BBC micro:bit now available for pre-order, get your kids into coding
The BBC micro:bit is now available for pre-order from element14, the tech company that also distributes the Raspberry Pi in the UK.
It was previously distributed to schools to help children learn the basics of coding, but is now starting to roll out to the general public, so parents and organisations can get their hands on the cheap, mini computer.
One million year seven children originally received one as part of the BBC’s Make it Digital programme, and they have already been working on different projects using their devices.
There are plenty of ideas already online to get your kids involved and prices start low so it won’t break the bank.
READ: How to get started with the new BBC micro:bit computer
A BBC micro:bit computer costs £12.99 on its own, £14.99 with a BBC micro:bit Go starter kit that also includes mini USB, battery pack and four project ideas to get users started.
There is also a BBC micro:bit Club pack that costs £140 but includes 10 computers and everything else needed to get a coding club started.
You can pre-order your micro:bit from the element14 website now, with only the computer on its own still listed as “coming soon”.
Shipping will start in July.
At internetmatters.org parents can find all the advice they will need to keep their children safe online. Designed specifically for parents, the site offers a wealth of up-to-date, unbiased information and advice about how to deal with online safety. Parents can learn about the latest issues and technologies, get great tips on how to talk about online safety with their children and get the best advice on dealing with issues and taking action. Created with experts, Internet Matters provides detailed information, but also signposts to best-in-class resources from individual expert organisations. Our goal is to ensure parents can always access the information that they need, in a format that is clear and concise.
OnePlus 3 official announcement and release dates are here, get ready
OnePlus fans it’s time to start getting excited as we’re now officially just two weeks away from the OnePlus 3 reveal.
OnePlus has officially announced that it will hold its OnePlus 3 launch event on 15 June.
The Chinese company posted, on blogging site Weibo, the image of a three with time and date. So pretty obvious what that means then. The result should mean an event that kicks off in Shenzen at 10AM, or 3AM BST for the UK and 10PM UTC.
That’s right, if you’re UK based and you’ve ordered a VR headset to watch the event live in 360-degrees then UK you’ll need to push back your bed time a bit.
For those of you that want to skip straight to the buying part, it looks like you won’t have to wait long. The OnePlus 3 should be on sale the next day of 16 June, in China at least, before becoming available in other countries.
So far invites have not been mentioned which could mean that the OnePlus 3 is open to all to buy, without the need for an invite at all.
The rumoured spec for the OnePlus 3 includes a 5.5-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 820 CPU backed by 4GB of RAM and a 16-megapixel rear camera plus a 3000mAh battery powering the handset along.
READ: OnePlus 3: What’s the story so far?
Mobile ad blocking is still relatively uncommon in the U.S.
Out of 1.9 billion smartphone users on the planet, about 419 million — or 22 percent — of them use mobile ad blocking tools, a new study from PageFair has found. While ad blocking has barely caught on in the United States, more than a third of all the smartphone users in the Asia-Pacific region use an app or browser to stop advertisements from reaching their phones.
55 percent of that global smartphone userbase lives in the Asia-Pacific region, NiemanLab notes, but it makes up 93 percent of the people who use ad blocking services. According to PageFair’s head of ecosystem Johnny Ryan, slower devices and expensive mobile data are to blame for the sudden surge in popularity in places like China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. By comparison, slightly more than two percent of smartphone users in the U.S. use ad blocking apps like Brave or Opera on their phones.
Given this popularity in Asia, it should be of little surprise that four out of the top five ad blocking apps are variations of Alibaba’s UC Browser. (Although PageFair’s report notes that lead might be shaken up by ASUS’ plan to ship phones with built-in ad blocking.) Now that Google has loosened restrictions around ad blocking on Android, the coveted fifth-place spot goes to the simply named “Adblock Browser for Android.”
Free Supercharging won’t come standard on the Tesla Model 3
Tesla’s early adopters have been enjoying a lifetime of free charging at the company’s network of Supercharger stations, but that won’t be the case for owners of the forthcoming mass-market Model 3. In today’s annual shareholder meeting, CEO Elon Musk explained free charging for life won’t be included with the new model, but will be available as an optional package.
For Musk, the decision to not include free power for life was a simple matter of economics. As he told the shareholders (and was quoted by VentureBeat):
To date, we wanted to keep it really straightforward and easy. So that’s why the Superchargers are set up, at least to date for people who bought the cars, as free long-distance for life. Obviously that has, fundamentally, a cost. I don’t want to make this some big news headline, but the obvious thing to do is decouple that from the cost of the Model 3. So it will still be very cheap — and far cheaper than gasoline — to drive long-distance with the Model 3, but it will not be free long distance for life unless you’ve purchased that package.
“I just want to emphasize,” Musk went on, “what Tesla’s motivation is, is to make electric transport as affordable as possible.” While the Supercharger network may be useful on long-distance road trips, part of Tesla’s motivation here is to change people’s behavior about how and where they top off their car batteries. “The best thing to do with an electric car,” Musk said later, “is to charge your car where you charge your phone. Would you really take your phone to a gas station?”
Windows Hello fully opens up to non-Microsoft devices
Soon you’ll have even more options to log onto Windows 10 quickly and securely. Microsoft just announced that it’s opening up the Windows Hello Companion Device Framework to other companies, which means their devices will let you hop into Windows just as easily as Microsoft’s Band. On stage at Computex today, a Microsoft representative used the Nymi band, an authentication wearable for the workplace, to log into her computer. You can also expect to see things like ID cards, phones and potentially other wearables working together with Windows Hello.
We’ve already seen Windows Hello-compatible facial recognition cameras from Tobii, but today’s news goes even further. Microsoft says the Windows Hello framework supports enterprise-grade two-factor authentication, so perhaps it’s something your employer will eventually support.
Microsoft gets into VR by letting others build HoloLens gear
HoloLens will eventually get some siblings — but most of them won’t be coming from Microsoft. At Computex today, Microsoft announced that it’s opening up the Windows Holographic platform to third parties, which they can use to build their own virtual and augmented reality devices. Yes, that’s right — Windows Holographic won’t just be about the AR experiences we’ve seen in HoloLens, it’ll also power full-fledged VR hardware. Microsoft is calling this mixture of AR and VR “mixed reality.”
The news isn’t entirely surprising, as Microsoft has historically been known for expanding its platforms with the help of other companies. It shows the versatility of the HoloLens concept: Microsoft’s current device makes for some cool demos, but it’s not exactly something meant for regular people just yet.
A consumer HoloLens “may come from us, or it may come from a partner, and either way that’s fantastic,” said Microsoft’s Terry Myerson, executive vice president of its Windows and Devices Group. Myerson likens HoloLens to Microsoft’s Surface — a concept that will inspire other companies to create similar devices. The Surface had a rough start, but it’s evolved into surprisingly compelling hardware, and now just about every PC maker is trying to get in on that action.
To give us a sense of what a world full of HoloLens devices could look like, Microsoft played a short video during its Computex keynote. It featured a young designer who used a HoloLens headset to design an event space virtually. Eventually, she reached out to colleagues remotely, one using an HTC Vive and another using a HoloLens headset of his own, to collaborate on the project in real time. All of them also had a friendly AI helper (which looks a lot like Cortana’s cute Chinese version), who chatted with them in virtual space.
When I asked about how the HTC Vive was running HoloLens, Myerson said diplomatically that “we’re working directly with HTC” on a product based on Windows Holographic. Myerson didn’t have any details to share about further HoloLens updates, or when we’ll see devices from third parties. Microsoft is also working with Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Acer, ASUS, Dell, Falcon Northwest, HP, Lenovo, MSI and others on the Windows Holographic platform. We’ll eventually end up seeing HoloLens accessories and other components from these companies, in addition to full-fledged headsets.
Xiaomi bundles Microsoft Office and Skype with its devices
It’s no secret that Xiaomi plans to go global, and its execs are hoping that the company’s expanding partnership with Microsoft could help them reach that goal. The Chinese manufacturer has announced that starting in September, its Android devices will come pre-installed with Skype and Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook). Further, it has revealed that it agreed to purchase 1,500 patents from Microsoft, including ones on cloud computing and voice communication. Xiaomi Senior VP Wang Xiang told Reuters that acquiring those patents is “an important step forward to support [the company’s] expansion internationally.”
As The Wall Street Journal noted, the company is collecting intellectual property en masse to beef up its portfolio in an effort to enter new markets. Xiaomi joined forces with Microsoft last year to launch a Windows 10 version of the Mi Pad 2. Not to mention, Mi’s cloud service is powered by Microsoft Azure. The manufacturer says it will be pre-loading Microsoft’s apps on the Mi 5, Mi Max, Mi 4s, and even its more affordable phones, the Redmi Note 3 and Redmi 3, though the exact list of pre-installed software may vary by device and location.
Source: Microsoft, Reuters
OnePlus starts selling phones via Amazon UK
If you’ve been eyeing up a OnePlus phone, there’s now another place you can order one in the UK. The company is selling the OnePlus 2 on Amazon UK for £249 — the same, recently reduced price found on its own website. A spokesperson for OnePlus has also confirmed to Engadget that both the OnePlus 2 and smaller OnePlus X will, eventually, be sold through Amazon US too. The move should improve the sales of both handsets, due to the added exposure and consumer trust associated with Amazon. It could also be a useful way to sell off old stock ahead of the OnePlus 3 launch.
We wouldn’t expect OnePlus’ next flagship to show up on Amazon any time soon, however. The company’s last three phones were sold using a controversial invite system — for a while, anyway — which Amazon can’t support. We suspect the OnePlus 3 will be sold in a similar fashion, meaning the phone will be an exclusive on its own online store. At least until the company is ready to blow the invite dam once more.
Via: Android Central
Source: Amazon UK
Google’s Echo Rival is a ‘Dressed-up’ Version of Chromecast
Last month, Google announced plans for its upcoming Amazon Echo rival, Google Home, a Wi-Fi enabled personal assistant that enables people to ask Google search queries, manage everyday tasks, enjoy music and entertainment, and more using hands-free “OK Google” voice commands.
Yesterday, a few more details emerged about Google Home, which will potentially go directly up against the smart device Apple is rumored to be working on.
According to technology news site The Information, Google Home will share many of the hardware components of the company’s popular internet-connected TV streaming device, Chromecast, relying on the same dual-core ARM-based microprocessor, 4GB of RAM, and a dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi chip.
The similarities are apparently so close between the two devices because the same team responsible for the Chromecast headed up development of the Google Home. As a result, it is being described as “dressed-up version” of the company’s existing device, with the addition of a microphone, speaker, plastic top with LED lights, and a fabric or metal bottom.
The Home is also expected to run the same Linux-based OS used on the Chromecast, though Google has discussed powering future versions with its Android mobile platform.
The upshot of all this is that the device could be extremely inexpensive to produce, given that the Chromecast currently sells at $35. That would mean Google being able to significantly undercut the $179 Amazon Echo. Notably, the Chromecast is also one of Google’s most successful hardware products, selling 3 million units in the past three years.
Apple’s rumored smart home product is a Siri-based device that would include a speaker and microphone that could be used for features like listening to music, getting news headlines, and more. Apple is also planning to introduce an enhanced version of Siri, which the company will open up to outside developers to integrate with their own apps and services.
Apple has reportedly been working on its rival device since before the Amazon Echo debuted in November 2014. Google Home will be available later this year, but it is not known when Apple will be ready to debut its home accessory or how it will fit into the company’s existing product lineup. However, given Apple’s track record for premium pricing, consumers are unlikely to see a product as inexpensive as Google appears to be readying for the home.
Tags: Amazon Echo, Google Home
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AMD’s 7th generation laptop chips are stronger Intel competitors
AMD has always been the cheaper alternative to Intel’s processors, but with its latest generation of mobile chips, it’s also aiming to close the performance gap. Announced at Computex today, the new high-end FX chips are 56 percent faster compared to AMD’s previous generation of laptop processors, while its entry-level chips are 52 percent faster compared to the last-gen. And compared to Intel’s fastest Core i7 mobile chip, the 7th gen AMD FX offers 53 percent faster graphics and a 51 percent bump in compute performance. Basically, these are the laptop chips AMD fans have been waiting for.
As is usually the case with major processor upgrades, AMD also focused on power efficiency for the new chips. The company claims its high-end FX chips now use 12 percent less power than the last gen, and the latest A9 processors use 41 percent less power when playing local 1080p videos. At the lower-end, AMD added “Excavator” cores to the new A9, A6 and E2 processors, which gives them a decent performance bump and makes them more efficient at playing HD video.
AMD says its new manufacturing process also allowed it to reach faster clock speeds with the chips. Its high-end FX 9830P offers 3GHz base speeds (with maximum speeds of 3.7GHz), while the lowest end E2-9010 is clocked at 2GHz (max up to 2.2GHz). The new A9 chip, which is being positioned as an Intel Core i3 competitor, gets max speeds 1.5GHz faster than the i3-6100U.
While AMD isn’t talking about specific pricing details for these chips (it’s not like you can buy them on their own), partners including Dell, HP, ASUS and Lenovo are already using them in new system designs. And of course, you can expect them to reach even more laptops (and some all-in-ones) throughout the year.
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