Best VR apps for exercise

It doesn’t have to look like exercise, it can look like fun!

Sometimes you need motivation to work out, and there’s no problem with that. All it takes is a distraction to make exercise feel less like work and more like fun, and VR can be perfect for those distractions. All you really need is an exercise routine you’re comfortable with repeating, and you’re good to go!

We’ve got a couple of ideas for how you can use VR to make that exercise routine either more engaging or less like work. Pick the one that works best for you and give it a shot!

Read more at VR Heads!

Sonos to announce a smart speaker at Oct. 4 press event

Sonos is expected to join Amazon, Google, and Apple in offering a voice controlled smart speaker.

Thanks to FCC filings and rumors, we’re pretty certain Sonos is about to announce its entry into the smart speaker market. Sonos sent out press invites to an October 4 event where the company is expected to announce an Amazon Echo-like smart speaker.

.@Sonos sends press invites to an event in NYC on Oct 4 – https://t.co/5io7tqHhtA pic.twitter.com/kcoAThKHrm

— LAUNCH Ticker (@launchticker) August 29, 2017

Press invites reference UI elements present in the FCC filing that appear to be on-device controls for playing, pausing, navigating, and activating voice control. The invites also feature a prominent Rolling Stones-esque mouth that — as far as we can tell — is a nod to voice control capabilities. Check out TechCrunch’s report for a side-by-side look at the invites TechCrunch and The Verge received — they’re different styles that, when combined, reveal even more of the UI controls. (Android Central also received the second invite — we’ll see you there!)

Sonos’s smart speaker is expected to include far-field voice recognition technology (like the far-field microphones in Amazon Echo devices and may include support for multiple voice assistants. How that would work, exactly, isn’t mentioned in the FCC filing, but it could get confusing shuffling between Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, Google Assistant, and — if applicable — any smart assistant Sonos brings to the table.

No word yet on when this product will launch or how much it’ll cost, but folks are starting to bet that Sonos will try to beat Apple’s HomePod to market, which is expected in December.

Popular cell phone plans you should avoid

There is a phone plan to fit everyone. There are also plans that won’t fit you.

There is an endless number of different phone plans to choose from. While that means there are some that will fit your lifestyle well and be just what you need, there will also be a few you should avoid. And since each of us is different, it’s impossible to just say don’t buy this or don’t buy that.

We can look at what companies offer and talk about how these plans would be a horrible fit for some of us, though. That’s what we’re going to do here: talk about what kind of phone user you might be and then look at the types of plans you should avoid.

Don’t feel pressured into unlimited

It’s awesome to see U.S. carriers offering unlimited plans again. Even if you don’t need one, you probably know someone who does and it’s nice to see any company listening to its customers. All four major U.S. carriers offer an unlimited plan or even several. They are all different, but they have one thing in common: they are the most expensive plan the company has to offer.

In the end, money is what this is all about. You want to get the most value for your dollar, and if a $40 monthly plan offers what you need, you shouldn’t be paying for an $80 plan. Look at how much data you use on average each month before you look at any plans or pricing. Then look at any extra services you need. Find the plan that can give you those things without adding data or extras you don’t want.

More: Which unlimited plan should you buy?

Plans with less than 1GB of data

You either need to have a data plan or you don’t. And a plan that offers under 1GB of data per month hardly counts as one.

They are enticing, usually just a few dollars more than a voice and text only plan. That’s because they are designed to get you to go over your monthly allotment and pay a lot more for 1GB of data than you would have if you just went with a 1GB plan.

If you don’t need an expensive data plan, that’s great. Just don’t think you actually have one if the carrier you use is offering 100MB per month or even 500MB per month. That’s not enough to be useful.

More: Best small data plan

Plans that don’t let you “top up”

No matter how well you plan and calculate how much data you need every month, there is always a chance something will happen, which means you need a little more once in a while. Life is not scripted.

Most companies will let you buy additional data by the GB, but there are still a few plans on some carriers that don’t offer the option. When something comes up, it’s easy to open a web page or send a text to pay $10 or so for 1GB of data, and if a plan doesn’t give you that option, avoid it like the plague. “Overages” are expensive by design — they are a punishment for not following your end of an agreement. Don’t give your money to a company who tries to force you into making them.

Know what International means

Working at Mobile Nations, I have heard too many stories about $500 or higher monthly bills because someone used their phone outside of the U.S. and didn’t realize how expensive that can be. It’s even happened to some of us who work here!

That’s because the word international means something different to carriers. If you look at the fine print on any “international plan,” you’ll see where it applies and where it doesn’t. Some of the worst offenders even offer separate international plans for Canada and Mexico, plus one that covers both.

All this information is available before you buy, so read exactly what you’re thinking of paying for before you hop on a plane. And if you live close to the border or will be visiting, make sure you know what happens if you end up connecting to a tower on the other side of it. Many a traveler to Niagra Falls has a horror story. Don’t let it happen to you.

More: Best international plans

All data is no longer equal

Finally, remember that every company has different rules when it comes to using the data you pay for. This is most evident when it comes to streaming video.

Just about every carrier, both big and small, will have rules about streaming video. You’ll be able to use your entire monthly data allotment — whether that means a set amount each month or the line where unlimited turns into slowed 3G speeds — watching Netflix if you want. But the quality of the video you can get can vary wildly.

If you want to see HD video on your phone, make sure you buy up into the correct HD extra if that’s what you need to do. And even then, know that streaming video on your phone will eat up your data faster than you might realize!

More: How much mobile data does streaming media use?

One size never fits all

We’re not calling out any plan or company by name here because no one plan is better than the rest for everybody.

A plan through Project Fi (for example) might be perfect for some who know what they will use every month and doesn’t need more than a few GB at a time, but it won’t work for others. Unlimited plans are the same way — many of us need one, even though most people don’t. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Know what you need and know what to look out for when you’re buying so you can find it.

Alternative carriers (MVNOS)

• What is an alternative mobile carrier?
• What are the advantages of going with an alternative carrier?
• How to make sure your phone works on a prepaid alternative carrier
• 8 Important Considerations When Switching To An MVNO
• These are the cheapest data plans you can buy in the U.S.
• Mint SIM vs. Cricket Wireless: Which is better for you?

Google’s answer to ARKit is ARCore, and it’s available right now

No more waiting for a Tango phone you’ll actually want to buy.

Shortly after the Android Oreo announcement, David Burke, VP on engineering and Android took to Twitter and hinted at “one more sweet surprise” coming this week. It turns out that surprise is an Augmented Reality SDK that takes all the brains of the Tango Core and makes it available to phones without the fancy sensors on the back. It’s called ARCore, and it looks an awful lot like Google’s answer to Apple’s ARKit.

Here’s what we know so far!

Where Tango phones are capable of filling entire buildings with Augmented Reality data that can be accesses from room to room, even as you go up and down stairs, ARCore is built for what is right in front of you. It uses the single camera on the back of your phone to detect flat surfaces and lets you place AR objects to walk around and explore.

The motion sensors on your phone let you wander around the stuff you’ve placed, giving it the illusion of existing right in front of you as long as you’re looking through the phone. As long as you are in the same room as the thing you’re playing with, or you’re outside in a wide open space, it’ll look like that thing is really there.

This is where the Tango brains kick in. ARCore uses the ambient light sensor on the phone to give developers more information for things like dynamic lighting and shading, so the shadows cast by the AR object should line up with the lighting in the room and the character will appear to be lit by the light in your area.

Out of the box, Google is ensuring there’s plenty of support for ARCore so fans can start playing right away and developers can take inspiration from those concepts to build new things. On top of support from Unity, Unreal Engine, and prominent AR developers like Wayfair and Niantic, Google has AR versions of VR darlings like Tilt Brush and Blocks so people can start creating in AR right away. In theory this means not only are there killer apps out of the box with support for thing like Pokemon Go on the horizon, but games powered by Unreal and Unity could be right around the corner.

Google’s AR strategy also goes beyond the Play Store with prototype browsers aimed at developers who want to build AR for the web. These browsers will enable ARCore and ARKit users to access AR tech right from the browser, encouraging developers to build for everyone instead of just one platform.

While ARCore isn’t anywhere near as capable as a full Tango phone, the most important feature here is accessibility. Google is launching ARCore today as a preview for Galaxy S8 and Pixel phones, with plans to quickly grow the number of phones that can support ARCore. Huawei, ASUS, and LG phones are expected to join this list shortly, with an internal goal of 100 million supported phones by the end of the preview. According to Google, Android 7.0 or higher is the current limitation for phones that could eventually be supported.

Are you excited to try out ARCore? Check out Google’s AR Experiments showcase on your Pixel or Galaxy S8 today to see what you can do!

WhatsApp now deals in customer support for businesses

A year after outlining its plans to give the platform customer service functionality, WhatsApp has revealed how businesses will be able to communicate with users via verified accounts. A green check badge — not dissimilar to the ones found on Facebook and Twitter — next to a contact name means the phone number belongs to a business account. You’ll also know when you start talking to a business through the app, as messages will appear in yellow. The feature is currently in beta for a small number of businesses participating in a pilot program.

The move represents the Facebook-owned company’s first real attempt at monetizing its service. It’s not clear exactly how this will work yet, although CEO Jan Koum has noted in the past that businesses, not users, will foot the bill. And it seems the platform will extend beyond basic broadcast marketing and basic customer assistance. In a blog post from 2016 Koum hypothesized WhatApp’s billion daily users communicating with banks about potentially fraudulent transactions, or an airline about delayed flights. This is already happening on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, so expansion onto one of the world’s largest messaging platforms was simply a matter of time.

Source: WhatsApp

Sonos will unveil a voice-controlled smart speaker on October 4th

After all that talk about voice control, Sonos is finally ready to put its money where its mouth is. The connected speaker company has sent out invitations to a New York City event on October 4th where it has some “news to share.” The invitation (below) has virtually no details, but the open mouth on the front is a not-so-subtle hint as to what’s coming — it’s that smart speaker that popped up in an FCC filing earlier this month. Based on the description, the device will use far-field mics to accept commands from “multiple voice platforms,” which suggests that the expected Alexa support may be just the start.

The fall timing for the event could be crucial. Sonos hasn’t had to worry too much about the rise of voice-guided speakers, as its sound quality still tends to be much better (even a standard Play:1 will thrash an Echo or Home), but that’s changing. Amazon just introduced the higher-quality Echo Show, and Apple’s HomePod is very clearly gunning after Sonos’ core market with a mix of both voice control and top-flight audio. Simply speaking, there’s a lot of pressure on Sonos to do something with voice — the pioneer in connected audio risks being left behind if it insists on ‘old-school’ apps and buttons.

Google Maps will help you park in 25 more cities

Back in January, Google rolled out a “parking difficulty” icon in Maps which, as its name suggests, explains how hard it will be to find a spot for your vehicle. While useful, it was only available in 25 US cities, including New York and San Francisco. Today, it’s being expanded to a further 25 locations around the globe: Alicante, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Cologne, Darmstadt, Dusseldorf, London, Madrid, Malaga, Manchester, Milan, Montreal, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Stuttgart, Toronto, Valencia and Vancouver.

Just pop in your destination and you’ll see a limited, medium or easy symbol near the bottom of the screen, next to the estimated journey time. The ratings are based on “historical parking data,” according to Google, and a smidge of “machine learning magic.” Armed with this information, the idea is that you’ll leave a little earlier and prowl around, waiting for a free space, or drive further afield where parking might be more plentiful. Or, perhaps you’ll leave the car at home and find another mode of transportation. Regardless, you won’t be caught off guard anymore.

Today, Google is also introducing a new “find parking” feature. If you tap the card with the parking difficulty icon, you’ll see an option to browse other streets and parking facilities. A small map visualises their locations, with each option listed underneath with an address and estimated walk time. If any of them sound suitable, you can “add parking” and start your trip. Once you’ve successfully parked your vehicle, Google Maps will switch to walking directions so you can easily find your destination.

For now, this feature is only available on Google Maps for Android, and in the following US cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas/Fort Worth, DC, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Tampa. As always, we suspect it won’t be too long before the feature is rolled out more widely. After all, parking can be a problem in any major city, and regardless of your smartphone operating system of choice.

Source: Google (Blog Post)

Reprogramming the piano

Dan Tepfer is an acclaimed jazz pianist and composer who has played venues from Tokyo’s Sumida Triphony Hall to New York’s Village Vanguard. He also has a degree in astrophysics and writes computer programs.

Born to a mother who sang in the Paris Opera and a plant-geneticist father who brought a Macintosh Plus home in the 1980s, Tepfer sees the worlds of art and science as entirely complementary. Algorithms and improvisation both drive his work.

In his latest project, Acoustic Informatics, Tepfer uses a player piano, the automated instrument that occasionally appears in airports and Wild West saloons. Next month, he will present his first concert in New York City — where he’s lived for more than a decade — to showcase this project at the Jazz Gallery, a venue known for its experimentation.

Essentially, Tepfer has hacked and rewritten the way a piano works.

Every time Tepfer hits a note, the Yamaha Disklavier — his digital player piano — sends the information via MIDI to his laptop, which instantly shoots back an algorithmic response that causes other keys to play themselves.

Using SuperCollider, an open-source programming environment for musicians, Tepfer writes rules that determine how the player piano reacts to his every manual strike of the keyboard. Mostly, these rules create echoes of the melodies Tepfer plays. One algorithm plays the same note but one octave further down the piano; another turns each musical phrase eerie by following it with cascading sets of five notes in a pattern called a minor ninth.

When Tepfer strings together a melody, extra keys start to shimmer on their own alongside his fingers. The effect makes it seem as if he has four hands playing simultaneously, all of them in sync. The architecture of the piece was created by algorithms, but the notes themselves are improvised. “I’m writing how the music works rather than writing the actual music,” says Tepfer. The sounds his Disklavier creates are deeply organic but would not be possible without technology.

“I’m writing how the music works rather than writing the actual music.”

As Tepfer plays, SuperCollider sends the data to a programming environment called Processing, which Tepfer uses to write visualizations. Each algorithm has a different graphical style that maps out both Tepfer’s notes and the player piano’s.

“Dan is, perhaps you could say, part of a new breed of improviser-slash-technologist that really has a strong foothold in both camps,” says Joseph Branciforte, another jazz musician and programmer who has been friends with Tepfer for two years. “I don’t know that there are that many generations of people that would have grown up knowing these types of possibilities from a young age.”

Born to parents from Oregon but raised in Paris, the bilingual Tepfer is predisposed to think outside basic binaries like American versus French, art versus science, structure versus freedom.

“Part of growing up in several cultures at once is that I think I take institutions a little bit less seriously,” he says. “You grow up as a very young kid realizing that all these cultural norms are very relative, and that really influences the way you see things.”

Around age nine, Tepfer began playing with HyperCard, a pre-internet programming tool on early Mac computers. By the time he was in his teens, he was coding in BASIC before teaching himself the programming language C from a book. Tepfer made games of Pong, 3D renders and line art from equations.

At the same time, he was studying classical piano at Paris’ Conservatoire Paul Dukas music school while learning jazz and writing music. College took him to Edinburgh, Scotland, for a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics before a master’s in jazz at New England Conservatory, in Boston. Today, in his Brooklyn apartment adjacent to Prospect Park, Tepfer keeps photos of pianists Glenn Gould, Thelonious Monk and Igor Stravinsky on the wall beside his grand piano. Next to those are digitally rendered visualizations of harmonic frequencies.

For Tepfer, science and art have always been compatible. “I think you’re greatly enriched if you can go between those two viewpoints,” he says. “There only is a tension between those two ways of seeing the world if you’re approaching music at what I would say is a relatively basic level.”

Music, on one level, is physics — frequencies relating to each other mathematically to create harmony.

His point is that freedom only really exists, and therefore has meaning, within an underlying, objective structure. Unlimited freedom in music would sound like a garble of notes, sheer chaos.

After all, music, on one level, is physics — frequencies relating to each other mathematically to create harmony. Keys and timing create a logical structure in which meaningful sound exists. Classical composers like Bach imposed their own rules, such as playing the same musical phrase over and over but in different timing and different spots across the musical scale — a touchstone for some of Tepfer’s algorithms.

In improvisational jazz, the back and forth between sticking to rules and deliberately flouting them is part of the joy. The musical narrative through which a skilled performer guides the audience, through stability and instability, keeps listeners on their toes.

In Tepfer’s Disklavier project, the algorithms create the structure and stability but are still a creative invention as much as the notes he conjures later have their basis in logic. “You put yourself in a system of constraints and then you see how much fun you can have,” he says. “The question I want to be asking myself is, ‘Here I am in this cage. How much wiggle room can I find?’”

Technology has pushed musical advances in the past half of a decade from the electric guitar in rock to sampling in hip-hop and more or less everything about EDM. Jazz is no exception, even as the mainstream view of the genre is that it emphasizes acoustic instruments, live performance and free-form improvisation.

Algorithmic composition traces back to the 1950s and composer Lejaren Hiller, who founded the Experimental Music Studios at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and collaborated with John Cage. In the 1970s and ’80s, trombonist and composer George Lewis pioneered improvisational AI, including his program Voyager, which jams with collaborators as well as on its own. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny’s Orchestrion, from 2010, involves an entire band of self-playing instruments.

In contrast, Tepfer is always in control of his music. The Disklavier has no agency of its own, no artificial creativity. Though Tepfer may experiment with neural networks in the future, for now he is more interested in the human inspiration that technology can trigger.

The idea is not to use technology as a substitute for his own creativity but as a catalyst. Tepfer wants his algorithms to stimulate new thoughts, shock his system, expand his conception of how the piano can sound.

Your browser does not support the audio element

One of Tepfer’s improvisations

He started experimenting with the Disklavier four years ago and now ends up trying to recreate its style in solo concerts with an acoustic piano. “Those sounds are in my ears now, and I find myself actually reaching for those sounds that the computer would be creating,” he says. “That’s really what I look for in a situation where I’m using new technology. It’s in artistic results, a window opening up at the artistic level.”

When combining music and technology, the essential question Tepfer always asks himself is: Am I enabling music that couldn’t have been created any other way?

He is conscious that he doesn’t want his programs to be a gimmick or to simply automate the same music he could play without a machine. He wants his music to have “integrity.”

“What is technology on its own, from an artistic perspective? I don’t think it’s anything.”

“What is technology on its own, from an artistic perspective? I don’t think it’s anything,” he says.

“Technology has to be at the service of this artistic impulse. And artistic impulse — at the end of the day, you have to spend a lot of time alone figuring out what it is you want to say,” he says.

Part of his solution is that the more he innovates with new forms, the deeper he digs into musical theory and history. “If you look at a tree, the higher it reaches up, the deeper its roots have to go to support that,” Tepfer says.

It is the classic artist’s tension, provoked by the host of creative technology at his disposal today: To steep himself in the knowledge of his forebears without getting stuck in tradition; to dive into the innovations of his time without privileging style over substance. The tension is one Tepfer may be well positioned to solve as a musician and technologist. Reconciling different worlds seems to be one of his assets.

Google pulls 300 Android apps used for DDoS attacks

If a random storage manager or video player you downloaded recently has disappeared from your Android device, don’t worry: it might have been for your own good. Google has removed 300 apps from the Play store, which were apparently merely masquerading as legitimate applications. In truth, they were made to hi-jack your phone so it can be used as part of a botnet’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. WireX, as the botnet is called, pummeled several content providers and delivery networks with traffic from the devices it hi-jacked on August 17th, though it’s been active since around August 2nd. In some cases, it also acted as a ransomware, demanding money from its victim.

It was content delivery network Akamai that discovered its existence following an assault on one of its clients. The company then got together with Google and several security researchers from rival companies like Cloudflare, Flashpoint, Oracle + Dyn, RiskIQ, Team Cymru and other organizations to solve the issue. Upon learning that the Play Store is inundated with hundreds of fake WireX apps hiding behind the guise of innocuous programs like storage managers and ringtones, the big G did its part and blocked them all.

Here are a few samples of infected apps:

In a statement, Mountain View said it’s now also in the process of removing applications from affected devices. It’s unclear how long that would take, though, since based on the team’s research, WireX compromised over 70,000 devices from over 100 countries.

Via: CSO Online, The Verge

Source: Gizmodo, Akamai, Cloudflare

Apple TV 4K movies could cost $20, but studios want more

With a new 4K Apple TV on the horizon, Apple has to figure out how much it’ll charge for ultra-high definition films. And, not surprisingly, it’s butting heads with Hollywood. While the iPhone maker wants to charge $20 for 4K films, studios are pushing for it to charge $5 or $10 more, the Wall Street Journal reports. Most new HD films on iTunes sell for $15, but some high-profile titles already reach up to $20, which could be why studios are eager for more. A lower price could convince more consumers to actually buy 4K films, but Hollywood is likely worried about it instantly devaluing an important new revenue stream.

Apple isn’t the first company to offer 4K purchases. Vudu has been selling UHD titles for years, and it typically tags them at $30 (though some newer films go for $25). If Apple wants to have a tactical advantage over Vudu, which is one of its biggest competitors at this point, it’ll definitely want to undercut them somehow. Making things even more complicated, Vudu just recently launched an Apple TV app.

Just like Apple’s earlier battles over music and film licensing, the company has to convince its more traditional partners that a lower price is better in the long run. And as someone who eagerly snaps up 4K Blu-rays, but refuses to spend $30 on 4K digital releases, Apple’s reasoning makes more sense. Most consumers are used to watching video on inexpensive streaming services these days, so they’d probably completely ignore $30 titles.

Source: WSJ