Sprint is offering lures and free charging stations for Pokémon Go players at its stores
Sprint is getting in on the Pokémon Go action by placing lures at its stores. Sprint and Boost Mobile stores will offer free charging stations should you need a quick top-up before heading out on your hunt. Sprint will also have “Pokémon Go experts” on-site that can provide assistance with nearby PokéStops.
You can find your closest Sprint store here, and your Boost Mobile store here.
Press release follows:
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – July 14, 2016 – Starting tomorrow millions of Pokémon Go players are invited to visit neighborhood Sprint (NYSE: S) and Boost Mobile retail store locations around the country for help in stepping up their monster search. Sprint stores will have lures to attract monsters that players can capture. For the closest store locations visit http://www.sprint.com/store and http://www.boostmobile.com/store.
Additionally, gamers can take advantage of free charging stations and knowledgeable on-site Pokémon Go experts that can help beginners learn the game or more advanced hunters with strategy and location of nearby Gyms and PokéStops.
“We welcome Pokémon Go players to visit their local Sprint and Boost Mobile stores to capture some of the monsters in town,” said Roger Sole, Sprint chief marketing officer. “Our knowledgeable staff will help you download the game on your phone, explain how it’s played, locate PokéStops in the area and even provide a power up for your device so game players can continue their adventures fully charged.”
Sole added: “Since the game launched just nine days ago, we’ve seen its meteoric rise with millions of our customers across the country playing on the Sprint network – often simultaneously — including in our more than 200 LTE Plus markets. Of course, customers can enjoy the benefit of our unlimited data plans, so they can play without the worry of overage charges as they continue their Pokémon Go adventures. We also want to remind gamers to play responsibly while hunting monsters: be aware of their surroundings and never play while driving.”
Google joins U.S. carriers in offering free calls to France following terror attack in Nice
France was rocked by yet another senseless tragedy earlier tonight when a lorry ploughed into crowds watching a fireworks display as part of Bastille Day celebrations in Nice. The terrorist incident has left at least 80 people dead, and dozens injured. U.S. carriers are offering free calls and texts to connect with family and friends in France, and Google is joining in by providing free Hangouts, Google Voice and Project Fi calls to the country following the aftermath of the attack.
From Google:
To all those affected by the attack in Nice, you’re in our thoughts.
To help people stay informed and connected with their loved ones, we’re making calls to France from Hangouts, Google Voice and Project Fi, free — from anywhere in the world those services are supported.
Grab Hangouts Dialer from here.
T-Mobile is allowing free calls and texts to France for its customers through July 17:
Our hearts are with all those affected by the horrible attack in Nice. To help our customers connect with loved ones in the area, T-Mobile is making it free to call and text from the United States to Nice, France. T-Mobile will also waive roaming fees on calls and texts for customers in that area.
The offer applies to all T-Mobile Simple Choice postpaid and prepaid customers, as well as customers of MetroPCS, GoSmart Mobile, and WalMart Family Mobile. It is effective from Thursday, July 14 through Sunday, July 17. Customers will see regular charges on their bills with corresponding credits.
Verizon is offering free calls and texts to the country through July 16:
More than 170,000 Verizon employees worldwide extend condolences to all our friends and family in France. In this time of uncertainty, we want to support our customers affected by the horrific attack in Nice, France today, so Verizon is offering free wireless and wireline calling from the U.S. to France to connect with family and friends.
Wireless users will incur no charges for texts or international long distance calls originating from the U.S. to France on July 14 through 16, 2016 (applicable taxes and surcharges will apply).
Home wireline telephone customers can make free calls to France from their U.S. landlines on July 14 through 16, 2016, (applicable taxes and surcharges will apply).
Sprint is similarly waiving off charges for calls and text to and from France through July 17:
Effective July 14 through July 17, 2016, Sprint is waiving charges for international calls and SMS to France for all Sprint, Boost and Virgin Mobile customers and international roaming for call and SMS charges while in France for all Sprint customers following the tragic events in Nice.
“We are deeply saddened by the reports from Nice and send our thoughts and prayers to the people of France and all those affected by tonight’s tragic events,” said Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure. “We want to do everything we can to help our Sprint, Boost Mobile, and Virgin Mobile customers stay connected with family and friends in the region.”
AT&T is also offering free calls and texts between the U.S. and France until July 17:
Our thoughts are with the people of France and our customers who have friends and family there.
AT&T will waive or credit charges incurred for calls placed by AT&T’s customers from the United States to France between July 14 to July 17 in the local time zone. This includes landline, texting, and mobility (Postpaid and GoPhone) calls.
Follow all the updates from the attack here. If you’ve got any family and friends in the region, follow this Reddit thread for emergency contact information for the area.
Samsung Pay is going live in Brazil on July 19
Samsung Pay has made its way to Brazil. The service is launching with Banco do Brasil, Brasil Pré-Pagos, Caixa, Porto Seguro, and Santander, with Samsung working to bring Banrisul, Bradesco, Nubank and Itaú-Unibanco on-board. List of compatible handsets include the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy A5 2016, Galaxy A7 2016, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge. The service will go live starting July 19.
After launching in South Korea, Samsung Pay is now available in the United States, China, Spain, Singapore, Australia, Puerto Rico. Brazil is the latest on the list, becoming the first country in South America to receive Samsung’s contactless payments service. The differentiator with Samsung Pay is that it works with NFC-enabled registers as well as older systems with magnetic readers.
Cattle-herding just got a lot more futuristic with SwagBot
Robots are taking over. No, really. They’re taking over jobs, especially when they have the opportunity to be better at them than we are. Even dogs aren’t safe, if the world’s first herding robot has anything to say about it.
Enter SwagBot, a robot developed by the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. Created for the sole purpose of herding cattle, it can scuttle its way even across not-so-ideal terrain like farmland and even pull trailers across said terrain. It’s the hope that SwagBot will eventually be able to manage the livestock across Australia’s various regions.
The robot is as efficient as it is rugged, proving it can get around ditches, swamps and a host of other obstacles that mean to keep it from doing its job. The next phase is to help SwagBot recognize whether an animal is sick or ailing. Temperature and motion sensors on board will aid it in this endeavor.
All in all, it sounds like a pretty great farmhand. It could be capable of a whole lot more in the future, too.
Source: New Scientist
eStories launches an alternative source for audiobooks
After ditching the major labels to go pure indie in 2014, digital music store eMusic and its new parent company TriPlay are now ready to take on Amazon and Audible’s audiobook dominance. Today, TriPlay launched their eStories competitor with 80,000 titles and memberships starting at $11.95 per month.
Audible, which is owned by Amazon, boasts over three times as many titles – about 250,000 total according to TechCrunch – but eStories is hoping their slightly lower price will be enough to win over at least some of Audible’s 55 million global users. For comparison, Audible’s rates start at $14.95 per month for a single title with 30 percent discount on subsequent titles after that. After the monthly fee, eStories offers a 33 percent discount per book if you buy them a la carte. From there, prices go up to $21.99 or $49.99 per month for two or five monthly titles.
The new service isn’t exactly following the eMusic indie-only format, however, and the company has partnered with the audiobooks divisions of major publishing houses like Hachette, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and others to bring some major bestsellers like The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones series, The Girl on the Train and Between the World and Me.
Also per TechCrunch, eMusic’s core service will be getting its own relaunch soon. After TriPlay acquired the company last year, the new owners shifted to a cloud streaming model rather than forcing users to go old school (circa 2007) and download purchased audio to their devices.
‘Hyper Light Drifter’ is touching down on consoles this month
Hyper Light Drifter is finally making its way to consoles soon, after a few harrowing months of waiting for PS4 and Xbox One owners. Developer Heart Machine’s neon wonderland, which originally launched on PC and Mac in early 2016, is touching down on both systems on July 26th. The information was outed early via Sony’s summer sale announcement — Heart Machine has now confirmed it.
While the game will launch on both consoles, there’s no mention just yet of whether or not its co-op mode will be included at launch. The playable mode was originally present during the PC beta on Steam, then removed for tweaks. It only just returned to the game in May.
If you’re interested in trying the game out, you’ll have three options as far as how you want to experience it. Pick it up on Steam here if you don’t want to wait.
Via: Destructoid
Withings Body Cardio Scale review – CNET
The Good The Body Cardio can measure weight, BMI, body fat and body water percentage, bone mass, muscle mass, standing heart rate and arterial stiffness. Sleek design, long battery life, works on hard floors and carpets.
The Bad Expensive. Its chief selling point is cryptic, and the “arterial stiffness” measurement doesn’t always work.
The Bottom Line The Body Cardio provides a new way for measuring heart health, but it’s not worth the time or money over a simpler connected scale.
Visit manufacturer site for details.
The Withings Body Cardio isn’t your typical smart scale. While it can measure weight and sync its data online like Withings’ other scales, this new version’s selling point is being able to measure cardiovascular health. This is the first scale that can measure Pulse Wave Velocity, a term I wasn’t even aware of before. It’s a measurement used to determine arterial stiffness and is said to be a key indicator of heart health.
In addition to this new metric, the Body Cardio can also measure weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), body fat percentage, total body water percentage, muscle mass, bone mass and standing heart rate. And since it’s a smart scale, there’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to automatically upload your information to the Withings HealthMate app on Android and iOS.
This smart scale measures your heart health…
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All of this sounds appealing, until you you consider the $180 (£140, AU$290) price tag, which makes the Body Cardio one of the most expensive consumer scales on the market. After using it for close to a month, I wasn’t sold on its value.
The scale failed to measure my Pulse Wave Velocity on numerous occasions, and even when it worked, I still found it hard to decipher what its value was to my everyday health. I recommend the more affordable Withings Body smart scale for $130 (£100). It’s essentially the Body Cardio, but without the standing heart rate data and the finicky Pulse Wave Velocity measurement. Trust me, you won’t miss them.
What is Pulse Wave Velocity?
Pulse Wave Velocity is used in clinical tests, research labs and some hospitals. My personal cardiologist and three others I called in New York City didn’t measure it, but studies have found it to be a reliable measurement for heart health.
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James Martin/CNET
To determine your Pulse Wave Velocity, the scale is equipped with special sensors that are said to be able to determine the exact moment when blood is ejected from the aorta and when it reaches blood vessels in the feet. The time between the two is then compared to your height (which you provide during the initial setup of the scale) to determine your Pulse Wave Velocity, a number that is measured in meters per second. If your eyes glazed over during that explanation, you’re not alone.
The entire process of measuring this and all other metrics takes about 30 seconds from start to finish. Unfortunately, it didn’t always work. About one out of every five times I received an error that stated the scale was unable to measure my Pulse Wave Velocity, but I didn’t know this until I opened the app on my phone. That’s because the small display on the scale only shows weight, BMI, bone mass, muscle mass, standing heart rate and a timeline of past weigh ins. It doesn’t actually show the Pulse Wave Velocity measurement.
Why T-Mobile’s free Pokémon Go data deal is cause for celebration, and caution
T-Mobile Tuesday’s latest deal is not all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s been difficult to avoid the scourge of Pokémon Go content over the past week, as various media companies, including our own, attempt to capitalize on a game that in under a week has amassed a daily active user base larger than Twitter and Tinder, and has single-handedly turned around Nintendo’s flagging fortunes.
The rise of Pokémon Go has been so swift, in fact, that many decisions made in its wake may have unforeseen consequences on every industry it touches, from mobile gaming, to augmented reality, to telecommunications. And while a direct impact on wireless policy may not immediately be something one would associate with a free-to-play augmented reality game for iOS and Android, that is exactly what may happen.
This week, T-Mobile, the third-largest wireless company in the U.S., announced that it would exempt a year of Pokemon Go data for all customers in its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion. All they need to do is download its T-Mobile Tuesdays app, accept the terms and conditions, and every moment spent playing Pokemon does not count towards their data cap. But want to play Clash Royale? That’ll cost you.
The rise of Pokémon Go has been so swift, in fact, that many decisions made in its wake may have unforeseen consequences on every industry it touches.
The term is known as “zero-rating,” and it is the act of exempting certain types of bits and bytes from counting towards your data cap. It’s a practice not new to T-Mobile, or to any of the major U.S. carriers; T-Mobile has been using it to great effect in its flawed BingeOn campaign, which allows users to consume to a number of music and video streaming services without them moving the needle on what is often a fairly low cap on wireless consumption. Advocates for the program say that it is about offering customers choice, and promoting competition in an industry that has failed to innovate. Opponents see the act of zero-rating as a stain on America’s net neutrality rules, which came into effect in 2015 and require all service providers to treat all internet traffic without bias.
But zero-rating falls into that grey area where the traffic itself is not being treated differently, it is just being charged differently. To the consumer, all they see is benefit: all the Spotify or Netflix — and now Pokémon Go — fit to binge, with no real downside but for, in the case of video streaming, a slightly lower bitrate. And, T-Mobile emphasizes, it’s easy to opt out of BingeOn — when the program started, the company was put on the defensive almost immediately — so it’s not harming anyone.
The problem with zero-rating, though, isn’t that it is bad for consumers. It’s not. It’s that, according to people like Ben Klass, who successfully led a campaign against Canadian carrier Bell’s practice of exempting the billing of its own video content across its wireless network, zero-rating reinforces the status quo, promoting the success of the incumbents at the expense of people, companies, services and games without the vast resources of a Spotify, Netflix or Niantic.
The compromise between innovation and regulation is going to be an ongoing battle between net neutrality advocates and opponents.
Pokémon Go is the flavor of the week — and let’s be honest, it will likely be the flavor of the month, and year — but there is an inherent problem with T-Mobile capitalizing on its success when, say, Clash of Clans (for which I have little love and no allegiance, and let’s be honest is plenty big on its own) was passed over for the same opportunity. And then there are the fantastic games from independent game developers like Frogmind, whose multiplayer hit Badland likely has a tiny fraction of the real-time usage, but would benefit greatly from the T-Mobile’s marketing machine.
More: How much data does Pokémon Go use?
At the moment, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not committed to regulating zero-rating, since it technically falls within the current net neutrality rules. Earlier this year, Chairman Tom Wheeler and his team sent out letters to companies involved in the practice, including Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, asking them to provide particular details about their zero-rating strategies.
In the letters, the FCC noted that it “[wants] to ensure that we have all the facts to understand how this service relates to the Commission’s goal of maintaining a free and open Internet while incentivizing innovation and investment from all sources.” That compromise, between innovation and regulation, is going to be an ongoing battle between net neutrality advocates and the companies constant trying to skirt their profit-lowering side effects for years to come.
In the light of this decision by T-Mobile, we know a couple of things already: untying the yoke of a limited data plan is unlikely to boost Pokémon usage, at least in the short term, since everyone is already playing it all the time. (It also doesn’t seem to use that much mobile data, for what it’s worth.) And in the long term, as usage declines, other game developers will seek to use such tools as promotional catalysts for their own titles. Even if money doesn’t change hands between T-Mobile and its zero-rating partners, you can believe that companies like Supercell and Epic War (which are behind Clash of Clans and Mobile Strike, respectively) will want a piece of the action. On the surface, everyone wins, since more people sign up for T-Mobile, download and play those popular games, and don’t accrue data overages.
As a customer, I think that zero-rating is great, especially for someone who can’t afford to spend $100 per month on multi-gigabyte data plans. But when it only gives preference to the apps, games and services already in use by millions of people across the country, it makes it hard for the little guys — the startups, the hustlers — to get noticed. And as a customer, that’s bad.
Pokémon Go
- Join our Pokémon Go forums!
- How to deal with GPS errors in-game
- Which team should you choose?
- How to play without killing your battery
- The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
Researchers can guess your age based on your Instagram likes
If you’re the sort of person who carefully prunes your unloved Instagram photos, chances are good you’re a teenager. At least, that’s one of the findings in a new set of research papers on social media behaviors from Penn State University. As associate professor Dongwon Lee told the Atlantic, the practice of going back and deleting photos is common among teens on the platform because they, “want to be very popular so they’re very conscious of the likes they’re getting.”
Teens also tend to interact, comment and like more photos than their older counterparts, Lee’s team found, but they also post fewer of their own photos. (Although, this might only seem true, since teens are more likely to go back and delete their own content.) On the other hand, adults tend to have a broader range of interests, whereas teens usually post about their “mood or personal well being.”
Lee’s team focused their research on Instagram and its 500 million users because the API was the easiest to work with out of the major social networks. They also found that a “Like” on Instagram is a much less complex compared to a similar reaction Facebook or Twitter, where a heart could mean anything from “I like your tweet” to “I saw this and now I’m ending this conversation.”
Microsoft victory protects overseas data from US warrants
For the past three years, Microsoft has been locked in a legal battle with the New York district court over a deceptively simple question: does a US Judge have the right to issue a warrant for data stored overseas? According to a new ruling from the US Court of Appeals Second Circuit, the answer, is no.
At issue, specifically, were the contents of an email account stored at a datacenter in Dublin, Ireland. Microsoft refused to release the data because the information was stored on servers physically located outside of the country. The New York court then argued that the Stored Communications Act allowed it to issue a warrant for “information that is stored on servers abroad.” The idea is that if Microsoft owns the overseas server and has the capability of accessing the data, it’s a domestic request regardless of the data storage location. Today’s decision from the Second Circuit shut that idea down.
“We conclude that Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant provisions to apply extraterritoriality,” the 42-page decision explains. “The SCA warrant in this case may not lawfully be used to compel Microsoft to produce to the government the contents of a customer’s e-mail account stored exclusively in Ireland.”
Naturally, Microsoft is heralding the decision as a victory for privacy, stating that “if people around the world are to trust the technology they use, they need to have confidence that their personal information will be protected by the laws of their own country.” Indeed, that’s what this decision means for now, though it could still be overturned by new legislation at a later date. In fact, that could be the ultimate solution. Microsoft itself argues that the world needs “new legal solutions that reflect the world that exists today, rather than technologies that existed three decades ago.” Sounds like a good idea — so long as the folks making the law understand the technology they’re trying to legislate.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: Microsoft v. United States
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