Apple shows off iPhone’s low-light chops in latest ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign

Why it matters to you

Consumers seeking a demonstration of the quality of the iPhone’s camera will appreciate the images presented in this campaign.

Apple struck a chord with phone buyers with the first ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign, illustrating the power of the iPhone camera by enlarging photos shot on the device to fill giant billboards. Now, the company has unveiled its third installment of the campaign, featuring photos shot on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. This time around, all of the photos were also captured at night, the apparent goal being to demonstrate the low-light capabilities of Apple’s latest phone cameras.

This new “Shot on iPhone” campaign, which went live in 25 countries this week, features work from photographers around the world. Jennifer Bin was one of those whose work is featured. “The whole concept behind this campaign is that the photographer is shooting from dusk to dawn, so almost all the shooting is done at night,” she told Time. Photographing the streets of Shanghai, Bin was impressed by the quality of the iPhone camera, saying many of the resulting photos “blur the line” between phone photography and photography shot on higher-end cameras.

More: Apple nabs 31.3 percent of smartphone sales at the start of 2016 holiday season

Apple made a big deal about the revamped photographic capabilities of the iPhone 7 when it introduced it last fall. This was also the first time that the company used different camera tech to differentiate between the standard and Plus models. While both phones use the same 12MP sensor and 28mm f/1.8 lens, the 7 Plus gains an additional camera with a 56mm “telephoto” lens. In addition to providing two separate angles of view, the dual camera setup allows the larger iPhone to simulate a shallow depth-of-field effect in a new “Portrait” mode, which uses computer vision to selectively blur the background.

In an earnings report released on January 31, Apple confirmed its best sales quarter ever, and the firm credited increased iPhone 7 Plus sales (compared to previous versions of Plus phones) for its success, according to Forbes. The iPhone 7 Plus’s two cameras likely contributed to that increased demand, which also saw the average selling price per customer go up to $695.

Cafe X is employing robots to make your coffee quickly and efficiently

Why it matters to you

This latest robotic invention shows just how many human jobs robots may be able to take over, or at least supplement.

Tired of your barista misspelling your name on your morning cup of joe? Perhaps a robot could do better. On Monday, Cafe X opened its very first robotic cafe in San Francisco’s Metreon shopping center. Promising “precision crafted specialty coffee in seconds, the way the roaster intended,” Cafe X thinks that anything a human can do, its machines can do better.

Specifically, one very special machine. Nicknamed Gordon, after a Cafe X employee, this robot mans, or robots, two standard professional coffee machines in order to serve up espressos and lattes. In the San Francisco location, customers can grab a cup of coffee with beans from AKA Coffee, Verve Coffee Roasters, or Peet’s. While the coffee itself may not make Cafe X stand out from the competition, the startup hopes that the robot’s efficiency will.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into great coffee. The Cafe X system is designed for humans and robots to collaborate,” Cafe X explains on its websites. “Smart robotics and machine learning working autonomously allows our operations team to focus on sourcing and using fresh ingredients, maintaining extremely high hygiene standards, and ensuring a great customer experience with every single interaction.”

More: After you teach it the motions, this robotic arm can do anything from drawing pictures to stirring your coffee

A great customer experience, Cafe X believes, involves efficiency and replicability. “By being automated, we guarantee every cup of coffee you are served from a Cafe X machine is how the roaster intended you to enjoy their coffee,” Cafe X CEO Henry Hu told CNET.

In fact, the company works carefully with each of its coffee roasters to “source the best ingredients, calibrate equipment, and create beverage configurations.” This, the startup believes, allows each cup of coffee to taste the way it was intended to.

Whenever you begin to crave some caffeine, you can order your cup of coffee ahead of time with the Cafe X mobile app and even schedule a pickup time, if you want. Thanks to the robot’s artificial intelligence software, your pre-orders are taken into consideration alongside walk-in orders to ensure that no one is waiting for too long. And with a single robot capable of making 100 to 120 cups of coffee in an hour, you likely won’t be waiting long at all.

RCS for T-Mobile subscribers could be here any day now

Users have reported seeing the RCS support option sprout up in Messenger for Google’s settings panel.

T-mobile users, your text messaging prowess is about to get more rich — in the sense of Rich Communication Services, that is.

T-Mobile customers have mentioned on Reddit and Google Plus that they’re seeing the RCS option pop up in the settings panel on the Messenger for Google app. But it’s been difficult to parse whether RCS is ready on the network given the lack of confirmation that it’s life. Other subscribers have suggested that with Digits in beta, the functionality is inevitable.

RCS as often been poised at the “SMS Killer,” and that’s partially true. The standard will essentially infuse your plain old text messaging app with the same powers as Apple’s iMessage. Here’s how my colleague, Jerry Hildenbrand, explained it:

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.)

Spring, T-Mobile, and AT&T were the three carriers who had initially signed on to the standard last year. But at present, only Sprint and Canada’s Rogers has signed on. If T-Mobile is indeed ready to adopt, it’ll be great news for RCS for the rest of us.

Samsung teases tablet on MWC 2017 event invite, announcement set for Feb 26

A tablet announcement is a lock for the end of February.

On the same day that we saw our first major spec leak of a purported Galaxy Tab S3, Samsung has sent out invites to its MWC 2017 event with a sneaky image of a tablet on it. The event will be held on February 26 at 7 p.m. in Barcelona, which translates to 1 p.m. in New York and 10 a.m. in San Francisco.

The image doesn’t do much to give us an actual clue about the design of the tablet aside from what looks to be a standard Samsung physical home button. The earlier specs leak points to solid internals on par with a mid-2016 phone, which would be a great improvement over what we have in the current-gen Galaxy Tab S2

We’ll be at the event, of course, covering whatever comes of it — though at this point we can expect to see at least one tablet, probably named the Galaxy Tab S3 unless Samsung wants to call an audible on us. The whole thing will be streamed over at Samsung’s website.

Super Bowl LI (2017) ads and teasers: Intel, Mercedes, Budweiser, GoDaddy, and more

Ahead of the New England Patriots facing off against the Atlanta Falcons, tonnes of big-budget adverts have begun hitting the air.

The Pats beat the Steelers in the AFC Championship game, while the Falcons beat the Packers in the NFC Championship game. Now, the two teams are headed to the Super Bowl LI on 5 February. This will be the Falcon’s second Super Bowl appearance, where as the Pats are on their ninth. Every year, many Super Bowl commercials release ahead of the game, but most premiere during the game on Sunday.

Here are some of the better adverts that companies have spent millions on for the Big Game. Keep in mind some of them are teasers meant to get you pumped for the actual commercial’s release (because, apparently, there’s people who get excited about that). If you want to know when and where you can watch the action unfold in real-time, check out Pocketlint’s Super Bowl LI guide.

Best Super Bowl LI commercials and ads

Avocados From Mexico

Bud Light

Budweiser

Buffalo Wild Wings

Febreze

Ford

GoDaddy

Intel

Kia

Lexus

Mercedes-Benz

Mr. Clean

Skittles

Snickers

Squarespace

TurboTax

Wix.com

Yellow Tail

Facebook is making a set-top box video app for premium TV content

Soon, you’ll be watching video on Facebook from your TV.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook is developing a “video-centric app” for set-top boxes, including the Apple TV, so it can put video content from the social network on screens in the living room. It would also help Facebook get into video advertising. Facebook’s been embracing video a lot over the past couple years, with a high-quality upgrade to its video platform and the introduction of live broadcasting.

• You can make Facebook posts colourful now – here’s how

Facebook’s upcoming set-top box video app is actually one of many projects it is working on as part of its ongoing “video-first” efforts. Facebook, which sits only behind Google as the largest digital advertiser, wants to better compete against TV ads. It’s currently testing a new video ad product and has even talked with media companies about licensing TV programming so it can make premium content available on television sets.

The Wall Street Journal said the US TV ad market is a $70 billion business, and that video ads command more of a premium than the text/image ads currently found in Facebook’s news feed, which is also quickly running out of room for ads. Facebook likely wants to tap into advertisers’ marketing budgets for TV ads and sees its availability on living room screens as being essential to achieving that goal.

Facebook’s set-top box app, which is under development, won’t contain “non-video content”. It’ll be a home for finding original, premium content that Facebook currently is trying to get from major studios. And Facebook will eventually sell video ads against that content.

Google opens the code for Chrome on iOS

Google’s Chrome browser has been open source from the get-go (through the Chromium project), but not on iOS. Apple demands that browsers use WebKit instead of their own rendering engines, so Google couldn’t just use its typical code base and call it a day. However, that all changes today: Google has added the iOS Chrome code into Chromium. Developers who want to build on the iOS app, or just poke around looking for security holes, should now have an easy time seeing what makes it tick.

This should also speed up the development of Chrome for iOS, Google adds. As all of the company’s usual Chromium tests now apply to the iOS code, it’ll be easier to implement cross-platform features. You won’t have to be a programmer to benefit from the open source move, in other words. This promises more frequent updates that will help the iOS browser more closely match its Android counterpart.

Source: Chromium Blog

Disney’s Club Penguin will relaunch as a mobile app in March

After 11 years online, Disney’s kid-friendly social network Club Penguin will shut down at the end of March, to be replaced by a new mobile-only version called Club Penguin Island. The site originally launched in 2005 before Disney bought it up two years later and devoted considerable resources towards making the platform a safe space for kids to play games and chat online. When it launches on March 29th, Club Penguin Island will carry over the same philosophy to a new standalone mobile with an updated look plus new features, games and quests to engage with.

Unfortunately for the tweens who have spent considerable time and energy building up their Club Penguin presence, players won’t be able to bring their memberships or their virtual items and property over to the new version, but Disney has opened up pre-registrations for Club Penguin Island so kids can go ahead and reserve their usernames before the app goes live. In the meantime, the site will be celebrating a “Waddle On” goodbye party starting on February 1st and current members can keep playing until Club Penguin sunsets on March 29th.

As TechCrunch reports, Club Penguin’s web traffic has been on the decline since it peaked around 12 million users in 2013. As of last month, the site was down to about 5.5 million monthly visitors and the launch of Club Penguin Island hopes to recapture some of that audience while bringing the next class of elementary schoolers online. The market for kids’ spaces is also much more crowded than it was back in 2005, and Disney will be competing directly with services like Lego’s Lego Life social network, also aimed at that under-13 demographic.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Club Penguin, Club Penguin Island Pre-registration

Coin shuts down its payment services on February 28th

You knew Coin’s payment tech wasn’t long for this world when Fitbit bought the company in 2016, and now the end is at hand: the Coin team is shutting down its payment services on February 28th. ITs signature universal credit card devices will keep working as long as they still have battery power, or about 2 years after activation. However, the mobile app will stop working after that date — you can’t change cards on the device if they’re due to expire. Nearly all support is going away (outside of deleting accounts), and you’re already out of luck if you need a warranty exchange.

It’s a quiet end, but you probably won’t see too many people lamenting Coin’s fate. Fitbit’s upcoming payment-friendly smartwatch will likely be more convenient than pulling out a card. And even if you have no interest in Fitbit’s hardware, there just isn’t as much desire for a tech-savvy card as there was when Coin made its debut back in 2013. Tap-to-pay technology has exploded in the years since then, and Samsung Pay can work at those stores that still depend on magnetic stripe readers. If you can just use your phone or watch, why bother reaching for a card in your wallet? Coin was appealing for a while, but its moment has passed.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Coin

SoundHound wants to take on Google and Amazon in voice AI

When it comes to voice recognition software, SoundHound is definitely not as big a name as Google or Amazon — yet. SoundHound has raised $75 million in support of its efforts to create artificial intelligence systems capable of recognizing complex human voices and commands, Bloomberg reports. Samsung and Nvidia, two companies that have previously partnered with SoundHound, were among the investors.

SoundHound already has Houndify, a proprietary AI technology capable of interpreting complex speech and other audio. The latest $75 million investment will go toward expanding this system into new territories and devices. In particular, the company is planning to grow its business across Asia and Europe.

SoundHound CEO Keyvan Mohajer told Bloomberg he wants to place his voice-recognition AI in third-party IoT devices. This way, device manufacturers won’t have to build their own AI systems and they won’t need to rely on products from Google, Microsoft, Apple or Amazon. These companies offer closed systems that remove control from the device-maker, Mohajer said.

“We don’t have an agenda to hijack your product,” he said. “If you use Amazon, you lose your brand, your users. You have to ask your user to log into their Amazon account, they have to call on Alexa, and all the data belongs to them.” He promised that companies wouldn’t lose control over their customers or data if they implemented SoundHound’s technology.

This all seems like good timing on SoundHound’s part — 2017 is poised to be huge for voice-recognition technology in IoT devices and beyond.

Source: Bloomberg