Postmates promises 30-minute grocery deliveries in New York

Postmates isn’t just for late-night take-out delivery anymore. The service just launched grocery delivery in Los Angeles, Manhattan and San Francisco. It’s called Fresh. More than that, the firm completely overhauled its app to make ordering a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper or a loaf of bread (or basically anything else you forgot while at the grocery store) a lot easier. A post on Medium claims that it shouldn’t take more than a half an hour for your goods to arrive — supposedly a quarter of the time some of its competitors. It’s about the same wait time for a Postmates booze drop-off. Amazon Fresh, on the other hand can take hours to make a delivery.

The delivery service is limited for now, but the upside of that, apparently, is that everything is going to be very high quality and come from small grocery stores. So, in LA, your food will come from Urban Radish; the East Village Farm in Manhattan; and Farmstead in San Francisco. Each pride themselves on offering curated picks for their foods and being active members in their respective communities.

Of course, this isn’t going to be as cheap as, say, running to your neighborhood bodega. Postmates charges a $3 fee per order, but the service doesn’t control the prices set by its partner stores. If you can afford to have groceries delivered, however, you likely aren’t going to sweat the potential price difference here.

Source: Medium

Christopher Nolan apologizes for trash-talking Netflix

Film director Christopher Nolan made no secret of his disdain for Netflix’s business model over the summer, when he gave an interview calling the streaming service’s “bizarre aversion” to supporting theatrical releases “mindless” and “untenable”. Now, he tells Variety that he sent a personal email to Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos, apologizing for his comments.

The exact contents of the email have not been disclosed, but Nolan tells Variety, “I should have been more polite. I said what I believe, but I was undiplomatic in the way I expressed it.” So clearly his apology didn’t renege on his previous comments. However, he concedes that Netflix is a new driving force in the film industry and needs to be acknowledged as such. “I wasn’t giving any context to the frankly revolutionary nature of what Netflix has done. It’s extraordinary. They need appropriate respect for that, which I have.” Nolan has previously stated his refusal to work with Netflix in the past, but this turnaround, however restrained, could well mean he’s not ruling it out in the future.

Via: The Verge

Source: Variety

Harry Potter AR game is coming from the makers of ‘Pokémon Go’

It’s hard to exaggerate the success of Pokémon Go, Niantic’s augmented reality game. That’s why it’s such big news that the company has announced the hit game’s successor. Niantic Labs will once again work with a much-loved property, but this time, it’s Harry Potter. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is set to launch in 2018, in cooperation with Warner Brothers Interactive and Portkey Games, reports TechCrunch.

Details on the game are pretty scarce, so it’s not clear what the game will involve or what its mechanics will be. Niantic did say in September that the company was looking at using audio cues in future AR games because holding up a phone for an extended period of time “makes them look like a total doofus,” according to Niantic CTO Phil Keslin. It’s possible that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will use sounds as cues.

According to TechCrunch, the game will borrow from Ingress, a previous endeavor from Niantic Labs. Players will move through their physical world to collect power-ups and defend locations (presumably, similar to Pokémon Go’s gym system). Whatever the mechanics of the game, with the Harry Potter franchise extremely large fanbase, it’s safe to say there will be a lot of interest in this game.

Source: TechCrunch

Zynga Debuts ‘Words With Friends 2’ Eight Years After Launching Original iOS Game

In 2009 developer Zynga debuted Words With Friends, a Scrabble-like game on the iOS App Store that quickly became one of the most popular and well-known apps associated with iPhone gaming. Today, Zynga is launching the first proper sequel to the game, Words With Friends 2, as a brand-new and free app on the App Store, and it’ll carry over all of your friends, running games, and settings from the first app.

In terms of gameplay, Words With Friends 2 plays the same as the original, offering up a word-creation board game against your friends in an asynchronous multiplayer experience. Additionally, Zynga said that it has added in a few new features to the sequel, “requested from the Words With Friends player community,” including a Solo Challenge that pits you against an AI bot, a team versus team Lightning Round, and an enhanced Social Dictionary.

Solo Challenge is meant to help you develop your strategy and vocabulary in a single player-style experience of “increasingly tough matches.” The Lightning Round mode is Zynga’s first-ever synchronous multiplayer feature, allowing you to play against more than one person in the same match by joining a team of five total players, resulting in a “faster and more competitive” mode than the traditional gameplay.

All of the new features come in an app that’s also newly designed with a “refreshed, modern look and feel,” according to Zynga.

“As one of Zynga’s most popular and iconic forever franchises, Words With Friends continues to connect millions of people around the world every day through a shared love of social wordplay,” said Bernard Kim, President of Publishing, Zynga. “Words With Friends 2 honors the rich, pop-culture legacy and beloved social gameplay of Words With Friends, while introducing innovative features in the largest refresh in the game’s eight-year history.

We’re proud to bring our loyal fans a brand-new experience that’s inspired by all the ways they want to play. Whether it’s teaming up in our first-ever synchronous multiplayer mode with Lightning Round or improving their vocabulary prowess in Solo Challenge, Words With Friends 2 gives players more opportunities to master their favorite word game than ever before.”

Zynga mentioned that over the course of eight years, more than 140 billion words have been played in Words With Friends, and to this day over 6.5 million matches are created every day. The popular original game spawned numerous spiritual successors created by Zynga and tackling other well-known game genres, including Hanging With Friends, Chess With Friends, Matching With Friends, Crosswords With Friends, Boggle With Friends, Word Streak With Friends, and more.

You can download Words With Friends 2 on the iOS App Store for free beginning today [Direct Link]. The sequel is also available on Google Play for Android devices.

Related Roundup: iOS 11Tags: Zynga, Words With Friends
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You Can Now Add Photos or Videos More Than 24 Hours Old to Your Instagram Stories

Instagram this week announced that users can now add photos or videos that are more than 24 hours old to Stories.

Instagram continues to catch up with rival app Snapchat by removing the 24-hour limitation, which should come as no surprise given Instagram has essentially been copying Snapchat for well over a year.

Just like you normally would, swipe up from the camera to open your Camera Roll or tap the gallery icon. Scroll to choose your photo or video, and tap to select what you want to share to your story, which still disappears after 24 hours itself.

If you choose a photo or video that’s more than 24 hours old, you’ll automatically see a new sticker that helps you add context for when it was taken. The sticker can be rotated, resized, or removed as usual.

The updated version of Instagram is available now on the App Store [Direct Link].

Tag: Instagram
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The Reflex 1 is the first manual film SLR in decades

Written off not long ago as dead technology, film has recently been embraced by instant photographers and filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan. A company called Reflex has capitalized on that trend by launching the manual focus, 35mm Reflex 1 SLR, “the first newly designed manual SLR system in over 25 years.”

The Reflex 1 has the classic look of an older Nikon or Canon SLR, and comes with an interchangeable, modular plate that supports a variety of lenses, including Nikon F, Olympus OM, Canon FD and universal M42 thread mounts. It also includes an interchangeable film back that lets you load rolls of 35mm film instantly by swapping a fresh one in. You don’t get automatic aperture control settings, but there’s a button for depth-of-field previews.

You get both an integrated flash and continuous LED light source, each with three intensities. The camera supports manual exposure and aperture priority settings, with +4 stops of EV, and has ISO settings ranging from 25-6400. (Film stocks generally max out at 3200 ISO for black and white and 1600 for color.) If you’re curious, a 36-exposure roll of 35mm film costs between around $6-10, and processing runs about $5 per roll ($10 with 36 4×6 prints).

So why get this instead of, say, a used SLR or even brand new Nikon F6 and FM10 35mm SLR cameras? For one thing, there’s the price: It’s on sale for £350 (around $465) on Kickstarter, before it goes up to £399 ($530) when the campaign is over. That’s a bit cheaper than the $570 FM10, and a lot less than the $2,700 F6. The other interesting thing about the Reflex 1 is the interchangeable plate, which lets you change lens systems instantly — handy if you have legacy glass lying around from different companies.

The Reflex 1 joins other retro film products, including Fujifilm’s SQ10 instant camera, the Leica Sofort and (hopefully soon) Kodak’s digital Super 8 movie camera. Technically, the Reflex 1 isn’t the first new SLR design in decades if you count the Lomography Konstructor, but that’s a relative toy that can’t take interchangeable lenses.

The Reflex 1 a relatively cheap, nice-looking, hand-made 35mm SLR camera being built in what looks like a serious way. As with any other Kickstarter project, there’s a risk you’ll lose your money, so you’re buying into the concept and the company, not the camera itself. if you’re just looking for a product, you can probably find a decent used SLR on eBay for a couple of hundred dollars.

Source: Kickstarter

Amazon Cloud Cam review: A Nest Cam rival with Alexa smarts

The home-security-camera market is a saturated one, with contenders from the likes of Logitech, Netgear and, perhaps trendiest of all, Nest. Now there’s another, rather surprising, company joining that fray: Amazon. Like the others, Amazon’s “Cloud Cam” keeps tabs on your home while you’re away, but it also works with Alexa. It’s a decent camera overall, and at $120 (cheaper per unit if you buy multipacks) it’s affordable. But Cloud Cam’s integration into Amazon’s ecosystem is likely its main selling point.

Hardware and setup

Compared to the Nest Cam, the Cloud Cam is pretty lightweight. Thanks to its all-plastic build, it weighs only 5 ounces (compared to the Nest’s 7.5). But lightweight doesn’t mean flimsy. On the contrary, the Cloud Cam is equipped with a 70 mm-wide sturdy base with rubberized footing. The camera is mounted on a flexible ball pivot that rotates 360 degrees. Unlike the Nest, however, the Cloud Cam’s base is not magnetic, and you can’t remove it, either. The Cloud Cam does ship with an optional wall mount, however.

Setup is simple: Plug the Cloud Cam into the wall, download the app and follow the pairing instructions. The LED above the camera flashes blue on startup and blue/green in pairing mode. In my experience, the app discovered the camera pretty quickly. From there, I entered my WiFi and Amazon credentials — for access to videos and linking with other Amazon services — and it was up and working. I also had to name my camera, which comes in handy when used with Alexa (which we’ll get to later).

Oh, and that LED light? It’s permanently green when the camera is on; there’s no way to turn it off. Amazon says this is so users know exactly when you’re on camera and when you’re not. This is understandable, but also means you can’t have the camera on in stealth mode. The Nest Cam, for example, lets you disable the status LED for this purpose.

In use

I was immediately impressed with the image quality from the Cloud Cam. It has 1080p resolution and a wide 120-degree field of view. My apartment is small, so this was more than enough to capture both my living room and my kitchen. The camera also has night vision, which activates automatically when dark (the Cloud Cam has an ambient light sensor). Night-vision recordings looked bright and crisp, which is valuable when browsing clips to see exactly what triggered the motion-detection.

That motion sensor also happens to be one of the main features of the Cloud Cam. Essentially, whenever the camera detects motion, it’ll start recording a video and send you a push notification. You can adjust the sensitivity, from high to low (high detects a person-size object up to 20 feet away, medium at 10 feet away and low up to 5 feet away). You can set notifications to arrive every time an event occurs, or at certain intervals (every few minutes, hourly, daily or never at all). Unfortunately, you can only receive notifications via the app, and not via email or text.

By default, the Cloud Cam stores up to 24 hours of recorded clips, with support for up to three cameras. If you want more storage you’ll need a subscription. Basic ($7 a month or $69 a year) increases the limit to the last seven days for up to three cameras; Extended ($10 a month or $99 a year) stores 14 days of video for up to five cameras and Pro ($20 a month or $199 a year) offers a full month of clips for up to ten cameras.

One of the ways to access those clips is via the aforementioned app. You can download them to your phone, share them via Airdrop or social media or simply delete them altogether. The clips are also stored automatically in your Amazon Drive account, which you can access via a browser.

A subscription will unlock two other features: Person-detection and Zones. Person-detection fine-tunes the Cloud Cam’s motion-sensitivity to detect when a person is in the room versus a pet (or Roomba, etc.). There are options to receive notifications of person-detection but not motion-detection, or vice versa, or both. Zones, on the other hand, blocks out certain areas of the room from being detected. So, for example, you can draw a square around the TV or a ceiling fan in the app, and the camera will ignore any motion in those areas.

In my experience, the motion sensors worked really well. It let me know when our cat was on the couch (which is fine) or when she was on the kitchen counter (which is not as fine). Since I also had the Pro subscription, it also let me know someone was in my apartment when my husband walked in. I also tried out Zones with a corner of the room, and sure enough, no matter how much I waved around in that corner, I couldn’t trigger the motion sensor.

The Cloud Cam also has geofencing that deactivates the camera when you’re home or switches it on when you leave. To enable this, select the “Home/Away” toggle in settings and specify your camera’s location. Now, whenever you leave the house (with your phone, of course), the camera will turn on automatically. And when you arrive home, the app will let your camera know you’re in close proximity and it’ll shut off.

What’s nice is that the feature works with multiple phones: If more than one person has the Home/Away feature enabled, all parties need to leave the house for the camera to turn on. If one person arrives home early, then the camera turns back off — it doesn’t need everyone to be home.

While that sounds useful, I had trouble getting it to work reliably. Sometimes when I was home, it wouldn’t turn off; sometimes when I was out, the camera wouldn’t turn on. When I asked Amazon about this, a spokesperson said to try relaunching the app. I did, which made the camera work as intended, but I ended up having to do this pretty often. It was so annoying that I just decided to turn the camera on and off manually.

Perhaps the main reason you’ll want the Amazon Cloud Cam above all other security cameras is that it works with Alexa. Amazon loaned me a Fire TV Stick to use with Cloud Cam, but the company tells me that it will also work with the Echo Show, Echo Spot, any Fire TV product and any Alexa-enabled Fire tablet.

The feed from the Amazon Cloud Cam as streamed on the Fire TV Stick

Remember when I signed in with my Amazon credentials during the Cloud Cam’s setup? I was also asked to do the same during the setup of the Fire TV Stick — so that all the Alexa devices could communicate with each other. To test it, I held down the voice button on the Fire TV remote and said: “Alexa, show me the ‘Family Room’” (which is what I named my camera) and voilà, live video from the Cloud Cam popped up on my television. I could even use the remote to talk to whoever’s in the room with the Cloud Cam, as it has a microphone for two-way communication.

Obviously, this is useful only if you’re already invested in the Amazon ecosystem, but if you are, I can see how this would be helpful for keeping an eye on your kids when you’re somewhere else in the house.

I should mention here that Amazon plans on selling a different camera called the Key Edition Cloud Cam, which costs $140. This works in concert with a special Amazon Key-compatible smart lock, which is to be used with the Key service (that lets delivery people in the door when you’re not home). The Key app lets authorized people in the door, and the Key Edition Cloud Cam will help confirm deliveries or identify friends and family.

The competition

Amazon’s Cloud Cam is surprisingly affordable for what it offers. It costs $120 for a single unit, but that drops to $100 (or less) if you get a multipack — a two-pack is $200 while a three-pack is $290. Other brand-name cameras with similar features are more expensive; the Nest Cam is $200, Logitech’s Logi Circle 2 is also $200 (though you can get it on Amazon for $140) and Netgear’s Arlo is $200 as well. The Blink home security camera is $100, but it doesn’t have two-way audio nor geofencing, and it only has 720p video.

Both the Logi Circle 2 and the Cloud Cam offer 24 hours of video as part of the default package, which is great. That’s a lot better than the Nest Cam, which doesn’t offer any kind of archives at all unless you pay for a Nest Aware subscription.

That said, the Cloud Cam doesn’t have facial recognition. For that, you have to either cough up $300 for the Nest Cam IQ or $200 for the Netatmo Welcome. Another downside is that the Cloud Cam needs to be connected to AC power. Logitech’s Logi Circle and the Blink camera both run on batteries, so they have way more placement options.

Wrap-up

Overall, Amazon’s Cloud Cam is a pretty decent choice. It’s well-built, affordable and has an advanced motion sensor that can separate people from pets (if you cough up the subscription money). The 1080p video quality is great, the default 24-hour archive is a nice bonus and the night-vision mode isn’t bad, either. The geofencing feature is a little finicky, and you can’t turn off the camera LED if you want it to be in stealth mode, but I didn’t find those to be deal breakers.

If you already have an Amazon device with a screen, like an Echo Show, the Cloud Cam is especially useful thanks to its integration with Alexa. On the whole, I found the Amazon Cloud Cam to be a surprisingly good value for a home security camera, with or without its Alexa tricks.

Apple may be working on an AR headset for 2020

Apple has been talking a lot about AR lately. ARKit allows developers to create augmented reality apps for iOS devices, and it’s already resulted in some pretty interesting stuff. This is apparently just the first step, though. Bloomberg reports that Apple is developing an AR headset that will be ready by 2019 and ship to customers in 2020. The company is looking to create a device that will change the game as much as the iPhone did back in 2007.

Apple isn’t interested in the current crop of AR devices that use a phone as both the screen and the processor. The AR headset will be all inclusive, with its own screen, and an Apple-designed chip. It will also have a brand new OS, currently labeled “rOS” for “reality operating system.” It’s possible that users will be able to download and install apps from an AR app store, much like they do across other Apple devices. The mechanisms for launching and interacting these apps — whether via head gestures or through Siri — hasn’t yet been decided upon, according to Bloomberg.

Because Apple doesn’t yet have an augmented reality headset of its own, it’s using other companies’ devices to develop and test features for their new device. Anonymous sources told Bloomberg that the HTC Vive is the headset of choice for developers. The team is currently working on an AR device that will use the iPhone’s screen, camera and processors, but notes that it will not be available for consumers. This will be a device for internal development only.

The emphasis on AR at Apple isn’t surprising — we’ve known that the company is working on a slew of augmented reality projects, including AR glasses. In July of this year, Tim Cook said on an earnings call earlier this year that Apple’s interest in AR wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “We are high on AR for the long run,” he said. “We think there are great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity.”

Source: Bloomberg

Postmates Announces New Grocery Delivery Service ‘Fresh’ Alongside iOS App Redesign [Updated]

Postmates today announced the dual-launch of a new curated groceries and essentials delivery service called “Postmates Fresh,” alongside a revamp of the company’s iOS app. Postmates has long allowed customers to order groceries for delivery on its app, but the company said Postmates Fresh is its “first-ever grocery product” offering the delivery of everything from paper towels to free range chicken to your door in minutes.

When ordering through Fresh, the average delivery time is estimated at thirty minutes, which Postmates said makes it a good source for last minute items. Postmates Fresh will also work directly with local partners to build out the new service, providing users with “curated, locally-sourced groceries,” and more directly competing with grocery delivery services like Amazon Fresh. Postmates Fresh will launch first in Manhattan, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Our first-ever grocery product launched today in Manhattan, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The launch of Fresh— a new category that curates high quality groceries and ingredients, is rolling out the same day as our brand new app design. This means customers can now get pesto, paper towels, LaCroix, Halo Top, Kombucha, free range chicken, prosciutto, salmon filet, organic apples, avocados — and pretty much all the essentials they need, in minutes.

Postmates said that the goal of Fresh is to make “locally grown groceries more accessible,” leading to the partnership with Farmstead in San Francisco, East Village Farm in New York City, and Urban Radish in Downtown Los Angeles. As the service expands to more markets, Postmates will look for more direct-to-consumer grocers who source from organic farms with the “highest-quality products” to integrate new partners into Postmates Fresh.

Additionally, the new app has been optimized for iPhone X and features a new collections view and scheduled deliveries section, where you can place an order for the future even if the grocery location or restaurant is closed. Postmates consumer product lead David Byttow told TechCrunch that the app’s new design and features are the basis for “a whole bunch of things we’ll be launching and bringing in the coming weeks.”

Update: Bloomberg reports pricing for Postmates Fresh will be $3.99 per delivery or $9.99 per month.

Tag: Postmates
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Galaxy S9 Will Likely Still Have Rear Fingerprint Scanner as Apple Rumored to Ditch Touch ID Entirely

Samsung has decided not to include a fingerprint scanner under the display of its next-generation Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ smartphones due to continued technical difficulties, according to South Korea’s The Investor.

Instead, the fingerprint scanner will likely remain positioned on the back of each device, just like the current Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ models.

Fingerprint scanning is one of three biometric options for unlocking the Galaxy S8 alongside iris scanning and facial recognition. Samsung says all three solutions provide “defense-grade security” around the clock.

Shortly after the Galaxy S8 launched, however, videos surfaced showing that Samsung’s facial recognition system could be fairly easily duped with a picture of someone. The iris scanner was also tricked with contact lenses.

In fine print on its website, Samsung admits that its facial recognition system is “less secure than pattern, PIN, or password.” Facial recognition can’t be used to authenticate access to the Galaxy S8’s Secure Folder or Samsung Pay.

“It is important to reiterate that facial recognition, while convenient, can only be used for opening your Galaxy S8 and currently cannot be used to authenticate access to Samsung Pay or Secure Folder,” the company told Ars Technica in March.

Apple was widely rumored to be attempting to integrate Touch ID under the display on the iPhone X, or even on the side or back of the device, but the company’s hardware engineering chief Dan Riccio suggested it ditched any form of fingerprint scanning after hitting “early line of sight” with Face ID.

Samsung’s facial recognition system is unquestionably less secure than Face ID, which uses significantly more advanced 3D facial recognition and has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of being duped by a stranger, according to Apple.

Apple is so confident in Face ID that it is planning to abandon Touch ID in favor of the TrueDepth system on all of its new iPhone models released in 2018, according to well-connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Apple says Face ID only has a possibility of being less reliable for identical twins, siblings who look alike, and children under 13 years of age, the latter because their distinct facial features may not have fully developed.

Apple’s Face ID security paper explains how the TrueDepth camera projects and reads over 30,000 infrared dots to form a depth map of your face, along with a 2D infrared image. This data is used to create a sequence of 2D images and depth maps, which are digitally signed and sent to the Secure Enclave.

Face ID is designed to confirm user attention, ensuring a lower false match rate, and mitigation against both digital and physical spoofing.

Tags: Samsung, Touch ID, Galaxy S9
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