Does Google need to return to China? It’s complicated.
After all, Android is king in China, and continues to grow rapidly. That said, the competition in China will be very fierce for Google, where dozens of 3rd party app stores are already well established. Of course, this could actually play to Google’s advantage. Many of these stores offer a fragmented experience, and there’s also tons of virus/malware issues with many of these app stores. Google Play would not only provide a more unified experience, but a more secure one as well.
If Google can find success with the Google Play store in China, we imagine that this will only be the beginning.
Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 to be unveiled November 24th, alongside Redmi Note 2 Pro
While we already suspected that the upcoming November 24th Xiaomi event would focus on the Redmi Note 2 Pro, yesterday Xiaomi teased an image of the device, showing off the back and its integrated fingerprint scanner. The Note 2 Pro is expected to be the first handset from the company to offer a full metal body and a fingerprint scanner, but is that all we’ll see on the 24th? Apparently not.
Xiaomi has now revealed yet another image, this time showing off what is believed to be the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2. The image tells us very little about what to expect from the Mi Pad 2, but thankfully the device recently was spotted on GeekBench. While not a lot of spec details were revealed, allegedly the tablet will be powered a 2.24GHz Intel X5-Z8500 SOC, as opposed to the NVIDIA Tegra K1 chip found in the original. As for the software, we can expect the tablet to run Xiaomi’s MIUI, built on top of Android.
So with both the Redmi Note 2 Pro and Mi Pad 2 expected to be shown off on November 24th, the event is certainly shaping up to be a memorable one. Now the big question that remains is if Xiaomi has any more surprises in store for us, or if the two devices will be the only new announcements on offer.
What do you think, excited for the Note 2 Pro or the Mi Pad 2? Share your comments down below.
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