Nintendo will pull the plug on ‘Miitomo’ in May

Before Super Mario Run and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, there was Miitomo. A sort of social network in disguise, it was Nintendo’s first push into mobile gaming on iOS and Android, but now the company has announced it will shut down May 9th. It rocketed to the top of app stores upon release in 2016 and gained more than 10 million users, but just as quickly fell off since it lacked basic features that would keep players coming back. Eventually, things like chat and increased customization arrived, but it was too little too late.

A note on the website informs users that the sale of premium coins has ended, however, it will offer daily login bonuses from now until it shuts down as part of a “Final Thank You Festival.” Once the lights go out at 3 AM ET on May 9th, users won’t be able to see or use any of its features.

They’ll need to save Miifotos locally to their device before the shutdown, and backup any Sidekick Mii characters they’d like to save as a QR code usable on 3DS or Wii U. To save your Mii, you’ll need to link a Nintendo Account, but all you’ll get is its look — the personality will not carry over. At least we still have Pokémon Go.

Source: Miitomo.com

Hulu locks out users with login problems two nights in a row

On Tuesday night many Hulu users were unable to stream video or live TV because they couldn’t log in, which was bad enough. Unfortunately, Hulu suffered another outage tonight, going down again for a few hours during prime time ET viewing. Within the last hour, its support Twitter account reported that a “fix is in place” to address the login problem, but it may come a little late for users heading to bed. We’ve contacted the service to find out what’s happening and will update this post if there’s more information.

UPDATE: Our developers have made us aware that a fix has been put in place to address the login issue we reported. We encourage users to attempt login once again. Please know that the work will continue to prevent this from happening in the future.

— Hulu Support (@hulu_support) January 25, 2018

Source: Hulu Support (Twitter)

Here’s how to make a watermark to help protect your photos

Love them or hate them, applying watermarks to your photographs is one of the best methods to prevent people from sharing your photographs online without due credit. A watermark may not be the ideal solution, and some people — including us — might argue they’re not beneficial as a whole, but personal preferences aside, they are here to stay.

As such, we’re here to show you how to make a watermark and apply it to your images. Below are a few of the different methods, ranging from simple to sophisticated, to make sure your photos are at least somewhat protected from taking on a life of their own without people knowing they’re yours.

The fast and easy way

The easiest way to add some form of copyright to your image is to use the text tool in any photo-editing program (heck, even Microsoft Paint will do the job) and tag your name on it. You can do it discreetly by writing it in a corner, in small font size, or you can plaster it over the entire photo. Draw a box around it, color it, use a funky font — it’s entirely up to you. This method might not be attractive, but it’s the fastest and easiest way to add a watermark. If you’re sending out a set of proofs for a client to select which images they want printed, something like this might be sufficient. For a cleaner approach, read on.

You can overlay some text over an image to create a watermark using Microsoft Paint, but it won’t be pretty.

Using online tools

Another easy way to watermark a photo is to use an online tool like PicMarkr. Upload up to five photos, or pull them from Flickr or Facebook, then pick from three watermarking options (text, image, or tiled). Whereas a text watermark is similar to the one previously outlined, an image watermark places another image (such as a logo) on top of the original (you need to resize it beforehand). The issue with using PicMarkr to create an image watermark is that it doesn’t let you choose the opacity of the secondary image, so you can’t blend with the original photo. The third option, a tiled watermark, simply layers a text or image all over the picture.

As for online watermarking tools, Watermark.ws offers a lot of options and flexibility.

This method is fast and easy, but it’s not necessarily pretty. Another online watermarking tool, PicMark (yes, it’s a very similar name), takes a cleaner approach by creating a frame around an image. Sadly, while leaving your photo untouched looks nice, someone can still easily cut your image out of the frame. And, you can’t choose the size of the watermarked image.

Watermark.ws, on the other hand, offers more flexibility in that it lets you drag a text or image watermark anywhere on the photo. The software also lets you adjust the font, color, and image opacity, letting you make it as obvious or as unobtrusive as you like. Of the three mentioned, Watermark.ws can give you the most professional-looking results.

Watermarkphotos.net is yet another option for watermarking your photos from within your browser. What sets this site apart is that all of the work is done locally, meaning none of your content is transferred to their servers to be watermarked, which adds an extra layer of privacy.

Going with desktop software

There is watermarking software you can download, which essentially does the same things as the aforementioned online tools. However, because you don’t need an internet connection, you will find the process faster and you keep your photos on your local drive. There is plenty of software, both free and paid, that does the same thing, although each comes with a different set of extras. Check out Alamoon Watermark, which also lets you crop and resize a photo, tweak the image quality, and use a variety of image formats. Alternatives include TSR Watermark and uMark, the latter of which is a premium app that lets you apply graphics and perform batch watermarking. Thankfully, uMark also has a free version with limited functionality.

uMark is a useful downloadable watermark creation software, but you’ll have to pay for extra features (image via uMark).

Before you download new software, however, you may already have something installed on your computer that can create watermarks. IrfanView, a popular image viewer for Windows, has a built-in watermarking feature. Photoshop Elements offers an easy way to create watermarks, too. Regardless, quickly check the image-editing software you are currently using to see if a watermarking feature is available.

Glucose-tracking smart contact lens is comfortable enough to wear

The concept of a smart contact lens has been around for a while. To date, though, they haven’t been all that comfortable: they tend to have electronics built into hard substrates that make for a lens which can distort your vision, break down and otherwise cause discomfort. A team of Korean scientists might just come to the rescue. They’ve developed a smart lens that could help diabetics track blood glucose levels while remaining stretchable enough to be comfortable and transparent enough to preserve vision.

The lens achieves its flexibility thanks to a design that puts its electronics into isolated pockets linked by stretchable conductors. there’s also an elastic material in between that spreads the strain to prevent the electronics from breaking when you pinch the lens. And when the refractive indicies all line up, you should get a lens that’s as transparent as possible and largely stays out of your way.

The sensor in question is straightforward: an LED light stays on as long as glucose levels are normal, and shuts off when something’s wrong. Power comes through a metal nanofiber antenna that draws from a nearby power source coil. That’s about the only major drawback — the low conductivity of the antenna means that you can’t just tuck the coil wherever it’s convenient.

This isn’t a purely theoretical exercise, as co-author Jang-Ung Park explained to IEEE Spectrum that he expects a commercial version of the contact lens in 5 years. And the technology isn’t just reserved for glucose monitoring, either. The soft electronics could also be used to deliver medicine, saving you the trouble of taking pills.

Via: IEEE Spectrum

Source: Science Advances

Darren Aronofsky-backed VR series ‘Spheres’ lands a 7-figure deal

If you want evidence that VR is maturing as an entertainment medium, you just got it. CityLights just bought the rights to Spheres, the three-part VR black hole series written by Eliza McNitt and produced by Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures, for a “seven-figure” amount at the Sundance Film Festival. That might not sound like much by Hollywood standards, but it’s the first-ever seven-figure VR purchase at the event. It was slated to reach the Oculus Rift in 2018 (Oculus and Intel backed the project) and should get wider distribution as a result.

The project’s pedigree helps, and not just because Aronofsky’s outfit is involved. While McNitt is best-known for producing conventional shorts and documentaries, she’ll have Jessica Chastain as narrator and Stranger Things artists Survive providing the series’ all-important soundtrack.

You aren’t about to see VR titles fetching the prices normally associated with blockbuster movies and TV shows. Not when VR headsets are rare both at home and public venues, at least. However, the Spheres deal could set the tone for Sundance and other VR-friendly festivals in the future. You might soon see more star-studded VR titles as companies feel they can make a serious profit, even if the viewership doesn’t hold a candle to what they’ll get from movie theaters.

Source: Oculus (Twitter)

Apple Shares New Photos of First Store in South Korea, Opening January 27

Apple’s first store in South Korea is set to open on Saturday, January 27, and ahead of the store’s official launch date, Apple has shared photos showing off the new location.

Apple Garosugil is located in the upscale Garosugil shopping area in the heart of the well-known Gangnam District in Seoul. The store, which is south of the Han River, features a 25-foot glass facade with in-store trees that are designed to blur the lines between the store itself and the tree-lined street where it’s located.

“We’re thrilled to open a new home for our customers in the vibrant city of Seoul and we look forward to continuing to grow in Korea,” said Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail. “Our stores are gathering places for the community where everyone is welcome to connect, learn and create.”

Like all Apple Stores, Apple Garosugil will offer dozens of free daily workshops to tech participants photography, music, art, design, coding, and more. Each session is led by a Creative Pro and hosted in “the Forum,” an area of the Apple Store with a dynamic 6K video wall, which is a layout offered in many of the company’s retail stores around the world.

Apple says the store will include its full line of products along with a curated collection of accessories located in the “Avenues,” aka dedicated display areas where customers can interact with products.

Garosugil is likely to be Apple’s 500th retail store, so long as no additional stores open between now and Saturday. Apple currently has 499 retail stores around the world, not counting Apple Watch boutiques and factoring in the September closure of the Simi Valley store.

Apple first announced plans to open its first store in South Korea a year ago, and the location has been under development since then. Apple Garosugil will open up at 10:00 a.m. local time, and Apple is already accepting Genius Bar appointments and Today at Apple signups.

Related Roundup: Apple Stores
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Wearable Android device can assess seniors’ risk of suffering a nasty fall

We’ve previously covered smart technologies, such as a wearable airbag, that are designed to help elderly people in the event that they suffer a fall. A new, more proactive device, however, wants to make sure that those unexpected falls don’t happen in the first place.

Developed by researchers at Spain’s Universitat Politècnica de València, FallSkip is a mobile app that runs on a special Android-based mobile device, which sits on a custom waistband. Doctors can enter the patient’s vitals into the app, and then use its in-built accelerometer and gyroscope to test them for balance and gait patterns, coordination, reaction time, and muscle strength. Once this test is completed, the patients are awarded a score which indicates whether they are a likely candidate to have a fall in the near future. That data can then be used to make informed decisions about their care.

“One out of three older adults falls at least once a year, which is one of the major geriatric syndromes and the second [biggest] cause of accidental or unintentional death,” Xavi Andrade Celdrán, innovation manager for FallSkip, told Digital Trends.

“A fall usually implies a deterioration in the autonomy of elderly people, which reduces their quality of life and that of their social environment. The consequences range from clinical problems, such as fractures or sprains, to the fear of falling syndrome, which involves an increase in the fragility of the older person and the onset of functional disability. According to [one study], falls affect approximately 16.5 percent of elderly people in Spain. The psychosocial and assistance consequences, as well as the fear of falling syndrome, affect between 44.7 percent and 64 percent. In addition, between 9.7 percent and 19 percent of falls result in hospital admission of the elderly person.”

FallSkip was intended to be an objective test to measure a person’s risk of falling, a bit like the way that a Breathalyzer turned subjective guesswork into an accurate test. It is highly repeatable, affordable to carry out, and based on the latest research. “The methodology followed by FallSkip is based on the application of an adapted version of the ‘Time up Go’ Test (TUG), which has been cited in multiple clinical trials as a reliable and cost-effective method for assessing general functional state,” Celdrán continued.

One day, the team hopes that this will be a standard tool in every physician’s clinic to help optimize care for our growing elderly population.

Editors’ Recommendations

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Wearable Android device can assess seniors’ risk of suffering a nasty fall

We’ve previously covered smart technologies, such as a wearable airbag, that are designed to help elderly people in the event that they suffer a fall. A new, more proactive device, however, wants to make sure that those unexpected falls don’t happen in the first place.

Developed by researchers at Spain’s Universitat Politècnica de València, FallSkip is a mobile app that runs on a special Android-based mobile device, which sits on a custom waistband. Doctors can enter the patient’s vitals into the app, and then use its in-built accelerometer and gyroscope to test them for balance and gait patterns, coordination, reaction time, and muscle strength. Once this test is completed, the patients are awarded a score which indicates whether they are a likely candidate to have a fall in the near future. That data can then be used to make informed decisions about their care.

“One out of three older adults falls at least once a year, which is one of the major geriatric syndromes and the second [biggest] cause of accidental or unintentional death,” Xavi Andrade Celdrán, innovation manager for FallSkip, told Digital Trends.

“A fall usually implies a deterioration in the autonomy of elderly people, which reduces their quality of life and that of their social environment. The consequences range from clinical problems, such as fractures or sprains, to the fear of falling syndrome, which involves an increase in the fragility of the older person and the onset of functional disability. According to [one study], falls affect approximately 16.5 percent of elderly people in Spain. The psychosocial and assistance consequences, as well as the fear of falling syndrome, affect between 44.7 percent and 64 percent. In addition, between 9.7 percent and 19 percent of falls result in hospital admission of the elderly person.”

FallSkip was intended to be an objective test to measure a person’s risk of falling, a bit like the way that a Breathalyzer turned subjective guesswork into an accurate test. It is highly repeatable, affordable to carry out, and based on the latest research. “The methodology followed by FallSkip is based on the application of an adapted version of the ‘Time up Go’ Test (TUG), which has been cited in multiple clinical trials as a reliable and cost-effective method for assessing general functional state,” Celdrán continued.

One day, the team hopes that this will be a standard tool in every physician’s clinic to help optimize care for our growing elderly population.

Editors’ Recommendations

• New brainwave-reading technique may unlock ‘locked-in’ patients
• Assistive tech is progressing faster than ever, and these 7 devices prove it
• Neuroscientists use electrical pulses to brain to curb Tourette syndrome tics
• Doctors may be able to spend less time transcribing notes thanks to Google
• FDA approves algorithm that predicts sudden patient deaths to help prevent them

Alphabet’s new cybersecurity company focuses on accelerating threat responses

Google’s parent company Alphabet recently introduced an independent cybersecurity business called Chronicle. According to CEO Stephen Gillett, Chronicle stems from a team that previously resided at Alphabet’s X Development arm (aka The Moonshot Factory). The staff spent several years determining how to best attack the growing cybersecurity problem and the result is a company that now provides two services: The current malware intelligence-based VirusTotal acquired by Google in 2012, and a new cybersecurity intelligence and analytics platform. 

“We want to 10 times the speed and impact of security teams’ work by making it much easier, faster and more cost-effective for them to capture and analyze security signals that have previously been too difficult and expensive to find,” Gillett said. 

The big deal is the “planet-scale” computing power behind Chronicle’s initiative. It’s the same infrastructure that powers Alphabet‘s other services, and backed by machine learning, Google’s search technology, and huge cloud-based storage capacities. Gillett believes Alphabet‘s powerful platform should help find and retrieve “useful” security-based information in mere minutes rather than hours or days as seen with other services. 

Chronicle puts an emphasis on speed and ease to provide tools for companies to understand its volumes of data, and unlock “hidden insights.” The goal is to provide security teams enough time to protect themselves against possible cyberattacks via vulnerabilities in their defenses, and the way they manage data across networks and campuses. Scale and affordability are also important factors. 

One of the benefits is using machine learning to find patterns in large volumes of data. According to Chronicle, these patterns aren’t easily detected by humans. Another benefit is not having another local software solution that must be maintained by IT. Instead, Chronicle will provide web-based services that can grow with the organization. 

Gillett says his team already consulted with several Fortune 500 companies to help shape and steer Chronicle in the right direction. Several of these companies are now testing the new cybersecurity intelligence program by way of an early alpha program. The company’s website currently doesn’t provide any specific plans for enterprise customers to purchase or lease, but it does offer an email address for querying about early access. Chronicle is also open to security and channel-based partnerships. 

“We’re excited about being an independent company, yet part of Alphabet,” Gillett said. “We’ll have our own contracts and data policies with our customers, while at the same time having the benefit of being able to consult the world-class experts in machine learning and cloud computing (among many other topics) that reside in other parts of Alphabet.” 

Alphabet’s X Development arm, formerly Google X, is a pool of moonshot thinkers that tackle global problems. Gillett joined Google Ventures in early 2016 after serving as the chief intelligence officer and general manager of Digital Ventures at Starbucks, and as the chief operating officer at Symantec. He moved over to X Development and teamed up with Mike Wiacek and Shapor Naghibzadeh, both who were longtime engineers on Google’s security team. 

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Samsung Galaxy S9 launch event set for February 25: ‘The camera. Reimagined.’

Now it’s all official.

We all had the date of February 26 circled on our calendars for the Galaxy S9 launch event, but now Samsung just made the whole darn thing official by sending out invitations to its launch event. The announcement date is February 25 — the original expectation of the 26th likely being a difference in time zones between Europe and Asia. And it’s the big press day right at the start of MWC 2018.

And just in case there was any doubt that we’d be looking at a Galaxy S9, the invite makes that pretty clear.

The only hints we have here beyond that are the few words that make up the tagline for the event: “The camera. Reimagined.”

Of all we’ve heard, some of the most intriguing rumors about the upcoming Galaxy S9 and S9+ have related to the camera(s). We have rumors of physically adjustable apertures, a dual camera set up on the larger Galaxy S9+, and more. Wonderfully, we have to wait just a month from today to find out for sure.

Samsung Galaxy S9: Rumors, Specs, Release Date, and More!

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