Play ‘Star Wars Battlefront’ on PSVR December 6th
Electronic Arts teased out its Star Wars Battlefront VR experience way back in March, and now we know when it’s actually exiting hyperspace. Come December 6th, you’ll be able to strap on your PlayStation VR headset, jump into a virtual X-Wing cockpit and hopefully destroy the Death Star. Remember, this will be a free download for anyone who owns Battlefront.
And because today marks the game’s first birthday, EA has seen fit to drop a glut of details about the latest, and final, map pack, Rogue One: Scarif — also out on December 6th. As the name suggests, it brings in a quartet of maps from the upcoming movie, two new heroes (Jyn Erso and Orson Krennic) and a new “multi-stage game mode with space and ground combat.” Sounds just a bit like the Battle Station mode from the recent Death Star pack, if you ask me.
Speaking of which, starting today and running through the 20th, you can play the previously released Bespin, Death Star and Outer Rim packs for free, and earn four times the experience you usually would. That is, if you can pull yourself away from the free Overwatch weekend taking place starting tomorrow, too. Decisions, decisions.
Source: EA Star Wars
Even more iPhone 8 evidence hints it’ll be ‘all glass’ with OLED screen
The next iPhone is going to be slick as heck.
The iPhone 7 is only a couple months old, but already we’re seeing tonnes of iPhone 8 rumours, including several mentions that the next iPhone, which is only thought to be called iPhone 8, will launch with an OLED display. The phone is expected to release on the iPhone’s tenth anniversary, and it’s rumoured to get a complete overhaul. Bloomberg is the latest news outlet to claim the iPhone 8 will have an “all-glass design”.
- iPhone 8 will come with curved bezel-less screen
The report noted OLED screens are more difficult to produce, so Apple may limit this fancy display to just one version of the next-generation iPhone (the company is supposedly going to unleash three versions next year). Keep in mind Apple was also largely rumoured to be making an iPhone with a sapphire crystal display, but that never happened. Still, Bloomberg said an OLED iPhone is coming with an edge-to-edge design.
The phone might also have a virtual home button, rather than a physical one. Check out Pocket-lint’s round-up of other iPhone 8 rumours.
Get the low-down on game development’s hottest tools with the Pay What You Want: 2017 Master Game Development Bundle
Not all of us had the chance to study programming in school, but that doesn’t mean a career in game development is beyond our reach.
With the Pay What You Want: 2017 Master Game Development Bundle, you can master the tools used to build today’s most popular games, and you won’t need to take out a student loan to start.
Here’s how the bundle works: just pay what you want, and you’ll instantly unlock the last two of the bundle’s ten courses. If you manage to beat the average price paid, you’ll unlock the remaining eight at no extra charge!
The Pay What You Want: 2017 Master Game Development Bundle includes the following ten courses:
- Learn 3D Game Development and Programming with Unity
- Unity Android Game Development With Game Art and Monetization
- The Complete Real-Time Web and Game Development Course
- Advanced Game Development with Phaser
- Unreal Engine 4: The Complete Beginner’s Course
- The Complete iOS Game Course Using SpriteKit and Swift 3
- Player vs. Player tvOS Games
- Unity In App Purchase Complete Course
- Learn Easy HTML5 Game Development in Construct 2
- Java Game Development: Create a Flappy Bird Clone
Boasting a whopping 77 hours of course content, this collection will show you how to use tools like Unity, Java, and Unreal Engine 4 to build your own games from the ground up. The training doesn’t stop there either. Once you build your games, you’ll discover the best ways to monetize them and bring in some extra revenue when you publish them to the marketplace.
The Pay What You Want: 2017 Master Game Development Bundle includes over £800 worth of training, but you can unlock it all for a price you pick.
Accelerate your YouTube channel’s growth with TubeBuddy (93 per cent off)
When it comes to succeeding on YouTube, putting out great content is only part of the equation.
To effectively build a following, you’ll need to do some work behind the scenes, and TubeBuddy Pro can help. This YouTube-certified extension is loaded with features to help streamline your uploads and better understand your target audience. For a limited time, Pocket-lint readers can get a lifetime subscription to TubeBuddy Pro on sale for only £28.18 ($34.99 USD).
TubeBuddy Pro cuts down on the time you spend managing your uploads. In just a few clicks, you can easily perform bulk updates, add annotations, and even find/replace videos with ease. TubeBuddy also lets you generate custom thumbnails and gifs to make your videos stand out more.
On top of streamlining your uploads, TubeBuddy Pro comes with a vast array of analytics tools to help you better understand who’s watching your videos and who your competitors are. You can export your list of subscribers and view their social channels for more insights, and TubeBuddy even gives you a detailed analysis of channels you’re competing with.
Plus, TubeBuddy Pro can help add SEO to your videos, allowing you to rank higher on search results. This extension also comes with tools for promoting your channel and optimizing ad revenue.
A lifetime subscription to TubeBuddy Pro would normally cost £402 ($500 USD), but you can sign up now for only £28.18 ($34.99 USD).
For one day only, the FRESHeBUDS’ Pro Magnetic Bluetooth Earbuds are at their lowest price ever (75 per cent off)
You shouldn’t let a little moisture ruin your listening experience.
New and improved, the FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth Earbuds are designed to pump out high-quality audio while shrugging off sweat and water damage. Now, you can save even more on these sporty headphones thanks to their new price cut. For one day only, we’re dropping the price even further to only £23.83 ($29.95 USD).
Featuring a new magnetic design, these earbuds automatically sync to your phone when you pull them apart, and they power off when you stick them back together. Combine this with their cord-cutting design, and you have a pair of earbuds that are easy to store and deploy on a moment’s notice.
The FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth Earbuds are also equipped with a new battery. Now, they’re proven to last up to 10 hours at a time, and they charge back to 100 per cent in only 90 minutes. What’s more, these earbuds are made with a built-in microphone and call controls. That way, you can adjust the volume and respond to calls without missing a beat.
Whether you need to fuel a workout or just add some music to your daily commute, these headphones will keep the tunes coming rain or shine. The FRESHeBUDS Pro Magnetic Bluetooth Earbuds were on sale for £31.79 ($39.95 USD), but now you can save even more on these earbuds for one day only: they’re just £23.83 ($29.95 USD), or 75 per cent off.
Nexar’s dashcam app is free, but at the cost of your data
We likely aren’t going to get flying cars anytime soon, but we will have self-driving ones. They’ll be packed to the gills with sensors to keep us safe and sound as we Snapchat ourselves cruising down the highway, bellowing along to our favorite Urfaust tracks. But those are a ways off, and the phone in your pocket already has a pretty solid set of sensors in it. Plus, using a device you already own is far more economical than buying a new car. That’s where Nexar’s dashcam app comes in. A $7 mount holds a phone, while the free app uses your gizmo’s onboard accelerometer, cameras and microphone do the rest of the work.
Nexar’s promise is that when enough drivers start using the app, the vehicle-to-vehicle network will alert folks of accidents seconds ahead of time, giving you a larger window for avoiding one yourself. Say, if someone does a hard stop a few cars ahead of you, you’ll get an alert about it. Or if you have an issue, other drivers using the app will get a ping saying what’s up so they have a chance to plan around it. It uses machine learning too, so over time, and with enough users, the app should progressively get better at predictions. This week, New York and San Francisco went online with the service, and it’s available on both Android and iOS.
As Wired notes, however, there’s no such thing as free lunch: Because the Nexar app is constantly using your phone’s camera to survey the road, it’s sending all that data back to its Israel-based servers for analysis. So, the more it’s used, the better the system gets. Opting in to the app means that Nexar has every right to do whatever it wants with your data, including sell it to third parties. Apparently, insurance companies have started tapping into this to offer people rewards for good driving. And though the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says there isn’t a formal agreement in place, Wired says Nexar has agreed to share driving data with the government.
Oh, and the company is even planning to roll out driving scores, assigned by driving habits and tied to license plate numbers, as well. What’s more, there’s no word what the constant video transmission will do to your monthly data cap, either. What’s a little driving data amongst friends, though, right?
Via: Wired
Source: Nexar, Google Play, iTunes
Full Fact wants to automate fact checking to fight fake news
“If we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.” That’s President Obama speaking to the threat of outright fake and inaccurate news. In an effort to combat this, and ensure that people are well-informed, UK charity Full Fact is trying to make fact checking fully automated. So far it’s working on UK-focused stuff like what members of Parliament say during addresses, and claims made by trade groups in addition to print, online and broadcast media organizations, according to TechCrunch. But in the future, it plans to cross the Atlantic.
Full Fact staffers will keep checking a claim even after their initial report publishes, too, will address corrections and retractions from sources as well. The human touch is key, because sometimes analyzing what’s available requires context and judgment, according to project director Will Moy.
“Some types of claims can be handled as easily as spellcheck, including claims that were fact checked by human beings before,” he told TechCrunch. “But some claims will always require human judgment, for example, about what’s a fair and balanced way of expressing things, or what methods of analysis should be applied to answer a question about crime.”
The primary aim is giving journalists the tools needed to see if a statement made on out of date statistics, or patently wrong, but Full Fact wants its tools to help inform the people who read news in addition to writing it as well. The current plan is for mobile and web apps, and to help get there, Google’s Digital News Initiative (GDNI) has contributed some EURO 50,000 ($53,113) to help make that happen. Full Fact says that to guard against conflicts of interest, it’s limiting a single entity from donating more than 15 percent of its total funding.
From GDNI’s donation overview:
“FACTS will be the first fully automated factchecking tool: our original technology will recognise claims in political debates and online media and immediately alert journalists if they are inaccurate. FACTS will give journalists the killer question the moment they need it. It will save time, when journalists have never had less.
It will help stop misinformation spreading through the news. It will help journalism maintain the credibility that audiences demand. Our tool has two modes. One identifies claims we have factchecked before and provides a verdict.
The most innovative mode factchecks claims automatically using statistical analysis—something never done before.”
Source: Google Digital News Initiative, TechCrunch
Sony brings its PlayStation Vue live TV service to new Apple TV
Sony has finally launched a PlayStation Vue app for the new Apple TV.
PlayStation Vue is a new cloud-based TV service. It offers live programming from AMC, Discovery, FX, ESPN, and other channels without a cable or satellite subscription. It is therefore an ideal service for cord-cutters, a growing group of people who prefer to cancel or forgo a cable or satellite subscription in favour of an alternative internet or cloud-based service. Sling TV, for instance, is another alternative service aimed at cord-cutters.
Starting 17 November, PlayStation Vue will be supported on the fourth-generation Apple TV. Sony in a blog post said you will be able to “take advantage of Apple TV’s Siri Remote and easy navigation with touch, while enjoying PlayStation Vue’s sleek look and feel”. PlayStation Vue allows customers to stream on up to 5 devices simultaneously. Plan pricing starts at $29 or $39 per month depending on your market/region.
- What is Sony PlayStation Vue and where is it available?
The service launched over two years ago in the US for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles, but it’s now available on several different devices and set-top boxes. You can’t sign up for Vue on the Apple TV. Instead, you must go to http://www.psvue.com/plans via a web browser.
The service also offers a free trial.
Volvo’s new concierge service lets you remotely fuel and move your car
Volvo has created a luxe concierge service for its customers.
What does that mean? Well, it’s like an ecosystem aimed at giving Volvo drivers access to third-party service providers. With it, you can remotely fuel your car, wash your car, service your car, etc. It’s called Volvo Concierge Services, and it’s based around a digital key. This one-time-use digital key, which is location and time-specific, allows the service providers to enter and use your vehicle.
The service provider, whether it’s a refueling company or valet, uses an app to remotely unlock the car and turn on the engine. The idea is that you won’t have to hand off your car keys, and your car will be kept secure while it’s getting serviced. Volvo said in a press release that it’s new service, which is starting as a pilot program, is all about convenience and making life less complicated.
Volvo
Only 300 owners of new Volvo XC90 SUVs and S90 sedans will try the pilot at launch. Volva is planning an expansion if the pilot is successful. Research by Volvo has shown that over 70 per cent of customers want “fueling services at their fingertips”, while 56 per cent want their “car picked up for routine maintenance”, and 49 per cent would like their car moved when desired.
The pilot program is now available in the Bay Area.
AT&T customers can now send texts through Amazon Echo’s Alexa
Amazon Echo users in the US just got a cool skill integration from AT&T.
Starting 18 November, AT&T mobile customers will be able to compose and send text messages using Amazon Echo’s Alexa assistant. The integration works with not only the original, canister-sized Echo but also the Echo Tap and Echo Dot.
- Amazon Echo review: It’s all about Alexa
So, no matter where you are in your house, you can ask Alexa to “have AT&T text [contact’s name]”, followed by your message. Alexa can store up to 10 contacts. Keep in mind you first need to enable the skill and add contacts to it. For more information on the AT&T Send Message skill, visit AT&T’s website starting Friday. Normally, to enable a skill, you must use the Alexa app.
AT&T said it’s the first carrier to offer an Alexa skill for SMS. Since the skill is not yet live, it’s unclear if Alexa will read your transcribed message before sending it. But the carrier did specify that “content of texts sent by AT&T are determined by Alexa’s reading of your voice commands”. In other words, you may want to use the old fashion way of sending a text for important messages.
Standard text messaging and data rates will apply when using AT&T’s Send Message skill via Alexa.
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