Apple sets $1 billion budget for original TV shows

Apple is finally putting its money where its mouth is, setting aside $1 billion to pursue the original programming agenda it’s been making so much noise about it recent times. In June, the company poached Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg — the TV execs behind Breaking Bad and The Crown — from Sony, noting at the time that it “had exciting plans in store for customers”. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has opened its war chest to make those plans a reality.

There’s no word yet on how Apple will spend its budget, though. A cool $1 billion sounds like a lot but programming costs can easily run into the millions for an episode of a high-end show — Game of Thrones episodes regularly top $10 million apiece. And after Apple’s initial and extremely lackluster original show attempts in the form of Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke, it’ll need at least one quality standout hit to make itself relevant in a market crowded by companies with much bigger budgets: Netflix is expected to spend more than $6 billion on its content this year.

It’s also not clear how original programming will fit into Apple’s existing video business, if at all. Buying movies and TV shows individually feels like an antiquated way of doing things now monthly-subscription services are the norm. Indeed, iTunes’ share of the movie sales and rental market has dropped to less than 35% from 50% in 2012. Plus, the company needs to find a way to take on rivals such as Netflix and Amazon without jeopardizing the 15% cut of subscriptions it gets from its app stores for video services such as HBO Go. But Apple has the right people on board, and the check the company has just given them demonstrates that it is genuinely serious about sliding out of Silicon Valley and into Hollywood. Whether Hollywood will have them though, is a different matter.

Via: Wall Street Journal

‘Hope Floats’ is a seaborne bot that spams lawmakers with calls

On a plain white wall at a large Brooklyn gallery, a seemingly old-fashioned phone booth sits about five feet off the ground. The words “Hope Floats” are painted in white on the black box, which houses a computer, a screen, a keyboard and a handset. It’s a nondescript façade for a potentially subversive art-meets-tech project. Hope Floats is a two-part interactive installation that encourages you to pick up the phone and make your voice heard, and it is also a commentary on the aging technology that powers the American political system.

The project started out as a reaction to the 2016 US presidential election. “Right after the election, we were strapped with wanting to provide something to our community (in Red Hook) and our audience … People needed to get stuff out,” says Bethany Tabor, technology programs manager at Pioneer Works, the nonprofit foundation behind Hope Floats. At first, the idea was to build something cathartic. “We wanted to just build a screaming booth where you could go in and scream,” added David Sheinkopf, the organization’s director of technology.

But Sheinkopf wanted to encourage what he called “constructive expression” instead of futile yelling, so the team decided to develop something more effective. So they set about building a phone booth for people to call their elected officials.

That’s the first part of Hope Floats, which launched online and in physical form this past Sunday at Pioneer Works’ monthly open house, which happens every second Sunday. As hundreds of New Yorkers wandered around the bright, airy gallery, the installation was actually quite easy to miss. Aside from a small sign next to the phone booth, there wasn’t an eye-catching setup to draw your attention to the installation. Still, several people stopped to read the project’s on-screen explanation, while a handful of them stayed to leave a message.

If sending your representative a note is something you prefer to do in private, you can also do so on the Hope Floats website. The physical phone booth lets people without internet access use the service. Sheinkopf pointed to the neighborhood’s elderly population as an example.

Only one phone booth is up and running at Pioneer Works right now, but Sheinkopf says the dream is to have phone booths that are solar-powered, with 3G or 4G LTE connections via a mobile hotspot so they can be installed “in the public space.” The setup is already weatherproof, making it a good fit for parks and sidewalks. The team’s ability to bring Hope Floats to more places depends on whether it gets enough sponsors.

Whether you make the trek out to Red Hook or see one in your neighborhood in future, placing a call via a Hope Floats booth is like entering a time warp. The device is anachronistic and somewhat confusing. The 15-inch screen is accompanied by a receiver on the right and a keyboard-and-mouse combo below it that evoke public phones from decades ago. Some people reached out to touch the screen last Sunday, and it took them a while to figure out that they actually had to use the accompanying mouse to navigate the menus.

At the booth, you can look up your district congressional representative, select a cause to discuss and leave a voice message for them. Tabor and Sheinkopf say they wanted to make Hope Floats a nonpartisan project, and as such, they tried to avoid leading questions or slanted scripts. Topics include immigration policy, travel bans, women’s reproductive healthcare, trans rights and NEA advocacy. There’s also an umbrella option called “Other” if your issue isn’t on the list.

Leaving a message at the booth can get tricky. Since the installation is basically a computer accessing the Hope Floats website and not an actual phone, you have to click the microphone symbol to start recording. At this point, most people, myself included, reached out to tap the screen. But you have to use the rolling ball next to the keyboard to move the cursor, press the “click” button below it, and click again to save your recording.

Sheinkopf is aware of the problems and says it’s a work in progress. In fact, after watching folks repeatedly tap the screen on Sunday, Sheinkopf added a label to the machine, indicating where the mouse was. He also says his team would work on shortening the introduction as well as improve the color scheme of the topics list, which is currently difficult to read.

The second part of the Hope Floats experience is more rewarding. All the messages people have left, whether from the booth or website, are being stored on a server. In September, Sheinkopf and his team will launch a callbot that will repeatedly dial the intended recipient of each message and play the recording. Sheinkopf says this is meant to help “people who have full-time jobs who can’t be on the phone all day long.” Since a large volume of calls on an issue can bring lawmakers offices to a halt, this is a more effective means of reaching your elected official than simply emailing or tweeting at them.

The team is also working on a raft-mounted device that will be launched into the water on September 30th. It will head towards Washington, DC, as it continues to place automated calls to various congressional representatives. During its symbolic journey to the nation’s capital and the heart of the government, the raft will use solar panels to stay powered, along with a mobile hotspot and radio to make calls. As you might expect, the raft will also have GPS to help keep it on course. But even if it meets an untimely demise, the spirit of Hope Floats will live on. The raft is only meant to place about 5 percent of calls made by participants; the main system, hosted on servers back home, will do the bulk of the work.

Hope Floats has many goals. It aims to show that participating in politics doesn’t necessarily demand a lifestyle change. “We would hope that people feel like it’s less of an obstacle to engage with their government and feel like they participated in something that up until now felt very distant from them,” Tabor says. “It’s also about demanding that your representatives do their job and represent you,” she adds. But the team also wants to inspire others to explore creative ways they can use technology for political engagement.

But the project can’t achieve much if it continues to operate at such a small scale. According to Pioneer Works, 30 messages were left on Sunday. At this rate, about a thousand calls will be saved by the time the raft launches at the end of next month. You can continue to send messages via the booth or the website even after the raft sets off. Hope Floats needs greater momentum to make politicians pay attention, but I suspect it will gather steam once the callbot starts dialing.

ESPN’s Apple TV app streams four live feeds at once

Just in time for football season, ESPN updated its Apple TV app to include a handy new feature for sports fans. Thanks to tvOS MultiCast, you can now watch up to four live streams at once across all of the network’s programming options. This means you can put shows and events from ESPN’s broadcast channels beside the online-only streams at the same time. It sounds fairly straightforward, but it’s sure to come in handy when you’re trying to follow multiple things that overlap in your viewing schedule.

Of course, you don’t have to watch four at once. You can also choose to watch one, two or three feeds and arrange them in one of five different layouts that suits you best. And yes, you can re-order the feeds, select audio and change to fullscreen view when the action gets intense. When you want to go back watching to all of your streams at once, you can do so easily.

Sure, this isn’t the first app to allow multi-feed viewing as the MLB At Bat app and ABC News are among the options already employing the feature. However, with football season nearly here, it makes a lot of sense for ESPN to take advantage and allow fans to track multiple games on Saturday afternoon. Yes, the ESPN app on Apple TV requires a cable subscription — at least until next year when Disney launches a standalone service for the 24/7 sports network.

Via: Recode

Source: ESPN

The Essential Phone is finally shipping next week

Ex-Android boss Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone will start shipping next week, at least in one color, according to an email spotted by 9 to 5 Google. “As shipment of your Pure White device is still a couple of weeks away, we want to give you the option to change your order from a Pure White to a Black Moon device, which will ship within seven days,” it reads. That should be a relief to folks who placed pre-orders, as the device was originally supposed to ship in June.

The Essential Phone has top-tier specs, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB of RAM and an amazing, nearly edge-to-edge screen. With a cutout on the display for the selfie camera, it could be a preview for Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8, which has a similar, but larger cutout, judging by leaked renders.

Sprint has an exclusive on the Essential Phone at launch, and will supposedly start selling it on Friday, August 18th. However, it’s only a carrier exclusive — you can also buy it from Essential’s site, and it should work on any other carrier (“unlocked phone, all carriers, no traps,” the marketing says). Amazon’s Alexa fund is an investor, so it may come to that site and other retailers later.

At $699, or $749 with a 360-degree camera, it’s not exactly a budget device like the $499 OnePlus 5 (which has slightly better specs), so we imagine you’ll want some more info about what it’s like. Luckily, Essential is holding a “First Look” event next week, on August 25th, and with the Sprint release ahead of that, we should know more about it very soon.

Source: 9 to 5 Google

Optical laser uses shockwaves to peer inside distant planets

Scientists at SLAC’s National Accelerator Laboratory are able to peer even further into space thanks to an improved optical laser. The laser uses shockwaves to create high pressure conditions in materials, and the material’s response is then captured by an ultra-bright X-ray laser, revealing what’s going on inside planets and meteors. Upgrades to the optical laser means it’s now three times more powerful, with the equivalent power of 17 Teslas discharging their 100 kilowatt-hour batteries in a single second.

Using this technology researchers have already investigated the effects of meteor impacts on minerals within the Earth’s crust, but the increased range and power of the laser means scientists can now begin exploring higher pressure material much further away. Shaughnessy Brennan Brown, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, said the upgrade enables researchers “to generate exciting, previously-unexplored regimes of exotic matter — such as those found on Mars, our next planetary stepping stone — with crucial reliability and repeatability”.

Source: SLAC

ESPN’s New Apple TV App Lets You Watch Up to Four Live Sporting Events Simultaneously

ESPN is releasing a new tvOS app for the fourth-generation Apple TV that allows viewers to watch up to four live sporting events simultaneously.

The multicast feature means a sports fan could, for example, watch two NFL games, an MLB postseason game, and an NBA game on a Sunday in October all at once, with each stream taking up an equally-sized quadrant of the TV.

There are multiple viewing modes to select from, including one with a large stream on the left alongside three smaller streams on the right.

The idea isn’t new—there’s a similar two-stream feature in the MLB.TV app for Apple TV—but ESPN says its implementation offers up to four streams and has a streamlined user interface, according to Recode.

The new ESPN app should be rolling out as a free update on the tvOS App Store today in the United States.

Tag: ESPN
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iDevices Announces New HomeKit-Compatible Dimmer Switch

iDevices, the company behind several HomeKit-enabled light switches and outlets, today announced the debut of its latest product, the Dimmer Switch. iDevices’ new Dimmer Switch, like its wall switches, is an in-wall product designed to replace a traditional light switch.

The Dimmer Switch includes customizable dimming capabilities that can be controlled via the iDevices app, the Home app, or using Siri thanks to built-in HomeKit integration (for Echo users, it also has Alexa support). In-app dim range settings prevent low-level bulb flicker, and it remembers the last brightness state.

It fits into any standard rocker faceplate to integrate with an existing lighting system with no extra wiring required, and it’s installed like any standard wall switch with support for single pole, 3- and 4-way setups.

Along with serving as a way to dim lights, the Dimmer Switch features a built-in LED night light that keeps it well-lit in the dark, with users able to set the night light to any color.

“The iDevices Dimmer Switch enhances our extensive line of premium smart home solutions and brings us closer to our goal of creating products that seamlessly integrate into the walls of any home,” says Chris Allen, iDevices President. “With Hubbell’s long history in the electrical industry, and our expertise in the IoT marketplace, we have the combined strength to continue our evolution towards flexible, ‘invisible’ products that fit any home, new or old. The iDevices Dimmer Switch is one of many innovations to come, forever changing the smart home as we know it.”

iDevices is selling the Dimmer Switch starting today for $99.95. It can be purchased from the iDevices website.

Tag: iDevices
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iPhone 7 Remained World’s Most Popular Smartphone Model in June Quarter

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus remained the world’s most popular smartphones in the second quarter, ahead of Samsung’s newer Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics.

Apple shipped an estimated 16.9 million iPhone 7 units and 15.1 million iPhone 7 Plus units worldwide in the quarter, which corresponds with April through June, according to the firm’s latest Smartphone Model Tracker report.

“iPhone 7 remains the world’s most popular smartphone model overall, due to a compelling blend of user-friendly design, extensive supporting apps, and widespread retail presence for the device,” said Juha Winter, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics.

Strategy Analytics estimates Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ shipments totaled 10.2 million and 9 million respectively in the quarter. The smartphones, released in April, were the world’s third and fourth most popular during the period.

“Samsung’s Galaxy S8 has instantly become the world’s most popular Android smartphone model, due to its attractive curved-screen design, a rich portfolio of software apps, and best-in-class retail distribution across dozens of countries,” said Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics.

Rounding off the top five was Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi’s budget Redmi 4A handset with an estimated 5.5 million quarterly shipments.

Apple reported it sold 41 million iPhones last quarter, but it doesn’t break down the number on a model-by-model basis. Apple CEO Tim Cook did note the iPhone 7 remained its most popular iPhone.

iPhone results were impressive, with especially strong demand at the high end of our lineup. iPhone 7 was our most popular iPhone, and sales of iPhone 7 Plus were up dramatically compared to 6s Plus in the June quarter of last year. The combined iPhone 7 and 7 Plus family was up strong double digits year over year. One decade after the initial iPhone launch, we have now passed 1.2 billion cumulative iPhones sold.

Android still remains the world’s most widely adopted mobile operating system by a significant margin given the hundreds of smartphone models running that platform. Android accounted for 67 percent of U.S. smartphone activations in the second quarter, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

iPhone 6s was similarly the world’s most popular smartphone model last year, according to market research firm IHS Markit.

Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: Strategy Analytics
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Facebook Will Now Let You Raise Money for Nonprofits on Your Birthday

Facebook today announced an update coming to its iOS and Android mobile apps, as well as its main website, that is aimed to make birthdays more “meaningful” for users based in the United States.

Two weeks ahead of your birthday, Facebook said it will now send you a message in your News Feed with the option of creating a fundraiser. If you opt-in, you can choose from any of the 750,000 U.S. nonprofit organizations on Facebook and set a funding goal. Then on your actual birthday, all of your friends will get the usual notification to send you a happy birthday message, which will also include a prompt to donate to your organization of choice.

Facebook said the update is a way to streamline a popular birthday tradition, which sees people dedicating the day to a specific cause instead of asking for gifts of their own.

People often dedicate their birthday to support a cause, and we’ve seen people using Facebook to raise money for causes they care about. For those in the US, we’re now making it easier to do this by giving you the opportunity to create a fundraiser for your birthday directly on Facebook.

Birthdays have always been a part of Facebook, and we hope to continue providing you with a variety of experiences that make celebrating on the platform fun and meaningful for you and your friends.

The company has supported user-generated fundraisers in the past, earlier this year allowing each Facebook user to create fundraisers for six specific categories: education, medical, pet medical, crisis relief, personal emergency, and funeral and loss. With those fundraisers, and presumably the new birthday-focused fundraisers, users were able to make a donation to the cause directly within the Facebook app.

The birthday announcement also included a new celebratory video that will appear whenever a birthday of a close friend is coming up. Similar to the social network’s previous anniversary videos, it combines pictures and status updates that include both you and your friend.

Yesterday, Facebook announced a few design changes also coming to its mobile apps, including circular profile pictures, easier to tap buttons, revamped comment sections, and more. The company said that the changes should make the Facebook app “more conversational and easier to read and navigate.”

Facebook is available to download for free on the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]

Tag: Facebook
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AMC wants to opt out of MoviePass’ one-movie-a-day deal

You and your friends might be thrilled at MoviePass’ new $10-a-month subscription service, but AMC sure isn’t. According to Variety and Deadline, the theater chain is trying to find a way to block the service’s users from using their subscription at its cinemas. MoviePass’ revamped plan allows subscribers to watch one 2D flick a day in participating theaters, which the company says covers 91 percent of all theaters in the US. The service previously cost between $15 to $21 per month, depending on location, for only two movies a month.

The company buys tickets from theaters at full price, so AMC is finding it hard to see how it can sustain its renewed business model. “[I]t is not yet known how to turn lead into gold,” AMC said in a statement. “In AMC’s view, that price level is unsustainable and only sets up consumers for ultimate disappointment down the road if or when the product can no longer be fulfilled.”

MoviePass explained that it’s funding the venture with the $27 million it’s getting by selling a 51 percent stake to data firm Helios and Matheson Analytics. It knows that it will lose money from subsidizing tickets, but it’s hoping that theaters and studios will eventually sell them at discounted rates once viewers pour in — it aims to gain 80,000 new subscribers — and concession sales go up. That might be why AMC is opposed to the idea.

Deadline says the theater chain’s value dropped 35 percent this month, and it’s worried about losing money from MoviePass’ offerings in the long run:

“From what we can tell, by definition and absent some other form of other compensation, MoviePass will be losing money on every subscriber seeing two movies or more in a month…

While AMC is not opposed to subscription programs generally, the one envisioned by MoviePass is not one AMC can embrace. We are actively working now to determine whether it may be feasible to opt out and not participate in this shaky and unsustainable program.”

Netflix cofounder and MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe doesn’t think AMC’s reaction would affect the deal his company is closing with Helios and Matheson. However, he’s worried that people would think that they can’t use the service for AMC’s theaters from the get-go. He likened the chain’s reaction to video rental services’ when Redbox and streaming services started popping up. “It’s the big guy being afraid of the little guy offering better value to consumers,” he added. Ultimately, though, he believes MoviePass can work with studios and theaters “in a constructive manner so that everybody makes more money.”

Via: AV Club

Source: Variety