Google scrapped plans for own Oculus Rift VR headset
Google reportedly had plans to take on Oculus, HTC and PlayStation with its own high-end virtual reality headset. However, it was scrapped with the company said to prefer to continue down the mobile VR route instead.
Recode claims that Google is streamlining its projects, which include ditching the more ambitious plans for VR. It cites “sources familiar with the plans” for the information.
Scrapping the standalone headset came at some cost, claimed the sources, with around 50 employees originally working on it. Interestingly though, they were also working on a VR operating system separate to Android, it is said.
- What is Daydream and when is it coming? Google’s Android VR platform explained
- Best VR headsets to buy in 2016, whatever your budget
The VR unit still remains, but it is likely to be working full time on Daydream now, Google’s unified mobile virtual reality technology.
We’re still waiting for the virtual reality tech market to kick on like many predicted at the beginning of 2016. Pricing and initial shipping delays for both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive have ensured that take up of those headsets has been steady rather than explosive. However, the PlayStation VR headset is yet to be released, with units hitting stores in October.
It is thought its price and, more importantly, its compatibility with PS4 consoles millions already own globally could see VR gain momentum.
Softbank buys mobile chip designer ARM for $32 billion
Japan’s Softbank, which owns US carrier Sprint and many other firms, is set to buy mobile chip company ARM in a blockbuster £24.3 billion ($32 billion) deal. The UK company designs the processors used in virtually every mobile device, including most models from Apple, Samsung and HTC. While it doesn’t build them itself, it licenses the tech to Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and others. If the deal goes through, it would be one of the largest acquisitions of a European tech firm ever, and a vote of confidence by Softbank in ARM’s business in post-Brexit UK.
Softbank has been freeing up cash lately through a variety of deals. It recently sold Clash of Clans maker Supercell to Tencent for a reported $8.6 billion, and cashed in $10 billion worth of shares in the Chinese retail giant Alibaba. The company owns US carrier Sprint, 28 percent of China’s Alibaba and the Japanese divisions of Yahoo and Vodafone. All told, it has participated in 140 deals worth over $82 billion in the last 10 years, according to the Financial Times.
Standalone VR headsets powered by ARM chips may flood the market over the next year.
ARM is a hugely important UK tech company, as over 15 million chips using its technology shipped last year. It became a tempting acquisition target following the UK “Brexit” vote to separate from Europe. That, in part, caused the UK pound to plummet 28 percent against the Japanese yen, effectively making the company cheaper. ARM is considered to be shielded from any potential Brexit fallout in the UK market, since it has customers around the world. However, there’s some concern that top UK engineers may flee to Europe and elsewhere once Britain’s EU divorce is finalized.
ARM was assured by Softbank that it would stay independent and keep its UK headquarters in Cambridge. The Japanese firm says it will also invest considerable sums into the business, “including doubling the UK headcount over the next five years.” It will also add employees outside of Britain. The deal would be an “all cash acquisition,” but is still subject to a number of conditions before it’s finalized.
Intel has often been seen as a suitor for ARM, but it’s now clear the purchase price may have been too rich for it to stomach. While ARM designs most of the chips used in mobile devices, it only had revenue of around $1 billion in 2015, and the purchased price is reportedly 70 times its net income. However, ARM has diversified from mobile and sells chips used in the “internet of things,” servers and network equipment and now, virtual reality.
Samsung is buying a stake in a Chinese car maker
Now that the smartphone market is cooling off, Samsung needs another way to keep raking in cash… and it’s going in an unusual direction to make that happen. The tech giant is buying a stake in Chinese automaker BYD that, at least at first, will help boost the two companies’ businesses in parts for electric cars and smartphones. What’s next may be more important, however. Samsung says that the two will talk about possible partnerships in “various businesses” — don’t be surprised if they work closely together.
Samsung has yet to reveal the size of the stake (BYD shot down rumors that it was 4 percent), so it’s not certain just how much of a commitment it’s making. Suffice it to say that the company stands to profit if everything goes to plan, though. The electric car market is quickly heating up, and Samsung could ride the bandwagon by supplying BYD with everything from batteries to processors. As it stands, Samsung might not want to sit on the sidelines when its big rival Apple is reportedly designing an EV of its own.
Source: Reuters
Galaxy S7 edge designed for the Olympics is now up for sale in the U.S.
Samsung designed a special variant of the Galaxy S7 edge to celebrate the 2016 Olympics in Rio, dubbed the Galaxy S7 edge Olympic Games Limited Edition. The manufacturer will be giving away the handset to all 12,500 athletes participating in the competition for free, and 2,016 units are being made available for sale in each of the following countries: the U.S., Brazil, China, South Korea, and Germany.
The phone retails for $849, and is set to go on sale at Best Buy later today. Who’s interested in picking one up?
See at Best Buy
Mercedes-Benz made a high-tech golf cart inspired by sports cars
File this one under the list of things to buy when you become stinkin’ rich. Mercedes-Benz has introduced a high-tech golf cart with the looks of a sports car, three years after it asked fans to submit ideas for a “golf cart of the future.” Now, don’t get too excited: it doesn’t have autonomous driving capabilities just yet. But the final product, designed by the automaker and its project partner (golf cart designer Garia), has a 10.1-inch tablet that displays its current speed and power consumption, as well as the vehicle’s controls.
You can tap on the screen to change driving modes (sport or eco) and to switch the headlights, heater, AC and wipers (among other parts of the cart) on or off. It also displays your vehicle’s position on a map of the golf course and gives you access to various programs like weather apps. Besides a tablet, the cart has integrated Hi-Fi Bluetooth speakers and, of course, a fridge.
Mercedes says it’s planning to add smartphone integration in the future, as well. For now, the companies are showing off their creation at the British Open and at various events in Denmark, Monaco and Germany in the coming months.
Source: Mercedes-Benz, A Real Sports Car
Invisibility ‘cloak’ hides objects by making them seem flat
Humanity is still some distance away from a real, honest-to-goodness invisibility cloak, but British scientists are that much closer to making it practical. They’ve developed a coating that uses graded refractive index nanocomposite materials (just rolls off the tongue, really) to reduce an object’s electromagnetic signature. Ultimately, it makes curved surfaces seem flat — electromagnetic waves leave almost as if there were no object at all.
Any real-world use is still a ways off, but it wouldn’t just be limited to stealth. It could allow for oddly-shaped antennas or acoustics that work just as effectively as their straight-laced counterparts. Cloaking would just be the most dramatic use of a technology that could help in many, many fields.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: QMUL, Scientific Reports
How to level up fast (and catch rare Pokemon) without spending money in Pokemon Go – CNET
Pokemon Go is free, to a certain degree. If you run out of Pokeballs and other supplies, you’ll need to run around to various PokeStops to get more. That can take a while and make leveling difficult.
The other obvious option would be to buy what you need from the game’s shop, but no one wants to spend money when there is another option. Luckily there is.
One more lure to go!
Alina Bradford/CNET
Level fast with this technique
First, gather up a group of Pokeplayers for a leveling party. Next, drive (with the game off, of course) to an area that has multiple PokeStops in one small area.
Some places that typically have a high concentration of Pokestops are historical districts, town squares, tourist attractions and locations that have many churches in one area.
Once you’ve found a good spot, walk around and harvest all of the PokeStops for their goodies. Then, have one person set a lure at each PokeStop. Once the lures are in place, walk from PokeStop to PokeStop catching the hoard of Pokemon that appear.
Running out of Pokeballs or other items? Don’t worry. Setting a lure at a PokeStop makes it refresh with new items every couple of minutes. So, by the time you make a loop around all of the nearby PokeStops, they will be ready for you to spin again.
Collecting droves of Pokemon in a short amount of time will level you up quickly without a lot of searching, driving while Pokemon Go-ing (a big no-no) or buying gear like incense.
Bonus: Rarer Pokemon
Be ready for your Pokeparty to be joined by dozens of other players. This is great, though. There’s a theory that the more people that are located in a PokeStop area, the more likely a rare Pokemon will be to show up.
I tested this theory. Sure enough, I was able to catch a Magmar, Exeggutor and a Nidorina in the span of an hour. While not the rarest Pokemon, they were a lot better than the dozens of Pidgey and Rattata creatures I usually get.
‘Kerbal Space Program’ arrives on Xbox One
Squad teased that Kerbal Space Program was reaching the Xbox One when it announced the PS4 launch, and it made good on its word just a few days later. The spacecraft construction and exploration game is now available through the Xbox Store. As with the PS4 version, this port preserves the challenge of designing and flying ships across the Kerbals’ star system, often with unintentionally hilarious results — the biggest change is simply adapting KSP to the realities of playing with a gamepad. There’s no mention of when the promised Wii U edition will arrive, but it might not be far behind given that Squad aimed to ship that title at the same time as the PS4 and Xbox One versions.
Source: Xbox Wire, Xbox Store
AC editors’ apps of the week: Vivino, Bloomberg, TunnelBear VPN and more
It’s Appday Sunday and that means we’re back with more of our favorites to share. Every week we bring a handful of great apps to the table and share them with everyone. Sometimes they are new apps, sometimes old standards, but every time they are apps we love to use.
Give these a look and then take a minute to tell us all about the apps you are using and love so we can give them a try. We all find some of our favorites right in the comments on these posts!
Daniel Bader – Vivino Wine Scanner
I love wine. Specifically, I love red wine. Maybe I’m getting old, but give me a great bottle of Spanish red and I’m as happy as a Twitter user in a fight.
Vivino helps me keep track of the bottles I drink since I try to keep to a strict diet of diversity. The app uses your Android phone’s camera to scan the label, and if the bottler, variety, blend and vintage is in its database, Vivino shows you everything you need to know about what you’re drinking. That includes local price (if applicable), tasting notes, user reviews, and information about the winery and grape.
In early 2015, Vivino transitioned, like so many revenue-strapped startups, from a free/premium app model to a more sustainable yearly subscription model. But, like so few of those startups, its $50 annual membership is actually worth the cost. That’s because Vivino publishes a members-only bi-weekly wine guide that is not only useful, but a pleasure to peruse; and the premium subscription also includes expert ratings of individual bottles, and a great wine cellar management tool for those with growing collections.
Free users benefit from recent additions, too, though. The wines list scanner, which uses OCR technology to summarize entire restaurant or bar lists in one fell swoop, is really useful (when it works, which is about half the time); and the user reviews are some of the most extensive in the industry.
Download: Vivino Wine Scanner (Free)
Andrew Martonik — Bloomberg
I live and breathe technology every day, but I also like to keep up on the business world (something that stuck with me when I finished my business degree in college). Bloomberg is the name synonymous with coverage of business and the markets, and it also has a really nice and simple app that makes it super easy to keep up with the business world, as well as politics, world news and technology from a financial perspective.
You can check out the latest stories, dive down into specific genres or just see what the latest indexes are doing at a glance. From the home screen, with one tap you can jump to a live feed of Bloomberg TV as well, which is important when news is breaking. My one tip is to turn off the push notifications, which can get to be a bit much throughout the day.
Download: Bloomberg (Free)
Ara Wagoner – Disney Emoji Blitz
I’m a fan of emoji, and I’m a fan of Disney, so if this felt like a no-brainer, not so fast. This game is quite similar to the Disney Tsum Tsum game that LINE puts out, but instead of the haphazard pile of plushies, you have the orderly grid of a Bejeweled-style match-3 game. Instead of jewels, you match Disney emoji.
The game is easily playable for free, but you’ll run out of lives fairly quickly if you’re not careful. Also, what I’m really interested in here, the emoji themselves, are awkwardly implemented. See, when you unlock an emoji in the game, you can use it on the Emoji Blitz keyboard. So if there are particular characters you want, you need to rack up coins to unlock them (or buy enough) through a random box you buy in the emoji store. So if I want Genie (and do I ever), then I’ve got to spend 30,000 coins and I have a 1/20 chance of getting it.
Then there’s using the emoji themselves. You switch to the Blitz Emoji keyboard, which means you’re giving this app all the permissions and data you give any other keyboard, and then you put together your emoji string … And then, since these aren’t system emoji, you share your emoji string as an image to an Android app of your choosing. This is clunky and it’s not Disney’s fault (it’s Android’s), but at least the emoji string images are transparent and easy to share. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time grinding this game to get the emoji you want. At least this is easier to grind than Pokémon Go.
Download: Disney Emoji Blitz (Free, in-app purchases)
Alex Dobie — TunnelBear VPN
There are a bunch of different reasons why you might want to use a VPN (virtual private network) on your Android devices. They often let you get around region-blocked services or websites — for example, BBC iPlayer outside the UK. They can help you send data more securely over open WiFi networks.
TunnelBear is the simplest VPN service I’ve come across, and the dedicated Android app makes it simple to use on your phone. Simply sign in , then select the country you want to tunnel to. In a few seconds, the VPN will be connected, and you’ll be able to use other apps as if you were in that country — complete with a world map and, yes, an animated bear that literally tunnels between countries. TunnelBear gives you a free 500MB of data each month, or for unlimited data, it’s $7.99 per month ($4.16 if you pay yearly). TunnelBear also has discounted pricing if you’re just using the service on your Android devices.
Download: Tunnelbear VPN (Free)
Russell Holly — Go Messenger
You didn’t think my contribution here would be about something other than Pokemon Go, did you? You silly goose.
Go Messenger fills in a much-needed gap in the Pokemon Go experience — chat. It’s not easy to coordinate attacks with strangers because it’s not easy to know who your team members are until you meet them in person and ask them. While that works well enough for populated areas, it makes strategic attacks on other locations more complicated. Taking down a Gym is not enough, you must raise it to an even greater level in your team color!
It’s a simple chat app that indicates your team color and user name, with a Facebook Chathead-esque bubble that can float over everything for when you’re actually playing the game. You can only chat with other folks who have the app, and you chat is limited to 20km around your current location, but it’s a good start.
Download: Go Messenger (Free)
Twitter was quick to pull extremist tweets following Nice attack
Twitter’s response to online extremism has changed a lot in the past few years. Observers at observer groups like the Counter Extremism Project report that the social network was exceptionally speedy in removing pro-extremist accounts and tweets in the hours following the truck attack in Nice, France on July 14th. It moved with “swiftness we have not seen before,” CEP says. Twitter hasn’t commented on the specific actions, but it’s apparent that the company is serious about its ban on terrorism.
The rapid takedowns are a sharp contrast with Twitter’s former hard line on free speech. While it still tends to value freedom of expression as a rule (particularly in countries where Twitter restrictions are mainly used to stifle dissent), it’s now eager to scrub tweets instead of waiting until officials step in. Twitter isn’t the only tech company taking a more active approach — talks with the US government have led to a broader anti-extremism push that includes Facebook and Google. However, its breakneck pace this time suggests that it may be one of the first (if not the first) to purge extremist material from now on.
Source: Reuters
AIVAnet 