Hive begins selling its smart plug and connected home sensors
When British Gas subsidiary Hive unveiled its latest take on the smart thermostat, the company also committed to launching a new a range of motion sensors, lightbulbs and a smart plug. It’s taken six months, but Hive is finally ready to add its Active Plug and Window and Door sensors to its connected home line-up, with all three products now available to buy online.
The Active Plug, which lets you control appliances via a mobile app, connects to the Hive Home Hub and can be operated from the Hive heating app. If you’ve already invested in the thermostat, the plug will cost £39, but if you’re new to the brand, you will need to lay down £80 for the hub.
The Window and Door sensors are small switches that will tell you when doors and windows have been opened or closed. They cost £29 and also require the Home Hub, but they’re especially useful for checking when the kids get home from school or notifying you of an unwanted visitor. While the sensors are on sale today, Hive says deliveries will commence from February 8th.
Last up is the Motion Sensor, a product that uses wireless passive infra-red (PIR) sensor to detect movement in your home. While it’s not on available to buy today, the company says it will go on sale from February 9th and will begin shipping from February 22nd.
Source: Hive
Olympus PEN-F camera takes you back in time with its looks
Olympus had a busy 2015, having introduced a number of cameras for people with different levels of expertise. This year, the manufacturer’s first announcement was its Stylus TG-870, a ruggedized compact shooter that offers niche characteristics. And now Olympus is introducing the PEN-F, which is bound to turn some heads. Other than the retro looks it brings to the table, it’s sporting a new 20-megapixel Live MOS sensor and TruePic VII processor, as well as built-in 5-axis image stabilization and an ISO 80 equivalent in low mode — that’s going to help with night shots.
Better yet, you’re also going to find a setting that lets you capture 50-megapixel photos, while the 1/8,000-second mechanical shutter should be speedy enough to handle most scenarios. As we’ve come to expect from the latest prosumer cameras, Olympus is blessing this PEN with a 3-inch touchscreen (articulating), a high-res OLED electronic viewfinder and WiFi. Video is limited to 1080p, although there is the option to turn stills into 4K time-lapse movies, if you’re into that.
Olympus says the PEN-F will ship in early March for $1,200, but that’s for the body only. We’ll have more on this Micro Four Thirds camera soon.
AMD wants to open up PC graphics chips
AMD isn’t just depending on ever-faster chipsets to boost graphics performance — it thinks coders can lend a hand, too. The company’s new GPUOpen effort gives developers the kind of open source code and documentation they need to use low-level PC video card features, port apps and otherwise understand GPU aspects that are normally kept hush-hush (outside of game consoles, at least). If everything goes smoothly, you’ll see games that look nicer on current hardware, and general computing tasks that lean more on GPUs to crunch numbers.
It’s potentially an important effort, and AMD is promising to accommodate multiple platforms. With that said, AMD isn’t necessarily doing this purely out of generosity. It’s being squeezed at the high end by NVIDIA (which rules the dedicated video card market), and the low end by Intel (whose processor sales lead gives it the de facto lead in integrated graphics). To some degree, GPUOpen is about making AMD’s Radeon graphics chips more attractive to developers, giving the company a better chance in a tough market.
Via: Slashdot
Source: GPUOpen
Samsung Gear S2 Rose Gold and Platinum receive new watch faces
Samsung recently unveiled that a Rose Gold and Platinum Gear S2 would be coming to the US at CES 2016. However, they have already been available to the Dutch for a little while now.
Samsung decided to go even further and release an update to bring two new watch faces for their new models. The latest Gear S2 update brings one for ladies and one for men. Only those with the new special edition Gear S2’s will have access to them meaning strictly Gear S2 Classic Rose Gold or Gear S2 Classic Platinum owners will get the watch face update.
The build number is BOL6 and the update is roughly 23MB. Also, the update has bug fixes and includes improved UX for heart rate monitoring in S Health.
Source: SamMobile
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Samsung may launch phone upgrade program
Samsung may be planning to launch a program that would allow customers to upgrade their device(s) every year.
Samsung, however, would not comment on the rumour, which was first reported by South Korea’s Electronic Times.
The Korean publication reported that sources said the program could begin when Samsung launches its new flagship phone, the Galaxy S7, in South Korea. The South Korean launch is expected to be some time around March.
Source: Electronic Times
Via: Reuters
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Lyft teams up with Waze, details using the Transport SDK for faster routes
Earlier today, Waze announced their new Transport SDK that will allow other services to integrate Waze’s crowd-sourced information into other applications. There were a few partners on-board at launch, one of which was Lyft, who stands to benefit greatly from having access to some of Waze’s best features. Lyft has spoken out and detailed some of the new features that users can expect to see in the near future.
Possibly the most efficient new feature to come out of this partnership will be Lyft’s ability to automatically update routes on the fly. This means a driver’s route can be adjusted based on many conditions that are pulled from Waze, and can even help to adjust a route to pick up an additional passenger. Lyft claims this should help to reduce wait times in the Lyft Line, speeding up how long it’ll take someone to be picked up and dropped off at their destination.
Waze is also replacing the default navigation system for Lyft, and the Waze app will have a quick button to jump right back into Lyft, mid-navigation. These new features are designed to make the experience simple and smooth, all while keeping driver ratings high thanks to Waze’s fantastic navigation.
This new partnership is sure to help out both Waze and Lyft, and will pretty likely be the first of many when it comes to crowd-sourcing your cab rides across town. Now we just have to wait and see how Uber responds.
source: Lyft
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‘Monument Valley’ is the latest game soundtrack going vinyl
Monument Valley was one of the most interesting, unique and beautiful games released in 2014 on any platform. Forget that fact that it’s “just” a mobile game — developer UsTwo build an extremely memorable experience, and the game’s music contributed heavily to that experience. If you want to immerse yourself in the game’s soundscape, the geeky art purveyors iam8bit have just the thing for you — the soundtrack for Monument Valley will go up for sale on vinyl tomorrow.
The $40 package gets you two LPs of music by Stafford Bawler, OBFUSC and GRIGORI; one of those records is entirely unreleased songs from the game’s expansions Forgotten Shores and Ida’s Dream. The other consists of music already released, but this marks the first time you can get any of these songs in a physical package.
As with other iam8bit releases, that package is almost worth the price of admission alone. The gatefold album artwork features some appropriately mesmerizing new designs on the inside along with an eight-page “story booklet.” The records themselves come in a stunning blue and slightly less striking cream. And, as a nod to the fact that most of us still listen to digital music, the package will come with a code to download the soundtrack on MP3.
This is hardly the first game soundtrack iam8bit has released on vinyl, and iam8bit is not the only company working on such releases lately. With vinyl sales continuing an unexpected resurgence, catering to fans who love excellent gaming music and other beloved genre works is a smart niche to go after. You can pre-order the Monument Valley soundtrack from iam8bit tomorrow; it’s expected to ship in Q2 of this year.
Source: iam8bit
Ford CEO goes full tech by joining IBM board
Ford CEO Mark Fields has been very vocal about his desire to move the automaker beyond just selling cars to folks. Instead he envisions it becoming a mobility company with pilot programs that offer car sharing and is researching autonomous vehicles. At CES, Fields told Engadget that “it is about developing relationships.” It looks like one of those relationships is blooming. IBM announced that Fields has been elected to its board of directors.
While IBM’s efforts into the future of transportation haven’t garnered the headlines of Google and Tesla, it has been researching how machine learning and big data will transform driving. In fact, Ford and IBM are already partnering on a platform to spot patterns in pieces of driving data.
IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said, “We are pleased that Mark will be joining the IBM board of directors. Mark led the highly successful transformation of his company in a competitive industry where technology has driven innovation.” He continued, “he is leading Ford into a future where cars are not only vehicles, but increasingly becoming mobile technology platforms. His knowledge and insights in running a complex global business will make a significant contribution to IBM.”
Source: IBM
Platinum is making a ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ game
It’s been a bit since we had a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and an even longer time since we had a good one. But that could soon change when Platinum Games unleashes TMNT: Mutants in Manhattan this summer on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Yeah, that’s right: the rumors that swirled around last month are true. Over on the PlayStation Blog, Platinum’s Robert Cooper says that if you’ve played any of the studio’s previous action games that this shouldn’t have a lot of trouble getting comfortable in the solo and co-op campaign.
Oh, and he also reveals that Bebop and Rocksteady (heavily featured in the trailer below and in this summer’s TMNT: Out of the Shadows movie) will be among the Foot Clan you’ll fight.
The only thing I’m a little wary of is the character design. And that’s mostly because it makes me think of the Michael Bay-produced flicks, but Cooper says the cel-shaded amphibians actually take a lot of inspiration from comic book artist Mateus Santolouco’s designs for the Heroes in Halfshells. Platinum’s pedigree is incredibly solid, so there’s reason to be optimistic here. Let’s hope it won’t be rushed out the door to tie in to the Turtles’ next movie adventure this summer, though.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Pepper the robot is going to staff an entire phone store
Kicking off an event that showcases Softbank’s Pepper robot working in a business environment, the Japanese phone carrier says it’s going to test it out for itself, announcing a Pepper phone shop staffed entirely by its robots. According to the company, you’ll be able to sign up to a phone contract with the robot. (In fact, that’s apparently the robot on the left’s role; in the middle is the store manager and on the right is “time killer” Pepper.) That sounds both incredible and hugely suspicious, but I’ll have to wait until the end of March to check it out for myself.
According to the announcement above, the Pepper Phone Shop with be “littered” with Pepper robots to give directions, advice, guidance and small talk. The shop will be open for only a limited run, and will act as a grand experiment for Softbank. We’ll be reporting from today’s “Pepper World” event with more details on the working robot later this week.
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