Now the NPR One app is plugged into Amazon’s Alexa

Amazon has been building out its voice-controlled AI system, Alexa, expanding into smart cars and Motorola phones. But part of its necessary growth comes from ingesting more content into its ecosystem. Today, National Public Radio announced that its NPR One app is now available on the fleet of Alexa-enabled devices, including Amazon’s own Echo and Dot.

Sure, the low-hanging fruit will be beckoning your AI hub to play the latest episode of Planet Money or Code Switch. But the app also provides audio-first stories and partner content from media outlets like Buzzfeed and Gimlet. If you want to build a personalized stream of NPR news and shows by barking commands at your Alexa-powered device as you’re in the middle of your bath or doing yardwork, today is your day.

Source: NPR

The tiny little Raspberry Pi ‘Zero’ board upgrades to Wireless N and Bluetooth

Why it matters to you

Application builders who used the original Raspberry Pi Zero board are no longer required to have dangling Wi-Fi dongles or USB hubs with the new model.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its original product’s launch by introducing the Raspberry Pi Zero W board. Costing a mere $10, the new addition builds upon the vanilla Raspberry Pi Zero by adding Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. In the United States, it can be purchased now through Adafruit, CanaKit, and Microcenter.

If you’re not familiar with the Raspberry Pi, it’s an inexpensive credit card-sized computer that can be used as the foundation of applications that require computing power, or simply slapped into a small case and used as a very capable PC. The first model, the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B, arrived in 2012 and was followed by numerous refreshes over the years.

The first entry-level Raspberry Pi Zero board landed during the end of 2015 for a mere $5. This version is smaller than the main Raspberry Pi product, packing fewer ports and general purpose input/output capabilities. According to the foundation, it’s “half the size of a Model A+ with twice the utility.” Features include a single-core processor clocked at 1GHz, 512MB of system memory, can more.

Here are the specs of the new Raspberry Pi Zero W compared to the full-size Raspberry Pi 3 Model B:

Raspberry Pi Zero W
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
Processor:
Single-core CPU @ 1.0GHz
Four-core CPU @ 1.2GHz (64-bit)
VideoCore IV 3D graphics core
Memory:
512MB
1GB RAM
Storage:
MicroSD card slot
MicroSD card slot
Connectivity:
Wireless N
Bluetooth 4.0
Wireless N
Bluetooth 4.1/BLE
Ports:
1x Mini HDMI
1x Micro USB On-The-Go1x Micro USB (power)
1x Full HDMI
4x USB
1x Ethernet
1x audio/video combo jack
Connectors:
1x HAT-compatible 40-pin header
1x Composite video and reset headers
1x Camera interface (CSI)
1x GPIO 40-pin header
1x Display interface (DSI)
1x Camera interface (CSI)
Price:
$10
$35

According to founder Eben Upton, the first Raspberry Pi Zero board saw the addition of the camera connector sometime after its initial launch. That led to its use in many projects that required computing power ranging from miniature arcade cabinets to electric skateboards. But many projects needed wireless connectivity, forcing users to connect an ugly, wireless dongle to the board’s USB port.

“Users often end up adding a USB hub to allow them to connect a keyboard, a mouse and a network adapter, and this hub can easily cost more than the Zero itself,” Upton said. That pushed the team to add the same Cypress CYW43438 wireless chip used in the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

More: The Raspberry Pi Foundation offers its Pixel interface for Windows PCs, Macs

The launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero W also sees the release of an official injection-moulded case created by the foundation along with Kinneir Dufort and T-Zero. It’s similar to the case designed for the Raspberry Pi 3 (albeit smaller), and comes with the following components:

• A set of rubber feet
• A short camera adapter flexi
• One blank lid
• One lid with an aperture for accessing the GPIOs
• One lid with an aperture and camera mounting point

The tiny little Raspberry Pi ‘Zero’ board upgrades to Wireless N and Bluetooth

Why it matters to you

Application builders who used the original Raspberry Pi Zero board are no longer required to have dangling Wi-Fi dongles or USB hubs with the new model.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation is celebrating the fifth anniversary of its original product’s launch by introducing the Raspberry Pi Zero W board. Costing a mere $10, the new addition builds upon the vanilla Raspberry Pi Zero by adding Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. In the United States, it can be purchased now through Adafruit, CanaKit, and Microcenter.

If you’re not familiar with the Raspberry Pi, it’s an inexpensive credit card-sized computer that can be used as the foundation of applications that require computing power, or simply slapped into a small case and used as a very capable PC. The first model, the Raspberry Pi 1 Model B, arrived in 2012 and was followed by numerous refreshes over the years.

The first entry-level Raspberry Pi Zero board landed during the end of 2015 for a mere $5. This version is smaller than the main Raspberry Pi product, packing fewer ports and general purpose input/output capabilities. According to the foundation, it’s “half the size of a Model A+ with twice the utility.” Features include a single-core processor clocked at 1GHz, 512MB of system memory, can more.

Here are the specs of the new Raspberry Pi Zero W compared to the full-size Raspberry Pi 3 Model B:

Raspberry Pi Zero W
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
Processor:
Single-core CPU @ 1.0GHz
Four-core CPU @ 1.2GHz (64-bit)
VideoCore IV 3D graphics core
Memory:
512MB
1GB RAM
Storage:
MicroSD card slot
MicroSD card slot
Connectivity:
Wireless N
Bluetooth 4.0
Wireless N
Bluetooth 4.1/BLE
Ports:
1x Mini HDMI
1x Micro USB On-The-Go1x Micro USB (power)
1x Full HDMI
4x USB
1x Ethernet
1x audio/video combo jack
Connectors:
1x HAT-compatible 40-pin header
1x Composite video and reset headers
1x Camera interface (CSI)
1x GPIO 40-pin header
1x Display interface (DSI)
1x Camera interface (CSI)
Price:
$10
$35

According to founder Eben Upton, the first Raspberry Pi Zero board saw the addition of the camera connector sometime after its initial launch. That led to its use in many projects that required computing power ranging from miniature arcade cabinets to electric skateboards. But many projects needed wireless connectivity, forcing users to connect an ugly, wireless dongle to the board’s USB port.

“Users often end up adding a USB hub to allow them to connect a keyboard, a mouse and a network adapter, and this hub can easily cost more than the Zero itself,” Upton said. That pushed the team to add the same Cypress CYW43438 wireless chip used in the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

More: The Raspberry Pi Foundation offers its Pixel interface for Windows PCs, Macs

The launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero W also sees the release of an official injection-moulded case created by the foundation along with Kinneir Dufort and T-Zero. It’s similar to the case designed for the Raspberry Pi 3 (albeit smaller), and comes with the following components:

• A set of rubber feet
• A short camera adapter flexi
• One blank lid
• One lid with an aperture for accessing the GPIOs
• One lid with an aperture and camera mounting point

YouTube viewers now tally up a billion hours — every single day

Why it matters to you

The average American watches over five hours of TV every day — but YouTube’s latest statistics show users are tuning in longer online than ever before.

If one person watched what all YouTube visitors consume in a day, it would take about 100,000 years. On Monday, YouTube shared a viewer stat milestone — a billion hours watched every day.

A few years ago, the video platform started tracking not just the number of times a video is viewed, but how much time viewers spent on each video. The statistic, at the time, was designed to help determine who liked a video well enough to actually finish it, and not just tally up the number of times someone started watching.

More: Google has shipped 10 million Cardboard VR headsets since launch in 2014

Now, that metric shows YouTube viewers are consuming an average of one billion hours every day. According to YouTube’s blog post, a single person would have to watch for 100,000 years to consume the same amount of video. That’s roughly how long it would take to travel from one end of the Milky Way to the other — if you traveled at the speed of light.

“That’s the great thing about this milestone,” Cristos Goodrow, VP of engineering at YouTube, wrote. “It represents the enjoyment of the fantastically diverse videos that creative people make every single day. Around the world, people are spending a billion hours every day rewarding their curiosity, discovering great music, keeping up with the news, connecting with their favorite personalities, or catching up with the latest trend.”

Just how long users watch is also likely a factor in the platform’s artificially intelligent search program that was rolled out last spring. Refined artificial intelligence programs track what users watch and flag patterns, improving the list of recommended videos.

The latest shared user count was over a billion users for YouTube — or nearly a third of total web users, according to the latest stats. YouTube is now in 76 different languages, with local versions available in 88 countries.

New holster sensor detects when a cop’s weapon is drawn, turns on nearby body cams

Axon is best known for its body and dashboard cameras that are worn by police forces in the US and the UK, but now the company is expanding its law enforcement lineup with the Signal Sidearm: a new gun holster sensor that turns on all nearby body cams when a gun has been removed from a holster.

Despite its name, the Signal Sidearm is not a sidearm itself. Rather, it is a wireless sensor attachment that can be retrofitted to most existing firearm holsters. The sensor detects when a gun is drawn from the holster and uses the company’s Axon Signal technology to alert devices in the area. This alert function turns on the recording feature for any Axon camera, including both body and in-car cameras, within 30 feet of the signaling holster. This simultaneous activation allows officers to record video footage from multiple camera angles, which is indispensable when documenting possible hostile confrontations.

More: BYU’s origami-inspired Kevlar shield pops up in seconds to block bullets

The sensor is powered by a coin cell battery, which is expected to last up to 1.5 years. Because it’s wireless device, there are no cables to worry about, making it both easy to install and a cinch to use in the line of duty. Axon plans to begin selling the Signal Sidearm starting in the third quarter of 2017.

Of course, the Signal Sidearm isn’t the only cutting edge technology designed to protect police officers in the line of duty. Earlier this month, the FCA announced new technology that will protect officers from ambush while they are parked. The Officer Protection Package uses the existing rear park assist systems and the backup to detect movement behind a police vehicle. When movement is detected, the officer is alerted and the car secures itself by locking the doors, rolling up the windows and flashing the taillights.

And that’s just a small sample of what’s out there. Law enforcement agencies all over the world are increasingly turning to technology to solve some of their toughest problems, so don’t be surprised if you see more

Xiaomi begins a new chapter as a chipset maker with Surge S1-powered Mi 5c

Why it matters to you

With Xiaomi developing the technology that powers its devices, it could make its products better and drive competition for faster, less expensive chips.

Following some rumors and speculation, Xiaomi has finally joined the ranks of Samsung, Apple, and Huawei. On Tuesday, the Chinese company unveiled its own system-on-chip at an event in Beijing. Called the Surge S1, it represents Xiaomi’s first foray into developing proprietary silicon to power its devices and is slated to debut in the upcoming Mi 5c smartphone.

Many phone makers rely on third-party manufacturers like Qualcomm and MediaTek to supply them with chipsets. Xiaomi is steering clear of that route in an effort to more tightly integrate its hardware and software and “master the core technologies” behind its products, according to CEO Lei Jun. The announcement of the Surge S1 is the culmination of a reported 28-month long development process, from planning to production, in which the company partnered with subsidiary Beijing Pinecone Electronics.

More: Xiaomi could release a lot more smartphones in 2017

In terms of power, benchmarks shared by Xiaomi on Twitter suggest the Surge S1 may be snappier than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 635, but fall short of MediaTek’s Helio P20. The 64-bit chipset combines two quad-core Cortex-A53 processors — one clocked at 2.2 GHz for high performance, and the other at 1.4 GHz for less demanding usage. A quad-core Mali T860 GPU will handle graphics, and is claimed to consume 40 percent less power than the outgoing T760.

We’re excited to launch #Mi5c with our #SurgeS1! pic.twitter.com/KEAUsufVQm

— Mi (@xiaomi) February 28, 2017

For shooting photos, the 14-bit image signal processor, in tandem with the company’s own algorithm, aims to greatly improves light sensitivity while reducing noise. Meanwhile, the 32-bit voice digital signal processor will make the Mi 5c voice over LTE-capable.

Speaking of the Mi 5c, Xiaomi’s newest midrange offering sports an all-metal body with a 5.15-inch display featuring 2,048 levels of brightness, which the Surge S1 can smoothly adjust to ambient light conditions. The new chipset accompanies 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, along with a 12-megapixel camera at the back, and an 8-megapixel shooter up front. Xiaomi is touting all-day battery life thanks to a 2,860mAh battery that also supports 9V/2A fast charging. Perhaps best of all, the company says the use of a first-party system-on-chip will lead to more frequent Android updates.

The Mi 5c will launch in China on Friday but the industry will be watching to see how Xiaomi’s efforts shake out in the real world and speculating as to what a Surge-powered flagship might bring.

Crazy new metamaterial bricks let scientists ‘steer’ soundwaves, levitate small objects

Why it matters to you

If refined, this technology might one day allow doctors to use targeted ultrasound to destroy cancer cells

Scientists in the United Kingdom have developed a super material that allows anyone using it to focus sound waves in a way that’s no tougher than rearranging Lego blocks.

Using a grid of 16 3D-printed metamaterial bricks, the researchers showed that sound waves can be transformed into different sound fields. The results can be used for a broad range of applications, from directing complex multisource sound fields that you would normally need multiple speakers to achieve, to focusing sound waves so tightly that it can levitate a polystyrene bead.

“It’s a bit like Scrabble pieces which you can assemble into different orders to create different words,” Professor Sriram Subramanian, head of the Interact Lab at the University of Sussex, told Digital Trends.

More: This amazing sound lab can replicate the acoustics of any building that exists … or doesn’t

In another simile, Subramanian said the work was an attempt to do with sound what LCD displays do with light.

“Looking at an LCD display, you might be forgiven for thinking that there many light sources behind it,” he continued. “In fact, there’s just one light source. But we don’t do sound the same way. To create a complex sound field, you have to have thousands of sound sources. We’re trying to do is to change that — and make sound manipulation similar to light manipulation.”

The research was published this week in the journal Nature Communications, which explains how the metamaterials can be made and used.

It’s still early stages, but the work has a broad range of potentially exciting applications. These could include obviously sound-based use-cases like directing sound so that it can only be heard in one specific hotspot, or to follow a person as they move. Another use-case might be in haptic technology. It could even be used in a medical context, with high-intensity ultrasound waves used to target tumors in the body.

Some of these are “much further down the line” than others, but there’s no doubting that this is work that Subramanian and his colleagues at the University of Sussex and University of Bristol will be building on in the months and years to come.

That noise you hear is the sound of progress being made!

Dirac Research makes any stereo handset sound like top-of-the-line headphones

Why it matters to you

With Dirac Research’s algorithms, you can listen to an album as though the band’s right in front of you.

If you’re like us, you probably aren’t familiar with Dirac Research. The Swedish audio company prefers to operate under the radar, partnering with smartphone makers like Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and OnePlus, high-end auto manufacturers like Rolls Royce and Volvo, and home theater brands to enhance existing products. But be that as it may, the spunky 15-year-old firm sure knows how to give a demo.

In a sequestered room off of the bustling Mobile World Congress convention center floor in Barcelona, Dirac walked us through a demo of what it calls Dynamic 3D Audio. “It enables transparent sound reproduction,” Dirac Research CEO Dr. Mathias Johansson said. “For example,  if in a VR environment a helicopter is hovering 10 yards in front of me, regardless of which way I turn my head, that helicopter [stays] perfectly fixed.”

More: Sonos’ smart speakers could one day integrate with all digital assistants

It’s startlingly realistic. Imagine playing your favorite album and hearing the instruments in front of you, as if on stage. Or picture a virtual surround sound system that simulates a real one: When you point your head in the direction of one “speaker,” it becomes louder, clearer, and more distinctive than the rest.

During our demo, we heard a firework whiz from the left-back corner of the tiny demo room to the front-right. And we nearly jumped at the sound of a booming voice near the back of the room.

Dirac Research’s secret sauce, so to speak, is head-related transfer functions, or HRTFs. As a company spokesperson explained it, they’re a function of how the human ear perceives a particular sound from a fixed point in space — like how a subwoofer sounds from across the room. Dirac Research’s Dynamic 3D Audio platform considers height, cranial proportions, and ear dimensions in each individualized HRTF, ensuring the most accurate reproduction of sound possible.

More: Apple patent describes headphones that flip upward to double as speakers

Those calculations feed a reverberation engine and a head-tracker. For the purposes of the demo, they were a pair of open-ear Sennheiser headphones with a taped-on bundle of wires. But Dirac Research has partnered with headphone manufacturers to build the sensors into a high-end model.

Just as impressive as Dynamic 3D Audio was Dirac Reasearch’s next demo, Panorama Sound. A rep handed us a Huawei Nexus 6P smartphone with specially modified software and enabled the effect via a checkbox, and the difference was revelatory. Held just about six inches from our ears — the sweet spot for Panorama Sound, a Dirac Audio rep told us — it was just like wearing a pair of high-end earphones, but without the headphones. We heard the strings of a guitar plucked to the far right of us, and during a clip of Gravity, mission control’s panicked transmission to Sandra Bullock was mere inches from our inner ears.

The convincing effect is thanks to patented algorithms that fine-tune not only the source of the audio’s frequency, but impulse response and phase as well. The end result is a perfectly coordinated speakers that deliver an ultra-wide sound stage, rich bass, and unbelievable crispness.

More: Transform your desktop into a concert hall with these computer speakers

Panorama Sound remains a demo for now — the technology requires integration at the operating system level. But one product the company confirmed is bound for market is Dirac Connect, an “optimization engine” that enhances the sound quality of existing headphones by widening the sound stage, improving sound reproduction, and simulating a home theater setup. “It makes a $20 pair of headphones sound like a $200 pair of headphones,” a Dirac spokesperson said.

Each profile is available for a limited-time trial, after which they can be purchased for a nominal fee. Chinese smartphone maker Smartisan is the first to feature the tech.

For our ears’ sake, we can only hope that Dirac Research’s magical suite ships more widely soon.

Microsoft and Qualcomm promise first Windows 10 ‘cellular PCs’ later this year

Why it matters to you

The cellular PC will be a new kind of always-connected, highly portable Windows 10 machine, and it’s coming in 2017.

One of Microsoft’s more exciting announcements at its 2016 WinHEC conference was that Windows 10 will run on ARM processors, breaking Intel’s lock on the platform. This isn’t the smartphone-focused Windows 10 Mobile or the severely limited Windows RT, either, but the same version of Windows 10 that runs on PCs.

Not only will Windows 10 run on ARM processors, but full desktop apps like Office 2016 and Adobe Photoshop will run on them as well. By various accounts, Windows 10 will first arrive on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor sometime in late 2017, and that company has offered up some additional details, as PC World reports.

More: Supply channels hint that ARM-based Windows 10 machines are due in 2017

ARM support for Windows 10 is important because it makes a wider range of device types possible. ARM processors are usually more power-efficient than Intel’s PC processors, and system-on-chip (SoC) solutions like the Snapdragon 835 include cellular communications and LTE data connectivity built-in. Because battery life is improved, smaller devices can be designed that perform well and still last a reasonable time on a single charge.

Adam Shah/IDG News Service

In fact, Microsoft and Qualcomm have already collaborated on a new “cellular PC” concept that will bring extremely thin and light PC notebooks with LTE data. By all accounts, the Snapdragon 835 will be fast enough to support both the core Windows 10 operating system and the emulation engine that will allow it to run full desktop Windows applications.

According to Qualcomm, a number of major PC manufacturers are on board, with a number of Windows 10 machines set to use the Snapdragon 835 SoC arriving later in 2017. These will be midrange devices in terms of price, and there won’t be that many of them. As Keith Kressin, Qualcomm’s senior vice president or product management, puts it, “It’ll start, and you’ll see more headed into 2018 and 2019. It’s a patient move into the market, and establishing a new value proposition.”

While nobody expects these ARM-based Windows 10 machines to perform like high-end Intel-based PC gaming systems and workstations, they should provide good enough performance for the majority of productivity and general computing tasks. It’s reasonable to expect cellular PCs to arrive at some point in smartphone-sized packages, which would seem to describe Microsoft’s Surface Phone concept. If Microsoft extends its Windows 10 Mobile Continuum concept to running desktop apps when the smallest cellular PCs are attached to external displays, keyboards, and mice, then the holy grail of a single computing device that can meet all of a user’s computing needs could eventually be realized.

Other possibilities include support for Windows 10 Holographic, for virtual reality (VR) applications based on the new VR and mixed-reality capabilities built into Windows 10 Creators Update. The Snapdragon 835 supports the majority of PC components such as USB, and cellular PCs should enjoy robust peripheral support as a result.

The details remain sketchy, but Qualcomm and Microsoft are clearly committed to bringing new power-efficient, thin, and light Windows 10 machines to the market starting in late 2017. With full support for Windows desktop applications, the new cellular PC platform should avoid the Windows RT debacle that saw Microsoft’s original Surface PC fail in the market, while ushering in a new kind of PC that lets users work anywhere without compromise.

HTC Ocean leaks, news and rumors

Rumors of a few new HTC devices, code-named the “Ocean series,” have surfaced, but they were initially brushed off by the company as concepts created by HTC designers that would ultimately never come to fruition.

Now, it looks like that has changed. A number of rumors have been surfacing over the past few months suggesting that the HTC Ocean is, in fact, a series of phones. Here’s everything we know about the HTC Ocean so far.

A radical design shift

It looks like the Ocean series will aim to push the boundaries a little and shake things up — which makes sense in the new year, given HTC’s somewhat lackluster 2016. The latest leak, from Mobile01, suggests the phone’s edge-like display will make use of a new feature called “Edge Sense,” which is basically the official name of the edge on the phone and how it functions. This comes from a series of screenshots of the phone’s settings menu.

We also finally have a better look at what the Ocean will look like thanks to a promo leaked by @evleaks. The video shows a very interesting phone with which apps can be launched through a soft-touch control on the side. Some suggest that this feature will finally bring some serious functionality to the “edge” display.

Remember the HTC Ocean? (https://t.co/q5ghm3vQ8Z) pic.twitter.com/GtpqowETjM

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) January 8, 2017

New images of the Ocean Master have also leaked on Chinese social media network Weibo, showing what appears to be a phone with a glass frame like the Galaxy S7 and a second display like the LG V10 and V20.

That second display would be used for things like app shortcuts and notifications, exactly like the LG V20, but it’s possible that LG would also have something special planned for the phone. In general the phone looks very sleek, and marks a pretty radical design shift for HTC, which has long stuck with an aluminum unibody design for its flagship phones.

The images have a date stamp of January 5 with the location being Las Vegas — so it seems as though HTC may have had them at CES.

Release date

Rumors about the phone have been swirling for months, but it’s still been unknown when exactly the phone would be launched. Now, a little more info has surfaced.

According to Taiwanese news outlet ePrice, HTC will launch the Ocean phone or phones on January 12. In fact, HTC has scheduled an event for that date — an event it’s calling “For U.” The company has yet to confirm the purpose of the event. According to ePrice, the phone will go on sale on January 24, but it’s unknown exactly where it will go on sale.

Is Ocean a series of three phones?

The latest rumors, from Taiwanese news outlet ePrice, suggests that Ocean is indeed a series of three phones, called “Master,” “Note,” and “Smart,” which back a previous leak from Twitter user LlabTooFer. Presumably, the “Note” will have a larger display, the “Master” will offer higher specs, and the “Smart” will be the base model. The Note will offer storage options of 64GB and 128GB, ePrice says, but that’s all we know about the phone’s specs.

More: Best HTC Phones

Not much else is known about the new devices just yet, however a HTC designer seems to have posted a concept video highlighting some of the best features of the phone. In particular, the video shows off what appears to be a touch-sensitive frame, which would make it possible to control the phone’s software in a similar way to how the edge is used on Samsung’s Galaxy Note Edge series.

Codenames

OCEAN MASTEROCEAN NOTEOCEAN SMARThttps://t.co/r4FY9I0Ske

— LlabTooFeR (@LlabTooFeR) September 21, 2016

HTC has been pretty busy lately, not only manufacturing the Google-designed Pixel and Pixel XL, but also unveiling a few new Desire phones — called the Desire 10 Pro and Desire 10 Lifestyle. The two phones are largely design-focused and sport a black-and-gold aesthetic similar to the other devices in the Desire 10 lineup.

To check out what the HTC Ocean series may look like, take a look at the video below.

Updated on 02-28-2017 by Christian de Looper: Added news that phone would use “Edge Sense” feature.