Watching two Google Homes trying to have a conversation is the best thing you’ll see today

In the future, computers will be able to talk to one another. Perhaps intelligently.

Today, though, all we have is this: two Google Home units sitting in the same room having a conversation. Twitch channel seebotschat have managed to whip together a Cleverbot API hook that keeps the units speaking in a way that yours wouldn’t be able to, and suffice it to say the outcome is, well… you just have to watch.

Watch live video from seebotschat on http://www.twitch.tv

A log of the conversation is being kept next to the video stream for context, but that’s difficult to find when most of it makes no sense.

Google Home leverages Google’s Knowledge Graph to give it access to the company’s vast array of growing search results. But try to have a chat with it and you’ll fail hard very quickly. Until then, you’ll have this.

New NVIDIA Shield Android TV: Everything you need to know

The latest Android TV box continues to drive the industry.

NVIDIA made a splash at CES 2017 when it unveiled a new version of its extremely popular Shield Android TV box. The new Shield Android TV has a similar design, identical internals, same price and similar value proposition as the original, and isn’t even getting a distinctive name to separate it from the first model.

So what has changed, and what can you expect to get in the new Shield Android TV? Well there’s still plenty to unpack here.

New external hardware

NVIDIA didn’t see a need to overhaul the internal hardware of the Shield Android TV, and it’s hard to blame it for doing so. The original box was more than powerful enough to handle high-end gaming and entertainment, and offered just about everything anyone was looking for. What has changed, though, is the external hardware.

You’re packing the same power into a box nearly half the size.

Though the new Shield Android TV has the same basic shape and look it’s roughly 40 percent smaller overall than the original, which is extremely impressive when you think about what’s inside. It still has a wedge-like shape and geodescent pattern all around, accented by a green light that glows when it’s powered on, and has an optional stand accessory that will place it upright if you’d like to put it more on display.

Around the back of the box you’ll still find an ethernet jack, HDMI out and two USB ports, but one of the room-saving removals is the SD card slot. That may hit a small group of people that liked the idea of using the slot for adoptable storage expansion, but know that you can still do the same with any USB drive if you wish.

Improved controller and remote

The included Shield controller has gone through a complete overhaul. You can immediately see a slimmer overall profile and once again a geodescent pattern all around that offers a unique grip — the joysticks also have more texture around the edges.

When it comes to non-gaming uses, the controller has ditched the somewhat-finicky capacitive navigation buttons for proper hard buttons for back/home/select. You’ll still adjust volume using a capacitive touch pad between the sticks, and a single press of the green NVIDIA button at the top activates the microphone for voice commands. The controller charges over Micro-USB still, and NVIDIA claims 60 hours of battery life when playing games.

The peripherals received much-needed improvements.

Though not everyone will want to play games regularly with the Shield controller, you’ll want to keep it around as it’s a bit of a trojan horse for the console. Thanks to its large battery and microphone, the controller is the conduit for the Shield Android TV to always listen for “OK Google” commands when Google Assistant hits the console in a couple of months. So long as the controller has a charge (a couple weeks with typical use), it’ll stay connected to the Shield Android TV and be always listening for your input — it simply hands the data over to the box, which crunches the information and gives you responses.

The Shield Android TV now includes its remote alongside the controller in the box, which is much better than shelling out $50 for the TV-focused accessory. The new remote is similar in design, but is no longer rechargeable and has lost its headphone jack for private listening — on the upside, though, is a quoted year of battery life. Going a step further, both the controller and remote now have integrated IR blasters, meaning they can control other parts of your home entertainment setup like adjusting volume on an AV receiver or a TV that doesn’t fully support HDMI-CEC.

What’s new in Android Nougat for TVs

Much of the new software being shown off on the Shield Android TV isn’t NVIDIA’s doing but rather just what you get when you upgrade to Android 7.0 Nougat. As we knew already, Nougat introduces features like picture-in-picture mode and an app switching interface, as well as little bits of polish around the interface. A new YouTube 360 app highlights many app improvements as well.

NVIDIA made a couple of changes as well, including removing the “NVIDIA” section of the home screen and tweaking the way the “Games” section is displayed. You’ll now see local, Gamestream and GeForce Now games all in one place to launch all the same. Further, the new “NVIDIA Games” portal will let you shop for and manage games from all three sources. There’s also a new Steam app that will launch you directly into its lean-back “Big Picture” experience so long as you’re a Gamestream user with Steam set up.

Google Assistant isn’t ready yet

One of the biggest features of the new Shield Android TV’s announcement is Google Assistant, but unfortunately it isn’t ready yet. The best that NVIDIA can offer us in terms of a time frame is “in the coming months,” which is understandable considering this is the first expansion of Google Assistant outside of Google’s own hardware. Everyone wants to get it just right.

This may be the most complete Google Assistant experience, even more so than on a Pixel.

From what we’ve been able to see thus far, the Google Assistant experience seems exactly as you’d expect and more fully featured thanks to the large display. Simple queries like asking about the weather or upcoming appointments, or making Google searches, pop up a half-height display over whatever’s on screen giving you the information. Specific questions like asking about your photos or a music video will jump straight to the required app like Google Photos or YouTube.

Importantly, any integration designed for the Google Home today will work on the Shield Android TV via Google Assistant. Anything from calling an Uber to showing you recipes for dinner will yield the same responses, but simply include a visual component whenever possible. In many ways, this is a more complete Google Assistant experience than you can get on a Google Home or even Pixel.

Smart home potential

NVIDIA is putting tons of focus on entertainment, but the Shield Android TV is also poised to be a capable smart home controller. Through a partnership with Smart Things, the Shield Android TV can be transformed into a Smart Things Hub with the addition of a tiny dongle plugged into one of its USB ports. Once configured, you can then talk directly to your Shield Android TV to control any device that integrates with Smart Things.

As soon as Google Assistant is available you’ll be able to command everything through Smart Things using the Assistant as well. The possibilities go even further when you invest in some NVIDIA Spot accessories, which will extend the smarts of the Shield Android TV to any room within Wi-Fi range. With a bit of configuration and these additional accessories this little Shield Android TV could really become not only the center of your entertainment setup but also your smart home.

Now available

The new Shield Android TV is already up for pre-order from Amazon, with a quoted release date of January 16. The $199 price includes the box, controller and remote.

See at Amazon

Meet Lynx, the walking, talking home robot powered by Amazon Alexa

Robot assistants are the natural progression once we’ve nailed down artificial intelligence, right?

AI assistants such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant are cool, but you’re still essentially talking to a speaker or your phone when you use them. Ubtech Robotics is looking to change that with Lynx, a talking and dancing robotic assistant that’s powered by Amazon’s AI.

Ubtech is a Chinese company that’s responsible for creating educational and interactive humanoid robots like Alpha Series, and with Lynx, they’ve combined their proprietary robotics tech with the speech recognition, language comprehension and search utility provided from Alexa to create a unique human-to-robot interface that’s super cool for some, and admittedly a little creepy for others.

This is #LYNX! 👋🏻🤖 He’s a #robot that’s been designed to work seamlessly with #AmazonAlexa, and he just launched today! #CES2017 #Amazon #ShowStoppers

A video posted by Android Central (@androidcentral) on Jan 5, 2017 at 6:59pm PST

Lynx is designed to be an in-home companion, a physical extension of everything you’d expect from Alexa. Talk to Lynx to control music, set reminders and calendar events for yourself, find out the latest news or weather updates, and much more. With Lynx, Ubtech has added a built-in camera to the mix, which is used for facial recognition, remote video access for keeping tabs on your kids or pets, and the ability to conduct video calls over Wi-Fi. Put all those parts together, and you’ve actually got a pretty capable little device, that’ll literally be able to follow you around the house, waiting for your next command.

This little robotic assistant is just more proof that Amazon is building out an impressive and capable operating system that we’ll begin to see integrated in more tech, going far beyond Amazon’s Echo speakers. At CES, we’ve already seen Alexa begin to be incorporated into appliances and autos, and now we can add robots to the list.

The future is here, folks. I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.

Huawei Mate 9 Pro preview: The Mate we wanted all along

When Huawei unveiled the Mate 9 it overshadowed it by revealing a smaller-scale and better designed Porsche Design model in tandem. But the latter model’s limited availability and €1,395 price tag clearly demonstrated it wasn’t a model for the masses.

Now Huawei has gone and changed all that, with the reveal of the Mate 9 Pro: a Porsche Design doppelgänger, minus the special edition’s branding, that looks more than a little bit like the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge.

Pocket-lint

That means a 5.5-inch (2560 x 1440; QHD) screen, curved edges, front-placed fingerprint scanner and physical home button, alongside off-screen capacitive buttons. It’s available in white or silver only, the latter of which doesn’t half love showing up smeary fingerprints.

• The best smartphone of CES 2017

And we think it’s far better looking than the larger Mate 9. Really this so-called Pro model should have just been the Mate 9 all along. Shame that Huawei wasn’t bold enough to go along with that idea from the off.

Pocket-lint

The physical home button is an interesting touch, as it’s flanked by two light-up capacitive buttons on the phone body itself rather than the screen. We find these are programmed back-to-front for our use, and without the triangle/circle/square visual reference it’ll take a little bit of getting used to this control format.

Spec-wise the Pro will offer the latest Kirin 960 quad-core (2.4Ghz) processor and Mali-G71 graphics processor. It’s plenty powerful, although the actual specs are somewhat up in the air: Huawei tells us that the phone will come with 6GB RAM and 128GB on-board storage, but the models on show at this year’s CES show floor were kitted with 4GB RAM and 64GB on-board storage.

• CES 2017: All the announcements that matter from this year’s show

Pocket-lint

Perhaps a step-down from the Porsche Design model after all then? Which is odd, as the whole point of its Pro moniker would surely be to squeeze that extra bit of power in.

• Huawei Mate 9 vs Porsche Design edition: What’s the difference?

There’s no change in camera arangement, with the Pro offering the same dual lens arrangement as part of its Leica partnership. That means one 12MP colour and one 20MP black and white snapper, both with f/2.2 aperture and 27mm equivalent focal length.

Pocket-lint

Software wise the Mate 9 Pro runs EMUI 5.0 over the top of Android 7, which – as we’ve said with the Mate 9 (er, standard) – makes for a mixed experience. There are some great additions like dual SIM and app twin (for dual WhatsApp/Messenger accounts), but the never-ending battery alerts and strict permissions frustrate.

• Huawei Mate 9 review: The big screen boss

Speaking of battery, the 4,000mAh cell in the Pro is hugely capacious. We doubt it’ll last quite as long as the Mate 9 given the higher-resolution, but it’ll easily blast the Apple and Samsung devices of this world out of the water… not that this Huawei is waterproof. Maybe next time, eh?

Pocket-lint

Other software points of interest in this build of EMUI include a new Student Mode (for parents to control their children’s profile and access) and Trustspace. Neither of which are on our standard day-to-day Mate 9.

There’s a current catch though: the Mate 9 Pro is only coming to China. At least for now. We suspect a savvy Huawei will release it worldwide to greater reception than the larger Mate models. If, that is, Samsung doesn’t have something to say about the way it looks…

Sony at CES 2017: Everything you need to know

Sony’s big CES booth is built around one product in particular: its first 4K OLED TV. Beautiful, bright (and highly anticipated), the television’s slender OLED panel also doubles as a speaker, with some subwoofer support from behind. Unfortunately, that’s about it, as far as the booth is concerned, anyway. Sony boss Kaz Hirai used his keynote earlier this week to recap all the products the company unveiled over the past year. Which would have been fine at CES 2016, just not this week.

So the booth is completely centered around this new TV?

Yes indeed. What we have here is the Sony Bravia OLED series. It’ll be available in 55-, 65- and 77-inch sizes.

I don’t think any of my apartment walls are that big.

Well, that’s your problem. I’ll be soaking in the 4K OLED joy.

Where are the speakers? Behind it?

Yes and no. There’s a subwoofer behind the thing, but the entire OLED panel itself also works as a speaker.

How?!

Due to the structure of OLED screens, if you attach a driver to them, you can make the membrane vibrate and create sound. We saw LG Display’s experimental prototype with the same tech, but this one is a real consumer product for you, fictional conversation partner!

How does it sound?

Well, it’s backed up by a subwoofer, so it’s hard to discern the sound of the panel itself. That’s a question for review time, perhaps.

Hot take: Sony finally made a 4K OLED.

Don’t say: Wait, was this Sony’s 2016 press conference?

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

Nike designers on self-lacing shoes and the future of footwear

Tinker Hatfield and Tiffany Beers, the designers behind Nike’s Mag and HyperAdapt 1.0, joined us on stage at CES 2017 to talk about how these self-lacing sneakers came to life. They also discussed how 3D-printed materials could shape the future of footwear, since we’re seeing more of the technology being used for prototypes and models that end up making it to retail. As for what’s next for HyperAdapt, Hatfield and Beers wouldn’t give any details away, but they did say the 2.0 and 3.0 versions are already in the works.

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

Theranos is laying off another 155 employees

Just three months after the company laid off 340 employees, Theranos’ workforce is being slashed again. The company announced today that it will part ways with another 155 employees, leaving the current Theranos headcount at 220.

“These are always the most difficult decisions,” the company’s official statement said, “however, this move allows Theranos to marshal its resources most efficiently and effectively.”

Today’s restructuring caps off a terrible 2016 for CEO Elizabeth Holmes and company. After the company’s innovative blood test and Edison testing machine turned out to be too good to be true and possibly based on junk science, the company spent the latter part of 2016 fending off multiple lawsuits from investors and its retail partners at Walgreens.

Last month, the company also announced a new leadership team and reshuffled its Board of Directors to help steer the company back on track as it works to develop a new testing platform called miniLab.

Via: Bloomberg

Source: Theranos Newsroom

New Balance’s running smartwatch is all about little tweaks

At last year’s CES Intel and New Balance announced that they would team up to develop a sports-focused smartwatch. One day shy of a year later, and the pair revealed it to the world with significantly less fanfare than before. Intel’s press conference was all about VR, leaving all talk of wearables to a press release that crossed the wire before the event even kicked off. So what does that mean for the New Balance RunIQ?

It’s a pretty neat looking device — certainly not out of place alongside other chunky running watches from other brands like Garmin with its 1.39-inch AMOLED display and fat bezels. If there’s one thing that is disappointing, however, it’s how chintzy the plastic device feels, betraying its intention as a rugged piece of running gear.

It’s also something of a mutt, with the fingerprints of four companies all over its DNA. Intel, for instance, used its hardware know-how to build the device itself, while New Balance shaped its style and overall branding. Google obviously created Android Wear — the first generation of the software, rather than version 2.0 — and Strava is providing native access to its social network for runners. It’s worth adding that this device is aimed squarely at marathoners and their ilk, with all the features geared toward slightly more serious athletes.

One of the reasons the watch is shipping before the arrival of Google’s redesigned watch OS is that Intel is confident it’s done enough to stand apart from the crowd. The company’s Dr. Jerry Bautista explained that his engineers have spent a long time tweaking the power management of the software for a better battery life. One of the other innovations he’s proud of is ensuring that the display will always show the time, if not the rest of the UI.

New Balance, meanwhile, polled users to find out that runners apparently hate touching their watch’s display during a run. So, the company insisted that there be physical controls on either side of the crown for one-touch lap times. As an added benefit, this allows runners to use the device even while wearing gloves. After all, if you’re running in the Pacific Northwest in January, you don’t want to have to expose your fingers to the elements.

Another neat tweak that Intel is proud of is the raised curve that surrounds the optical heart rate monitor on the underside of the case. It apparently encourages the skin on your wrist to push up into the space immediately around the optical sensor. That way, you get less light interference and a better, more accurate heart rate track than you would with other devices.

If Intel is to be believed, this is the best implementation of an Android Wear running watch, as the fitness features are mostly custom. The running app, which is Strava-branded, has been totally rewritten from the ground up for better performance and to be used without a smartphone. Once you’ve used your phone to pair the watch to your account, the device will then independently sync your stats whenever you hit WiFi.

One thing the device is lacking is a better music function, mostly because Intel and New Balance held off on altering the software. Knowing that Android Wear 2 will open up implementation beyond Google Play Music users, the two companies chose to wait for the update before making meaningful changes there. Speaking of which, the device will get an over-the-air update to the latest OS, but not before Intel has had chance to tweak it where necessary.

We’ll reserve judgment on if the litany of small tweaks set the RunIQ ahead of other Android Wear devices in the same category. But while we wait to review the device, you can pre-order the watch for delivery on February 1st. Oh, and if you notice, we have images of a cool gold-and-gray model — an alternative to the stock all-black edition. It’s a limited paint job of just 1,500 that will be available on a first come, first served basis when the device hits stores.

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

Source: New Balance

Basis’ wearables are (probably) dead

When you’re sitting across from Dr. Jerry Bautista, the vice president of Intel’s wearables division, you have to ask about Basis. After all, Intel has been weirdly quiet about the fate of wearables startup it bought, especially after recalling the Basis Peak due to overheating concerns. Bautista wouldn’t give a definitive answer about the future of the brand, but from what he didn’t say, it’s clear we’ll never see a new Basis device.

I asked if, instead of releasing devices off its own back, Intel would double-down on partnering with third-parties. The plan, as he explained, was to pair up with various companies to address different parts of the watch market. So, for instance, it teamed with Tag Heuer for a premium timepiece and New Balance for a runner’s watch. Bautista said that these partnerships are “a very good example of our strategy” to let other companies sell Intel-made products. He added that by teaming up with “iconic brands” enables those firms to “focus on the product in a way that we can’t.”

So, farewell Basis, we hardly knew ye.

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

Kodak brings back classic Ektachrome color reversal film

Kodak Ektachrome color-positive film, beloved by portrait photographers and indie filmmakers alike, is rising from the dead. Kodak Alaris will start selling the classic 135-36x 35mm and Super 8 movie films in the fourth quarter of this year, the company said in a statement. The stock (also called reversal or slide film) was discontinued in 2012, and is known for its extremely fine grain and saturated colors. It’s also cherished by indie filmmakers for its ability to be “pushed,” producing an artistically grainy effect (see the trailer for Buffalo 66, embedded below).

After a campaign of sorts by filmmakers like Martin Scorcese, Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, plus a deal forged with major studios, Kodak agreed to keep movie film stocks alive for the foreseeable future. Then, last year at CES 2016, the company unveiled a new digital hybrid Super 8 movie camera and film to go with it. Via a Kickstarter arrangement, Kodak also agreed to provide free film stock to student filmmakers to further encourage its use.

Ektachrome is an unusual format that produces a positive print suitable for slides or professional pre-printing processes. For that reason, it “became iconic in no small part due the extensive use of slide film by National Geographic Magazine over several decades,” Kodak Alaris wrote. The E6 development process is more onerous than for regular films, but the company says many pro labs can still do it.

Kodak said the brand was in high demand by analog photographers. “We’ve been listening to the needs and desires of photographers over the past several years and wanted to bring back a color reversal film. In assessing the opportunity, Ektachrome was the clear choice,” says Kodak Alaris President Dennis Olbrich. At this point, there’s no word on whether it’ll bring the stock back to Super 35mm or 16mm movie films.

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

Via: PetaPixel

Source: Kodak