Control your home with a gorgeous wooden remote

If you’re looking for an attractive way to control your smart home, this minimalist, carved-wood multipurpose remote might fit the bill. It’s called the Turn Touch, and it’s pulled in almost twice the Kickstarter funding requested. The project has almost reached its first stretch goal to add IFTTT support, with plans to add Apple’s HomeKit down the line.

The Turn Touch is made from mahogany, maple and inlaid mother of pearl and has four wooden buttons that can be programmed via an app on your Mac or iOS device. It connects over Wi-Fi to control your Hue lights, your smart lock and your music. You can set up a single button to perform multiple tasks at once, like turning down the lights, dropping the volume on your favorite evening tracks and then locking the door.

You can get the Turn Touch on Kickstarter with a $59 pledge for the basic mahogany model, while other versions, like ones sourced from Padauk and Rosewood, are available for $99 and up. A three-pack with a custom inlay design comes in at $499.

Inventor Sam Clay, who also developed mobile app Newsblur, says he made the Turn Touch to look like furniture instead of another gadget. He wanted an elegant, small remote to control his smart devices without having to pull out his phone. The result: a neat-looking little smart controller that fits in the palm of your hand. If nothing else, it could be a killer conversation starter at your next dinner party.

Source: Kickstarter

SpaceX is sending two private citizens around the moon in 2018

It’s been a long time since humans orbited the moon — but Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going to try and change that next year. The company just announced that two private citizens approached SpaceX about a trip to the moon for late 2018. The two potential space travelers have already paid a “significant” deposit and SpaceX expects health and fitness tests along with initial training to take place this year. There’s no word on how much the travelers will pay, nor who the two individuals are, just yet, but SpaceX also says that other flight teams are interested in similar trips — if this first voyage works, we could see a whole sequence of trips around the moon in the near future.

SpaceX was careful to note that there’s no moon landing being attempted here. But still, this will be the first time in 45 years humans return to deep space, and the company says that these travelers will go further into the solar system than any humans have before. CNBC reports that the trip will take about a week. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the trip will “skim the surface of the moon, go quite a bit further out into deep space,” and then return to earth.

The trip will use SpaceX’s Dragon capsules, which the company says were “designed from the beginning to carry humans.” For starters, an initial Dragon capsule will be sent unmanned to the International Space Station, with a manned mission to follow in Q2 of 2018. These will be part of the four annual missions to the ISS that SpaceX has contracted with NASA to carry out; once those missions are underway, the private manned mission to the moon will take place.

Fittingly, this mission will take off from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A near Cape Canaveral, the same pad used to launch the Apollo missions way back in the ’60s and ’70s

Source: SpaceX

Mozilla Acquires Read-it-Later App Pocket

Mozilla today announced it has acquired read-it-later app Pocket, which it says has 10 million unique monthly active users on iOS, Android, and the web. The app, formerly known as Read It Later, launched in 2007 and is integrated in services such as Flipboard and Twitter. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Pocket will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Corporation and will become part of the Mozilla open source project, the company said. Pocket’s core employees and technology will help accelerate its Context Graph initiative, while promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content.

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard:

“We believe that the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content is key to keeping the internet healthy by fighting against the rising tide of centralization and walled gardens. Pocket provides people with the tools they need to engage with and share content on their own terms, independent of hardware platform or content silo, for a safer, more empowered and independent online experience.”

Mozilla and Pocket worked together to integrate the service within Firefox in 2015, and this acquisition will allow the teams to work more closely together.

Mozilla’s acquisition follows in the footsteps of Instapaper, one of Pocket’s biggest rivals, which was acquired by Pinterest in August 2016.

Tags: Mozilla, Pocket
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