This is how carbon dioxide moves around the world
NASA likes studying and illustrating the effects carbon dioxide has on our planet. It’s kind of a hobby for the organization. And now the aeronautics association has a new model for how greenhouse gases move through the atmosphere. It’s thanks in part to the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office from the Goddard Space Flight Center, combined with data from from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, chronicling the movement of CO2 from September 2014 through September 2015.
“The visualization showcases information about global carbon dioxide fields that has not been seen before in such detail: The rise and fall of carbon dioxide in the Northern Hemisphere throughout a year; the influence of continents, mountain ranges and ocean currents on weather patterns and therefore carbon dioxide movement; the regional influence of highly active photosynthesis in places like the Corn Belt in the U.S.” the accompanying post from NASA says.
The hope of this model is to study which ecosystems are absorbing carbon dioxide and exchange of it between the atmosphere, land and sea. NASA calls that transfer process “carbon flux” and says that the new data is an “important and necessary step” toward further understanding CO2.
Next up? Adding an intricate biology module that can more accurately look at forests and other land ecosystems and analyze their impact on carbon flux.
Source: NASA
You can now livestream directly from Twitter’s mobile apps
The line between Twitter and its livestreaming service, Periscope, is beginning to fade. Starting today, anyone can broadcast by hitting the compose tweet button inside Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, followed by the “Live” button. Instead of being bounced to the Periscope app, however, you’ll now start start a livestream immediately. The functionality is still “powered by Periscope,” and indeed the experience is mostly the same as before — you write a quick caption before you go live, and then registered users can leave hearts and comments while you stream. Is this a direct reaction to Facebook Live’s growing popularity? Almost certainly.
Periscope as a self-contained service won’t be disappearing anytime soon, however. “Our apps and web player on periscope.tv remain the best place to search and discover Periscope content,” the team said in a blog post. While that may be true, the reasons for downloading and using the Periscope app are now greatly reduced. All but the most diehard Periscope fans will be better served by the Twitter app, streaming from the compose interface and watching the broadcasts that pop up in their feed.
For Twitter, it’s an opportunity to reinforce video and livestreaming as a fundamental part of its service. The company has inked a few broadcasting deals, spanning the NFL, Wimbledon tennis and the US Presidential debates, but much of its value comes from user-submitted contributions. That’s what makes it such a valuable tool for activism, citizen journalism and general public debate. The rise of Facebook Live threatens to erode that utility, while publishers, celebrities and brands hunt for larger audiences. Twitter and Periscope’s fusion was inevitable — the question is how long the company keeps the latter around as a standalone entity.
We all saw what happened to Vine.
Amazon completes its first drone-powered delivery
It’s already been three years since Amazon first revealed its somewhat audacious plan to make deliveries by drone. But the company is quite serious about this, and today it is announcing that it complete the first Amazon Prime Air drone-powered delivery. The company recently launched a trial in Cambridge, England — and on December 7th, Amazon completed its first drone-powered delivery. It took 13 minutes from order to delivery, with the drone departing a custom-built fulfillment center nearby.
Amazon’s video about the project says that it’s only servicing a few customers in the area right now, but will soon be open to dozens more who live within a few miles of the Cambridge fulfillment center. Naturally, this center is custom-built to handle these types of orders — once an order is placed and packaged up, the drone is loaded up and sent out from the facility on a motorized track. From takeoff, it flies at heights up to 400 feet to make the delivery and then return to the facility.
This Cambridge beta program has been in the works for a long time now; recently it was revealed that Amazon has been operating a secret lab in the area to get ready for the launch of Prime Air. Amazon’s page detailing this first delivery notes that the company also has Prime Air labs in the US, Austria and Israel as well as the United Kingdom, so we may hear news about test deliveries in those areas sooner or later as well.
Amazon’s FAQ page answers a few other questions about its drone delivery system. For starters, drones are only allowed to fly during daylight hours when its sunny — rain, snow or icy conditions will ground them. As for how Amazon’s drones will work in airspaces with other vehicles, the company says it believes drones should operate in a separate airspace where only small unmanned vehicles can operate. Amazon says airspace access should be “determined by capability” — the company envisions the low altitude space it is operating in should be reserved exclusively for drones similar to what it plans to deploy.
With only a couple customers able to receive drone deliveries, we’re still a long way out from this becoming a reality. But just a few years ago some thought CEO Jeff Bezos’ plan was just a joke — but it now appears to be a very real part of Amazon’s plans. The company says that “one day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road.” It’s a big goal, but it’s going to be a lot harder to manage drone deliveries in London than it is in the peaceful pastures of Cambridge.
Source: Amazon
AirPods Slip to 4 Week Delivery Estimates for Most Countries
After launching on Apple.com early yesterday with a delivery window somewhere between December 19 and December 22 for most countries, Apple’s new wireless headphones have now slipped to 4 week delivery estimates for most launch countries and territories. Within 90 minutes, shipping windows for Apple’s United States website slipped to 4 weeks yesterday, but most European countries held onto deliveries before Christmas for a while longer, as well as having estimates a few days ahead of U.S. customers.
Now, for most territories in Europe where the AirPods are available shipping dates have lengthened to 4 weeks, including: France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Italy, and more. Elsewhere around the world, Apple.com in Singapore, Japan, and Australia have all had their AirPods shipping estimates slip to 4 weeks into 2017. In total, AirPods are available in more than 100 countries.
When they debuted on Apple.com, the company noted that the first round of AirPods shipments would be available in “limited quantities,” meaning many of its customers missed out on the opportunity to purchase the wireless headphones as Christmas presents. There remains a sliver of hope, however, with Apple noting that its retail stores will receive “regular AirPods shipments,” but it’s not clear which stores specifically, and when they’ll begin getting the shipments. Apple authorized resellers and select carriers will also get some AirPods inventory next week.
Apple has also added a few support pages onto its website centering around how to use the AirPods, adjusting its features, and the device’s various technical specifications.
Tag: AirPods
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Apple TV Universal Search Expands to 10 More Apps, Including Apple Music, TBS, and TNT
Apple TV universal search received a major update today, expanding to 10 new apps in the United States. On the fourth-generation Apple TV, users can now search for movies and TV shows on Apple Music, Animal Planet GO, Crunchyroll, CuriosityStream, Investigation Discovery GO, Science Channel GO, TBS, TNT, TLC GO, and Tribeca Shortlist.
For those unfamiliar with universal search, it’s a feature that allows users to conduct Siri voice searches or text-based searches to find TV and movie content across a wide range of channels. At launch, universal search only supported a few channels, but Apple has been rapidly expanding the feature to encompass additional channels.
Apple TV universal search is now available for a wider number of apps in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K., but the feature is limited to iTunes and Netflix in France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. In some other countries and regions, only movies in iTunes are supported.
Meanwhile, in Germany, users can now search for episodes on Galileo.
Related Roundups: Apple TV, tvOS 10
Tag: Apple Music
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Caution)
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How to enable the app drawer on the Huawei Mate 9
By default, all your apps are shown on your home screen on the Huawei Mate 9. But it’s easy to enable a more traditional Android app drawer.
Gone are the days when using a phone with Huawei’s EMUI software meant having to choose between and iOS-like home screen setup — where all your apps are shown on the home screen — and using a custom launcher. The latest EMUI 5 software, included on the Huawei Mate 9, makes it easy to keep your home screen relatively uncluttered, leaving less-used apps in the app drawer.
Enabling this option is easy — in fact, it’s a top-level setting in EMUI 5.
Drag down your Notification shade and hit the cog icon to go to Settings.
Tap Home Screen Style.
Select Drawer.
You’ll then be kicked back to your home screen, complete with your handy new app drawer. (Note that you’ll need to re-arrange things in the new launcher view, as app and widget placements won’t carry over.)
That’s it. Enjoy your new app drawer!
Here are Google’s most popular search terms for 2016
Stranger Things, Pokémon Go, and Donald Trump dominated search in 2016.
Google has rolled out its top searches for 2016, highlighting the people, topics, news, musicians, TV shows, and tech products we searched for the most this year. As you can probably imagine, Niantic’s Pokémon Go led the way for global searches, followed by the iPhone 7, and Donald Trump.
Global
Top searches of 2016
- Pokémon Go
- iPhone 7
- Donald Trump
- Prince
- Powerball
Top people searches of 2016
- Donald Trump
- Hillary Clinton
- Michael Phelps
- Melania Trump
- Simone Biles
Top consumer tech searches of 2016
- iPhone 7
- Freedom 251
- iPhone SE
- iPhone 6S
- Google Pixel
Top TV show searches of 2016
- Stranger Things
- Westworld
- Luke Cage
- Game of Thrones
- Black Mirror
USA
Top searches of 2016
- Powerball
- Prince
- Hurricane Matthew
- Pokeman Go
- Slither.io
Top people searches of 2016
- Donald Trump
- Hillary Clinton
- Michael Phelps
- Bernie Sanders
- Steven Avery
Top consumer tech searches of 2016
- iPhone SE
- iOS 10
- Google Pixel
- iPhone 7 Plus
- Nintendo Switch
Top TV show searches of 2016
- Stranger Things
- Making a Murderer
- Fuller House
- Westworld
- The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
Canada
Top searches of 2016
- Donald Trump
- Pokémon Go
- Toronto Raptors
- Fort McMurray Fire
- Prince
Top consumer tech searches of 2016
- iPhone 7
- Samsung Galaxy S7
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Google Pixel
- Nintendo Switch
Top TV show searches of 2016
- Stranger Things
- Westworld
- Girlmore Girls
- Fuller House
- Luke Cage
UK
Top news searches of 2016
- Brexit
- US election
- Hurricaine Matthew
- Zika virus
- Clowns
Top consumer tech searches of 2016
- iPhone
- Samsung Galaxy
- Google Pixel
- Sky Q
- Amazon Echo
India
Top searches of 2016
- Rio 2016 Olympics
- Pokémon GO
- EURO 2016
- Sultan
- Kabali
Top people searches of 2016
- Donald Trump
- P.V. Sindhu
- Sonam Gupta
- Dipa Karmakar
- Disha Patani
See at Google
What is RCS and why is it important to Android?
We all want a better way to do messaging and calls on our Androids, and RCS is the best way to make it happen.
Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T have all jumped on the RCS bandwagon in one way or another. Sprint has gone all-in with Google behind them and you have probably seen people talking about RCS recently. Both are very cool things — Sprint and Google using new standards that make text messaging better than ever and people being interested and talking about it.
But like all things, it helps when you have a basic understanding of what people are talking about. There’s plenty of information about RCS out there on the internet, but let’s try to sort it all out in one place and talk about what RCS is and why it matters to everyone.
What is RCS?
In a nutshell, RCS is a set of communication standards for SMS, MMS and calling that will make text messages look and feel more like Google Hangouts or Facebook Messenger.
In 2007 a group of telecommunication industry companies founded the Rich Communication Suite industry initiative to use new technologies to create inter-operator communication services based on IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). Text messages and phone calls generally work well, but they’re pretty bland and don’t make use of the full capabilities of the network they’re being sent on. They had three primary goals:
- Use a better contacts list that included things like more information about your people, if they were available and if they have seen the message you’ve sent.
- Build a better messaging system that enables extras like instant chat, emojis and sharing data between the people participating.
- Support enhanced calls with features like video calling and data sharing in real time.
That sounds like things your phone already does (and does well) without any new communications standard, but the secret sauce here is that this is all part of your phone service and will work the same way on any phone that can call or send texts — which is all of them.
RCS makes your texting better with rich messages and a great real-time experience with the person you’re texting.
The GSM Association (the folks who run Mobile World Congress every year) thought it was a great idea, too, and formed the RCS Steering committee a year later to push the idea of supporting this to phone carriers all over the world. They’ve since refined and expanded the standards and have been releasing them under the RCS blanket (RCS now stands for Rich Communication Services) for a while. The technical parts of the standards have adapted and changed, but the core goals remain the same: making phone service have a better way to communicate without adding anything additional from any app stores or carrier download sections.
Unfortunately, there has been a mixed response from carriers and companies making things that connect to them like phones, tablets, and computers.
Who uses RCS?
A lot of cellular carriers all over the world use RCS, but not all of them use all of it and provide a service you can use with everyone else. For this to work the way it was designed, all the carriers involved and all the devices being used have to support all of the standards. Of course, companies usually only support what makes them money or what they are forced to support and RCS is no exception.
The GSMA has a handy list of which companies support which parts of the RCS standards that they publish online. Have a look at it (it’s a .pdf file).
RCS launches and support (as of October 2016)
Remember, this is a tool to make others see how popular RCS is in order to entice them to support it. That means it doesn’t tell the whole story. So we’re going to.
Sprint supports the RCS Universal Profile, and nobody else in the states does.
For starters, since we’re based in the U.S., let’s talk about Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T. Only Sprint supports the full Universal Profile for RCS. (In Canada, Rogers has launched the same thing.) This means it works the way you and I think it would work when they say they support it. Sprint’s network supports all of the standards the GSMA has put out, and Android phones sold on their network since adoption have the hardware needed to send and receive better texts and calls. Software support is provided for existing Android phones — Google Messenger now supports everything you need here if you’re using Sprint — and will be included on all new Androids sold after November 2016.
T-Mobile’s RCS support is limited to in-network messages sent using an Advanced Messaging capable app. Metro PCS had full network support for RCS as of the 2012 spec (they were the first in the U.S.) but further data since being acquired by T-Mobile isn’t available in full detail. To me, that means it probably doesn’t support the latest RCS standards network wide.
AT&T’s RCS support is limited to in-network video calls and in-network messages sent through an advanced messaging app.
Verizon supports RCS, but not officially in any way that the GSMA feels is compliant. That’s not really surprising because this is Verizon we’re talking about and they don’t like to play nice with anyone until they have to.
Carrier network support is more important than device level support, but you still need both. Android and iOS both support what you need.
So in the United States, we can pretty much say only Sprint supports RCS the way we want it to be supported. That’s awesome for Sprint — they are totally on the right track here lately in a lot of ways — but pretty useless if the people you’re talking to are on another network that isn’t supporting the RCS initiative. Worldwide, we see a handful of carriers — India’s Jio, Claro and Telcel in the Americas, and Orange in Europe fully supporting the standards while plenty of other networks support it partially or are getting ready to support it.
More: Google’s iMessage competitor isn’t Allo, it’s texting
On the device side, Android, iOS, and Windows 10 all can support the full RCS standards when using a capable app. Chrome and Mac OS don’t offer the same support, which puts another hurdle in front of RCS — Apple would rather keep using iMessage because it works on MacBooks, too. But honestly, device support isn’t as big of a problem as network support and even Apple would quickly offer an iMessage replacement that uses RCS if people wanted it and were using it.
That means worldwide, a whole lot of people have access to RCS. And a whole lot of people don’t have access. For things to work the way the Rich Communication Suite industry initiative intended, everyone needs to support it.
Why is this important for Android?
This is the easy part. RCS is important to Google (and all of their partners) because iMessage exists.
RCS can make all your texting as good as iMessage.
It’s cool to hate on Apple, but if you’ve ever used iMessage you know what I mean here. Combined with FaceTime, iMessage already offers exactly the things RCS is trying to achieve. Voice and video calls are simple and messages are rich with great media sharing and read receipts and typing indicators and everything else. And it uses SMS in tandem with regular data to do it. It’s the best SMS app you’ll ever use until RCS becomes ubiquitous (if it ever does.)
Google knows this and they are doing everything they can to get carriers to adopt RCS. Including buying Jibe in February 2016. Jibe is a service that carriers and phone makers and everyone else involved can deploy that brings everything RCS offers in one compliant package. AT&T or O2 or anyone else can use Jibe to make phones on their network send and receive messages and calls that offer the same features as iMessage does with anyone else on a carrier that supports RCS.
Since about 80% of the phones in the world use Android and can’t use iMessage, this is a big deal.
Google offers Hangouts as a way to have rich messages and calls through SMS and IP connections from your Android, but to get full support you need to be using Project Fi or a Google Voice number. That doesn’t help most people, and it seems that Google is focusing Hangouts more as a corporate tool (and it’s pretty excellent for that) while they build full RCS support into Google Messaging, along with their own rich messaging client (that doesn’t tie into your SMS) in Allo as a capable substitute to WhatsApp.
iMessage is probably never coming to Android so RCS is Google’s best hope to bring a great experience to every phone.
They’ve got Sprint on board. As mentioned, Sprint fully supports everything about RCS, and we’re pretty sure they will support future enhancements to the standards to remain RCS complaint. That’s awesome, but having AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon out of the picture makes it a lot less awesome. You can be sure Google is courting the other players in the States as well as the rest of the world to get on board along with the GSMA, and if it can happen we all get a better experience.
Now TV Smart Box review: A scrappy blend of on-demand and live TV
Now TV is pivotal to Sky’s future success. More people than ever before are eschewing big, expensive TV packages for lighter, on-demand alternatives such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. For the last few years, Sky has been refining (and heavily marketing) Now TV in response. The platform has a number of “passes” which, for roughly the price of a Netflix subscription, cover either sports, movies or TV shows.
Now, Sky is pushing forward with the Smart Box, a set-top streamer that comes with the Now TV app and a coaxial port as standard. That means it can handle both free-to-air TV channels and Now TV’s content, which includes live channel streaming and catch-up programming. The idea is that the box (which is basically a Roku in disguise) will appeal to cord-cutters who fancy an affordable streaming service or two on top of their traditional TV experience. With the new Smart Box, you can alternate between them without switching inputs or grabbing another remote.
Hardware
The Smart Box, like most streaming hardware, is a black slab designed to fade into the back of your entertainment center. It’s a flat, squarish puck measuring 165mm by 165mm on top, which is about the same size as Amazon’s Fire TV and Google’s Nexus Player. Given its low height (20.5mm), I found it simple to slide the box in between a few dust-covered consoles beneath my TV.
Around the back you’ll find a handful of ports for power, HDMI, microSD cards and Ethernet. There’s also the aforementioned coaxial port, however you won’t find a TV cable in the box. If you just have a port in the wall, rather than a permanent cable trailing into the room, you’ll need to dash to somewhere like Maplins or buy one online. (I moved house recently and had to do just this.) It feels like an oversight on Sky’s part, even if most people probably have one kicking around in a cupboard.
The Smart Box remote is a tiny piece of kit with just a few buttons. A directional pad sits in the center, with back and home options up top. Three navigational arrows (rewind, pause/play and fast-forward) sit underneath, followed by an options button and two shortcuts for Now TV and the Sky Store. There’s no search button and no microphone, meaning you can’t bark for “action movies starring Tom Cruise” like you would with the latest Apple TV. It’s a serviceable remote, but could use a numerical keypad — scrolling through more than 60 TV channels gets pretty tiresome with bog-standard arrow buttons.
On-demand
The Smart Box feels like three separate experiences stitched together with gaffa tape. The first is the Roku-powered interface, dominated by a six-option menu that sits on the left-hand side. The “Home” is your starting point, with a grid of square thumbnails highlighting TV shows and movies you might like to watch. The first suggestion is always your last live channel, which provides a quick shortcut into free-to-air television.
There are several sub-categories present on the home screen, such as “highlights” and what “you might have missed.” I rarely use these, however, because while Sky suggests programming from a few different places, including BBC iPlayer and the ITV Hub, there’s no personalisation. The picks are seemingly based on what’s popular at the moment, so you’ll see a lot of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Teen Mom UK. Yuck. Occasionally I’ll stumble on a gem — a nature documentary by the BBC, or a new movie added to the Sky Store. But these moments are rare and I’ve long stopped looking beyond the first row of suggested viewing.
One step down from Home is the “Best of Catch-up,” another grid showcasing VOD content. Now TV sits at the top, followed by BBC iPlayer, the ITV Hub, All 4 and Demand 5. A row is dedicated to each service, with a few programme choices and a shortcut to launch the app itself. It’s a functional, if bland interface which I use only to launch apps that I know have a particular show or movie I want to watch.
Continue scrolling through the core menu and you’ll find “My Apps,” which, well, should be self-explanatory. Now TV has a dedicated button on the remote, so I only used this menu to launch Crunchyroll, Vimeo and TED, which are available to download through the App Store. These applications — which are the same as those found on regular Roku players — vary wildly in quality. Each has a different design and interface, and it’s clear some are updated more frequently than others.
Then there’s Now TV. With “Home” and “Best of Catch-up,” Sky makes it seem like everything is just a click away. Tap once and your show or movie will start immediately. But that’s not the case — Now TV is actually a separate app, with its own menu hugging the left-hand side of the screen. In the context of the Smart Box, it’s an interface inside an interface. Sure, the two are visually consistent, but it’s wildly disorienting when you drill down into the Now TV app and then hit the “Home” button on the remote, only to find yourself in the similar but ultimately different Roku menu.
The Now TV app is perfectly functional on its own. That’s because it’s the same app you’ll find on other streaming devices, such as the PlayStation 4. Clearly, Sky has put a lot of time and money into its development. The problem is that it’s not cohesive with the rest of the Smart Box experience. It’s a silo — a brilliant one, but a silo nonetheless. As I mentioned earlier, this makes it feel like the two have been virtually gaffa-taped together.
Live TV
While I mostly stream my favourite TV shows, I still use free-to-air TV channels for sports and political events. International football matches, parliamentary debates — I could always stream these live, but there’s a convenience to doing it the old-fashioned way. The experience is mostly stellar on the Smart Box, thanks to three different types of navigation. You can tap up and down on the remote, which lets you scan available channels as a slim sliver at the bottom of the screen. It’s useful if you want to keep the current channel in view, while seeing what else is available at the time.
Alternatively, you can tap left on the D-pad to activate a larger TV guide. The expanded feature takes up half of the screen and lists eight channels simultaneously. You can scroll through with the remote; a thin white bar appears underneath each show, denoting how long is left until the next programme starts. Finally, you can head back into the Roku interface and select the dedicated ‘TV Guide’ option. I wouldn’t recommend it, however, as it takes a second to load and doesn’t offer too much more information. Still, it’s there if you really need it.
You can’t record with the Smart Box, but you can rewind. Sky lets you scrub back to the moment when you first selected the channel — 30 minutes is the maximum, however — and fast forward once you’re done. It works well, although a “jump to live” shortcut would have been nice.
A Now TV subscription will grant you access to some of Sky’s premium TV channels; the Movies pass, for instance, lets you livestream everything related to Sky Cinema. Annoyingly, all the live channels are listed in a TV guide that’s separate to the free-to-air TV channels. That’s because the functionality is contained within the Now TV app, rather than the top-level Roku-powered interface. These isolated experiences add to the overall feeling of disharmony. They’re strong on their own, but rarely work together in a way that feels smart or cohesive.
Content
Unsurprisingly, the Smart Box gets better as you subscribe to more of its monthly passes. If you have all four, you’ll find an excellent range of sport, movies and TV shows to dig into. But that’s an expensive way to go, and almost defeats the purpose of avoiding a Sky TV subscription. I normally have one or two active — I subscribed to the Entertainment Pass while Game of Thrones was airing, then activated the Sports pass once the Premier League was back in full swing. Now, I’m rinsing the Movies pass in the run up to Christmas.
The problem is that there’s no way to filter what’s shown in the top-level interface. You’ll always see suggestions tied to the Entertainment, Movies and Sports passes, regardless of which ones you have access to. It’s an obvious ploy to tease more money out of you — the hope being that you’ll see a TV show you want to watch and pay for the relevant pass out of convenience. As a stubborn customer, however, I found myself irritated by the wealth of irrelevant content. I only want to see what I have access too, otherwise the process of deciding what to watch is extended unnecessarily.
While Now TV is decent, it doesn’t make up for the absence of Netflix and Prime Video. These are huge services with vast libraries. I’m signed up to both and enjoy some of their shows immensely, which means I always need another box connected to my TV. I don’t mind switching — my PS4 is always plugged in — but it defeats the purpose of having a single TV and streaming box. Sky’s device is supposed to be a silver bullet solution, handling free-to-air TV and streaming with grace. If you need another box for Netflix and Amazon, you might as well use it for every streaming service, including Now TV, which is available as an app elsewhere.
Wrap up
The Smart Box, despite its navigational niggles, is a capable device. If you mostly watch free-to-air TV, but want to compliment it with a streaming service or two, this is a solid option. It’s fast and responsive, with plenty of shows and movies to peruse. The problem is that it doesn’t accommodate people who have already signed up to Netflix and Prime Video. If you love these services and their libraries, you’ll need to switch inputs.
Sky’s strategy does make sense. Offering Netflix and Prime Video would mean risking its Now TV subscribers. Each service offers different content, and few people want to pay for them all at once. If the apps were available on the Smart Box, people would be compelled to at least try them and see how they fare against the Now TV passes. Sky built the hardware to push its streaming services and “Combo” TV, broadband and phone packages. Not to give customers a free or vastly discounted Roku. (It’s available for £40 on its own, or cheaper with one or more Now TV passes.)
If you want to stay platform agnostic, you might be better off with a regular Roku, or any other set-top streaming box. The compromise is the coaxial cable — most, like the new Apple TV, don’t support free-to-air channels — but in return, you’ll have better access to VOD services. The value of that trade-off will vary depending on your personal viewing habits, of course. If, like me, you’re addicted to BoJack Horseman, Stranger Things and Mr. Robot, you might want to consider another TV streamer, and relying on your TV (even if it has a crummy interface) for traditional channels.
Microsoft’s Amazon Echo competitor will launch next year
Microsoft is partnering with the (soon-to-be Samsung-owned) audio company Harman Kardon to launch a speaker with its Cortana personal assistant built in. Described as “a voice-activated speaker,” a short teaser video shows glimpses of a (rendered) cylindrical design not too dissimilar to Amazon’s Echo. It also takes cues from Google Home, with a display atop fashioned after Cortana’s familiar blue circle that shows when the assistant is thinking.
Unfortunately, the teaser video is all we have to go on, and that only tells us the device is “coming in 2017.” It seems a pretty safe bet that it won’t be the only speaker with Cortana built in, though. Microsoft is making a big push into the “internet of things” with the Cortana Devices SDK, hoping to partner with many manufacturers to bring the assistant to various devices and appliances.
In a blog post announcing the SDK, Microsoft describes Harman Kardon as “one early device partner,” noting that the speaker company will have “more news to share next year about their plans.” Still, if you were holding out for a Microsoft version of the Echo or Home, this looks to be the closest you’ll get to it for some time. We could still see a Surface- or Microsoft-branded speaker at some point, of course, but for now, Microsoft seems content to rely solely on partners to take on Amazon and Google.
Via: Eweek
Source: Microsoft
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