AT&T offers unlimited data with slow speeds for pre-paid plans

AT&T is upgrading two of its inexpensive pre-paid GoPhone plans today, but they come with some serious trade-offs. The first plan, with unlimited data for $60 per month, only offers 3Mbps of data, and the speed will drop even further after you’ve used 22GB of data. The second plan comes in at a budget-friendly $45 for 6GB of high-speed data, but you’ll get throttled down to 128K when you exceed your cap. Both plans require an AutoPay option, but you won’t have to sign a contract or undergo a credit check.

AT&T has been refreshing and upgrading its pre-paid phone plans for a while now (including a similarly structured plan for non-prepaying customers). Of the current offers, the more expensive one gets you unlimited talk, texting and data, but you’ll be limited to the slower speeds — almost half of AT&T’s regular LTE throughput, as reported by the Open Signal project. Sure, unlimited data sounds great, but you’ll be also be limited to “standard” definition video at 480p and there’s no mention of using your phone as a hotspot.

If you need a low-cost option for your phone, one of these plans might be worth considering. Still, the low data cap and throttled speeds won’t let you do much, making for a less complete experience.

Via: The Verge

Source: AT&T

Next up in your News Feed: Gear VR livestreams

It looks like announcing 360-degree photos and videos for the Gear VR app was a teaser of what Oculus had in mind for this week. Now, Facebook’s $2 billion baby is pulling back the curtain on the mobile VR live-streaming it teased last October. Assuming you aren’t stateside, it’s rolling out to the public today. Domestic users will be able to livestream their VR gameplay from Face Your Fears or Wands, a sorcery simulator, directly to Facebook “in the coming weeks,” according to TechCrunch.

Then there’s “Oculus Events,” a new social virtual reality feature that adds things like tech talks and multiplayer games to the mobile-VR viewing experience. As the name suggests, “this new feature lets you find public events and interact with others in Gear VR,” a blog post reads. It starts with a VR poker tournament later this evening.

Beyond that Oculus is expanding on its other social VR attraction, Rooms. Watching 360-degree from the likes of Vimeo, with friends, is totally a thing you can do (something Twitch has teased). You can even search by voice. Oh, and speaking of, a system-wide voice search is out today as well. “Over time, we’ll add even more functionality like seeing if a friend is online or contextual commands to invite people to play a game with you,” the post reads.

While this sounds incremental on the surface (because it is) it lays the groundwork for Facebook’s grand plans to wire everyone into the metaverse. Mobile VR headsets outnumber 360-degree cameras by a wide margin, but eventually that won’t be the case. This announcement is the foundation for when everyone has a VR-friendly camera and can broadcast, say, their kid blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. What’s more, when you combine it with the Rooms update, it gives people something familiar they’re able to grab onto. In this case, Facebook Live and internet chat rooms.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Oculus

Google insists Hangouts for consumers isn’t going away

After announcing their new AI-powered chat platforms Allo and Duo last September, Google seems to be sunsetting the old and busted Hangouts in favor of their new hotness. Several other announcements seemed to confirm that strategy, including a Hangouts app specially tooled for enterprise the search giant introduced yesterday. What that means for the consumer version in the long run is unclear, but head of product for Allo and Duo Amit Fulay assured that it’s not going anywhere, at least for now.

@amitfulay What will happen to current consumer Hangouts users?

— Andrew King (@andrewkingmusic) March 10, 2017

Which came hours after he identified the product focuses for Google’s messaging apps:

This further crystallizes our efforts around Allo and Duo for consumers and Hangouts for productivity/business users

— Amit Fulay (@amitfulay) March 9, 2017

Obviously, “not going anywhere” has no time frame, but at least that means consumer Hangouts probably won’t be replaced tomorrow. It will almost certainly be at some point, as consumer apps relying on the old platform won’t work after April 25th. In Google’s long obsession with churning out chat platforms, it’s never quite certain which of last year’s promises the company will keep.

Source: 9to5 Google

IBM inches toward human-like accuracy for speech recognition

The tech world has spent years trying to create speech recognition software that listens as well as humans. Now, IBM says it’s achieved a 5.5 percent word error rate, down from its previous record of 6.9 percent — an industry milestone that could eventually lead to improvements in voice assistants like Siri and Alexa.

Microsoft claimed to reach a 5.9 percent word error rate last October using neural language models resembling associative word clouds. At the time, the company believed 5.9 percent was equivalent to human parity. But, IBM says it’s not popping the champagne yet. “As part of our process in reaching today’s milestone, we determined human parity is actually lower than what anyone has yet achieved — at 5.1 percent,” George Saon, IBM principal research scientist, wrote in a blog post this week.

IBM reached the 5.5 percent milestone by combining so-called Long Short-Term Memory, an artificial neural network, and WaveNet language models with three strong acoustic models. It was then measured using the “SWITCHBOARD” corpus, a collection of telephone conversations that’s been used as a benchmark for speech recognition software for decades. SWITCHBOARD is not the industry standard for measuring human parity, however, which makes breakthroughs harder to achieve.

“The ability to recognize speech as well as humans do is a continuing challenge, since human speech, especially during spontaneous conversation, is extremely complex,” said Julia Hirschberg, a professor and Chair at the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, in a statement to IBM. “It’s also difficult to define human performance, since humans also vary in their ability to understand the speech of others.”

Source: IBM

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a Complete Desk Accessory Set From Grovemade

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Grovemade to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win an enormous desktop accessory package that features Grovemade’s entire lineup of quality-crafted desk products.

A Laptop Stand ($139) and a Monitor Stand ($119) are the centerpieces of Grovemade’s desktop setup, with the former able to hold any Mac notebook and the latter able to hold an iMac, LG 5K UltraFine Display, or any other monitor.

Grovemade also makes a Keyboard Tray ($99) that’s appropriate for the iMac keyboard, a Trackpad Tray ($59), a Wrist Pad with leather accents ($49), and a matching leather Mouse Pad ($99), all of which can be used with Apple accessories.

To go along with the Apple-related accessories, Grovemade makes additional desktop products that include a Pen Cup ($39), a Dish for small odds and ends ($29), a Planter that holds a succulent or other small plant ($29), and even a little Desk Lamp ($99).

All of Grovemade’s products are made from a dark walnut wood or a light maple wood, so everything matches and can be ordered in a color that best matches existing decor. The entire set includes everything you might need for the perfect organized desk setup, and the whole shebang looks great on a desk or table.

For our giveaway, Grovemade is including a Laptop Stand or Monitor Stand, Mouse Pad, Pen Cup, Trackpad Tray, Keyboard Tray, Wrist Pad, Lamp, and Dish.

To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (March 10) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on March 17. The winners will be chosen randomly on March 17 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

Tags: giveaway, Grovemade
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German Company WeberHaus Becomes First Homebuilder to Support HomeKit in Europe

WeberHaus, a German company that specializes in pre-fabricated connected homes, today announced plans to support HomeKit in its SmartHomes starting in 2017, making it the first homebuilder in Europe to officially support Apple’s home automation system.

WeberHaus does not name which products will be included in its HomeKit packages, but underfloor heating, blinds, light systems, smart plugs, radiator valves, sensors, and more, are mentioned as possibilities. With HomeKit, customers who purchase a SmartHome from WeberHaus will also be able to add new accessories over time.

WeberHaus already has experience with intelligent homes, having previously used WeberLogic 2.0 and the MyHomeControl app from BootUp for home control, but will pivot to Apple’s HomeKit, introducing features like Siri control and Apple TV support for controlling devices when away from home.

“Apple HomeKit is the control solution of choice for home manufacturers around the world, delivering a simple and secure smart home solution for new home buyers,” says Klaus-Dieter Schwendemann, marketing manager at WeberHaus. “We are excited to work with Apple to bring these turnkey smart home packages to home buyers this year.”

The first WeberHaus homes with Apple HomeKit integration will be available later this year, but an official timeline and pricing information is not yet listed. WeberHaus has a demo home that shows off how HomeKit will be integrated into its SmartHomes, which can be viewed at the “World of Living” exhibition at WeberGaus in Rheinau-Linx, Germany.

Several homebuilders in the United States have already announced support for HomeKit, including Lennar, KB Home, and Brookfield Residential. R&F Properties has also begun incorporating HomeKit devices into homes it builds in China.

Tag: HomeKit
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TUFFS – Quick and Painless Notification Shortcuts (Sponsored Review)

TUFFS is a simple app that, in essence, creates a constant notification in your shade, with a number of configurable “slots” for quick access to apps or shortcuts.

IT’S SO CUTE.

When you install TUFFS, even if you don’t immediately configure it, it still shows up in your notification shade. It’s kind of obnoxious – though it definitely gives you an incentive to configure it ASAP.

Once you’re in the app, it presents you with the main menu screen, shown here, complete with an utterly adorable menu animation that I personally think should be used more often.

Now, there’s a bunch of different options here, but there are really just two that matter – Home, and Settings (and even then, the two could easily be combined). The various options of the app are separated arbitrarily between the two, so you’ll have to do a little exploring before you figure out which options are where.

The free version will land you most of the options, including a single row of up to eight configurable and customizable shortcuts; the paid upgrade – $0.99 – gets you two rows.

The color picker.The theme picker.

The app comes pre-loaded with some common themes among smartphone UIs, in order to better match your TUFFS shortcuts to your Quick Settings. It also includes some custom options for frames and background colors as well as icon pack support, if you fancy creating your own theme. The color picker is also really, really fancy-looking; check it out to the left.

The end result.

The end result is something that looks a little like the image to the left; up to two rows of apps or shortcuts that live in your Notification Shade and Lockscreen for easy access. While TUFFS isn’t the most polished or well-organized app, it does what it sets out to do effectively. The interface is a bit cluttered, but easy; just tap on the shortcut you want to modify, pick the replacement, and you’re done.

It should be noted that I got a couple force-closes while using the app, and it doesn’t reliably ‘stick’ to the Quick Settings like it should – notice that my Kings notification ended up on top of it – but overall it performs well.

TUFFS is available on the Google Play Store for free, with an option unlock all features ($0.99) or unlock and tip the developers ($1.49).

Movements is a charitable-giving app that rounds up your spare change

Why it matters to you

If you’ve ever wanted to donate regularly but couldn’t carve out the time, Movements might be the answer for you.

We buy clothing, order food, book flights, and reserve hotels from our smartphones. In fact, as of 2015, mobile commerce represented 30 percent of all commerce in the United States, and it’s expected to grow nearly three times faster than ecommerce overall.

The market’s upward trajectory has helped to elevate an adjacent, more philanthropic vertical: Charitable giving. But unlike the broader ecommerce industry, the effect hasn’t been especially dramatic. According to Dunham and Company, only 18 percent of donors report using a mobile device to give to a charity’s website, and half of all people who donate to charities online do so once a year.

That’s what Movements, a new mobile app for iOS, hopes to turn around.

More: Charity made mobile: How to give from your phone without getting scammed

The brainchild of CEO and founder Jong Woo, Movements takes aim at a very specific segment of the mobile charitable giving market: Millennials. “Movements was conceived as a response to some of the pain points that I felt when trying to give back,” Jong told Digital Trends. “I had the heart to give and finally some means, but I didn’t know where to start — I knew what causes I card about generally, but I didn’t know which charitable organizations were doing impactful work within those causes.”

The solution Woo settled upon was change — spare change. Instead of having users take charge of the donation process, Movements sets aside funds rounded up from linked credit and debit cards. Once one or more payment methods have been linked to the app’s dashboard, Movements begins to calculate (and subsequently deposit) the round-ups for every transaction.

The money is made available for the charitable cause of an individual user’s choice, but those who need ideas can browse Movements showcase, which ranks organizations across categories like funding goal and time limit.

More: Feeling charitable? eBay unveils donation feature in latest app update

Movements doesn’t stop there. The app provides regular updates on projects in the form of photos, videos, texts, and messages from organizers, and users get briefs on the state of the project post-funding, and information about the real-world impact it’s made.

Woo believes that one of Movements’ greatest strength is its “set and forget it”-style of donation — the act of giving becomes compulsory, in effect. “I believe that the biggest differentiator for Movements is that the app enables people to quickly and easily incorporate giving back into their daily lives,” Woo said.

More: Users can now donate to their favorite charities in the U.K. with Apple Pay

“My hope is that we can bridge the gap that currently exists between a person’s intent to give back and the act of doing it.[In] doing so, I believe that we can unlock the next generation of donors and philanthropists who are able to channel their desire to make a difference with real, impactful action.”

Movements is available for free from the iTunes App Store.

Safari-like Reading List feature makes its way to Chrome beta on iOS

Why it matters to you

Reading List is a useful tool that can help organize, sync, and enable content for offline reading, and is sure to be a welcome addition for Chrome users on iOS.

Google’s Chrome browser for iOS is taking a page from Safari — literally. The Chrome 57 beta for Apple’s mobile devices has introduced Reading List, a feature users of the iOS stock browser have enjoyed for quite a while, according to a report from 9to5Mac.

Chrome’s implementation appears to be iOS-exclusive for now, as Reading List is nowhere to be found in the recently released update to the desktop version of the app. Third-party Chrome extensions have provided a similar service to PC users for some time, though one of the key benefits of the feature on Safari is the ability to sync content between multiple devices. This would indicate that first-party support should eventually arrive on Chrome on other platforms as well.

More: Google makes Chrome for iOS open source

9to5Mac

Reading List on Safari allows users to save entire web pages for offline viewing. It’s not quite the same as apps like Pocket or Instapaper, as those automatically present pages in a streamlined, uniform reading-friendly format, akin to news apps. However, Safari does allow users to automatically convert most sites to reader view when opened, which achieves a similar presentation, albeit with less customization than those purpose-built apps.

Reading List on Chrome appears to behave similarly to how it does in Safari, while adding a useful element. Pages are automatically separated between those you have and haven’t read, making it easier to keep track of your favorite links. The feature can be accessed through Chrome’s menu represented by the three dots at the top-right corner of the app. The menu also shows the number of unread articles next to the Reading List option.

Users of the stable version of Chrome on iOS can expect to see the feature roll out very soon. Other changes in the upcoming release are vulnerability patches and improvements to help developers scale sites to multiple display sizes.  The Android version has its share of exclusive updates as well, like expanded media notifications and minor changes to the recently released Progressive Web Apps feature.

Harmonix’s mobile ‘Dropmix’ combines card collecting with sound mixing

Why it matters to you

DropMix doesn’t fit the mold of a mobile game but it could open the door for more novel ideas on the platform.

Do you remember DJ Hero, the 2009 record-scratching game with a Guitar Hero style of play? It reviewed well enough to garner a sequel but sales for both games were underwhelming, likely because of music game fatigue. With the resurgence of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, Harmonix appears to be trying to capitalize on renewed interest with the unveiling of DropMix.

“DropMix is a fast-paced music mixing game where players create one-of-a-kind mixes by playing cards featuring hit songs from award-winning artists,” Harmonix said.

More: ‘Rock Band VR’ setlist includes tracks by Aerosmith, Oasis, The Black Keys

Harmonix partnered with Hasbro to create a game board featuring five spots for near-field communication-enabled playing cards. Each card plays a different part of a song such as vocals, guitar, or bass. When placed on the board, your mix plays through a connected app on iOS or Android. There is even a slot for your phone, but it can also be played on a tablet. All of your mixes can be saved to your device so that you can show off your mixing talents to friends and family.

There are ways to get competitive with DropMix, though. In Clash Mode, you can play one-on-one or two-on-two with friends. It’s unclear exactly how points are earned but a winner is decided when a team hits 21 points.

DropMix comes bundled with 60 cards and more than 300 cards are planned for the 2017 collection. Two types of card packs will be available separately. Playlist Packs include 16 cards for $15 and Discover Packs contain five cards for $5.

DropMix will probably be best served as a party game. However, it’s arriving during the downfall of the toys-to-life genre, so interest in the collectible aspect of the game is hard to gauge. It’s technically a mobile game and one with an expensive price of $100.

Harmonix promised to provide more details before DropMix launches in September.