Order around this Samsung refrigerator with your voice

Home appliances may not be the most exciting side of CES, but every year massive companies like LG and Samsung show off weird additions to the vast range of refrigerators, washing machines and other exciting devices. Take Samsung’s “Family Hub 2.0” refrigerator, for example: This massive monolith has a 21.5-inch touchscreen built into it for playing video and audio, leaving your family notes and to-dos, ordering groceries, looking up recipes and much, much more.

However, if Alexa and Google Home have taught us anything, the days of having to physically interact with our devices are coming to a close. Samsung is right on that curve: You can talk to the Family Hub 2.0 fridge and ask it to do a handful of tasks for you. That includes adding items to a grocery list or shopping cart in InstaCart, checking out using your voice, launching apps like Pandora, and having the fridge read back recipes to you.

In some ways, this makes a lot of sense. The kitchen is often a dirty place, and being able to have a hands-free assistant is definitely useful. Of course, for the vast majority of people, it’ll make way more sense to spend $180 on the Amazon Echo rather than spend upwards of $5,000 on a new fridge whose “smart” features will be out of date in a few years. But hey, if you’re building a new kitchen and want the fanciest fridge you can get, this is certainly a contender. That said, I might rather have LG’s Alexa-enabled refrigerator instead.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Whirlpool’s Zera Food Recycler easily turns food scraps into compost

Though several municipalities like San Francisco, New York and Portland have city-wide composting services, not everyone can enjoy this luxury. Most people still have to compost their unwanted food the old-fashioned way: by putting them in a stinky composter and going through the labor-intensive process of adding manure, keeping it moist and turning it every so often so that it doesn’t rot. Otherwise, all those orange peels and rotten carrots will just end up in the trash. Whirlpool’s new Zera Food Recycler, however, could be the solution to that. It’s a new kitchen appliance that will turn your food scraps into rich fertilizer with hardly any work on your part at all.

The way it works is pretty simple. Plug it in and then throw all your food scraps into the chute. The only things you can’t put in it are bones and pits, because they’re too tough for the Zera’s blades to cut through. The top of the Zera is also conveniently counter-height, so you can just sweep all your leftovers into the bin with one fell swoop. From there, just make sure it has a carbon filter installed (this is to reduce odor) and add a plant-based additive to assist in the breakdown process. The additive is based mostly on coconut husk and baking soda and is wrapped in paper, so the whole thing should decompose fairly easily. Keep putting in food scraps for about a week, and by the end of it you’ll get a pile of freshly made fertilizer, perfect for your lawn or garden.

The Zera was designed by W Labs, an internal Whirlpool incubator tasked with coming up with unique gadgets for the home. One of its first devices was the Vessi homebrew beer fermentor, which was successfully funded on Indiegogo last year. Similarly, the Zera will launch on the crowdfunding site as well. This isn’t to actually raise money for it — Whirlpool is a pretty profitable corporation after all — but more to gain early support for an untested market. Plus, a Whirlpool spokesperson said that it likes hearing from Indiegogo backers on how to improve their products.

That said, it’s pretty expensive. The Zera Food Recycler will retail for $1,199 later this year at select retailers like TreeHouse and Williams-Sonoma. But if you want it cheaper, for a limited time you can purchase it through Indiegogo, where it’s selling for a much more reasonable $699.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Mattel’s Aristotle is a kid-focused Echo alternative

First there was Alexa, Siri, Cortana and the Google Assistant. Now you can repare to add Aristotle to that growing list of voice-enabled assistants. Mattel’s cheerful AI companion differs from the competition by focusing on children, first and foremost. It’s been packaged inside a smart speaker (what else?) and promises to understand your little one’s vocal ramblings, all the way from toddler to middle school. That’s a bold promise, given most of the current offerings struggle with even the most eloquent adults. Mattel says it’s solved the problem with a custom AI engine, which uses a mixture of “natural language processing” to learn your child’s enunciation.

In a quiet hotel room here in Las Vegas where CES is taking place, Mattel’s team took me through some common scenarios. At first, Aristotle will serve as a smart baby monitor, leveraging a companion camera to stream live video to your phone. Inside the app, you’ll be able to set up exactly how the system should react to your child’s mid-night wailing. It can play some soothing sounds, a custom radio station or a piece of relaxing white noise. The device can also illuminate in one of many different colors, similar to a night light. Parents can even use the system to log when they’re changing diapers, and ask Aristotle to order new ones when they’re running low.

As your child grows older, Aristotle will adapt and offer new services. It can tell bedtime stories and play basic spelling games for toddlers. When they’re a youngster, it can help them with homework by retrieving information from the web. The speaker includes some basic games too, which can be used just for fun or to teach kids important skills.

Aristotle, as its name suggests, is supposed to be the descendent of the famous Greek philosopher. She sounds like a chipper twenty-something, though occasionally sounds like Microsoft’s Cortana. This is because Microsoft is indeed helping out with some of the platform’s smarts: Aristotle has a finite bank of stock phrases, while Cortana can say almost anything by stringing together individual words and sentences.

At the end of the demonstration, I tried talking to Aristotle. Unfortunately, it was maddeningly slow and inconsistent. On my first attempt, I had to say “Aristotle” three times before it acknowledged me. I then said “story time” to trigger a short audiobook, and managed to activate it once in the space of five minutes. Not promising, to say the least. Mattel blamed the hotel room’s weak Wi-Fi connection, and I suggested that it could be my strange British accent. Regardless, the final product will need to do better to understand an emotional or impatient pre-schooler. The company has until June, when the speaker and camera combo kit goes on sale for $300.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

LG made a couple of robots just for airports

Get ready for some friendly robots in your airport. LG made two different ones — one is the Airport Guide Robot while the other is a Cleaning Robot. The Airport Guide robot, well, guides you through the airport. Simply feed it your boarding pass and it will tell you how to get to your gate and when your flight is going to take off. It can also respond to your voice, tell you the weather of your destination, and offer directions in one of four languages: English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Oh, and there’s a giant display where it shows you where to go. It can even walk you to your gate, if you prefer.

The cleaning one, on the other hand, really just wanders around vacuuming up your airport detritus. It has light sensors, multiple cameras and sensor-laden bumpers to help it do its job while avoiding the occasional obstacle. Think of it as a really big Roomba.

As for whether you’ll actually be able to see this in person, well, you can. LG has said that both robots will be deployed at Seoul’s Incheon International Airport later this year.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

‘Pokémon Snap’ takes one last photo tour on the Wii U

The past few months have been bittersweet for fans of the Nintendo 64. On the one hand, Nintendo has been steadily filling its virtual console service with some of the N64’s best games — but with the Nintendo Switch on the horizon, the Wii U is on its last legs. Still, it’s nice to see games like Mario Kart 64, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and Excitebike 64 land on the eShop before it gets replaced. Today, Nintendo added yet another fan favorite: Pokémon Snap.

Although Pokémon Snap isn’t obscure, it’s absolutely weird. At a time when fans were clamouring for a full-on Nintendo 64 Pokémon title, Nintendo decided to release a pocket monster-themed wildlife photography simulator. Odd, to be sure, but surprisingly fun. If Pokémon Sun/Moon’s photography mini-game left you feeling nostalgic, it’ll cost you $9.99 to go back to the original (or $2 if you owned it on the Wii Virtual Console). Now if only Nintendo could tell us if our retro VC libraries will transfer over to the Switch.

Source: Nintendo

Nick Offerman on why sometimes the best tech is low-tech

Nick Offerman — star of Parks and Recreation, author of Good Clean Fun and carver of emoji — made his first trip to CES this year. And, no trip to biggest tech show of the year would be complete without a stop at the Engadget stage. Offerman came by to share his thoughts on technology’s pitfalls, working with your hands and the power of greeting cards. No, seriously. As part of American Greetings’ new #DeviceLikeNoOther campaign, he is reminding everyone that sometimes an email or a text message isn’t the best way to communicate how you feel. Sometime’s there’s just no replacing a physical card.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Samsung’s FlexWash and FlexDry machines are laundry ‘Inception’

The new FlexWash and FlexDry laundry machines from Samsung are, to put it simply, beastly. The front-loading compartment on the washer is five cubic feet alone, and that’s not including the extra cubic foot added by the top-loader space. The FlexWash machine features dual washers and the FlexDry machine has dual dryers, making the whole system a feast of dryer-in-dryer and washer-in-washer action.

The top-loading compartment on the FlexWash unit is designed to wash smaller bundles of laundry or handle clothes that require different settings than the main load. The top compartment on the FlexDry machine can handle delicate clothing with a lay-flat rack and gentle heated-air system.

The new laundry machines represent an aspect of Samsung’s business that doesn’t get as much glitzy coverage as its other offerings, such as TVs and phones — unless its washers are exploding in people’s homes, of course.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Porn is back at CES, but good luck finding it

In the far reaches of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall, beyond booths full of off-brand robots, massage chairs, power strips and hoverboards (presumably not the exploding kind), is a row of conference rooms, marked only by white placards with red numerals signifying you’re in the right place. Just beyond the sign reading “S115” is the first porn company to have an official presence at CES since the departure of the Adult Entertainment Expo in 1998.

This is Naughty America, one of the world’s most prolific purveyors of virtual reality porn, but the scene inside S115 is not what you’d expect. There are no naked women, not even a single booth babe — just a row of cocktail tables containing VR headsets, wash clothes and disposable headset protectors. A crew of spokespeople mill around in front of a step-and-repeat, tiled with safe-for-work box covers.

It’s not until you slip on one of those headsets that you see exactly what Naughty America is selling.

Porn’s return doesn’t scream “sex!” it sighs “loneliness.” When we arrived at this sexual Siberia just over an hour after the CES show floor opened, the room was nearly empty, save for the demo stations and a handful of Naughty America employees. The mood was tense.

After a strong showing at E3 this year and a long campaign for an official presence at CES, Ian Paul, Naughty America’s CIO, says the company agreed to a list of stipulations that would allow them to exhibit. But just moments after the doors opened at CES 2017, that list of stipulations was still in flux. Among others things, Paul told us, the company was prohibited from opening its doors or posting a sign. Its spokespeople, dressed in simple black Naughty America t-shirts and blue jeans were allowed to walk the show floor, but not allowed to stand still.

All they want to do is put some VR boobs in your face.

The Naughty America staff spent the first few minutes of our appointment trying to come to a compromise with the CTA (CES’ parent organization) and wondering if an official presence was ultimately the right idea.

This sort of precarious back and forth with the CTA should come as no surprise. While the CTA has said that Naughty America is being held to the same standards as mainstream exhibitors, it’s had a long history of not fully embracing the intersection of sex and tech.

From the early 1980s until 1998 when the AVN founder Paul Fishbein started an independent show for the porn industry, CES had an adult software section where porn stars and adult filmmakers openly displayed their products. But, Fishbein says, after years of being tucked away off the show floor and being treated like “second-class citizens” his clients began to push for their own show. And so AEE was born.

Just as I prepared to leave S115, Naughty America received word from CES that they would be allowed to open one door onto the show floor. They put a nondescript sign out front bearing the company’s name and a slow trickle of conventioneers began to appear. As the room began to fill the mood shifted from tension to child-like exuberance. If those last moments were any sign, attendees are ready for porn’s return. It remains to be seen if the same can be said for the CTA.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.

Verizon Eliminates Two-Year Contracts for Smartphone Upgrades

Starting today, Verizon will no longer be allowing customers who are upgrading their smartphones to purchase a two-year contract, effectively eliminating two-year contracts for all new and existing users.

While Verizon did away with two-year contracts for new customers back in August of 2015, existing customers were able to re-purchase two-year contracts when upgrading their smartphones. That option is no longer available, and customers will be transitioned to device payment plans as their contracts expire.

Two-year contract upgrade options are no longer available at Verizon stores and have been eliminated at partner stores, including Apple retail stores.

Customers who are currently on a two-year contract will need to purchase a phone outright or choose a device payment plan when their contracts expire and they need to upgrade their phones. A device upgrade fee will be required as well.

Verizon device payment plans for the iPhone 7 start at $27.08 per month, while plans for the iPhone 7 Plus start at $32.08 per month. Verizon offers a range of data plans, from 2GB for $35 per month to 24GB for $110 per month, with a $20 access fee for smartphones.

Verizon’s move to fully eliminate two-year contracts comes on the heels of T-Mobile’s “Un-carrier Next” announcement, which will see T-Mobile offering a single $70 per month unlimited plan with no additional fees.
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TCL Moveband BT Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

TCL

TCL on Thursday announced a new fitness tracker with ultra-long battery life. The MoveBand BT can track steps, distance, calories burned and sleep for up to 30 days on a single charge. That’s about 25 days longer than a Fitbit. It’s also water-resistant (rated IP67) and can notify you to incoming calls, text messages, emails and other alerts from your phone.

While I haven’t seen it in person just yet, the press images make the band look sleek and stylish. The MoveBand BT is being offered in two styles. There’s a double wrap leather version for women and a unisex single leather strap model.

The MoveBand BT will be available in March. Pricing information hasn’t been announced, but TCL has said that it will carry an “appealing price tag.”