Pandora ends its war with two major music publishers
If there’s one thing that Pandora likes, it’s a fight, but even the firm that bought an FM radio station to stick it to the man has limits. The outfit has decided to make peace with two of its most formidable adversaries: music licensing agencies ASCAP and BMI. Pandora has revealed that it’s signed a new, multi-year deal with both entities that’ll see it pay what’ll probably be a higher fee every time one of their songs is played. Naturally, the terms of the agreements are being kept secret, but USA Today thinks that it’ll be above the 2.5 / 1.75 percent that BMI and ASCAP, respectively, currently earn.
As an internet radio station, Pandora is a different beast to Spotify, Deezer or Apple Music, since you can’t pick what songs you listen to on-demand. The rules for radio mean that, unlike the others, it doesn’t have to ask for permission before it plays a hip new tune to its customers. The recording industry felt that this was an outrage, and spent the last few years throwing lawsuit-shaped grenades at Pandora’s bunker. The signing of this accord caps off an interesting year for Pandora which saw it lose big in court, but it did manage to swallow a rival.
[Image Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images]
Via: USA Today
Source: Pandora
YouTube says T-Mobile downgrades its video quality without consent
YouTube was nowhere to be found in T-Mobile’s list of partners when Binge On was launched, but the Google-owned website claims the carrier’s been downgrading its videos anyway. A YouTube spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that T-Mo’s been lowering the quality of its videos to 480p even though the company hasn’t agreed to anything. “Reducing data charges can be good for users,” he told the publication, “but it doesn’t justify throttling all video services, especially without explicit user consent.”
YouTube has admitted to Ars Technica that it has been talking to T-Mobile about joining the service. If the company’s not pleased with this development, though, it’s safe to say they haven’t agreed on the details of partnership yet. We’ve reached out to the wireless operator for its side, and we’ll update this post when we hear back. But, it’s worth noting that when Ars asked for its response, a spokesperson reportedly pointed the publication to a tweet from John Legere that says users have “complete control to turn [Binge On] on/off at will.”
As a reminder, Binge On is the carrier’s controversial product that allows users to stream videos on from select services without it eating into their data allowance. The FCC has recently summoned T-Mobile for a discussion about the product, as net neutrality advocates believe it makes “certain video apps more attractive to others.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Vodafone brings WiFi calling to the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge
Vodafone launched its seamless WiFi calling service in early autumn, opting for a native experience over the kind of apps O2 and Three use. For several months, only iPhone 6s and 6s Plus owners have actually been able to use the feature, but today the carrier announced it’s added Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge to the list of compatible handsets (as long as you got yours from Vodafone directly). While it’s good news for a subset of customers, it also highlights the sluggish rate at which native WiFi calling is being made available across the network. In the three-plus months since switching on the service, Vodafone has managed to enable the feature on a grand total of four handsets.
To be fair, EE isn’t exactly setting a record pace itself. The provider was the first to launch app-free WiFi calling back in April, meaning it’s had a good few months to bake the feature in to roughly 20 different handsets. Most relatively new phones support native WiFi calling, but only when a carrier gets round to issuing the requisite software update will it become available. WiFi calling is a simple but useful feature, and native integration has promised to be streets ahead of app-based approaches. So far, however, we can’t say that’s really rung true. Is it better to have a seamless experience only a certain proportion of your customers can use, or an app that’s available to everyone?
Source: Vodafone
ICYMI: The best health innovations of the year
Today on In Case You Missed It: It’s been a pretty magical year for medical innovation, with something for everyone but most especially Star Trek fans. The FDA approved 3D-printed medicine for the first time, prosthetic arms for kids got awesome and researchers helped a man with a severed spine walk, with sensor connections on either side of his spine.
Please share any interesting science or tech videos with us! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag to @mskerryd. Tomorrow’s show will cover the innovations of the year in transportation news, so please check back in for that.
This is why ‘Prince of Persia’ has the legacy it does
Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time defined how the company looks at its properties. But before the publisher began pumping out annual sequels with a startling cadence at rapidly diminishing returns, there was just the Prince and his snazzy ability to rewind time while jumping, wall-running and shimmying from stone column to stone column. And it’s the latest episode of DoubleFine Productions’ “Devs Play” series that focuses on that seminal game and finds its director, Patrice Desilets, explaining what went into development.
Desilets admits that when doing background research for 2003’s incredible, genre-defining Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time that he’d only played an hour of Jordan Mechner’s 1989 original. Honestly, his explanation of what he took from the game when making Sands sounds a lot like Square Enix Montreal’s approach when it makes mobile AAA games: he took the “essence” of the original and translated it into new approach. “There was no rewind in the first one, but maybe there should have [been],” Desilets says with a hint of bravado.
Comparing it to the original, Desilets mentions that game development isn’t about animation when making a platformer, it’s about the transition between short animations and long ones. You know, they type of idiosyncrasies that give a character’s movement weight and, well, character. “Animators are more behavior crafters than animators in the movies,” he says early on. “It’s really important that you’re always there and your character feel alive and credible.
“That’s one thing: I don’t want people to go back into their living room, right?” he asks DoubleFine’s vice president of business development Greg Rice. “That’s why they play; they want to be out of there. And if your character isn’t fluid enough, the suspension of disbelief will be gone.” All that to say, it’s up to a skilled animator to keep the player present in the game and not looking at their phone or other distraction.
Like previous episodes in the series, this one isn’t short by any means, but the hour-long video offers a wealth of insight into one of gaming’s touchstones that you likely won’t get outside of the annual Game Developer’s Conference.
Source: DoubleFine Productions (YouTube)
HTC rolling out Android 6.0.1 for the One A9, Android 6.0 for the One M9
HTC’s Mo Versi, VP of Product Management, announced that Android 6.0.1 is on its way to the Unlocked One A9, followed by Android 6.0 coming to the Unlocked One M9. Updates for both smartphones should be available to download within the next 12 hours.
The Taiwanese-based company is ending 2016 on a positive note, making sure that the One A9 and One M9 are receiving their updates on schedule.
Happy Holidays! Updates to the Unlocked A9 6.0.1 and Unlocked M9 6.0 will be able to be downloaded within next 24 hours! Enjoy 
— Mo Versi (@moversi) December 23, 2015
The upgrade to Android 6.0.1 on the One A9 brings fixes some critical security issues, but also brings with it the much-anticipated set of new emoji.
HTC hasn’t given any official word or confirmation on when the One M9 will receive Android 6.0.1, so users holding out for the new emoji on the One M9 will still have awhile to wait.
source: Mo Versi (Twitter)
Come comment on this article: HTC rolling out Android 6.0.1 for the One A9, Android 6.0 for the One M9
Marshmallow arriving for the HTC One M9 (unlocked) within 24 hours
As promised earlier in the month, an Android Marshmallow update is on its way for this year’s HTC One M9 flagship, along with a smaller update for the One A9. HTC’s Mo Versi has just announced that the two updates will be going live any time now.
Well, any time in the next 24 hours, according to the tweet. Also, there appear to be two slightly different updates heading out to the smartphones. The HTC One A9 will be bumped up to Android 6.0.1, complete with all those extra emoji’s, while the One M9 will receive the original 6.0 Marshmallow software.
Happy Holidays! Updates to the Unlocked A9 6.0.1 and Unlocked M9 6.0 will be able to be downloaded within next 24 hours! Enjoy
— Mo Versi (@moversi) December 23, 2015
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The update only appears to be heading out to US customers who own unlocked versions of the handsets too, so we’ll have to wait for news on when the upgrades will arrive for customers in other countries. As usual, carrier branded handsets will lag further behind.
HTC seems pretty hot on the updates, having rolled out Marshmallow to its One M8 smartphone back at the start of December. Keep an eye out for that OTA notification any time now.
Virtual Reality: The Ice Cave
This blog was written by Kapileshwar Syamasundar during his summer placement at ARM in the ARM Mali Graphics demo team. Kapil did some great work at ARM porting the Ice Cave demo to VR using Unity, we hope you can benefit from this too.
Ice Cave, the latest demo from ARM Mali Ecosystem, has been shown with great success this year in such major events as GDC, Unite Europe, and Unite Boston. The demo has been developed in Unity and aims to demonstrate that it is possible to render high visual quality content on current mobile devices. A number of highly optimized special effects were developed in-house, specifically for this demo, some of which are based on completely new techniques, for example the rendering of shadows and refractions based on local cubemaps.
The Ice Cave demo was released at a time when Virtual Reality has become the centre of attention in the game development community, and related events and media. A number of VR demos and games have already been released but VR performance requirements can limit the complexity of VR content and therefore the visual quality of the final VR experience.
It is in this landscape that the Ecosystem demo team decided to port the Ice Cave demo to Samsung Gear VR and this task was assigned to me. In this blog I describe my experience in porting the Ice Cave demo to VR during my eight weeks summer placement in the Ecosystem demo team.
By the time I joined the demo team, Unity had just released a version with VR native support for Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR. Previously, VR support was only available by means of a plugin based on Oculus Mobile SDK, but this had some obvious limitations:
- Each VR device has a different plugin
- Plugins may conflict with each other
- Release of newer VR SDKs / Runtimes can break older games
- Lower level engine optimizations are not possible with plugin approach of two separate cameras
Conversely, the newly released Unity VR native integration lacked both support and sufficient information for developers, and experienced many unresolved issues. Nonetheless, the team was convinced that with the native integration in Unity we would be able to achieve the best possible performance; a key point in guaranteeing a successful VR user experience.
Samsung Gear VR
The Samsung Gear VR for Samsung Galaxy S6.
The Samsung Gear VR headset does not have a built in display but has instead been designed to host a mobile phone. At the time of writing, the Samsung Gear VR comes in two versions; one for Samsung Note 4 and another for the latest Samsung Galaxy S6. Some of the main specifications of the Samsung Galaxy S6 version are listed below:
- Sensors: Accelerator, Gyrometer, Geomagnetic, Proximity
- Motion to Photon Latency < 20ms
- Manual Focal Adjustment
- Main Physical UI: Touch Pad
- Oculus’s Asynchronous TimeWarp technology
Samsung Gear VR is powered by Oculus VR software and incorporates the Oculus Asynchronous Time Warp technology. This important feature helps reduce latency, or the time taken to update the display based on the latest head movement; a key issue to avoid in VR devices. Besides the Time Warp technology, the Samsung Gear VR has several sensors which it uses in place of the ones incorporated in the phone.
The Samsung Gear VR has its own hardware and features a touch pad, back button, volume key and, according to the specifications, an internal fan designed to help demist the device while in use.
The key point here however, is that you can insert your Samsung Galaxy S6 into the headset and enjoy an immersive experience with just a smartphone. We are no longer limited to the screen size of the phone and can instead become completely immersed in a virtual world.
Main steps to port an app/game to VR in Unity
VR integration in Unity has been achieved following one of the main Unity principles, that it must be simple and easy. The following basic steps are all that are needed to port a game to VR:
- Unity 5.1 version with VR native support (or any higher version).
- Obtain the signature file for your device from the Oculus website and place it in Plugins/Android/assets folder.
- Set the “Virtual Reality Supported” option in Player Settings.
- Set a parent to camera. Any camera control must set camera position and orientation to the camera parent.
- Associate the camera control with the Gear VR headset touch pad.
- Build your application and deploy it on the device. Launch the application.
- You will be prompted to insert the device into the headset. If the device is not ready for VR you will be prompted to connect to the network where the device will download Samsung VR software.
NB. It is useful to set the phone to developer mode to visualize the application running in stereo without inserting into the Gear VR device. You can enable the developer mode only if you have installed previously a VR application appropriately signed.
Enabling Gear VR developer mode
Developer mode allows you to launch the application without the headset and also dock the headset at any time without having Home launch. |
Side by Side view of stereo viewports captures with VR developer mode enabled.
Not as simple as it seems. Considering VR specifics
After following the instructions above, I saw nothing but a black screen when inserting the device into the headset. It took me some time to get the VR application running in order to establish that some existing features had to be changed and others added.
VR is a completely different user experience and this is therefore one of the key issues when porting to VR. The original demo had an animation mode which moved the camera through different parts of the cave to show the main features and effects. However, in VR this animation caused motion sickness to the majority of users, particularly when moving backwards. We therefore decided to remove this mode completely.
We also decided to remove the original UI. In the original Ice Cave demo a tap on the screen triggers a menu with different options but this was unsuitable for VR. The original navigation system, based on two virtual joysticks, was also unsuitable for VR so we decided to entirely replace it with a very simple user interaction based on the touch pad:
- Pressing and holding the touch pad moves the camera in the direction the user looks.
- When you release the pressure the camera stops moving.
- A double tap resets the camera to the initial position.
This simple navigation system was deemed to be intuitive and easy by all users trying the VR version of the demo.
User interaction with touch pad on the Samsung Gear VR.
The camera speed was also a feature we considered carefully as many users experienced motion sickness when the camera moved just a little too fast. After some tests we were able to set a value that most people were comfortable with.
Additionally, the camera has to be set as a child of a game object. This is the only way Unity can automatically integrate the head tracking with the camera orientation. If the camera has no parent this link will fail so any translation and rotation of the camera has to be applied to the camera parent node.
In VR, as in reality, it is important to avoid tight spaces so the user doesn’t feel claustrophobic. The original Ice Cave was built with this in mind and provides ample space for the user.
The only effect not imported to VR was the dirty lens effect. In the original Ice Cave demo this effect is implemented as a quad that is rendered on top of the scene. A dirty texture appears with more or less intensity depending on how much the camera is aligned with the sun. This didn’t translate well to VR and so the decision was made to completely remove it from the VR version.
Dirty lens effect implemented in the original Ice Cave demo.
Extra features in the Ice Cave VR version
In the original demo the user can pass through the walls to look at the cave from the outside. However in VR this didn’t create a good experience and the sensation of embedding disappeared when you went out of the cave. Instead, I implemented camera collision detection and smooth sliding for when the user moves very close to the walls.
When running a VR application on Samsung Gear VR, people around the user are naturally curious about what the user is actually seeing. We thought that it would be interesting, particularly for events, to stream the content from the VR headset to another device such as a tablet. We decided to explore the possibility of streaming just the camera position and orientation to a second device running a non-VR version of the same application.
The new Unity network API allowed a rapid prototyping and in a few days I had an implementation which worked pretty well. The device actually running the VR version on the Samsung Gear VR works as a server and in each frame sends the camera position and orientation over wireless TCP to a second device that works as a client.
Streaming camera position and orientation from Samsung Gear VR to a second device.
Using the built-in touch pad to control the camera motion proved very successful. Nevertheless, we decide to provide the user with an alternative method of control using an external Bluetooth mini controller readily available elsewhere. This required us to write a plugin to extend the Unity functionality by intercepting the Android Bluetooth events and using them to trigger movement and resetting of the camera. Unfortunately there is not much information available so whilst it was only possible to intercept the messages coming from two keys , this was enough to move/stop and reset the camera.
Conclusions
Ice Cave VR was implemented during my summer placement with ARM’s Ecosystem Demo team in less than eight weeks with no previous experience of Unity. This was possible thanks to the native VR integration Unity released on version 5.1. In principle, just a few steps are necessary to port a game to VR, although in practice you need to do some extra work to fine-tune the specific requirements of VR in your game. With this integration, Unity has greatly contributed to the democratisation of VR.
Unity VR integration is still in progress and some reported issues are expected to be solved in coming versions. Nonetheless, the Ice Cave VR version shows that it is possible to run high quality VR content on mobile devices if resources are balanced properly at runtime by using highly optimized rendering techniques.
All the advanced graphics techniques utilised in the Ice Cave demo are explained in detail in the ARM Guide for Unity Developers. In the guide it is possible to find the source code or code snippets of these techniques which allowed me to understand how they work.
What I consider the most relevant in all this is the fact that with mobile VR we are no longer limited to the size of our smartphones to enjoy a game. Now we can be part of a limitless virtual world and enjoy a wonderful VR experience from a tiny smartphone inserted in a head set. This really is an outstanding step forward!
If you want to know more about ARM, its microcontrollers, its Cortex-A processors, and its diverse eco-system then be sure to checkout ARM’s Connect Community at https://community.arm.com/welcome
Republished with permission from ARM – Read the original post on ARM’s Connected Community.
6-inch Samsung Galaxy A9 spotted at China’s TENAA
Following a major leak earlier in December, the upcoming mid-tier Samsung Galaxy A9 smartphone has just been spotted passing through China’s TENAA certification center. The latest posting confirms many of the earlier leaked specs.
The listing gives us a nice rundown of the Galaxy A9’s hardware specifications. The phone looks set to ship with a 1.8GHz octa-core CPU, possibly the Snapdragon 620. There’s also 6-inch FullHD (1920×1080) AMOLED display, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory. The handset measures 161.7 × 80.9 × 7.4mm and weighs in at 200g.
Previous rumors indicated a 13 megapixel rear camera, 8 megapixel front facing camera, a 4,000mAh battery and Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 technology. Samsung also seems to have made good on its intentions to bring support for Samsung Pay to its mid-tier devices. There looks to be some pretty decent hardware packed into the Galaxy A9, so long as the price is right.
An updated Galaxy A7 was also recently spotted passing through TENAA, which boasts quite similar specifications. Reference to an A5 refresh was also mentioned by China Mobile and both handsets have been spotted in previous leaks alongside the Galaxy A9. Samsung looks to be preparing some new mid-range handsets for next year, and I’m sure we’ll see more of them next month.
All 4 streaming app arrives on PlayStation 4
If your PlayStation 4 hogs the first or second input on your telly, there’s a good chance it doubles as your TV streaming box too. It already has a bundle of apps including iPlayer and Netflix, but today an important service is joining its roster: All 4. The live streaming and on-demand service from Channel 4 (formerly known as 4oD) is now available from the UK PSN store, giving you easy access to programmes like Homeland and Fargo. This particular app only supports catchup viewing though, so you’ll need to use another device if you want to tune in live. Given that Demand 5 is already available on the PS4, that means ITV Hub is the only service from the big terrestrial trio now missing on Sony’s console.
Source: Channel 4
AIVAnet 