Best iPad (2017) cases: Protect your new 9.7-inch iPad

Apple surprised us all when it quietly introduced a new iPad in March.

The 9.7-inch tablet has the same height and width as its predecessor, the iPad Air 2, as well as the same weight as the current 9.7-inch iPad Pro. But it’s thicker than both models – at 7.5mm. In other words, any old iPad cases you might have laying around probably won’t fit it. So, if you ordered Apple’s latest tablet and are needing a new case to protect it, we’ve rounded up a list of the best iPad cases.

• New Apple iPad 2017 review: Solid, affordable replacement for the Air

We’ve included book-like ones, artsy ones, and rugged ones. And most of them you can buy right now.

Apple

Apple iPad Smart Cover

Of course the first cover you should consider is Apple’s own iPad Smart Cover. It features a soft microfiber lining to protect your display, but it’ll also automatically wake up your iPad when opened. When you close the cover, your iPad goes to sleep. The Smart Cover can also be folded back. It comes in five colours – Charcoal Gray, Midnight Blue, Red, Pink Sand, and White – and can be ordered now at Amazon.

Price: $39.99 at Amazon.com

Apple

Pad and Quill Walden Case

Here’s a book-like, moleskine-style case for the iPad. It attaches to the rear of your iPad with 3M adhesive, protecting the front with a smooth interior and leather exterior. Pad and Quill also offer the $110 Contega Case, which has a Baltic birch cradle and hand-applied bonded leather. You can select from one of two exterior colors – Black or Whiskey Leather – and even have it monogrammed.

Price: $49.99 at Pad and Quill

Apple

Fintie iPad Cover

Fintie’s line of cases for the new 9.7-inch iPad feature a variety of designs, including the famous Starry Night artwork. It has a hook and loop fastener, so you can adjust the iPad to any angle, and it has a microfiber interior and adjustable strap on the back for mounting on a car headrest.

Price: $22.99 at Amazon.com

Apple

UZBL ShockWave Rugged Case

UZBL’s ShockWave Ultra-Protective Case is for maximum protection. It features a removable six-angle kickstand, optional handstrap, and built-in screen protector with cushioning ribs for added shock absorption. It comes in five colours and promises a “slim fit for more cart compatibility”.

Price: $39.95 at Amazon.com

Apple

Logitech Rugged Combo

Logitech’s Rugged Combo keyboard features a shell to protect against dents and bumps. It also comes with a detachable Bluetooth keyboard so you can do work while on the go. We also like the boxy, old Mac laptop-type look. But it only comes in one colour from what we can tell.

Price: Coming soon

Apple

Speck Balance Folio

This is a simple foldable case and stand for the iPad that comes in six colours. It promises a slim profile, multiple viewing and typing angles, and protection against “extreme temperatures, cracks, chemicals, and abrasions”.

Price: Coming soon

Robots could soon cooperate on surveillance

Computers are getting better at spotting objects, but they tend to work in isolation. What good would a security robot be if it couldn’t share info about an intruder with other machines? Cornell scientists might have an answer. They’re designing a system that would let robots and other autonomous devices cooperate with each other on identifying and tracking objects. Each bot would send its imagery to a central unit that could talk to both other camera systems and the internet to help identify objects. The group would combine and compare images to follow objects and collect more information about them, getting more data than they would if they did all the work by themselves.

For instance, a robot might detect a suspicious person racing through a crowd. The team could follow this person wherever they go, using a planning feature to determine which cameras are needed and where robots need to go to get a better look.

There’s a lot of work still to be done. Cornell has yet to finish a system that it can test, let alone put it into service. However, it would likely be useful for far more than building security. The US Office of Naval Research is backing the project, and there’s hopes that the Navy could use this to coordinate drones. No matter how this gets used, it’s reasonable to say that automatons won’t be lone wolves for too much longer.

Source: Cornell University

‘Star Wars Battlefront II’ trailer leaks out a few days early

EA promised to reveal a trailer for its Star Wars Battlefront sequel on April 15th during the Star Wars Celebration event, but it appears to have popped up online a bit early. The 30-second teaser clip shows “game engine footage,” with hints at what we can expect from both its single- and multiplayer experience. It appears that the story mode will have players taking on the role of a young woman fighting on the side of the Empire in a post-Return of the Jedi story line attempting to “avenge your emperor.”

Still, most people will probably spend much more time in the multiplayer section, which promises to feature action “across all eras,” as clips flash including Darth Maul, Yoda, Rey and Kylo Ren. The final shot (shown above) highlights the first two and what we assume is your single player character — expect to find out more about Star Wars Battlefront II over the next few days.

#StarWarsBattlefrontII is coming this year. Get your first look on April 15 at 2:30PM ET/11:30AM PT. Learn more: https://t.co/orUCPwoO4l pic.twitter.com/fAKY4hhR1u

— EAStarWars (@EAStarWars) March 29, 2017

Via: NeoGAF, r/Battlefront

Source: Vimeo

Google’s AutoDraw uses machine learning to turn your doodles into art

Google’s latest tool can turn your doodles into works of art.

It’s launched AutoDraw, a web-based app powered by machine learning. With that technology, AutoDraw can recognise your crude drawings, whether it’s a flower or a cake or a smiley face, and it can smartly serve up pre-drawn alternatives created by “talented artists” to replace it. Google is pitching this app as a free, easier alternative to paid, complex programs from the likes of Adobe.

• Adobe wants to use AI and machine learning to beautify your selfies

Not only is the app free to use, but it also available on mobile devices. It works like this: draw a cat, or try to anyway, and the auto suggestion tool will attempt to decipher your doodle. At that point, you can choose from a variety of actual cat drawings. You can also turn off the auto suggestions so that you can just draw whatever you want and use the app as a digital sketchpad.

AutoDraw uses the same technology as Google’s QuickDraw experiment. While that tells you which objects to draw, AutoDraw is a tool you can open up to make birthday cards or posters. But they both teach a neural network to recognise doodles. Google said AutoDraw can guess hundreds of drawings, and it plans to update it with more suggestions in the future.

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Interested artists can contribute to the project from here.

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 launch will happen without Bixby Voice

We’re just days away from the launch of Samsung’s latest flagship phones, but now the company says we’ll have to wait for one of the highlight features of the Galaxy S8 / S8 Plus. While some features of its Bixby AI assistant, like Vision, Home and Reminder will be ready on April 21st, the company said in a statement that Bixby Voice will launch in the US “later this spring.”

Samsung:

With its intelligent interface and contextual awareness, Bixby will make your phone more helpful by assisting in completing tasks, telling you what you’re looking at, learning your routine and remembering what you need to do. Key features of Bixby, including Vision, Home and Reminder, will be available with the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 on April 21. Bixby Voice will be available in the U.S. on the Galaxy S8 later this spring.

There’s no word on exactly why the voice features are being delayed, but Bixby will need everything in place to fight competition from Google, Amazon and Apple.

The Moto C series could be Motorola’s most affordable yet

Life under Lenovo has had its ups and downs for Motorola. The company has found success on the budget end of the smartphone spectrum with the recent Moto G5 and the Moto E series before that, but the mobile phone business is still bringing down its corporate parent. Based on a new leak obtained by VentureBeat, however, the company appears to be doubling down on the budget end of its product line with an even more affordable Moto C series of phones.

The Moto C and Moto C Plus are directed at first time smartphone buyers VentureBeat’s Evan Blass reports, so they make a solid base for Android 7.0 Nougat but won’t offer much beyond that. Both the C and the C Plus will sport a five-inch display, so the “Plus” badge is actually a reference to a bump in specs rather than screen real estate. The Plus offers 720p HD resolution, 4G LTE and a 64-bit 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, while the standard C only has a 480p screen. The C will come in two flavors, however: one with 4G LTE radios and one presumably aimed at emerging markets and limited to only 3G. The C will only come with 1GB of RAM, but the C Plus with offer either 1GB or 2GB depending on the region. Likewise, storage space will vary depending on the market, but you can expect either 8GB or 16GB onboard with microSD slots to handle any media library overflow.

On the back, the Moto C brings along a 5-megapixel rear camera (with autofocus only on the 4G model). The C and the C Plus share the same 2-megapixel selfie shooter, but the Plus gets an 8-megapixel sensor on the main camera. Both models should get some respectable battery life with a 2350mAh capacity in the Moto C and 4000mAh in the C Plus. No word yet on release dates or launch markets, but when they are available, you can find them in Motorola’s now-standard black, white, gold and red.

Source: VentureBeat

Samsung to Delay English-Language Launch of Siri Rival ‘Bixby’

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, announced in late March, are set to go on sale starting on April 21, but one feature will be notably missing on smartphones sold in the United States – Samsung’s Bixby voice assistant.

Samsung is planning to delay the launch of the English-language version of Bixby, reports The Wall Street Journal, due to performance issues discovered over the course of the last few weeks.

The English-language version of Bixby could be delayed until the end of May, according to a source that spoke to The Wall Street Journal, but Samsung has not made a final decision on timing. A Samsung spokesperson confirmed that the Bixby service will not be available in the United States until “later this spring.”

During internal tests in recent weeks, the performance of Bixby’s voice recognition in English has lagged behind that of the virtual assistant’s performance in Korean, these people said, and company executives are still discussing when to make Bixby available in English.

Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant was first announced in March, ahead of the debut of the Galaxy S8 and S8+. According to Samsung, Bixby is “fundamentally different” than competing products like Siri and Cortana because it is able to be deeply integrated into apps.

Samsung also says Bixby is intelligent enough to understand commands with incomplete information and execute the commanded task to the best of its knowledge. Bixby was built on technology that was acquired from Viv, an AI virtual assistant created by some of the same people who originally built Siri.

As a major feature in the Galaxy S8, with a dedicated button on the left side of the device, Bixby’s absence could deter customers from purchasing Samsung’s new smartphone.

The Galaxy S8 and the S8+ feature a 5.8 or 6.2-inch AMOLED display, a 12-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera, IP68 water resistance, iris scanning and facial recognition capabilities, a Snapdragon 835 processor, and 4GB RAM. Pricing on the S8 starts at $750 while pricing on the S8+ starts at $850.

Tags: Samsung, Galaxy S8, Bixby
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Google’s AI-powered drawing tool turns terrible sketches into masterpieces

Why it matters to you

Turn quick drawings into something better than stick figures with Google’s free AutoDraw tool.

Say goodbye to crummy stick figures — artificial intelligence can now turn crappy drawings into actual artistic sketches. AutoDraw is a new web-based tool from Google, announced April 11, that interprets quick sketches and replaces them with artistic renderings.

The AI program seeks to recognize what you are drawing, and then displays similar drawings at the top for you to replace yours with. Along with replacing your sketches with artistic renderings, the online tool allows users to color in the figures and add text, good for making quick graphics that don’t look like they were done quickly, from flyers to coloring pages. Since the program is web-based, users can access it from desktop computers or mobile devices — and it’s free.

More: Who needs hands? This robot draws your tweets, messages, and artwork on command

When AutoDraw turns your bad stick figure into a yoga pose, it’s using neural networks and object recognition to determine exactly what you’re trying to draw, then displaying a list of similar figurines crafted by artists. Along with using drawings from a team of artists, the program encourages users to submit their own non-crappy drawings for the system to use.

The tool comes from Google’s experimental AI Quick Draw that was designed to guess exactly what you’re trying to sketch, except the new web-based tool can actually replace it with the real thing. Quick Draw was actually partially taught by asking web browsers to draw an object in under twenty seconds. The more users drew with the program, the better the system got at interpreting just what that drawing is.

The computer verbally guesses what you’re drawing — the first guess on our snowman drawing was a potato, but the system picked it up after the second snowball and even before any carrot noses.

Besides the artificially intelligent sketch recognition, AutoDraw will also let you keep your drawings as-is for those just looking for a free drawing tool. Sketches can then be downloaded or shared on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Since it’s designed for quick sketches, there isn’t an option to save your work to come back later.

Smart bra sends good vibrations when you need to take a breath and relax

Why it matters to you

Want to feel more leveled in every sense of the word? This smart sports bra could help.

Imagine if your clothing could remind you to stand up straight, or when to calm down and breathe. That’s the goal of a new tech-heavy sports bra that’s just arrived on Kickstarter.

Called Vitali, it goes beyond the regular smart clothing schtick of monitoring miles run, calories burned, et cetera, by instead focusing on tracking breathing, posture and heart rate variability to keep stress levels in check at all times.

“When I was a mechanical engineering student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I was stretched to my limits with an overly full course load, student teams, athletics, a part time job, and minimum sleep,” Vitali founder Cindy Gu told Digital Trends.

“That led me to a period of depression. I tried medication and therapy, but none of it was very effective for myself. Eventually, a friend got me to try yoga, and it changed my life — so much so that I became a yoga teacher. While yoga definitely helped my depression and stress, I still found it was difficult to keep up that level of mindfulness and awareness of my physical and mental well being day to day through stressful work, meetings, and everything in between. I decided I needed a tool to help me out.”

More: Why smart clothes, not watches, are the future of wearables

Gu said she started sewing sensors onto existing bras to monitor her breathing and biofeedback when she got stressed out. She then visited a hackathon, where she successfully pitched the idea to a group of like-minded entrepreneurs. Jump forward in time, and the project is (almost) ready for prime time with the new crowdfunding campaign.

The tech works by detecting subtle changes in the upper diaphragm during breathing, while fabric-based sensors — such as a built-in gyroscope and 9-axis accelerometer — also collect data. This is all then sent to a diamond-shaped onboard device for processing, before personalized feedback is set to users in the form of gentle vibrations.

You can pre-order a Vitali sports bar on Kickstarter, with prices starting at $129. Shipping will begin in February 2018.

Windows Vista officially reaches the end of life support

Why it matters to you

If you’re still using Windows Vista, then you’ll want to upgrade soon or face a complete lack of technical support from Microsoft.

Today is the official release date of Windows 10 Creators Update, bringing some new 3D, gaming, privacy, and security functionality to the operating system. And while that’s an example of Microsoft giving something, the much less popular Windows Vista is an example of Microsoft taking something away.

Specifically, Microsoft is officially ending Windows Vista extended support as of today, April 11, 2017. That follows fully five years after the OS hit its end-of-maintenance support date of April 10, 2012, and roughly 10 years since Microsoft first released Windows Vista to a litany of complaints and its eventual replacement by the much more well-received Windows 7.

More: Here’s how you can start using the Windows 10 Creators Update today

Microsoft’s operating system support policies are spelled out fairly specifically, as follows:

• Mainstream support. Microsoft will offer mainstream support for a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability. For example, if you buy a new version of Windows and five years later another version is released, you will still have two years of support left for the previous version.
• Extended support. Microsoft will offer extended support for a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product’s general availability.

What this means is that Windows Vista will no longer receive any kind of update, including new security updates, non-security hotfixes, or free or paid support. Microsoft will also no longer provide any online technical content updates. In other words, if you’re intent on continuing to use Windows Vista — and there aren’t many of you who remain committed to one of the company’s least popular operating systems — then you’re completely on your own.

Perhaps the most significant downside to using an unsupported OS is that you’re leaving yourself wide open to security vulnerabilities. You’ll also likely receive zero support from hardware and software vendors in terms of keeping their products working well.

Most users will likely go ahead and upgrade their machine to Windows 10 if it’s currently stuck on Windows Vista. Windows 10 offers a host of improvements, not the least of which is enhanced security — albeit raising some potential privacy concerns — along with the best level of third-party support. If your PC can’t handle an upgrade to Windows 10, then you might just want to consider buying a new one.