Anki Cozmo Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET
It wakes up and blinks its eyes. It crawls over on its cute caterpillar-tread wheels. The blue LED display looks like it’s looking at me. The head lifts, and it pauses, blinks and then seems excited.
“Scott,” it says. It knows me. Sort of.
The Anki Cozmo doesn’t say anything else, just musical beeps and blips. It’s a robot toy available for the holidays, and also a project of sorts. According to Anki, the company making the Cozmo, it’s an animated character brought to life in a robot. I’d describe it best as a semi-aware robot with a budding personality. And what’s most fascinating to me is I’m falling for its cuteness…and so are my kids.
Unlike some other STEM-friendly robot kits, the Cozmo isn’t a thing you build or program (yet). It’s more of an AI work in progress and a demonstration of personality. And it’s definitely a toy you can play games with. I tried one out for a week. I don’t know if I’d run out and buy one, but it has serious charm.
The Cozmo’s face is an expressive little LED screen, like a computer monitor.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Phone-connected robot
The Cozmo has some surprising tricks that seem impossible for a thing its size, and that’s because it’s using a Wi-Fi connection to a phone to aid its computer vision (object-recognizing camera) and behavior. The phone acts as a processor for the robot, but no internet connection is needed. The Cozmo won’t work, however, unless it’s paired to a phone. It’s a definite phone “app-cessory” toy, more than a true stand-alone robot. Once it’s paired, the Cozmo runs for about an hour before needing to recharge and snooze on its cradle.
Three cubes that come included are connected to the Cozmo and covered in readable codes. They blink in multiple colors, too. The Cozmo can find, stack, topple and play with the cubes, and a few games use them. One, a pattern-matching reflex contest, pits people against the Cozmo to tap a block if the colored lights match. At first, I beat it easily. Later on, I realized it was toying with me.
Unlocking some skills in the Cozmo app while it sleeps in its charging dock.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Another game involves bringing a block up to the Cozmo, teasing it and waiting for it to pounce, then trying to pull the block away before it can tap it.
The Cozmo mainly drives around, avoids objects, looks for its cubes (or, people it recognizes via its camera), and sometimes pings people via the app that it wants to play a game. Every day the Cozmo app has challenges to accomplish, earning points that unlock other tricks and future features.
It likes lifting its little blocks.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Independently minded for the moment
The Cozmo feels like Pixar’s Wall-E, or any of the robot creatures Wall-E encountered. It’s like a speedy mini-forklift, with BB-8’s quirky mood shifts. And the version I tried, with a prerelease build of its app software, had plenty of quirks. Sometimes it disconnected from my phone; other times, it didn’t do the block-lifting or toppling tricks I asked it to do.
The future could lie in programming. Anki is opening up the Cozmo to Python programmers via an SDK later this year, and from there the company has plans to offer child-friendly block-based programming, much like Sphero and other robot kits offer. You can’t program the Cozmo to do things right now, which sometimes feels frustrating. But you can unlock a remote-control mode, where the phone can drive the Cozmo around and see out of its camera-eyes. In fact, when I tilted the Cozmo’s head up at me, I saw it draw a square around my face…and above it, it said “SCOTT.”
It has some tricks that make it feel like a perky cat: it can follow motion and pounce on my fingers with its lifter arms, gently. Anki decided on a smaller size for the Cozmo because it can move faster, and also be less dangerous when it makes sudden moves.
The Cozmo recognizes me, thanks to facial recognition in its built-in camera.
Sarah Tew/CNET
A future of robots?
How far can the Cozmo go towards being a true AI companion? Could I have a conversation with it someday? Right now it’s an expensive toy ($180, which is about £150 or AU$235) with aspirations of more. I need to see more features and skills before I’d buy one. But it’s the most expressive little robot critter I’ve ever played with, and that alone could be the accomplishment.
Larger robots, like Softbank’s Pepper, are working on similar challenges: how to be friendly versus creepy, “alive” versus mechanical, giving a sensation of personality via animation tricks and tools. The Cozmo feels like another step towards trying to decipher what it means to be a “social” robot.
Would I get my kid a Cozmo? I don’t think so, not yet. The Anki Overdrive, last year’s successful AI-powered car-racing kit, was a little easier to digest as a toy. The Cozmo is more complicated. I thought it would do more than it currently can. But on the other hand, it’s already pretty impressive for the few things it does.
Amazon to stream Ghibli-produced ‘Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter’
Amazon’s children’s video offerings are expanding once again. This time it’s with an animated version of Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter. That name might sound familiar if you were assigned a book report in 5th grade for Astrid Lindgren month but didn’t want to read Pippi Longstocking. The details of the show’s production are a little convoluted, so bear with me. It’s directed by Goro Miyazaki and hasn’t made it outside of Japan and the Scandanavian region. Goro is the son of famed Studio Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki (Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle), and Studio Ghibli co-produced this project. That version came out back in 2014.
What Amazon will stream is an English dub spanning 26 episodes, narrated by everyone’s favorite FBI agent, Gillian Anderson. She has a bit of history with Ghibli as she did the voice for Moro in the Princess Mononoke dub, which was handled by Disney. So, the chances of this being a solid version with western voice-overs are probably pretty high. But, again, it’s important to note that this isn’t a full-on Amazon Original. With Studio Ghibli on hiatus, this might be the last bit of the team’s work, so make the most of it.
For those with little kids (and who aren’t just young at heart themselves), Amazon has also ordered Little Big Awesome which features flying sea turtles and “a jelly giant.” That hails from Ben Gruber of Spongebob Squarepants and Super Jail fame, and is being animated by the house of Metalocalypse, Titmouse Inc. It probably won’t be brutal, but we can always hope for a William Murderface Easter egg, can’t we?
Source: Amazon
Forget holograms, here’s a ‘floating e-ink’ display
The amount of pixels in a display has been the source of forum flamewars since the advent of HDTV, which makes an experimental display technology from the University of Sussex so interesting. It’s called JOLED and it measures a whopping 7 x 6 voxels high and wide, respectively. Hold on, it gets more interesting. Each voxel is a diminutive multi-colored sphere, and they’re suspended in mid-air by an array of ultrasound speakers that “create high-pitched and high-intensity soundwaves that are inaudible but forceful enough to hold the spheres in place,” according to the school.
That holds the JANUS objects in place, but to make them spin and show different colors at different times is something else entirely. What seems to be the key to the rotation is that the spheres are coated with titanium dioxide — also used to purify air when mixed with concrete — which, when a exposed to an electrical field causes them to rotate.
“JOLED could be like having a floating e-ink display that can also change its shape,” researcher Deepak Sahoo said in a canned press release quote.
Maybe don’t expect to have these sitting on your desk, though. The school suggest that it could wind up like many of Disney Research’s projects and be used in commercial or tourism settings. Some examples? Showing the changing patterns of carbon footprints or changes in currency conversion rates. So, don’t expect to watch Luke Cage on one of these in HDR anytime soon is what I’m saying.
“We also want to examine ways in which such a display could be used to deliver media on-demand,” University of Sussex’s Sriram Subramanian said. “A screen appears in front of the user to show the media and then the objects forming the display fall to the ground when the video finishes playing.”
The scientists hope to increase the pixel density as well as the amount of colors displayed (sound familiar?), and will be presenting their research next week at Japan’s ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: University of Sussex
These 10 widgets belong on your iPhone’s lock screen – CNET
With iOS 10, Apple redesigned the lock screen and got rid of the slide-to-unlock gesture. Now, instead of unlocking your phone, swiping right takes you to the Today view where you can glance at and interact with widgets. You can also access these same widgets on an unlocked phone by swiping right on your home screen, but they are most useful for performing quick checks and actions without unlocking your phone.
Along with many of Apple’s stock apps, third-party apps are allowed widgets on the lock screen. Options abound; I tried many. After roughly a month with iOS 10, here are the 10 widgets that currently occupy a spot on my iPhone.
1. Launcher
The Launcher widget provides the quickest way for me to call home, text my wife, FaceTime David Lee Roth and view Instagram. The free version of Launcher lets you program up to seven actions, from launching apps to calling or texting or FaceTiming specific contacts.
2. Fantastical 2
Fantastical 2 is a superior calendar to Apple’s stock calendar app, and its widget is superior to the stock calendar app’s widget. The Fantastical 2 widget shows you how many minutes remain until your next calendar appointment, and when you tap to expand the widget, it displays the current month where you can view any day’s appointments. It also integrates reminders from the stock Reminders app if you want to combine your calendaring and tasks.
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Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
3. Todoist
I like to keep my calendar and reminders separate. The stock Reminders app has a lock-screen widget, but it shows only reminders set to remind you at a certain time; items without alarms set do not show up. The Todoist widget shows you all of your reminders for the current day. You can mark items as complete and add new tasks with the widget.
4. BeWeather
The stock Weather app’s widget shows the current conditions along with the expected high and low temperatures for the day, while the expanded view shows the hourly forecast for the next few hours. That’s more than the surprisingly lackluster widget for Storm, which had been my go-to weather app. I want more from my weather widget and turned to BeWeather because its widget lets you customize the information it displays, including current conditions, hourly forecast, daily forecast and text forecast.
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Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
5. Shazam
Shazam remains my all-time favorite iOS app. If you told me 20 years ago that such a thing existed — that my cell phone would magically tell me the name and artist of any song I hear — I would flipped my phone shut and quickly walked away from such an insane-sounding person. With the Shazam widget, I can quickly get it to start listening and tell me what it is I’m listening to before the song ends.
6. Batteries
I use the sadly discontinued Jawbone JamboxBluetooth speaker to listen to music in my home. My kids use it, too, so the speaker moves around my house and is rarely plugged in. Half the time, I don’t know where it is. And I never know how much battery life it has left, which is why I love the stock Batteries widget that shows me how much juice my Jambox has left. It also shows me the battery life remaining on my Apple Watch. And the widget smartly disappears when my Bluetooth devices are off or out of range.
7. ESPN
My wife jokes that I can turn on the TV, turn on any game of any sport and have some sort of vested interest. And I don’t bet on sports! The ESPN widget gives me quick access to the scores (or the time and spread of their next game when they aren’t playing) of the favorite teams I selected in the ESPN app along with any notable games of the day.
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Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
8. Timeglass
When I’m not blogging or watching sports, I can be found in the kitchen. I like to cook, and the Timeglass widget lets me monitor multiple timers so I can keep track of what’s in the oven, what’s on the stove and what I have outside on the Weber grill. The free app gives you up to three timers, which is the maximum number of timers I need on any given night.
9. Dropbox
The Dropbox app received a recent update that improved its widget. Now, in addition to showing the four most recently added files, the widget has three helpful buttons: Scan Document, Upload Photo and Create File. I don’t think I’ve touched the Dropbox app itself since the widget added these buttons, and I use Dropbox daily to shuttle files around.
10. DataMan
I keep DataMan at the bottom of my widgets to keep an eye at the end of my billing cycle where I stand toward my monthly 4GB data limit.
Have you come to embrace iOS 10’s lock-screen widgets? If so, let me know what your favorite widgets are in the comments below. And if not, learn how to use the new iOS 10 lock screen.
The $400 Android phone showdown!
Today’s flagship smartphones are so bombastic and feature-packed, it’s easy to forget that many cost upwards of $700. As I was recently reminded when a certain company announced pricing for a certain device I was planning to buy, that’s an awful lot of money. In 2016, you can get a lot of smartphone for less than half that – and the proof has been sitting in MrMobile’s studio for several months.
Join me as I take today’s top $400 Android smartphones for a test drive! From the strange innovation of Alcatel’s IDOL 4S to the build quality of ZTE’s Axon 7 to the sheer beauty of Huawei’s Honor 8, we’ll see what each phone brings to the table … and where each falls short. You may come away with some new additions to your holiday shopping list, or at least a revived appreciation for your $700 flagship.
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Salesforce CEO says no to Twitter bid
It’s official. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Financial Times that it will not be bidding on Twitter. On news that the CRM company was pulling out of the running, the social network’s stocks tumbled six percent.
During an Interview with FT, Benioff said, “in this case we’ve walked away. It wasn’t the right fit for us.” Salesforce was the last big name in the running to bid on Twitter. Google and Disney had already removed themselves from potentially buying the company.
Earlier this month Reuters reported that Twitter was pushing to have a sale decision by October 27th. An incredibly aggressive plan for any company, especially one that’s seen user growth nearly flatline and struggles to make a profit. Meanwhile, not everyone inside the blue bird is happy about a potential sale.
Internally, there’s a split over staying independent versus seeking a new owner. According to Bloomberg, CEO Jack Dorsey prefers for Twitter to keep plugging along on its own. Meanwhile co-founder and board member Ev Williams believes an acquisition would be ideal.
We have reached out to Twitter for comment on Benioff’s statements. It had not replied to our query as of the publication of this article.
Source: Financial Times
Yahoo revived email forwarding so you can finally leave
After Yahoo disabled automatic mail forwarding earlier this week, the internet company has flipped the feature back on for all users. The company told Engadget that the move was part of “previously planned maintenance to improve its functionality between a user’s various accounts” when it was turned off on Monday. In a blog post announcing the feature had returned, Yahoo apologized for the interruption users experienced over the last few days.
The company also recommends users connect any Yahoo accounts directly to their email client or provider of choice rather than relying on automatic forwarding to keep everything in one place. It also offered a reminder that it has multiple mailbox support for those who might be interested.
The last few weeks have been rough on the former internet giant. In September, Yahoo confirmed a 2014 security breach that affected 500 million users two months after Verizon announced a deal to buy the company. According to reports this week, that deal may very well be in jeopardy. Reports also surfaced this month that Yahoo gave the US government access to all of its users’ incoming email last year, allowing authorities to scan “hundreds of millions” accounts in compliance with a classified request. Even though the company says disabling forwarding as part of previously scheduled upgrades, the timing certainly seems interesting.
Source: Yahoo
White House encourages local governments to embrace chatbots
The Obama Administration receives thousands of emails, phone calls and letters every day. And, since August, American citizens have been able to contact the president through Facebook as well, thanks the the White House’s Messenger bot. Now, the administration is going a step forward and releasing the bot’s source code onto the internet for anyone to use.
This is done “with the hope that other governments and developers can build similar services…with significantly less upfront investment,” according to the White House Blog. Anyone who’s familiar with the Drupal 8 coding language will be able to take the administration’s boilerplate code and easily launch a bot of their own. Hopefully this will spur state and local governments to create their own Messenger bots and become just that little bit more accessible to the people that put them in office.
Source: WhiteHouse.gov
Germany urges Tesla owners to use extreme caution with Autopilot
Tesla’s “Autopilot” feature (a driver assistance tool rather than something that truly lets the car drive itself) has come under fire in recent months. Earlier this year, a car using Autopilot was involved in a fatal accident, causing a host of investigations into the safety of Tesla’s feature. Among the institutions concerned with the feature is the country of Germany — last week, Germany’s transportation ministry said the Model S Autopilot was a “considerable traffic hazard.” Now, Reuters reports that the country is reaching out directly to Tesla drivers, asking them to use caution.
The letter sent out reminds owners that Autopilot is strictly a driver assistance feature and still requires the driver’s full, undivided attention. That’s how Tesla says it describes the feature, but there’s concern that drivers aren’t staying completely alert while using Autopilot.
The fatal crash, which took place in May, isn’t the only Autopilot-related incident — a second, non-fatal accident took place in July, but it’s not clear yet that Autopilot was at fault. Another crash took place in China in August, and the cumulative effect of these incidents has led to questioning on how exactly the company messages Autopilot to its customers. Indeed, the name itself makes it sound as if the car can drive itself — but that is definitively not the case.
Source: Reuters
Samsung introduces a gilded, more powerful Galaxy TabPro S
While your smartphone is headed back to meet its maker, Samsung is rolling out a flashier Gold Edition of its already svelte Galaxy TabPro S tablet. It’s been less than a year since the PC replacement debuted, and Samsung is already jumping on the gold finish trend and bumping up the specs with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB solid state hard drive and a battery that should be good for 10.5 hours of video playback.
Aside from the RAM boost and that gold finish on the magnesium alloy body, there’s not much else new here. You’re still getting the same 12-inch Super AMOLED Full HD display, a 2.2 Ghz Intel M3 processor, and five-megapixel front- and rear-facing cameras as the earlier model. The Gold Edition TabPro S still clocks in at an airy 1.53 pounds without the keyboard, and you still get one USB-A for peripherals and one USB-C port for charging. There is one other difference though: the whole package will set you back a cool $999.99 when it goes on sale at Best Buy and Samsung.com today. On the other hand, if you’re not a fan of the gold look — or can get by with half the RAM and half the storage — the earlier model is currently going for $799.99 on Samsung’s site.
Source: Samsung News
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