Asus Zenbo: Who is the handy robot helper?
Asus pulled a rabbit out of the hat at its pre-Computex press conference, showing off its first venture into robotics with the ever-so-cute Zenbo.
The diminutive household robot joined Johnny Shih, Asus’ chairman, onstage and made quite the impression with its cutsey facial expressions and big blue eyes.
Zenbo is touted as an all-round household helper: it can play games with the kids, find recipes online and read them out while you cook, and it can keep tabs on grandpa too – it will send an emergency alarm out to relevant smartphones if an accident befalls him.
Zenbo then uses its camera to allow real-time communication between the injured party and those concerned.
Asus Zebo: Voice control
The robot helper also aids the elderly in that the voice command function removes any difficulty with faffing around with the user interface. Simply ask and Zenbo can help make calls, order things online, engage on social media, and so on.
Asus also highlighted the educational opportunities for kids, with interactive games and stories built in.
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There is a suggestion that Zenbo can dance, although we didn’t get to see that live. Onstage and in the promo video shown, it appeared that Zenbo responded to voice commands initiated with “Hey, Zenbo!” and merrily chatted back.
Want the lights dimming? Ask Zenbo. Want to see who’s at the door? Ask Zenbo. It can unlock the door, too. Got a question that’s bugging you? Zenbo can check with the built-in interactive encyclopaedia. Want to check up on what’s going on at home while you are out and about? Access Zenbo’s camera through your smart phone. Can’t be bothered reading the kids a bedtime story? Zenbo can take care of that too.
Asus Zenbo: Price and release date
While the on-stage demo looked great, we suspect Zenbo is still a prototype that was being run via remote control – a suspicion reinforced by the lack of access to Zenbo after the conference.
Overall, the presentation was heavy on potential but light on specifics. There were many uses shown but not much explanation of how. For example, Zenbo apparently knows which family member to remind to take their medicine or keep their appointment. Also, access to such information is controlled and given to the appropriate person.
Asus announced a price of $599 (£411) but no release date as yet. If you’re keen to have your very own home spy assistant, you should keep an eye on zenbo.asus.com.
Intel 7th gen Kaby Lake and Apollo Lake processors are coming this year
Intel has officially announced its next generation of advanced processors that it’s calling Kaby Lake.
The Intel 7th gen Kaby Lake processors will go into production in the next few months and begin to ship before the end of the year. They will appear alongside new entry-level 7th gen Apollo Lake processors.
The Intel 7th gen Kaby Lake processors are going to pack in some serious threading power. But they won’t follow Intel’s usual Tick-Tock format. This usually means one year sees a drop in chip size, for tick, and another year sees a new microarchitecture, for tock.
This year the Kaby Lake processors will remain at the 14-nanometre footprint but will have a more “optimised” microarchitecture.
The Apollo Lake chips will be a more affordable version of the current 6th gen Skylake chips. They should be able to handle 4K video and make USB-C in laptops and tablets more affordable as well as supporting Thunderbolt 3 and IR cameras.
Intel has also announced a boosted Broadwell-E Extreme Edition chip in its i7-6950X which will pack 10-cores, 20-threads, Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0, 4-channel memory support, 25MB Smart Cache and overclocking thanks to being fully unlocked. VR and 4K gaming, your time is at hand.
READ: Intel augmented reality headset to merge worlds, real and virtual
Asus ROG GX800 preview: Best gaming laptop ever? 4K and GTX980 suggest so
Asus unveiled its latest liquid cooled gaming laptop at Computex this year and, as expected, it’s a heavyweight.
The Republic of Gamers is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year and the Asus ROG GX800 appears to be the company’s thank you to its loyal fans. It also has a spanking new motherboard, a new desktop and a Geforce GTX 1080 graphics card on the release schedule, but this is the one that impresses most.
According to Asus, a staggering one in seven people on the planet is a gamer. However, this particular laptop is very much a machine for the overclockers among them. Two 330W power supplies allow for uninterrupted gaming with overclocking rates of 236 per cent on the GPU without compromising on graphic power. Wow.
The GX800, like its predecessor, the GX700, uses liquid cooling via a docking station – Thermo Hydro Clocking – to allow for that serious overclocking on the CPU (Intel K-series, 4.4Ghz) and GPU (twin Nvidia SLI, 1428MHz). You’re looking at 2,800MHz of DRAM and 3.8MHz of VRAM as well. The model on show was running on a desktop grade Geforce GTX980.
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It’s an incredibly good looking bit of kit with a ROG mechanical keyboard, on which gamers can colour-customise each LED key according to their desires. Asus calls this MechTAG (Mechanical Tactile Advanced Gaming). It also employs anti-ghosting technology to avoid missed key presses and allows for multi-key commands. The logo to the left of the keyboard glows and changes colour too, which just makes it look even slicker.
The display is a world first, an 18.4-inch 4K display with G-Sync, and we have to say it was looking pretty impressive.
The GX800 is set for a worldwide launch at the end of August, although pricing is yet to be revealed. If you’re serious about overclocking on a gaming laptop this is truly top shelf kit and is likely to cost a fair bob for the pleasure.
Intel’s first 10-core desktop CPU will cost $1,723
Now that the megahertz race has slowed down in the desktop processor world, the new race is all about more and more cores. To that end, Intel just announced its first 10-core desktop CPU, the Core i7-6950X Extreme Edition, today at Computex. (It’s had 10-core Xeon CPUs for servers since 2011.) The new processor will run at 3GHz (with boost speeds up to 3.5GHz), pack in 25MB of cache and feature Intel’s new Turbo Boost 3.0 technology. Just but be prepared to pay through the nose for the privilege of owning it, as the 10-core i7 Extreme Edition will run you $1,723.
So what does such an expensive processor get you? Intel claims it’s twice as fast as the quad-core i7 6700K when it comes to 3D rendering, and 35 percent faster than the last-gen Core i7-5960X. When it comes to editing 4K video, it’s 65 percent faster than that same quad-core chip and 25 percent faster than the previous i7. On the gaming front, it’s 25 percent faster than the 5960X when it comes to gaming in 4K while encoding and broadcasting a 1080p Twitch stream. Basically, if you’re dealing with massive amounts of content on a daily basis, it could be the ideal CPU for you.
The new Extreme Edition of i7 processors will also be available in an 8-core version (the i7-6900K for $1,089) and 6-core variants (the i7-6850K for $617 and the i7-6800K for $434). Naturally, they’re completely unlocked, so you can overclock them to your heart’s content. All of the new chips also support DDR4-2400 RAM, a slight bump in speeds from the previous-gen processors.
If your head is spinning at the cost of these chips, then they’re probably not for you. But for demanding users, it puts Intel a step ahead of AMD, whose current high-end processor tops out at eight cores (though it’s notably cheaper than any of Intel’s chips). If you’re in the market for a new CPU and still want a decent amount of power, Intel still has its “Performance Unlocked” line of i7 CPUs around, the 6600K ($242) and 6700K ($339).
Intel’s 7th generation of Core CPUs are coming later this year
Besides its $1,723 10-core Core i7 Extreme Edition processor, Intel just teased some other chip news during its keynote presentation at Computex. There aren’t many details available, but the company confirmed the the 7th generation of its Core CPU technology will go on sale later this year. They will be joined by its Apollo Lake chips, which are a cheaper version of the current 6th gen Skylake family. Apollo Lake should bring 4K video capability and USB-C to cheaper, 2-in-1 laptop/tablet style devices with smaller batteries. As far as the 7th generation of Core CPUs, buyers can expect support for Thunderbolt 3, and IR cameras used for features like Windows Hello’s facial recognition.
UberPool now covers most of central London
Uber’s ride-sharing service, UberPool, is now available in a larger patch of London. Whereas before it was limited to a small part of the capital, it now spans all of zone one and zone two, as well as Heathrow Airport. All told, the reach of UberPool has more than doubled across the city.
The service itself remains mostly the same, however. You simply open the app, choose the UberPool option and set your destination. Once you’ve specified the number of seats you need — two is the maximum, otherwise you’re not really sharing — Uber will figure out the best driver based on their location and who else they’ll be able to pick up along the way.
The President of Taiwan tries a quick chat with ASUS’ home robot
I’ve said before that Computex is ASUS’ show — and what better demonstration than having the recently-elected President of Taiwan “talk” to your newly announced home robot? Crowd noise necessitated several repeated commands to ASUS’ Zenbo play some music, but if it was apparently a live demonstration (ASUS’ PR affirmed to our Engadget Chinese colleagues that it was), then it’s pretty impressive. (With my connectivity, I can barely upload to Instagram in the thick of the show.) Unfortunately, the Zenbo’s SOS “lifesaving” feature failed in the midst of the trade show chaos. Check out the successful part of the interaction between world leader and… $600 house robot, right after the break.
Source: Engadget Chinese
Welcome to Computex 2016!
In the middle of humid Taiwan, Computex is a show mostly all about computers. There’s always other stuff, but it centers on PCs. ASUS started the show a little early, but we’re also hearing from Intel, Microsoft and more about what to expect over the next year or two. Mobile computing is The Thing now, so the likes of Qualcomm will have something to say as well. Virtual reality has ushered in a renaissance in PC gaming, and we’re sure that’ll also inform what we see this year.
You’ll find the news right here — we”ll be reporting all week.
Hong Kong Pokémon fans protest over Pikachu translation
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have caused a minor international kerfuffle after deciding to reduce the number of languages it translates Pokémon games into. Back in February, the pair revealed that Pokémon Sun and Moon would be released in traditional and simplified Chinese — the former for Hong Kong plus Taiwan, and the latter for Mainland China. But rather than keeping the three original sets of localized character names for these markets, the companies dropped Cantonese — the main dialect of Hong Kong and many overseas Chinese folks — in favor of the more common Mandarin Chinese used by the two other larger markets. The news didn’t go down well with Pokemon fans in Hong Kong, and yesterday, around 20 locals staged a protest outside the Japanese consulate, backed by anti-communist political party Civic Passion. They came armed with banners demanding that Pei-kaa-jau (Mandarin for Pikachu) should be restored to Bei-kaa-chyu (Cantonese Pikachu) for their local market.
It may seem like a trivial thing to protest, but there’s more to the story than simply a new game for the Nintendo DS. Hong Kong has, historically, been a distinct social and political entity with clear separation from China, which guaranteed to preserve the city’s status as an autonomous region for 50 years. But locals are increasingly antsy that their culture and independence are quietly being erased, both with interference from the mainland and carelessness by companies outside. After all, not producing a Cantonese version of Pokémon effectively lumps all Chinese people into one culture.
Source: HK01, Quartz, Next Media
Developer Excitement for Apple TV Easily Exceeds Interest in WatchOS
Developer interest in coding third-party apps for Apple TV continues to surge, while interest in the Apple Watch has waned since the start of 2016, according to mobile app developer database Realm.
Realm hosts a database of apps used by approximately 100,000 developers, and contains details of apps used by around 1 million people, giving it a unique view of which devices capture mobile developers’ interest over time.
Speaking to Business Insider UK, Realm VP Tim Anglade said that the Apple TV had gained the most interest among developers since the release of the fourth-generation device and the launch of a dedicated App Store in October 2015. Meanwhile, developers have cooled their interest in the Apple Watch, viewing it more as a companion to the iPhone, where coding appeal remains high.
“tvOS is a brand new platform so there’s a gold rush for it,” said Anglade. “[But] on a weekly basis we’re seeing very few Watch apps, compared to iOS apps. For every 1,000 new iOS apps being built, there are 10 tvOS apps and maybe 1 Watch app.”
Apple doesn’t release separate sales figures for the Apple Watch, but market research suggests the device finished third in the overall wearables market in the first months of 2016, with 7.5 percent market share. Since the launch of the fourth-generation Apple TV, sales of the set-top box have been 50 percent higher than unit sales in 2014.
According to Anglade, there’s every chance that coders will flock to the next version of the Apple Watch – expected to be unveiled late this year – in the way they did when the device was first launched, so long as the timepiece offers more opportunities for developers to tap into upgrades and Apple opens up the platform to run independent apps.
Developers originally had limited access to Apple Watch features using WatchOS 1, and were unable to access the gyroscope, accelerometer, NFC, built-in speaker and microphone, and the Taptic Engine of the device. That all changed with the launch of watchOS 2 in September, and as of June 2016, all Apple Watch apps must run natively, rather than rely on the iPhone.
Apple is said to be continuing its work on various health-related sensors that did not make it into the original Apple Watch due to performance problems and inconsistent results. These sensors may be incorporated into the second-generation device following further refinement, although details remain sketchy.
“Apple published a road map, to be able run independent apps, and that’s a big deal,” added Anglade. Apple is expected to demo the next version of watchOS at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Until then, coders seem satisfied to invest the majority of their time and energy on developing for Apple’s other platforms.
Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 2, WWDC 2016
Tag: Realm
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Caution)
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