Hasbro’s Furby is now a connected toy with LCD screens for eyes

Although it’s 2016, Furby is still a thing.

Hasbro’s weird, nostalgic fur beast has been resurrected with some new tricks. It’s now a connected toy, for instance. And it’s eyes are full-colour LCD screens. You’ll also notice a glowing antenna on its head that turns blue whenever it gets an update. The antenna will change other colours, too, in order to match whatever type of emotion Furby is experiencing. Furby’s also got the usual motion sensors, motors, mic, and speaker.

It’s actually called Furby Connect now, and it comes with Bluetooth support so it can pair to iOS, Android, or Amazon Fire devices via the Furby Connect app. Furby uses Bluetooth to get updates as well. When it’s not being all technical, Furby will react to sound and touch with over 1,000 phrases or animations through its eyes. It can track the date and time, ask for food and sleep, and work with integrated apps, such as Kidz Bop.

In fact, because of that Kidz Bop integration, Furby might randomly get a song – with lyrics to boot – stuck in its head. It could potentially also fetch sports scores or news that’s pushed to it from approved apps. But make no mistake: this new Furby isn’t a cuddly Amazon Echo. There’s no location awareness, true always-on functionality, nor anything that could result in privacy issues.

This is a kid’s toy, after all.

This Furby of the internet-of-things age can still download info, however, allowing it to work away from an app for up to a week. It can also talk to another Furby Connect to do stuff like in-sync dancing. If any of this interests you, you can grab this intelligent, Gremlin-like reboot for $99.99.

Oh, and there’s an included sleep mask you can pop over its eyes to turn it off, whereas older models needed a battery removal to shut down. (Parents across the world are now thanking you, Hasbro.)

‘Wreck-It Ralph 2’ is officially set to wreck the internet in 2018

Everyone’s favorite game-related Disney movie (no, not Tron) Wreck-It Ralph is set for a sequel that’s hitting the scene on March 9, 2018. This news probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone given the original’s massive success back in 2012, but it’s definitely a reason to get excited.

Disney broke the news during a special livestream on Facebook today, announcing that it’s working on Wreck-It Ralph 2, which will go beyond the confines of the arcade seen in the first movie and into the internet. There weren’t many additional details divulged to go on, but this could mean some interesting changes for both the film’s format and the type of game references we might see.

It’s a bit of a wait for the sequel to hit theaters, but it’s just one in a long line of video game-focused films coming down the pipeline. For instance, the Minecraft film is arriving n 2019, and the Tetris film (now a trilogy) is planned to begin shooting next year. The future is rife with video game movies, but will they be any good?

Via: VentureBeat

Spotify Accuses Apple of Using App Store Approval Process as a ‘Weapon to Harm Competitors’

Spotify and Apple are embroiled in a major dispute, which Spotify is today taking to the court of public opinion. Spotify submitted a new version of its app to the App Store, following a decision to eliminate the option to purchase a subscription through Apple, and Apple has rejected the update.

In response, Spotify wrote a letter to Apple’s legal team on June 26, portions of which have been shared by Recode. Spotify’s letter, which it shared yesterday with Congressional staff in Washington, D.C., accuses Apple of causing “grave harm” to Spotify by rejecting the app update.

The details on the rejection are somewhat murky, but Spotify claims Apple denied the app update and demanded Spotify use Apple’s billing system if it “wants to use the app to acquire new customers and sell subscriptions.” Spotify was using its iOS app to highlight a promotion offering new Spotify customers three months of service for $0.99, something Apple didn’t like.

Apple reportedly forced Spotify to stop advertising the promotion in the iOS app or face the removal of the app from the App Store. Spotify stopped the advertisements, but also decided to stop offering App Store subscription options, a move that’s led to the current disagreement between the two companies.

“This latest episode raises serious concerns under both US and EU competition law,” Gutierrez wrote. “It continues a troubling pattern of behavior by Apple to exclude and diminish the competitiveness of Spotify on iOS and as a rival to Apple Music, particularly when seen against the backdrop of Apple’s previous anticompetitive conduct aimed at Spotify…we cannot stand by as Apple uses the App Store approval process as a weapon to harm competitors.”

At issue is the 30 percent cut that Apple takes from App Store subscriptions, which has caused Spotify to charge $12.99 for subscriptions purchased through the App Store, a $3 premium over subscriptions purchased on the web and $3 more than the price of Apple Music. Apple does not force apps to use its billing system, but it also does not allow apps to offer other purchase options. As stated in the App Store guidelines:

Apps may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than IAP. […]

Auto-renewing subscriptions should only be offered using in-app purchase and may only be used for periodicals (e.g. newspapers, magazines), business apps (e.g. enterprise, productivity, professional creative, cloud storage), media apps (e.g. video, audio, voice, photo sharing), and other approved services (e.g. dating, dieting, weather).

Apple in the past had a battle with Amazon and other book sellers over its App Store rules, which resulted in Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo removing an in-app book store purchase options from their apps. Apple has never relented on the issue, even years later.

Apple recently announced plans to tweak its subscription policies to take a smaller 15 percent cut from subscribers who stay subscribed to a service for more than one year, but Spotify says those changes don’t “get to the core of the problem.”

Though Apple has rejected Spotify’s update, options to purchase Spotify subscriptions in the Spotify app for iOS devices have been gone since the end of May, removed via a backend update. At the current time, it is not possible to purchase a subscription through the Spotify app, and the Spotify app is not able to direct customers to purchase a subscription on the web.

Tags: Spotify, Apple Music
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