Google now lets anyone sign up to try experimental Area 120 products

Google has an incubator that develops interesting products, like the new Uptime app, but now it’s allowing anyone to test those efforts.

Called Area 120, the in-house unit not only developed Uptime but also Advr, an experimental project for advertising in VR. Area 120 began in 2016 as a way for Google to attract talent that likes to think outside the box. It then gives them the opportunity to test new ideas that could eventually become official Google products, or at the very least be integrated into existing products.

The unit’s name even references Google’s rule of allowing employees to work on passion projects during 20 per cent of their work time. Anyway, Area 120 has finally now launched a central website, which anyone can go visit. Not only that, but you can sign up for early access to future Area 120 experiments, projects, apps – whatever they’re willing to open up for public feedback.

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Here’s how Area 120 described itself:

“We’re an experimental program within Google to help small teams rapidly build new products in an entrepreneurial environment. We’re where Googlers spend 100 per cent of their time on 20 per cent projects. We build, launch, and iterate on dozens of novel ideas that might otherwise not be explored. Most of these experiments will fail. But our teams succeed when we test the limits and learn something new.”

So, to join Area 120’s Early Access program, you just need to submit your email, preferred mobile OS, agree to its terms, and that’s it. If nothing else, this is a good indication that more Area 120 products are on the way.

You won’t escape Google ads in VR

Sorry, folks, donning a virtual reality headset won’t offer a refuge from internet advertising. Google’s Area 120 incubator is experimenting with online ad formats designed with VR in mind. It’s a lot trickier than slapping a banner on a website, as you might have already guessed. The team says it’s trying to create ads that feel at home in VR and are relatively flexible, but are also “non-intrusive” and genuinely useful if you’re interested. Area 120’s first concept appears to hit that mark.

The initial concept packages the ad into a cube that unfolds into an ad (in this case, a YouTube video promoting an app) when you tap on the cube or stare at it for a few seconds. Close the video and a download button briefly appears before shrinking back into the box. It’s a simple concept, but it gets the point across without feeling out of place or risking an accidental launch.

Area 120 is currently testing the ad format on Google’s own Cardboard and Daydream VR experiences as well as Samsung’s Gear VR, and it’s encouraging VR developers to sign up for an early access program to get a head start.

It’s hard not to wince at the thought of headset-based sales pitches, but this could be important to the future of VR. Many mobile app creators depend on ads for a living, and this format would let them offer VR titles without either charging you for access or having to figure out their own ad solution. While this won’t necessarily raise the quality of VR apps (it’s easy to see this enabling a lot of fluff), it could at least give you more than a handful of choices.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: Google Developers Blog

Postmates’ speedy booze delivery begins drop-offs in NYC and Texas

Postmates’ on-demand alcohol service is now available well beyond California’s borders. On top of an expansion to Miami in May, the internet delivery mainstay is now making its Drinks feature available in New York City (in Brooklyn and Manhattan) as well as Austin, Dallas and Houston. As before, the aim is to bring neighborhood stores’ booze to your door in 25 minutes or less. You’ll have to be in the mood for certain drinks depending on where you live, though. The NYC service focuses on wine and spirits, while the Texas offerings revolve around beers.

The Drinks service is best-suited to pricier orders: you’ll need to pay a $3 delivery for orders under $30. Postmates is waiving that fee for the next month (as of this writing), though, so it may be worth trying if you’re craving an amber ale or bourbon on a hot summer night. The main catch right now is simply availability — it’s far from a nationwide service at the moment (Postmates counts 13 cities in total). Given the rapid expansion, however, you might not have to wait long to see whether it’s any better than existing delivery options in your area.

Source: Postmates (Medium)

Real-time tracking and projection mapping keeps getting better

Japanese creative studio P.I.C.S. have set a mindbending new standard for real-time tracking and projection mapping with their latest visual creation, EXISDANCE.

The technology has been around for a while, although it arguably first captured the mainstream public’s imagination at the Grammy’s last year, when a red bright lightning bolt appeared on Lady Gaga’s face during her David Bowie tribute.

Since then we’ve seen Disney take scary clown makeup to the next level with its ‘Makeup Lamps’, plus any number of visual delights from creative studios demonstrating the technology’s increasingly precise capabilities, but the latest offering from P.I.C.S. (the same team that made the weird Nintendo Switch advert), is an absolutely spectacular execution.

This isn’t straightforward projection. A complex set of algorithms is responding to the dancer’s movements and creating a visual accompaniment in real-time. Latency — the time between generating a particular image and matching it to the pose — is one of the biggest challenges in this kind of live augmentation, but as you can see here the P.I.C.S. team have nailed it. Minimal latency, maximum wow.

Source: Vimeo

Apple’s iCloud Backup Service Experiencing Outage

According to Apple’s System Status website and multiple reports sent in by MacRumors readers, Apple’s iCloud Backup service is unavailable for some users. Apple’s site says iCloud backup is down for “less than 1 percent of users,” but those affected have been unable to restore from an iCloud backup since yesterday.

Customers impacted by the iCloud outage who attempt to restore an iOS device using a backup are seeing the process hang while in progress, with the restore failing to complete. iCloud backups can still be made from iOS devices, so data is safe, but affected users will not be able to restore from backups until Apple’s servers are back up. In some cases, existing iCloud backups are also not showing up on new devices.

Apple employees have been telling customers to wait it out and set up recently purchased iPhones and iPads as new devices rather than restoring from an existing backup.

Apple’s iCloud Backup service has been experiencing issues since 8:00 a.m. yesterday morning, and it is not clear when a fix will be implemented. We’ll update this post when the problem is resolved.

Tags: iCloud, system status
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Apple Reminds Developers About 64-Bit Requirement for iOS and Mac Apps, Releases WWDC 2017 Transcripts

Apple today updated its developer news site to remind developers about 64-bit requirements for both Mac and iOS apps.

Apple has required all new iOS apps and app updates submitted to the iOS App Store to support 64-bit since June of 2015. Since then, Apple has begun phasing out support for 32-bit apps, and plans to stop supporting them all together with iOS 11.

While Apple has enforced 64-bit support for several years, there are still a number of older iOS apps that have not been updated since 2015 but remain in use. When attempting to open a 32-bit app on iOS 11, it will not run and users will see a popup that says “The developer of this app needs to update it to work with iOS 11.”

As a reminder, new iOS apps and updates submitted to the App Store must support 64-bit. Support for 32-bit apps is not available in iOS 11 and all 32-bit apps previously installed on a user’s device will not launch. If you haven’t updated your app on the App Store to support 64-bit, we recommend submitting an update so your users can continue to run your apps on iOS 11, which will be in the hands of hundreds of millions of customers this fall.

At WWDC, Apple announced plans to start phasing out 32-bit Mac App Store apps as well. Starting in January of 2018, Apple will require all new Mac apps submitted to the Mac App Store to support 64-bit, and all existing apps must implement support by June of 2018. According to Apple, macOS High Sierra will be the last version of macOS that will support 32-bit apps “without compromise.”

At WWDC 2017, we announced new apps submitted to the Mac App Store must support 64-bit starting January 2018, and Mac app updates and existing apps must support 64-bit starting June 2018. If you distribute your apps outside the Mac App Store, we highly recommend distributing 64-bit binaries to make sure your users can continue to run your apps on future versions of macOS. macOS High Sierra will be the last macOS release to support 32-bit apps without compromise.

When phasing out 32-bit apps on iOS devices, Apple gave both end users and developers ample notice and several warnings, and the company plans to follow the same path as it phases out 32-bit Mac apps.

Along with reminding developers about its app requirements, Apple today also announced the availability of transcripts for all of its WWDC 2017 videos, making it easier for users to find and share specific information that was covered at the event. Transcripts can be searched by keyword, with those keywords linked to the specific times when they were mentioned.

Apple’s session videos cover a wide range of topics, including Core ML, ARKit, Metal 2, Drag and Drop, Swift, Touch Bar, CareKit, tvOS, and much, much more.

Tag: Apple Developer Program
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Logitech Z537 speaker system review

Our houses are getting smarter all the time. Be it light bulbs, security systems, doorbells, or something else, the Internet of Things is growing at quite a rate. In fact, it’s hard to buy household things, or at least consider them, in 2017 that aren’t “smart”.

Speakers are one of those items that have been getting increasingly more robust and well-rounded. To many, the grandfather of the smart speaker is the Sonos and its Wi-Fi based setup.

There’s something very cool about being able to play separate music playlists in individual rooms or tie them together for a group party. Moreover, it’s really fun to have so many different music and audio sources.

Chromecast Audio, and later Google Cast for Audio, is a great, inexpensive way to get users/listeners halfway there. It’s a low-cost way to play music and other audio through speakers that otherwise might not have the capability. Then, of course, there’s the old standby in Bluetooth. It doesn’t get much easier to pair a speaker to a phone and play your favorite tracks.

Introduced in April, Logitech’s latest audio offering is the Z537 speaker system. Designed to connect to your desktop computer or laptop, it’s a 2.1 channel setup that also includes RCA input and Bluetooth. The four-piece system runs about $130 and can be found at a variety of retailers.

As is the case with most speakers designed for computers, the Logitech Z537 has its share of cables. Nothing crazy, mind you, but the standard stuff to tie the four components together. Included in the box are two upright speakers, a sub-woofer, and a control dial puck.

Setup is really quite simple in that you plug the monitors into the sub-woofer; the puck is hardwired into it. The sub acts like the brains or the main component and there’s plenty of cord length to place it away from your feet. The left and right speakers are marked and also come with a nice length to them. You aren’t confined to the typical 3-foot space and can space them out as you need. Audio sources come from three options: 3.5mm, RCA, and Bluetooth.

The puck has a rubbery, tacky material on the bottom which keeps it from sliding around. You adjust the volume by turning the dial and the power button is on the left. Should you wish to jump from your desktop’s audio to a Bluetooth connection, it’s as simple as pressing a button.

The left and right satellite speakers are just a hair under 7-inches tall and are designed with black, grey, and a bronze. Taken as a whole they look great and the colors balance well. The speakers are not protected by any grille but we’re quite fond of the look.

The Z537 puts out an impressive amount of sound, both in terms of volume and quality. Considering the $130 price tag, we expected it to be loud and semi-decent range. We didn’t expect to use this as a primary audio experience, but the RCA input has changed our mind. Another item we’ve recently been reviewing is a turntable (yep, records) with RCA output. When paired with this setup we now have a reason to bring our vinyl to the office.

We really like the Logitech Z537 as a desktop setup as it delivers more robust audio than some of our previous computer speakers. You’ll certainly find a variety of speakers at a lower price, but you probably aren’t getting the added Bluetooth and/or RCA inputs. Should you find yourself with a number of sources of music, you’ll want to consider this one.

We’ve been a fan of Logitech since as far back as we can remember, perhaps dating into the 90’s with our first replacement computer mice. The brand consistently puts out excellent hardware in all areas and we’ve yet to run into something that gives us pause.

The Z537 has quickly made itself comfortable here at the office. The puck makes it easy to hop from a podcast on the phone (Bluetooth) to a movie trailer on the computer (3.5mm). It’s hard to overstate that convenience and functionality.

The Logitech Z537 can be purchased directly from Logitech’s website as well as other retailers such as Amazon and FRY’s. Pricing tends to stay right around the $130 mark as this is a newer product.

Honor 9 hands-on

The Honor 9 is so rock solid and familiar it basically feels like a gutted Honor 8 with an updated specs sheet and front-facing fingerprint scanner. It delivers a familiar design, software experience, hardware and more, and yet somehow, still ends up being an exciting phone.

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3 weeks ago

That’s because Honor has remained remarkably gimmick-free over the years, so while other companies have gone chasing The Next Big Thing, Honor has instead chosen to focus on the core smartphone experience. The upshot of a “distilled” smartphone is that Honor has managed to keep its prices down in the process.

The Honor 9 continues that tradition, starting at €449 in Europe, although most countries currently have offers up where either £379 or €429 will get you the 64 GB Honor 9 and a Honor Band 3 fitness tracker. No matter what you pay though, you’ll be getting a phone packing pretty high-end specs – essentially the same as those found in the Huawei Mate 9 and P10 – but for a lot less than most other high-end phones.

To get those specs out of the way, there’s a 64 GB version with 4 or 6 GB of RAM (depending on your region) and a 128 GB version with 6 GB of RAM. Both are powered by the Kirin 960 chipset with Mali-G71 MP8 GPU and run Android 7.0 out of the box. Both have microSD expansion but no water resistance rating, and a 3,200 mAh battery that misses out on Huawei’s Supercharger tech. There’s also USB Type-C, NFC, and an IR blaster.

The Honor 9 doesn’t claim to be revolutionary, but it does aim to deliver a top-notch experience for a very affordable price. And it certainly seems to achieve that goal. We’ll reserve our final judgements for the full review, but after a bit of hands on time with the Honor 9 things certainly look promising.

Related: Best cheap Android phones

The build quality is typically excellent, with a strong resemblance to last year’s Honor 8, albeit with a front-facing fingerprint scanner. While some folks will lament the fingerprint scanner’s migration to the front of the phone, it’s lightning quick and reliable no matter where it is. There are capacitive buttons on either side of the ceramic home button, and while you can switch their order, there’s no option for on-screen buttons like on the OnePlus 5 or the Honor 8 for that matter.

Also unlike the Honor 8, the Honor 9 now curves gently at the edges on the back, making it a little more grippable, although the glass back is just as prone to collecting fingerprints as ever. While the UK will be getting the sapphire blue color pictured here, there’s also a black version and a gray version available if you don’t think you can pull this color off. The main color is echoed in the sandblasted metal frame as well as on the front, but no matter which color you get, the 15-layer optical coating on the back is an eyeful.

Up front there’s a 5.15-inch 1080p IPS LCD display, a slightly smaller panel than last year’s model. In some ways 5.5-inches and above, QHD and above, and AMOLED everything have become the norm, but Honor imagines a different future where smartphones screens remain smaller and less pixel dense. Full HD is still perfectly fine for a lot of folks, and the Honor 9’s LCD is still easily viewable outdoors and is nice and saturated with good contrast and viewing angles.

The downside of Honor not chasing fads is that the Honor 9 has roughly the same footprint as the Galaxy S8 but comes with a much worse screen-to-body ratio. The Honor 9 has the same big bezels above and below the screen you’d remember from last year, and I get the feeling Honor is in no hurry to chase the Univisium standard or go bezelless. Nevertheless, it supports an impressive 96 percent of the color gamut.

If the Honor 9’s display is a little too small for you, you can always check out the Honor 8 Pro, which has basically the same specs sheet as the Honor 9, but comes in a metal housing with a larger 5.7-inch display. If you want to add even more features to that mix, and don’t mind paying a little more again, then consider the Huawei P10 or even the Mate 9.

The Honor 9’s software is spectacularly unremarkable. Unremarkable in that it’s the same EMUI 5.1 we’ve seen on all the phones I just mentioned, but spectacular because it’s super fast, fluid, feature-packed and heavily customizable. The Honor 9 still comes with no app drawer by default, but it only takes a second to add one if you want it.

Honor 9 buyers are also in a for a few software treats. You’ll get six months’ exclusive access to Assassin’s Creed: Unity, and the Honor 9 apparently has a 10-percent faster touch response while gaming. There’s also a Google Play package worth up to $18 for Honor 9 owners which includes the exclusive Honor crystal in Transformers: Forged to Fight.

As far as audio is concerned, there are a couple of optional 3D audio sound profiles for when you’re listening to music through headphones. You can choose the type of headphones you’re using and set the audio to near, front or wide for a close up, full-frontal or more immersive audio experience.

The Honor 9’s audio has been tuned by a famous sound engineer and promises all sorts of musical magic like virtual surround sound which we’ll evaluate in our full review. For now I can say the bottom-firing speaker gets plenty loud, although I wouldn’t recommend maxing it out if you actually like music.

Moving onto the camera, there’s a lot of promise here. The Honor 9 bumps its monochrome sensor up to 20 MP, affording the 2x hybrid zoom we also saw on the Huawei P10, and even more detailed photos. The 12 MP RGB sensor adds color information, but you can also use the monochrome sensor alone for high-quality B&W images. In full daylight you’ll get very nice photos, but that is true of practically all phones these days.

There’s also: live photos; Night Shot Mode, which you’ll only want to use on a tripod; a synthetic Bokeh portrait mode, which misses as often as it hits; light painting; 4K video compression that produces 50 percent smaller file sizes; and a full manual mode.

But the absence of OIS means your 4K footage will be pretty shaky and you’ll need steady hands for nice low-light shots using either f/2.2 aperture lens.

Pixel-binning technology produces pretty good low-light photos, but there’s still plenty of noise visible with lots of detail lost even at dusk. We’ll bring you much more detailed thoughts on the camera in the full review, but we can already see that the Honor 9 does well, but not spectacularly.

While the 8 MP front-facing camera works fine, the beauty mode is a little aggressive and you’re probably better off taking your chances with the rear camera or just turning it off. Take a look at some of the sample photos I took and see what you think.

With the Honor 9, the company has once again pulled out an affordable smartphone that hits all the right spots: audio, performance, style, camera and software. While you can absolutely find better experiences on other phones, you’d likely have to pay a couple of hundred dollars more for it.

With the Honor 9, the company has once again pulled out an affordable smartphone that hits all the right spots

As I mentioned at the outset, the Honor 9 is a no frills smartphone, delivering a solid baseline across the board at a price point that most can manage. It doesn’t add anything brand new to the mix, just improves on a winning formula from years past, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

NBC Sports’ new Premier League plan is terrible for everyone

When NBC Sports announced its new $50 Premier League Pass yesterday, it was easy for soccer fans in the US to get excited about the ability to watch without a cable subscription. However, upon close inspection, the new broadcast structure for England’s top league may be worse than limiting a full slate of games to those who have a plan with Comcast, Time Warner or other providers. Allow me to explain.

If you want the comprehensive slate of matches that has been available through the NBC Sports apps in the past, you’ll have to pay for both the new subscription and a cable plan. The NBC Sports Gold Premier League Pass will give subscribers access to 130 games during the season for $50. The Premier League schedule has a lot more games than that, so where are the others? NBC says “up to 250 games” will be available to cable customers that air on NBC, NBCSN and CNBC — the three networks that typically show the top matchups each weekend in the US. In other words, NBC Sports is dividing its coverage between people who are willing to pay for cable and those who aren’t.

NBC Sports confirmed to Engadget that the only time Pass subscribers will be able to stream games broadcast on NBC networks will be after the fact as archived replays of “most matches.”

Now, $50 for an entire season isn’t that big of an investment. But you’re getting a limited number of games and matchups that may not be super compelling unless you’re a die-hard fan of a mediocre top-tier English club. Even then, when the likes of Swansea City face top-of-the-table sides like Chelsea, a cable subscription may be your only way to watch. And the same applies for fans of good clubs taking on terrible teams — Manchester City fans may need this new subscription when they’re playing a team at the bottom of the table. NBC will most likely continue to air the week’s best matches on its broadcast networks.

Basically NBC is screwing both cord cutters and cable subscribers.

Sure, the Premier League continues to gain popularity in the US and NBC is likely wrestling with a way to cash in on those Extra Time games. But this is a terrible solution for both casual and die-hard soccer fans. Just charge us $100 (or slightly more) per season and give us access to every game without demanding that we have a cable plan to see the best matchups. Or heck, give us the option to watch our favorite team for $75 per year — similar to what MLB.tv offers. Hey, it seems to be working OK for MLB, NBA, NHL and the NFL.

Western Digital’s 96 layer 3D NAND will lead to terabit memory chips

Why it matters to you

Western Digital’s new 3D NAND will lead to larger solid-state drives and flash-storage solutions, but they won’t enter mass production until 2018.

Although there is some legal scuffling ongoing between Toshiba and Western Digital, the two technology giants have co-developed a new standard of 3D NAND flash memory known as BiCS4, featuring 96 layers of vertical storage. This is a 50 percent increase in layers over the previous 64-layer BiCS3 technology and will offer a 40 percent boost in storage capacity for drives that make use of it but do not expect the full capabilities of the technology anytime soon.

One way that storage manufacturers have been able to increase the size of solid-state drives (SSD) and other flash storage mediums, is through 3D NAND. By stacking information vertically, the footprint on the PCB is much reduced and enables the use of more memory chips in the same form factor. This Western Digital development is the latest incarnation of that and could lead to much larger SSDs in the future.

The key word here is future though. While the earliest iterations of this BiCS4 technology will be shipped out to original equipment manufacturers and Western Digital partners in the latter half of 2017, they will only be in the 256-gigabit chip range. This technology is said to be capable of creating one terabit chips, though they are unlikely to appear for at least another year.

Mass production of any of these chips won’t begin until 2018, either. BiCS4 technology is expected to see Western Digital through to 2020, during which time it will continually evolve and improve, before being replaced by its eventual successor around that time, Anandtech reports.

That means that the existing 64-layer BiCS3 chips will continue to be manufactured and Western Digital suggested that this recent development will not slow down production on the older technology. It claimed that 2017 will see it and its partner, Toshiba, produce more 64-layer 3D NAND than ever before — more than any other industry supplier throughout the year.

Along with praising Western Digital’s ability to stick to its roadmap for intended release dates of the new BiCS4 hardware, Western Digital’s executive vice president of memory production, Siva Sivaram, said:

“BiCS4 will be available in 3-bits-per-cell and 4-bits-per-cell architectures, and it contains technology and manufacturing innovations to provide the highest 3D NAND storage capacity, performance and reliability at an attractive cost for our customers. Western Digital’s 3D NAND portfolio is designed to address the full range of end markets spanning consumer, mobile, computing and data center.”

Not all is rosy at Western Digital, though. It was revealed by anonymous sources only last week that its WDLabs division was being shut down.