Apple TVs and iPhone Check-In Coming to Red Lion Hotels

Red Lion Hotels today announced plans to enhance guest experiences with a series of Apple-related technology upgrades, including Apple TVs in hotel rooms, an updated iOS app that allows guests to check in using their iPhones, iPad kiosks for lobby areas, and more.

Red Lion Hotels is starting to add in-room Apple TVs to its “Hotel RL” branded properties. The TVs will be equipped with Red Lion Hotel apps that allow guests to watch DirecTV channels and the Hotel RL Living Stage channel that highlights local artists and performers performing live across the Hotel RL brand.

Hello Rewards, the Red Lion Hotel app, is being updated with new functionality that will allow guests to manage loyalty accounts and check in and check out right on their iPhones. The app will include digital keys, so guests don’t need to visit the hotel’s registration desk at all – the iPhone can unlock a room door.

“We are constantly looking at ways to service guests with tailored experiences,” said Edwards. “We understand that sometimes guests don’t prefer engaging with people during travel, so we created a way for people to arrive, check in, proceed directly to their room, and even check out. We want to accommodate them in every way that we can, and our updated Hello Rewards app with new check-in and check-out features, plus digital room keys, deliver on that promise.”

With these additions, Red Lion Hotels is aiming to create a connected experience for guests from check in to check out. Prior to arriving at the hotel, guests will receive a text message with a link to the Hello Rewards application, and from there, Hello Rewards can be used to manage the entire hotel experience. Along with serving as a digital key, the app can allow guests to communicate with hotel staff and discover local venue recommendations.

Red Lion Hotels is also equipping its staff with Apple products. Valet staff will be provided with Apple Watches to manage car retrieval requests without needing to be present at the hotel’s valet stand, and in the lobby, there will be self-service iPad kiosks for checking in and contacting customer support, all with the aim of streamlining the hotel experience for customers.
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Three months with the LG G6 (full review)

Second best. Also ran. Little brother. Lesser than.

If you’re looking at the mobile landscape today, this might be what you think of the LG G6. Message boards everywhere are filled with potential customers asking “why would I buy an LG G6 when the Samsung Galaxy S8 seems superior?” While that’s a valid question when trying to decide between the two, it glosses over a whole host of things that LG does very well. Boiling a phone down to just what processor it has or how many milliamp hours(mAh) the battery has doesn’t tell the whole story of a phone.

I’ve spent the last three months with the LG G6. It’s either held my SIM or been in my pocket alongside my Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus as I switch back and forth between them. In my extended time, I’ve never used a phone quite so polarizing as the G6. However, the phone comes a host of contradictions. Let’s dive in.

Backstory

Over the course of my cell phone obsession, I’ve owned the LG G3, G4, G Flex, V10, and V20. I’ve also spent time with the LG G5 for my review and I’ve had years of supporting my grandmother’s LG G2. While I haven’t loved everything about LG’s flagships, I do have a great respect for the South Korean giant’s devices and I keep coming back to them.

My love affair began with the LG G3, the first phone with a 1440p display. 1080p displays had been the standard of greatness for a few years until LG broke through the FHD barrier on the G3. As you can tell, that was the big selling point, but there were others. A great design, solid battery life (and the battery was removable!), and decent software was a recipe for success.

LG V20 long term review: is it still worth your money?

From that point on, I was hooked. LG has had its missteps (G5, G Flex 2), but overall it has produced very respectable phones. I love that it has never shied away from taking chances. Almost every iteration of the G series has been a complete redesign instead of the tick-tock method that most companies use. It also knows when it’s made a mistake. The LG G5 was released and with it came plenty of promises for the modular system LG heavily marketed. LG quickly realized that it was never going to take off and cut bait quickly. That might have angered some G5 owners, but it was the right thing for LG as a whole.

Redesign

LG knew it needed a complete redesign and we “ended up” with the LG G6.

There isn’t much about the LG G6 that resembles the G5. The dual camera/fingerprint sensor setup has returned to the rear of the device the small LG branding on the front, but that’s about it. The plastic/metal backing has been replaced by a glass fingerprint magnet. The front of the device has bezels so small and a display that will require your eyes to take some time to adjust to. The battery is now built-in and while that’s a bummer, we get an IP rating for our troubles.

The redesign is so drastic it’s a bit hard to put into words. It’s obvious that LG obviously threw out the playbook immediately after the G5 launched and started over from scratch. The G5 felt like a cheap toy but the G6 feels like something worthy of the $650 asking price.

It’s that different.

The most noticeable redesign of the device is the aforementioned display. Sporting almost no side bezel, the G6 now fits a 5.7″ display into its body. LG went a little outside of the box this year and stretched the display north and south to give it an 18:9 display ratio instead of the 16:9 that we’re used to seeing.

The extra little bit of space means that the display is twice as tall as it is wide. The benefit is that you can display more information on the screen, but as most full-screen apps aren’t designed to support an 18:9 screen ratio, black bars appear on the top and bottom of the apps. LG has included software tricks that we’ll go into more detail about later to make the most use out of your display, but issues do remain.

While the display is the show-stealer, the rest of the body got a redesign too. The aluminum frame holds the flat display which harkens back to a time where every display didn’t have to be curved. This makes the phone easy to use and enjoyable to hold. The buttons are clicky, the back glass looks beautiful when it isn’t mucked up by fingerprints and smudges, and the bottom-firing speaker holds its own.

Specs

• Display: 5.7″ 1440 x 2880 LCD
• Dimensions: 5.86 x 2.83 x 0.31 in
• Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 821, 2 x 2.35GHz, 2 x 1.6GHz
• GPU: Adreno 530
• RAM: 4GB
• Storage: 32 GB with microSD card expansion up to 256GB
• Battery: 3300mAh, non-removable
• Camera (main): Dual-13MP, f/1.8 primary + f/2.2 wide-angle
• Camera (front): 5MP f/2.2
• Bluetooth version: 4.2
• USB: 3.1, type-C
• Charging technology: Fast charging, Wireless charging

I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation where the LG G6’s processor wasn’t brought up as a negative. As you may know, Samsung bought up all of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processors that Qualcomm could produce, so LG was forced to wait or use a different processor. LG got its phone out early and went with the SD821. And look, that chip powered some of last year’s best phones like the Pixel, V20, and OnePlus 3T. It’s no slouch, but it’s not the latest and greatest either.

The rest of the power plant is rather ordinary for a flagship phone. 4GB of RAM and 32B of storage seem to be the minimal people will accept for a flagship in 2017, while the 3300mAh sits right in between the Samsung Galaxy S8’s 3000mAh and the Galaxy S8+’s 3500mAh batteries.

Battery

But, that battery just isn’t big enough. I may be among the subset of users who demand a little bit more from their devices, but I did find the battery life a bit lacking. I would routinely go hunting for a charger around 6:00 PM every night to get through the rest of my waking hours. I’d routinely end up with between 3:30 and 4:30 hours of screen on time while using apps to surf Reddit, check my email, chat with friends, and check my social networks. Nothing too strenuous.

I don’t know if there can be anything done with the software to improve it but I do know we’re seeing phones come out of China that all have 4000mAh batteries at the low end. Everyone is walking on eggshells because they don’t want to have the Note 7, but bigger batteries sell phones.

Wireless charging is still a bit of a luxury on phones in 2017 so I’m pleased to see it on the G6; however, it’s only on the US version of the device. While wireless and quick charging helps confront the issue of less than ideal battery life, it isn’t a perfect solution because you’re required to be near an outlet.

While on a recent long weekend, I spent a lot of it outside and the G6 couldn’t keep up. The phone died all three days after a lot of navigating, picture taking, and screen on time. I couldn’t find time to charge it during the middle of the day and it died early. In 2017, this feels unacceptable

Wireless charging and Quick Charge 3.0 do help soften the blow of having an embedded battery, even if it’s not a perfect solution. It’s the first time since the G2 that LG released an early-year flagship without a removable battery. This is the unfortunate cost of the redesigned glass and metal body along with an IP68 water and dust resistance rating. We trade aesthetics and function over the peace of mind that comes with a spare battery.

What an is IP rating?

Display

The engineering work that LG put into getting a display that big, that bright, and that beautiful into that small of a frame is honestly amazing to me. Unfortunately, there a few limiting factors that hold it back from being top-tier.

LG has continued to go with its own LCD panels and while there used to be a debate about which technology, LCD or AMOLED had the upper, AMOLED has ended that debate with the giant leaps forward it has made in the last five years. Buying a phone with an LCD panel feels like settling for less.

AMOLED displays have the ability to only turn on the pixels it needs. This is pretty important when you take into consideration that the LG G6 has an always-on display baked into its functionality. There was a story floating around recently that Google is investing in LG to make flexible OLED panels for its devices so hopefully, in the next few years we’ll see LG’s strategy shift from LCD to OLED.

The other limiting factor is LG’s software. I’ve honestly never been a fan of LG’s software and if I’m using an LG device I immediately throw on Nova Launcher. But, there are some things that Nova Launcher can’t fix; one of those issues is auto-brightness.

This has been an issue with every LG device I’ve ever used. I’m a fan of auto-brightness. I just want it to work because I hate screwing around with the brightness. But, LG just can’t seem to figure it out. The G6’s brightness was constantly too low forcing me to manually set the brightness multiple times a day. The screen does look great (and has awesome max brightness) but if it’s so dark that you’re not able to see things, what the hell is the point?

LG, figure that out before you release another device.

Cameras

The LG G6 features a dual-camera setup on the rear of the device. It has two 13MP sensors, one at a normal field of view for your everyday pictures, and one sensor with a 125-degree field of view. The main sensor has an aperture of f/1.8 and comes with optical image stabilization while the wide-angle lens has an aperture of f/2.2 and does not feature OIS.

The wide-angle lens is great for capturing landscapes, large groups of friends, and anything that won’t fit into the normal 71-degree sensor. In previous generations of LG devices with dual-camera setups, there was a noticeable lag when switching between the two cameras, but that is all but gone now. LG has seriously upped its game and continues the winning streak with a great camera app too.

The front-facing camera features the same 5MP resolution that the LG G5 had. It can record 1080p video and comes with a beauty mode for those selfies. Much like the wide-angle lens on the rear of the G6, the front-facing camera is a bit wider. It splits the difference between the 71 and 125-degree rear lenses, coming in at about 100-degrees. This will make it easier to get that large group of friends in your selfies.

Click here to view our LG G6 camera samples

Connectivity

USB Type-C was once the connector of the future, but the future is now. Almost everyone has adopted the standard now and even Apple is starting to use it on its Macbooks. The LG G6 is no exception and features Type-C, much like the LG G5 and LG V20 before it. It also supports USB On-The-Go (USB OTG). UBS OTG allows the G6 to act as a host for flash drives, battery banks, and other phones and pass power and data between it and another device.

Additionally, the G6 supports Bluetooth 4.2. While the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ support the newer Bluetooth 5.0, the G6 does fine with 4.2. I have both the Galaxy S8+ and LG G6 and have noticed no real-world difference between the Bluetooth capabilities of the devices. Could it be that I’m not stressing them enough to find the breaking point of the LG G6 that the Samsung Galaxy S8+ handles with ease? Sure, but I’m using the devices in real world scenarios where I haven’t had any issue like that.

Where I have had issues, however, is with WiFi. The chip within the G6 has given me intermittent problems since I got the device. I can’t pinpoint exactly when or why it happens, but I occasionally have to disable WiFi then turn it back on to get a good connection. I hope that this is just another frustrating bug that can be fixed through a software update instead of a long-term problem with the hardware.

A nice surprise was the inclusion of FM radio on our T-Mobile unit. The included radio app requires you to use any wired headset to listen, but its there and its great in case you don’t want to use your data (or you’re in a bad signal area) to listen to some tunes. You’ll also get your normal radios for GPS, GLONAS, and BeiDou Navigation Satellite System or BDS.

All-in-all, the connectivity suite on the LG G6 is pretty standard for a 2016 or 2017 flagship.

Buttons and Audio

One of the most recognizable things about LG phones in the past has been the placement of its buttons. Starting with the G2, LG made the decision to move the lock/wake button to the rear of the device and it integrated a fingerprint scanner into the button starting with the G5.

The fingerprint scanner on the G6 is nothing less than best in class. I’ve been using it for almost three months at this point and I’ve never had a misread and it’s extremely fast. The placement, unlike on the S8 and S8+ is directly below the camera on the rear of the device and perfectly placed. A wonderful fingerprint sensor like the G6’s in addition to double-tap to wake so you can check our notifications is the perfect combination to stay on top of whats going on with your device. LG has done an excellent job here.

The left side of the device is dotted by two satisfyingly clicky volume buttons near the top of the device. When I hold the device in my right hand my finger sits just below the buttons and it’s a bit of an inconvenience to reach up and push them hard enough for it register. I have to shuffle the phone in my hand to get a little more leverage to press the buttons so a lower position would’ve been a little more convenient.

To the right of the charging port are three machined holes dotting the bottom of the device. These holes are the gateway to a rather standard, bottom-firing speaker. I was neither impressed nor disappointed with the speaker. It has the ability to get quite loud but the quality isn’t especially good. While doing the audio test for the review my wife was pretty impressed by how clear the music was, and while I do agree with that, it does lack any kind of bass and distorts just a hair at the highest of volumes.

If you’re an individual who listens to a lot of music through the speakers on their phone, first, buy some damn headphones. No one wants to hear your music but you. But, secondly, this might not be the phone for you. It’s great for watching a YouTube video or listening to a podcast, but there are better phones on the market for listening to music.

Apple and Motorola (and more recently, HTC) have done a disservice to the entire industry by removing the headphones jack from devices and forcing customers into using a pair of wireless headphones or using a USB Type-C (or lightning on Apple devices) adapter that can easily be lost. Wireless headphones don’t sound as good as wired ones, no ifs, and’s, or butts.

Luckily, we don’t have that issue on the G6 because LG had the good sense to include the headphone port. I can’t believe we have to make a note of this, but here we are. Listening to music on the G6 with a pair of wired headphones sounds as good as any other device, but it could have been better. LG left the quad-DAC out in the US version of the G6, opting only to offer it in a few select markets. Disappointing to say the least.

Software

Since the dawn of Android, phone manufacturers like Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and LG have been designing custom software to differentiate their phones from everyone else. Sometimes these software tweaks are small features like in the case of Motorola. Sometimes they’re complete redesigns of the software like we see in phones like the Xiaomi Mi 6.

LG falls somewhere in the middle. I’ve railed on them before because I don’t like the approach its taken with its software over the years and while there are some cool software features included, I have never gotten on board with the software skin as a whole.

Included themes

LG had a huge opportunity with the G6 due to the new aspect ratio of the display. The phone is now twice as tall as it is wide and I believe LG missed a huge opportunity in building the software around it. There are some features in UX 6.0 that work better with a longer screen like split screen apps and apps that have two information panes in landscape mode, but there is nothing build specifically for the LG G6’s new display.

1 of 3

One of the biggest obstacles in designing software for a phone with an 18:9 display is that almost every app in the Play Store is designed to work on a 16:9 display. LG had to find a workaround to get these apps to display in a visually pleasing way on the G6 or be stuck with black bars on the top and bottom of apps.

LG implemented a few options to scale your apps to make them look as good as possible, but honestly, it just falls flat for me. There are too many steps, too much jumping back and forth to see how the apps look… Samsung’s approach is better and easier, it’s just that simple. I don’t want black bars around my apps, I don’t want apps stretched so much that I can’t press buttons on the screen, I just want it to work. Samsung achieved this while LG lags behind.

It isn’t all negative though. Some of my favorite features have carried over from old versions of the software. I love that you can edit your navigation buttons to set them in an order you want, and even add buttons. I was lost on the huge LG V20 without the added button that drops the notification shade, but it’s not that big of a deal now on the much smaller G6.

In the application drawer, you can set to display your apps in alphabetical order, download date, or custom order if you’re into that sort of thing. I like that you have options here even if I’m so set in my ways that I’ll never use those options. There are a few more options in the application drawer like showing larger icons, hiding apps, uninstalling multiple apps and viewing the homescreen settings that are welcome additions.

And the further you go into the settings application, the more you’re going to find. Many customers became frustrated with the overabundance of “in-your-face” features popping up so it seems like Samsung and LG have decided to hide them in the settings menu. This is something I support since it allows the casual user who just wants to make phone calls and text use their phone how they want, but rewards those who customize their phone a little bit more. Additionally, most people won’t care about custom ringtones, but there’s an option if you want it.

Conclusion

I can comfortably sit here and say the LG G6 is a good phone. It might even be a great phone and it’s one of your best options right now. But, we’re only six months into the year. We still have releases from Motorola, OnePlus, Samsung, Apple, and more on the horizon. If you’re committing to a phone today that you’ll be paying on for the next 24-months, do you want it to be the LG G6?

Earlier in the review, I mentioned that no phone I’ve ever used has ever been as polarizing as the LG G6. It feels like every great feature has a “yeah, but…” right after it. It has a great display! Yeah, but it’s LCD instead of AMOLED and the auto-brightness hurts it. It has a massive 3300mAh battery, Quick Charge 3.0, and Wireless Charging! Yeah, but the baseline battery life isn’t great and you can quickly find your phone dead if you’re not around a charger. The new 18:9 display is awesome and makes the phone feel thinner! Yeah, but almost no apps are optimized it and LG’s software answer is clunky and frustrating.

It truly is a phone of contradictions.

We’ve never have, and never will see a perfect phone because it all comes down to the compromises we’re willing to make for the overall phone. If you’re willing to make those compromises, then pick up the LG G6. If you’re not, wait for something better to come along.

Facebook’s WiFi locator is available to users worldwide

Last year, Facebook began testing its “Find WiFi” feature on its app, which lets you locate businesses nearby that have free, public WiFi. Find WiFi was launched in a few countries in 2016 and today Facebook announced it would be expanding the feature globally.

When activated, Find WiFi will show which locations near you offer free WiFi along with those locations’ business hours, what kind of places they are and their network names. However, businesses have to opt in to this service by claiming their network on their Facebook Page. So, not every available hotspot is going to show up.

In the announcement, Facebook said it found the feature to be useful in areas where cellular data was lacking or for people who were traveling. And this is just the latest project meant to boost internet connectivity and, therefore, Facebook use. The company is also working on an undersea cable connection between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, internet-providing drones and laser-based internet access.

To get to the feature, click the “More” tab in the Facebook app and then “Find WiFi.” The roll out begins today and is available for both iOS and Android.

Source: Facebook

Google’s Triangle app gives you full control over your apps’ data usage

Why it matters to you

Worried Facebook or Twitter’s using too much data? Google’s Triangle app lays it bare.

Not all data plans are created equally. Some charge an arm and a leg for slow service. Others make do with aging, unreliable infrastructure. And still others serve markets where free alternatives, like high-speed public Wi-Fi, are plentiful. Point is, plenty of folks do not want or need background apps chipping away at their capped plan’s data bucket. That is where Triangle, an experimental new app from Google, comes in.

Triangle, which launched in the Philippines in late June, is a data-saving app that gives you precise control over your phone cellular activity. It provides an overview of your device’s data consumption, and an itemized list of the apps that have accounted for for the largest share in a given time period. If you subscribe to a carrier that is partnered with Google, like Globe or Smart, you will see other useful stats like your prepaid data balance.

But Triangle’s real benefit is letting you drill down to the application level. You can specify apps’ data usage in increments like “10 minutes at a time,” “30 minutes at a time,” or “Always.” If you have a plan with Globe or Smart, you can accrue rewards by minimizing your data usage and gain access to download sponsored apps and files that do not count against your data cap.

Triangle has yet to launch widely. Google began testing the app in April, according to TechCrunch, and debuted a beta in early June, but it has been coy about Triangle’s future.

“We’re currently doing tests in the Philippines on ways to help users better manage their mobile data,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

Broadly speaking, Triangle’s part of Google’s ongoing effort to address data-constrained markets. Years ago, it introduced Data Saver for Chrome, a feature that taps Google’s servers to reduce web browsing data usage by up to 50 percent.

Google followed up those efforts with a software suite aimed at developing markets. In late 2016, it rolled out YouTube Go, a low-bandwidth version of the YouTube app with support for sharing via Bluetooth and faster playback on slow connections. Alongside Go, it introduced a lightweight version of Google Play and an optimized News and Weather app for low-power devices.

But Google’s aimed its development crosshairs at infrastructure, too. Last year, it broadened its free Google Station public Wi-Fi program to more than 400 train stations across India. And it continues to expand AMP (accelerated mobile pages), its open source platform designed to streamline phone-optimized web pages.

“We believe everyone should have fast and easy access to information online. However, many people still have slow and costly mobile connections,” Google said in a blog post. “Faster [connections] help publishers and advertisers reach new audiences.”

The best gardening apps for the green-fingered

It doesn’t matter whether you’re green-fingered or horticulturally hopeless, the best gardening apps can help you to create wonderful gardens, grow delicious food, and become a brilliant botanist. Even if you have an apartment with no outdoor space, there are plenty of great gadgets for indoor gardens available to those who have no intention of stepping outside.

Below, we’ve put together a list of handy gardening apps that will help you identify plants, get expert advice, deal with pests, and plan a garden than will be the envy of your neighbors. You can also find more great app suggestions in our comprehensive roundups of the best Android apps and best iPhone apps, along with our guide on how to grow herbs indoors.

Garden Tags

This popular gardening app is home to a large community of friendly gardeners who are quick to offer care advice, identification help, and handy tips. You can keep a photographic journal of your garden and get reminders about pruning, or advice on the best spots for growth. You can also search the encyclopedia, see what’s popular, and follow other gardeners when you find plants and gardens that you really like. This is a great app for design inspiration.

Download now for:

Android iOS

GrowIt!

GrowIt allows you to join an enthusiastic community of gardeners, helping you to find inspiration, gather information, and share your own cultivations with the world.  This gardening app is good if you want to find out what plants will grow well in your local area. You’ll also find useful advice catalogued in projects and you can add your own, too. You can even ask the community to help you identify specific plants, and you can rate other people’s gardens and check out the cream of the crop if you’re in need of some ideas.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Garden Answers Plant Identifier

With Garden Answers Plant Identifier, you can snap a photo of a plant you want to identify and submit it to find out what it is. This is easily one of the best free gardening apps in existence, namely because it can automatically recognize more than 20,000 plants. If it can’t identify the plant in question, then you can also pay $2 to get an expert identification from a botanist with additional information and advice on its care. This app also identifies pests and has a robust Q&A section that covers more than 200,000 of the most common gardening queries.

Download now for:

Android iOS

SmartPlant

This app has an enormous plant library, but the real attraction is the ability to snap and upload a picture of a plant or pest and have an expert gardener identify it on your behalf. It also allows you to add your plants and generate a care calendar, which will send you notifications and remind you of what you need to do each month to order to keep your plants healthy. You can submit a couple of photos for free, but unlimited use of the app, expert care advice, chat functions, and regional notifications require a subscription ($6 a month or $35 for the year). This app was formerly known as PlantSnapp, prior to merging with Garden Compass.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Gardenate ($1)

If you’re looking for a simple calendar for planting garden vegetables that comes with an assortment of useful hints and tips, then you should take a look at this app. With Gardenate, you can plan your garden, set a schedule, access detailed information on different vegetables, and use the “Planting now” tab to see what to plant each month. It’s minimalist and straightforward, making it a good alternative to many of the social media-style gardening apps on our list. Vegetable growers with Android devices should also check out Gardroid.

Download now for:

Android iOS

Space junk is no match for NASA’s new gecko-inspired space janitor

Why it matters to you

Space debris poses a danger to orbiting satellites or spacecraft. This robot gripper could help clean it up before it causes any damage.

It turns out we are the solar system’s worst hotel room guests. In the relatively short period of time we have spent in space, we managed to leave around 500,000 pieces of manmade space junk whizzing about — much of it now orbiting our planet at 17,500 miles per hour.

To help cut down on possibly hazardous collisions between this space junk and useful things like satellites or spacecraft, Stanford University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have teamed up to invent a space cleanup tool in the form of a robot gripper, based on the gripping mechanism of the gecko lizard. Think of it like a space-faring Roomba.

“We developed a robotic gripper using gecko-inspired adhesives to grapple space debris,” Hao Jiang, a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford, told Digital Trends. “Space debris has been growing really rapidly over the past several decades, and there isn’t really any existing technology that has been tested or verified. We are excited to show that our adhesives have the ability to sustain the harsh environments in space and that the gripper is able to grasp as large as 370kg floating objects without disturbing them before attachment or after detachment.”

Jiang said that the team was intrigued by the way geckos use tiny hairs on their feet to stick to surfaces. By default, this material is not sticky but when you put a sheer force on the material, it adheres strongly. This is interesting because it allows something to stick without having to be pressed onto a surface. That is perfect in space, where the likes of conventional suction cups won’t work due to the lack of atmosphere.

The hairs on the team’s robot gripper are approximately 10 times smaller than the ones found on a person’s head. In order to grab a piece of space junk, the idea is that the gripper need only place its pads on an item’s surface. In the lab, it has been tested in multiple zero-gravity experimental spaces, while a smaller version has been put through its paces on the International Space Station.

“Our next steps include adding some tactile sensors to the gripper to monitor the adhesion levels in real time, combining electrostatic adhesion to make the gripper better on rough surfaces, and conducting experiments outside the ISS in space,” Jiang said. “For space debris grappling applications, we are not considering commercialize it, at least for now, but as a regular gripper that can also be used on Earth, we are definitely looking at applying it to industrial robotic manipulation, as well as people’s everyday lives.”

Personally, we are just excited to see the first advertised job for a space janitor. This is one heck of a space-age mop!

Magnetic implants in the eye could help cure flickering vision disorder

Why it matters to you

This procedure might offer a drug-free method of treating a debilitating condition.

If you see your family doctor about nystagmus, a condition that involves an involuntary flickering of the eyes, don’t expect to be told to take two pills twice daily and to call them in the morning. In fact, a new study suggests a somewhat more radical, gadget-heavy approach: having a set of magnets implanted in the eye socket.

That’s the conclusion reached by researchers at the U.K.’s University College London and Oxford University, who have developed a new approach to dealing with the so-called “dancing eyes” syndrome, which affects around 1 in 400 people. This condition can be highly unpleasant for sufferers, making it appear like the world around them is constantly on the move. The newly developed procedure stabilizes the eyes through the implantation of titanium-encased magnets in the eye socket. Two magnets are used in the procedure, with one placed on the bone at the bottom of the eye socket, and a smaller one sutured to one of the muscles which controls eye movement.

“A neural problem is naturally felt to be in need of a neural solution,” Dr. Parashkev Nachev, a UCL neurologist and lead author of the paper, told Digital Trends. “Most approaches to treatment therefore focus on changing the way in which the underlying neural systems work.”

The issue with this is that solutions involving drugs can have the side effect of making patients unacceptably drowsy. The complexity of the disorder also means that what works for one patient may not work for another. Nachev likens it to expecting to deal with any motherboard faults in a computer simply by moving the power supply voltage up or down.

“We therefore took a different approach, focusing on the point where the neural systems converge: the muscles moving the eyes,” he said. “Since the forces involved in making saccades are usually far greater than those involved in nystagmus we can theoretically apply a counteracting force that damps the nystagmus but leaves saccades intact. This cannot be done directly, through a flexible stitch, for example, because the eye tends to respond to such restriction with scarring, resulting in a frozen eyeball, fixed in the head. Rather, we must deliver ‘action at a distance,’ applying a damping force without direct mechanical restriction. This is what our implant does.”

While Nachev noted that this treatment is still in its early days, it has already been successfully demonstrated on one intrepid patient in his late forties. A paper concerning the team’s study was recently published in the journal Ophthalmology.

Between this, devices that use magnetic fields to distribute drug doses, and other attractive implants, it seems magnetism is the hot new thing in medicine!

Microsoft manages to cram artificial intelligence on the Raspberry Pi 3 PC board

Why it matters to you

Microsoft is working to bring artificial intelligence to extremely small devices, but the work requires compression techniques and other technologies so it can run on the tiniest of CPUs.

The Raspberry Pi 3 is one of the most popular devices you can buy. For $35, this inexpensive all-in-one computer board can be used to power numerous projects ranging from miniature Linux-based PCs to gaming consoles and more. Now Microsoft reports that it built a device based on the Raspberry Pi 3 that uses artificial intelligence to hunt down pesky rodents.

The device was created by the head of Microsoft’s Machine Learning and Optimization group, Ofer Dekel. He discovered that squirrels were stealing flower bulbs along with seeds in the bird feeder in his backyard garden. Naturally, he couldn’t literally keep watch in the shadows and chase down the furry-tail rodents with his bare hands, so he came up with a plan.

Using his team located at the Redmond, Washington, research lab (he has one in India, too), they trained a computer-vision model to detect squirrels. The artificial intelligence was then deployed onto a Raspberry Pi 3 board inside a special device he mounted in his backyard. Thus, when a squirrel rears its head, the device will turn on the sprinkler system, thwarting the rodent’s thieving habits.

This backyard “project” is just part of Microsoft’s overall picture of an artificial intelligence-first world. “We’re moving from what is today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world to a new world that is going to be made up of an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the recent Build developer conference.

The big accomplishment in the squirrel-hunting project, according to Microsoft, was cramming a deep neural network onto an extremely small chip. Dekel and his team used “a variety of techniques” to compress the neural network, which is essentially “a class of predictors” inspired by our brains.

One technique is called weight quantization, capable of cramming more parameters into a smaller physical space. This compression enables the artificial intelligence to work faster, too. Additionally, Dekel’s group is examining a technique called pruning, which removes redundancies in neural networks. This has a double benefit: the ability to run a neural network on extremely small processors, and faster evaluation times.

However, the team wants to get artificial intelligence running on the smallest ARM-based processor to date: the Cortex M0. According to ARM, this processor has a “floorplan area” of 0.007mm squared. That’s very, very tiny, and will require the team to make its machine learning models up to 10,000 times smaller than what they’re compressing for the Raspberry Pi 3.

“There is just no way to take a deep neural network, have it stay as accurate as it is today, and consume 10,000 less resources. You can’t do it,” said Dekel. “So, for that, we have a longer-term approach, which is to start from scratch. To start from math on the white board and invent a new set of machine-learning technologies and tools that are tailored for these resource-constrained platforms.”

To see what the team is currently working on, early previews can be downloaded from Microsoft’s GitHub depot here. It also provides previews of the compression techniques and training algorithms.

Microsoft manages to cram artificial intelligence on the Raspberry Pi 3 PC board

Why it matters to you

Microsoft is working to bring artificial intelligence to extremely small devices, but the work requires compression techniques and other technologies so it can run on the tiniest of CPUs.

The Raspberry Pi 3 is one of the most popular devices you can buy. For $35, this inexpensive all-in-one computer board can be used to power numerous projects ranging from miniature Linux-based PCs to gaming consoles and more. Now Microsoft reports that it built a device based on the Raspberry Pi 3 that uses artificial intelligence to hunt down pesky rodents.

The device was created by the head of Microsoft’s Machine Learning and Optimization group, Ofer Dekel. He discovered that squirrels were stealing flower bulbs along with seeds in the bird feeder in his backyard garden. Naturally, he couldn’t literally keep watch in the shadows and chase down the furry-tail rodents with his bare hands, so he came up with a plan.

Using his team located at the Redmond, Washington, research lab (he has one in India, too), they trained a computer-vision model to detect squirrels. The artificial intelligence was then deployed onto a Raspberry Pi 3 board inside a special device he mounted in his backyard. Thus, when a squirrel rears its head, the device will turn on the sprinkler system, thwarting the rodent’s thieving habits.

This backyard “project” is just part of Microsoft’s overall picture of an artificial intelligence-first world. “We’re moving from what is today’s mobile-first, cloud-first world to a new world that is going to be made up of an intelligent cloud and intelligent edge,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the recent Build developer conference.

The big accomplishment in the squirrel-hunting project, according to Microsoft, was cramming a deep neural network onto an extremely small chip. Dekel and his team used “a variety of techniques” to compress the neural network, which is essentially “a class of predictors” inspired by our brains.

One technique is called weight quantization, capable of cramming more parameters into a smaller physical space. This compression enables the artificial intelligence to work faster, too. Additionally, Dekel’s group is examining a technique called pruning, which removes redundancies in neural networks. This has a double benefit: the ability to run a neural network on extremely small processors, and faster evaluation times.

However, the team wants to get artificial intelligence running on the smallest ARM-based processor to date: the Cortex M0. According to ARM, this processor has a “floorplan area” of 0.007mm squared. That’s very, very tiny, and will require the team to make its machine learning models up to 10,000 times smaller than what they’re compressing for the Raspberry Pi 3.

“There is just no way to take a deep neural network, have it stay as accurate as it is today, and consume 10,000 less resources. You can’t do it,” said Dekel. “So, for that, we have a longer-term approach, which is to start from scratch. To start from math on the white board and invent a new set of machine-learning technologies and tools that are tailored for these resource-constrained platforms.”

To see what the team is currently working on, early previews can be downloaded from Microsoft’s GitHub depot here. It also provides previews of the compression techniques and training algorithms.

We’re over the moon for these 5K Overwatch screenshots

Blizzard’s Overwatch may be a fast-paced, competitive shooter, but that doesn’t mean the game’s attention to detail suffers as a result. The designers put a lot of time into filling out the world with little touches and beautiful scenery that, as these 5K Overwatch screenshots demonstrate, looks sharp if you take the time to stop and check it out.

The gallery is viewable above, and make sure to click the captions to see the pictures in full 5,120 x 2,880 glory.

As the newest map in the game’s lineup, the Horizon Lunary Colony takes the fight off Earth and into space for the first time. There’s even a section outside with reduced gravity, something Blizzard began playing with first on the Oasis map with the launch pad. Horizon was also Winston’s home as a child, well before the events of the game, and this map is a closer look into his history. That’s about as close as Blizzard gets to real story in Overwatch, apart from the CGI shorts, the most recent of which was Sombra’s introduction.

Taking the screenshots was easy thanks to Overwatch’s built-in custom game and screenshot mode. We just booted up a custom game type with skirmish on the Horizon Lunary Colony. We changed over from the red or blue team to the spectator team. That allows you to fly freely around the map, without any weapons blocking the screen.

There are a few more steps to perfect 5K Overwatch screenshots, or even higher-resolution snaps. One of the advanced graphical options lets you set the screenshot resolution to three, five, seven, or nine times the rendered resolution. While that setting won’t affect the performance during average gameplay, anything above the render resolution will cause the system to hang for a moment when you actually hit print screen to snap a shot.

Finally, Alt + Z will temporarily hide the Overwatch HUD and UI, so it won’t get in the way of whatever it is you’re shooting. Pressing Alt + Z will also turn the screen elements back on, which can be a confusing moment as you hit Escape and no game menu appears.