Google Officially Rolls Out Cardboard VR Viewer to EU and Canada Stores

Google has begun selling its affordable VR viewer to customers in the U.K., France, Germany, and Canada.

The viewer works by phone owners inserting their handset into a cardboard shell that contains optical lenses. With a supporting game or app running on the phone, the image on the screen is split into two halves.

By looking into the lenses, the images are combined into one immersive, 3D image. Many Cardboard apps also use a phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer to let users look around the virtual world.

Previously the popular cardboard device was only available outside of the U.S. via third parties and promotional offers, but Google is now offering it direct to international customers via its online store.

The VR viewer is available in Canada for $20 each or $35 for a pair, 20 Euros each or 30 Euros for two in France and Germany, and £15 each or £25 a pair in the U.K.

Cardboard supports Apple’s range of iPhones and has an interactive click button that works with all compatible handsets.

(Via The Verge.)

Tag: Google Cardboard
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Former Apple CEO John Sculley: Apple Watch ‘Doesn’t Have Enough Utility’

Former Apple CEO John Sculley went on camera yesterday to give his thoughts on Apple’s current product lineup and offered a couple of interesting tidbits on where he thought the Apple Watch could be improved.

In an interview with The Street, Sculley said he still loved Apple products and used his iPhone, iPad and MacBook daily, but that he’d so far passed on owning an company’s smartwatch offering. “I think the Apple Watch is beautiful, but it doesn’t have enough utility to be something that I feel I have to have at this point in time,” he said.

Steve Jobs (left) and John Sculley (right) in 1984.
Asked what Apple would need to change to make it a worthwhile purchase for him, Sculley said that first the company needed to de-connect the hardware from the dependency it has on the iPhone. “When you go jogging, I don’t want to carry my iPhone and Apple Watch to count the steps – Apple will solve this though, they are good at that kind of stuff.”

Secondly, Sculley said Apple needed to take advantage of the “incredible excitement” over smart messaging which he called the “next big thing”. “Whether it’s WeChat or Facebook M, we are starting to see a move to an era where messaging could be an intelligent assistant, and that could be a perfect application for the Apple Watch if they can incorporate it.”

“I don’t think an Apple lover has to have every product, but the ones I have and use I love,” continued Sculley, expressing a particular fondness for the iPad Pro. “I think it’s a spectacular experience to read the newspaper on it every day and even read books, I much prefer it to a Kindle.”

Sculley was vice-president and president of Pepsi-Cola before he served as Apple’s CEO from 1983 to 1993, where he is famous for forcing out Steve Jobs from the company, something he has since called “a mistake”. In 1987 he was named Silicon Valley’s top-paid executive, with an annual salary of $2.2 million. When he left Apple, the company had $2 billion in cash and $200 million in debt.

He is widely considered an expert at marketing, and continues to speak and write about disruptive marketing strategies. He also has investments in a number of high-tech start-up companies, including Zeta Interactive and WorldMate. Jeff Daniels portrayed Sculley in the recent movie Steve Jobs.

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Meizu m3 note with 5.5-inch FHD display, 3GB RAM and 32GB storage hits India for ₹9,999

Chinese manufacturer Meizu has launched the m3 note in India for ₹9,999. The phone will be up for sale exclusively on Amazon India from May 31, with registrations kicking off later today.

The m3 note goes up against the LeEco Le 1s and the Redmi Note 3, offering similar hardware at a slightly lower price. The phone comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD screen, 1.8GHz Helio P10 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 32GB storage, 13MP camera, 5MP front camera, LTE with VoLTE, dual-SIM (with the second SIM slot doubling up as a microSD slot), Bluetooth 4.0, and a massive 4100mAh battery.

There’s also a fingerprint sensor at the front, and while the design of the phone hasn’t changed all the much from its predecessor, the upgraded internals position the m3 note as a viable alternative to what LeEco and Xiaomi have to offer in this segment.

See at Amazon India

Logitech’s new car mounts bring smart hands-free to Android

Logitech has announced a new pair of hands-free car mounts that work in concert with a voice-controlled app to keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel.

ZeroTouch is available either as a vent mount ($59.99) or a dash mount ($79.99). The free app then connects with the the mount via a small metal plate or a disk hidden underneath a case, triggering a Bluetooth LE connection. When you remove the phone from the mount, the ZeroTouch app shuts down, so you only have to use the voice commands when you want.

ZeroTouch focuses on four basic hands-free operations — text messages, phone calls, navigation and music playback. You also can share your location via voice, with built-in Glympse support.

ZeroTouch is available today at Logitech’s website, or on Amazon.

See at Logitech

Press release:

Logi ZeroTouch Turns Any Car Into a Hands-Free Connected Car Smart Car Mount and App Help Keep Drivers’ Eyes on the Road

NEWARK, Calif. — May 11, 2016 — Today Logitech (SIX: LOGN) (NASDAQ: LOGI) introduced the Logi ZeroTouch™ Air Vent and Logi ZeroTouch Dashboard smart car mounts for Android™ smartphones that trigger Logitech’s voice-controlled app when you dock your phone in the car. With this combo you can hear and respond to an incoming text, and operate select apps such as navigation and music, completely hands free. Together, the car mount and app give you the best features of a connected car, without buying a new car.

“New car owners can experience the luxury of a connected car, but there are still tens of millions of older cars on the road,” said Bracken Darrell, Logitech president and chief executive officer. “As we look for ways to design products that are thoughtful solutions to human needs, we realized there was an opportunity to turn any car into a connected car. The result is the Logi ZeroTouch. The smart mount and app work together to give you the best features of a connected car, while keeping your eyes on the road. We believe ZeroTouch will play a crucial role in turning the look down and text, into the look up and talk.”

To get your car connected, simply snap your phone to the magnetic air vent or dashboard mount to automatically trigger the Android app, and speak freely. You can use your voice to place calls, text back and forth, stream music using Spotify®, initiate directions with navigation apps, such as Google Maps™ mapping service or Waze, or easily share your location with friends and family through Glympse® location service – all without ever touching your phone.

Through natural language understanding, using the app feels like talking casually to a person next to you in the car. A simple hand gesture quickly wakes up the app to initiate a text or command, and to eliminate errors, the app reads your text back before sending. The app automatically informs you of incoming texts, and you decide if you’d like to listen, respond or cancel without ever looking at or touching your phone. Or, depending on the streaming music app, you can request specific artists, songs, playlists, or genres, and give commands like “pause” and “skip.”

Availability

The ZeroTouch Air Vent and ZeroTouch Dashboard are available today at Logitech for a suggested retail price of $59.99 or $79.99 respectively. For more information, please visit our blog or connect with us on Facebook.

About Logitech

Logitech designs products that have an everyday place in people’s lives, connecting them to the digital experiences they care about. Over 30 years ago, Logitech started connecting people through computers, and now it’s designing products that bring people together through music, gaming, video and computing. Founded in 1981, Logitech International is a Swiss public company listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (LOGN) and on the Nasdaq Global Select Market (LOGI). Find Logitech at http://www.logitech.com, the company blog or @Logitech.

Samsung announces the new Galaxy Tab A 10.1 for Europe

Samsung has announced the Galaxy Tab A 10.1 for Europe and should have the new tablet available for purchase next month. Set to arrive in both black and white variants, this latest device from Samsung will set you back €289 ($330) for the base Wi-Fi-only model. Opting for LTE connectivity will kick prices off from €349 ($395).

As covered by SamMobile, the Galaxy A 10.1 sports a 10.1-inch WUXGA (1920×100) display, 1.6 octa-core Exynos 7870 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage (with microSD expansion), 8MP main shooter with LED flash, 2MP front-facing camera, and a 7300mAh battery to power everything.

Walmart takes Visa to court over debit card payments

Walmart isn’t happy that Visa still allows customers to sign for purchases made with their chip-equipped debit cards. The retail giant has filed a lawsuit against Visa in New York in an effort to compel the credit card brand to require PIN verification when paying in its stores. Walmart argues that PINs are a lot more secure than signatures and can help prevent fraud. It used to only allow debit card payments verified by PINs when it first started accepting chip cards, but Visa forced the company to allow signature verifications.

According to The Wall Street Journal, debit cards are the most common form of payment at Walmart. Considering a lot of big retail stores fall prey to card breaches, making transactions more secure would benefit a lot of buyers. Company spokesperson Randy Hargrove said in a statement: “Walmart believes Visa’s position creates unacceptable risk to customers and its actions and rules are inconsistent with federal law.” The company does pay five cents more for every signature transaction, though, so there’s definitely something in it for the retailer, as well.

Source: Reuters, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal

Judge blocks Staples and Office Depot merger

Last year around this time, Staples announced that it had purchased Office Depot, a merger that would have created one enormous outlet for office supplies, computers, 3D printing services and more. However, US regulators thought the merged company would be too enormous, and convinced a court to kill the merger on antitrust grounds. US District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the “merger will substantially impair competition,” especially to business customers, and that blocking it was “in the public interest.”

However, Staples and Office Depot lawyers argued that the merged company would be more efficient and could pass savings on to customers thanks to at least $1 billion in “synergies,” possibly in the form of layoffs. They also have a new, formidable online rival: Amazon Business. Jeff Bezos’ operation is just a year old, but already has a $1 billion in sales and is growing at a clip of 20 percent a month. Staples said it was “extremely disappointed” with the decision, adding that the FTC “fell woefully short of proving its case.” Nevertheless, the company won’t appeal and plans to terminate the merger agreement.

The FTC sued to block the merger late in 2015, arguing that business customers would have much less bargaining power if Office Depot disappeared. “This deal would eliminate head-to-head competition between Staples and Office Depot and likely lead to higher prices and lower quality service for large businesses,” says FTC competition chief Debbie Feinstein. “Today’s court ruling is great news for customers in the office supply market.”

Source: Bloomberg