Allo is coming to your phone today!
Google’s smart messaging app Allo is finally becoming available to the public. The app is now available on Android and iOS. Announced back at I/O 2016, Allo is the first app to integrate Google Assistant, a chatbot that leverages the company’s machine learning and AI smarts to provide answers, suggest replies to conversations, retreive your travel information, and so much more. Think of it as an evolution to Google Now.
Like Google’s other messaging app Duo, Allo is primarily mobile-based. It isn’t available on the web, and there isn’t a desktop version — yet. You sign up using your phone number, and then associate your Google ID with the service.
Interested in taking a look at Allo? You can download the messaging client from the Play Store right now. In typical Google fashion the app will roll out over time, so if you aren’t seeing it right away keep checking back in the store regularly.
Nike’s self-lacing HyperAdapt shoes go on sale November 28th
Nike designer Tinker Hatfield promised us power-lacing shoes to mimic the kicks from Back to the Future in 2016, and now we know what day they’ll go on sale. The Nike HyperAdapt 1.0 will be available at “select” retail locations by appointment beginning November 28th. The company brought Wired in for a look behind the scenes of the shoe’s development, but we’re expecting more details, like how to set up an appointment and pricing, in the coming weeks.
HyperAdapt 1.0 will be available in the U.S. at select Nike retail locations. Appointments to experience & purchase begin 11.28.16. pic.twitter.com/t3YVLa8Rsl
— Heidi Burgett (@heidiburgett) September 20, 2016
Source: Wired, Heidi Burgett (Twitter), Nike
The SproutsIO smart microgarden nurtures your inner botanist
I’m not good at remembering to water my one houseplant. I know I’m not alone — the phrase “black thumb” exists for a reason. And if some of us can’t even manage something as basic as adding a little H2O regularly, asking those same people to worry about humidity or soil pH for our flora is right out. Unfortunately, that means a lot of us don’t get to enjoy the benefits of growing our own herbs or vegetables at home. The SproutsIO connected planter, now on Kickstarter, aims to solve that by not just reminding you to water your plant, but creating an entire support system aimed at your individual wants and needs about what to grow.
SproutsIO is the brainchild of Jenny Broutin Farah, an architect who’s worked on large-scale gardening projects with the New York City Parks Department. She wanted to make fresh produce something that anyone, from restaurant chefs to home cooks, could keep around their kitchen without worrying about it going bad quickly or not being clean enough.
The first step in that process is the SproutsIO pot itself, a modular system designed with convenience in mind. The bulk of the product is the basin, which is where you put the water, and it contains the monitoring systems as well. There’s no soil: The Sprouts IO is a hybrid hydroculture, using hydroponics and aeroponics to care for the plants. Hydroponics involves keeping roots in a nutrient-rich water solution, while aeroponics mists them with a similar mixture.
These methods enable easier management (no need to change the soil, for one) and lighter weight; you can remove the top layer of the SproutsIO, containing the plant, and pop the lower basin into a sink or dishwasher for cleaning. The modular nature of the pot also means it’s easy to adjust the height of the planter, leaving more room for the roots or letting you switch between hydroponic and aeroponic modes.
The SproutsIO even comes with its own light source, a flexible LED lamp that can be removed for better access to your project and consumes less power than a standard incandescent bulb. In fact, the whole setup consumes less energy than a laptop. The lighting scheme can be customized to each project, from a harsh white to softer shades of red and blue. There’s also a camera so you can peep at your plant from afar in the SproutsIOGrow app.
SproutsIOGrow lets you adjust things like the lighting and misting, but the real power of the program is how it learns from experience. Horticulture is more than just sticking a seed in some dirt and watering it regularly; small changes in temperature, humidity, light levels and soil acidity can render very different variations of the same crop. SproutsIOGrow contains information not just about the ideal conditions for your plant to grow in, but about which conditions can render greener spinach or juicier tomatoes.
Farah hopes the app’s database will grow over time, not just through machine learning but also via contributions from SproutsIO users, who will come up with their own “recipes” to share. It’s a lot like taking advice from a forum for amateur botanists, except you’re all using the same tools already.
The level of convenience is what makes SproutsIO different from other IoT solutions like Gro.io; it makes not just caring for the plants easier, but purchasing them as well. The subscription service will sell you sIO seed refills, which contain everything you need to get started: the seeds, the growing media and the appropriate nutrients. Once you’ve harvested your crop and are ready to move on to your next project, each sIO is compostable.
The current list of subscription choices includes kale, chile peppers and fairy-tale eggplant. But you aren’t limited to the plant disks; ultimately you can grow anything you want, even root vegetables like carrots and potatoes. (Mark Watney would approve.)
SproutsIO hits Kickstarter today at an early-bird price of $559 (regular price $699). Or you could always just spend $2,999 for a pack of five and assemble your own counter garden. The app supports multiple units, so why not put together a dream team of some lettuce, tomatoes and arugula for some super-fresh salads?
Source: SproutsIO
Allo brings Google’s ‘Assistant’ to your phone today
If you’re going to unveil a new messaging app, it had better do something unique. At this point, finding a place amongst entrenched options like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and iMessage is not an easy task. Google didn’t quite pull it off with Hangouts when it launched in 2013. Sure, it’s installed on basically every Android phone out there and anyone with a Gmail account has probably tried it, but Google’s messaging strategy never quite came together in a compelling or clear way.
So Google is rebooting yet again with Allo, a mobile-only messaging app that leverages the company’s biggest strengths in an effort to stand out from the pack. That strength is the vast amount of knowledge Google has about you and the world around you. It shows up in the app via the Google Assistant, a conversational chatbot that provides you and your friends with contextual info based on your chat history. The bot will show up across multiple Google products, including Google Home, but this is our first look at it in action.
It’s an outgrowth of what Google’s been doing for a long time with the Knowledge Graph and the info it serves you in things like Google Now, and that really is something no other app can do. I’ve been playing with Allo for about a week to see just how much the app can do — and where it still falls flat.
Getting set up is a simple affair: Once the app is installed, you create a profile linked to your phone number and Google account. From there, you’ll be able to see who in your phone’s contact list is using Allo to initiate a chat; you can also invite friends who don’t have the app to give it a shot. Then you can start a one-on-one chat, a group chat, an encrypted “incognito chat” or talk directly to the Google Assistant.
The Assistant is what really sets Allo apart from other chat apps, and it can provide you with a host of info depending on whether you’re in a private chat with it or bringing it into a conversation with other human beings. Probably the best way to sum up the Assistant is that it lets you bring info from around the internet right into your conversations without having to jump back and forth between apps.
If you’re planning dinner, for example, you can ask it to show you nearby Indian restaurants, and then tap on a specific result to get more details. Results from the Google Assistant typically have “chips” below them to prompt you to continue getting more info; you can pull up a map, call the location, see pictures inside and more with one tap. And because it understands natural language, you can follow up your query about Indian restaurants by saying “What about Chinese?” and it’ll know you’re interested in food, not the language.
This can be genuinely useful — it’s easy to share things like flight status, local weather and nearby points of interest with groups of people just by asking Google. And there’s lots of silly fun to be had as well. Google built in some games like “emoji movies,” where you have to guess the name of a film based on a series of emojis. You can also have it pull up pictures and GIFs from Google images, so it’s pretty easy to drop cute cat pictures to your group on the fly.
The downside to the Google Assistant is that it doesn’t quite live up to the promise of letting you do everything in the app, through the bot. Many times, tapping on various items will bounce you out to your browser, and while I can look up a bunch of restaurants with my friends, I can’t actually book one through OpenTable right in the app, for example. The Assistant doesn’t yet work with third-party services, so I can’t say “get us a table for four at 8PM.” That’ll come down the line, though.
When it can’t complete a task itself, you get bounced out to the web. Sometimes that makes sense — seeing a restaurant’s full menu is better in a browser than in a chat app, and getting directions to a location is a lot better in the proper Google Maps app. But the experience occasionally felt a bit more disjointed than I’d like. Google says the Assistant is considered only a “preview” right now, so it should become smarter and better integrated in time.
Chatting directly with the Google Assistant (rather than interacting with it in a chat with other humans) opens up more functionality. For the sake of privacy, it can do certain things only in private chat — you can ask it to get you directions to work, show you emails from yesterday, pull up your calendar agenda and more things based on your personal Google account. You can even have it pull images from Google Photos using natural language like “show me my pictures of dogs.”
The app also lets you set reminders and alarms as well as sign up for recurring “subscriptions.” You can search for a particular news item (I tried “Red Sox news”) and it’ll pop up every day at the time you specify. This is all well and good, but I don’t think a chatbot is the best place for a lot of these interactions. In fact, in a lot of cases, it’s easier to just say “OK Google” and ask your Android phone for this sort of help or info. Siri also does a lot of this on the iPhone at this point, as does the Google iOS app. Don’t get me wrong, the Google Assistant can be quite knowledgeable and useful, but in a lot of ways it’s just replicating things you can already do in Google search.
Beyond the Assistant, Allo has the messaging basics covered, but there are few surprises here. You can tap and hold the “send” button and then scroll up and down to increase or decrease the size of text — Google calls this “yelling” or “whispering.” It’s quite similar to the “loud” and “gentle” settings Apple added to iMessage in iOS 10, if you’ve checked that out. Google has also added in the “smart reply” feature that originated in Inbox. It’ll analyze the content of your chats or photos and offer suggestions. I found it to be pretty hit-or-miss; it’s handy to have it offer up a quick yes or no reply, but deeper replies don’t usually work out terribly well.
Naturally, Allo also has stickers; there are 29 different sets you can download, for starters, some of which are animated. They’re nice, and Google notes the name of the artist who created each set, but they’re not wildly different from what’s out there already. And as of yet, there isn’t a way to add more third-party options.
You can share your location or photos in Allo, but I ran into one surprising omission during my testing: On Android, you can’t see content from Google Photos and add them to a chat — you can access only images you’ve shot directly on your phone or downloaded to storage. There are work-arounds — you can go to Google Photos directly and share a photo to Allo from there — but it still seems like a strange omission. On Android, you can add text to photos and draw on top of them (a la Snapchat), a feature that’ll be coming to iOS down the line.
Allo also offers end-to-end encryption in “incognito” chats. The Google Assistant isn’t allowed here, and the participants in the chat can decide how long they want the messages to stick around for. You can set the chat expiration time as long as a week or as short as five seconds (you can also make it so messages don’t disappear). Most users probably won’t bother with this feature, but apps like Telegram made highly secure chat a feature of note, so it makes sense to see it pop up here.
Overall, there’s not a lot to make Allo stand out from the competition beyond the Google Assistant. And unfortunately, the Assistant feels a bit like it’s under construction, still. The breadth of information that Google has access to, both about a user as well as the world around him, is stunning, and it’s great to tap into. But Google has already given us a plethora of ways to do that; Allo is just another. The difference is that Allo makes it easy to bring that data into a conversation with other humans.
That’s the killer feature. But it’s not a simple one to explain, and it’s not something that becomes immediately useful. Some co-workers and I goofed around with Allo for several days, but the Assistant never elevated itself to a must-have feature. It was fun to show off and experiment with, but it didn’t feel like enough to keep any of us conversing in the app over the many other options we already have available to us. I’d like to keep giving it a shot, because it feels like it could be useful under the right circumstances. The trick is getting your friends to use it long enough for those situations to arise.
Control this smart candle’s real flame with your smartphone
Do you like the thought of smart lighting, but think that LED bulbs are a little too modern? No? Well, LuDela has a compromise regardless. It’s introducing a namesake smart candle that has you controlling honest-to-goodness fire with a smartphone app — the company is even cheeky enough to refer to the wireless pairing as “Wi-Fire” (yes, really). You can light or extinguish the flames of multiple candles at once, complete with scene modes that can get just the right look for that special dinner. There’s even a safety measure that automatically extinguishes the candle if it’s in danger of tipping over.
The LuDela is available for pre-order at $99, or $50 less than the price it should carry when it ships in early 2017. That’s not a completely outlandish price (we’ve seen far less charming smart lights that cost more), although it’s high enough that it might give you reason for pause. Do you really want to recharge your candles’ batteries every 5 to 6 months, on top of replacing the wax candles inside? It’s wonderful that technology allows control over one of the oldest forms of artificial lighting, but this may be proof that companies are pushing a little too hard in their quest to connect absolutely everything in your home.
Source: LuDela, BusinessWire
Netflix aims to fill half its catalogue with original shows
Netflix would have launched up to 600 hours of original programming by the end of 2016, but that’s apparently nowhere near enough the company’s goal. According David Wells, its CFO, Netflix wants to fill 50 percent of its library with original shows and movies within the next few years. Seeing as the streaming service has such an expansive catalogue, ensuring half of its offerings in the US is made up of originals will be huge undertaking.
The company is around a third to halfway there, and it knows that on its way towards achieving that goal, not every original will be a huge hit like Stranger Things. “We don’t necessarily have to have home runs,” Wells said. “We can also live with singles, doubles and triples especially commensurate with their cost.”
Wells also reiterated what the company admitted in the past: it recently raised prices to fund its original projects, though that ended up affecting its user growth. However, he also noted that 33 to 50 percent of ex-subscribers eventually cave in and resubscribe. It’s unclear if the company is also looking to release as much originals internationally, but it aims to offer 20 percent local programming in countries outside the US.
Source: Variety
Google’s Android search may drop the ‘Now on Tap’ name
Google signaled that its Google Now branding was on the way out when it unveiled Assistant in May, and it now looks like the company is determined to erase whatever traces were left. The team at 9to5Google has discovered that Google’s latest search app beta kicks the Now naming scheme to the curb. Now on Tap is just “screen search,” while Now cards are your “feed.”
The only significant addition in the beta at this point is the option of creating a shortcut for searching within your apps.
Yes, it would just be a name change (assuming Google doesn’t reverse course before the final release). However, it’d both influence the way Google talks about Android and reflect its overall strategy. Google Assistant and the search box are the real stars of the show — those additional features are just icing on the cake.
Source: 9to5Google
Fizzics’ new beer system is cheaper, smaller and easier to use
When we first tasted beers from Fizzics’ countertop “draught” system last summer, we weren’t expecting the device to live up to its lofty claims. The company promises to turn your bottles and cans into an on-tap experience with a little help from its so-called Micro-Foam bubbles. Aside from imparting a creamier mouthfeel and punching up some aromas, changes in flavor were relatively modest. However, it did make cheap beers noticeably better. For the second version of its “draught” setup, Fizzics is focusing more on user experience than improving the tech itself.
The new device is called Waytap and it still uses those Micro-Foam bubbles as a means of “unlocking that fresh-from-the-tap taste.” This time around, the company teamed up with Frog Design to retool the look and user experience of the new system. The end result is a smaller gadget that looks a lot more like something that would serve beer. A new design allows the user to remove the top with the push of a button to put a bottle or can into place. There’s still a removable drip tray just in case you spill, but the tap handle mechanism sports a more traditional look that the previous version. The Waytap has a design that you would actually want to keep on your counter all the time.
On top of the redesign and cutting the overall size by a third, the new Fizzics system is also $30 cheaper. The Waytap will retail for $130 when it ships in December, but those willing to back the company’s Kickstarter campaign can nab one for as little as $90. It comes in black and white color options so hopefully one of those will look okay sitting on your kitchen counter.
Source: Kickstarter
Polaroid’s digital camera with inkless printing ships in October
Despite recent experiments with photography apps and, uh, smart TVs, Polaroid is still making new cameras that print physical photos on the spot. To build on the success of its inkless instamatic Snap released last year, the company premiered the Touch at CES 2016, an upgraded version that adds a touchscreen and Bluetooth sensor. If that hybrid machine sounds right up your alley, Polaroid is now accepting preorders on its website to ship out sometime in October.
While it’s a bit more expensive at $180 than the original Snap’s $100 pricetag, the Touch has a few tricks besides the obvious virtue of seeing your photos on its touchscreen before printing. Load up its dedicated app on a smartphone or device and you can send images over Bluetooth to the camera, which can then pump out physical copies. Of course, you can only use Polaroid’s proprietary ZINK inkless paper, which starts at $10 a pack, but such is the price of hybrid cameras-cum-printers.
Source: Polaroid
Samsung now has 500,000 new Note 7s in the U.S. waiting to be exchanged
Last week, coinciding with the official U.S. CPSC recall, Samsung claimed it would have replacement Note 7s available by Sept 21.
Samsung now says that a whopping 500,000 brand new Note 7s have arrived in the U.S. and have been distributed to various carriers and retailers, ready to be swapped out for the recalled phones that are still out in the wild. Getting beyond what must have been a logistical nightmare of distributing the phones, this should relieve some of the frustration Note 7 owners have been experiencing trying to exchange their phone only to be greeted by a lack of available new stock.
Samsung naturally reiterated its commitment to get every Note 7 swapped out for a new one:
Working hand in hand with the CPSC, we are delivering as promised and moving quickly to educate consumers about the recall and make new Note7s available. New devices will be in stores no later than tomorrow and we will continue to take the necessary actions to ensure users are powering down and immediately exchanging recalled devices.
Along with this announcement of new stock Samsung also reiterated that software updates will be arriving on these new phones that will give visual indicators that they are of the “safe” batch sent out after September 15. With the latest software, new Note 7s will have a green battery icon in the status bar and in the power-off screen. This is in addition to the physical “black square” marking on the outside of the Note 7’s box.
Samsung is still some 300,000 phones short of replacing every recalled Note 7 in the U.S.
Even with 500,000 new phones available in the U.S., that’s unfortunately not enough to cover the remaining recalled phones that are currently out there. As of the official recall date less than 200,000 phones had been turned in. Even if every single new Note 7 was used in an exchange, that leaves Samsung some 300,000 phones short of the 1 million that were recalled in the U.S.
But this is a great start, and in all reality by the time this stock of 500,000 new phones is cycled through Samsung will likely have hundreds of thousands more phones available. Only once every single recalled Note 7 has been replaced can Samsung hope to get back to anything approximating “normal” sales of the new phones.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 recall: Everything you need to know
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
- Here are all four Note 7 colors
- Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
Press release:
Samsung Galaxy Note7 U.S. Voluntary Recall Update
Samsung Will Begin Note7 Exchanges Nationwide No Later Than September 21, 2016
RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J. – SEPTEMBER 20, 2016 – Samsung Electronics America, Inc. today announced that over 500,000 new Galaxy Note7 replacement devices have arrived in the U.S. and have been shipped to carrier and retail stores. New Galaxy Note7 devices will be available for exchange at retail locations nationwide tomorrow.
Software Update to Easily Identify New Galaxy Note7 Devices
Samsung also announced the rollout of a software update for new Note7 devices.
The software updates are being delivered in partnership with Carriers and will display a green battery icon on the status bar found on the top right hand of the screen. The green icon indicates that consumers have a new Galaxy Note7 with an unaffected battery.
Samsung and the U.S. CPSC have and continue to urge all consumers of Note7s sold prior to September 15 to power down their device. For those not heeding that advice or are still not aware of the recall notice, a software update will be pushed to all recalled devices. Once installed, users will be prompted with a safety notice that urges owners to power down and exchange their recalled device. The notice will appear every time a user powers up or charges their device.
For details on the software update visit http://www.samsung.com/us/note7recall.
“Working hand in hand with the CPSC, we are delivering as promised and moving quickly to educate consumers about the recall and make new Note7s available,” says Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America. “New devices will be in stores no later than tomorrow and we will continue to take the necessary actions to ensure users are powering down and immediately exchanging recalled devices.”
In conjunction with the CPSC, carriers and retailers, Samsung continues to maximize its reach to Note7 owners through multiple touchpoints, including direct communications, customer service, social media, marketing and in-store communications.
Consumers are encouraged to visit samsung.com/us/note7recall for carrier and retailer specific instructions on how and where to exchange their Note7 device.
AIVAnet 