Alexa can send SMS messages using your voice

To date, messaging with Alexa has meant sending screeds using Amazon’s in-house system, which doesn’t do you much good if your recipient doesn’t have an Echo speaker. You won’t have to be quite so selective from now on, however, as Amazon has added support for SMS messaging through Alexa-capable devices connected to Android phones (there’s no word on iOS). You can explicitly tell the voice assistant to “send an SMS,” but it will also pick SMS automatically if you message a contact that doesn’t have an Echo.

There are some catches outside of the Android requirement. Not surprisingly, you can’t use this to text 911, participate in group messages or send MMS — there’s only so much you can do when you can’t actually see the chats. You’ll still be reaching for your phone most of the time, then, but this could be helpful if you want to let a friend know you’re on your way while you’re racing out the door.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Amazon

Humble is selling Rockstar Games on the cheap to save the rainforest

Want a way to pick up a bulk of Rockstar Games’ back catalog and help a good cause? Then head over to Humble where donating $1 or more will get you Grand Theft Auto III, GTA: Vice City and the grisly stealth game Manhunt. Bumping up your pledge to $8.13 adds Bully: Scholarship Edition, GTA IV, GTA: San Andreas, L.A. Noire and Max Payne 3 to your haul.

And finally, if you drop $15 or more you’ll snag all of the above plus Max Payne Complete, comprised of all three Max Payne games and the third’s post-release add-ons. If you need an audio reminder of one of Max Payne 3’s best moments, peep the YouTube embed below. The promo runs through February 12th, so if you’re looking to score a deal, you should donate sooner rather than later.

However much you pledge it’ll go toward supporting The Rainforest Alliance, a conservation group made up of farmers, scientists and more. For the past 30 years, the Alliance has worked to bolster biodiversity and ensure land is sustainably managed.

All prices were current as of 3:59 PM Eastern.

Via: Rockstar Newswire

Source: Humble

Oreo rolling out to unlocked Huawei Mate 9 in the U.S.

Available for model numbers MHA-L29 and MHA-L09.

Prior to all of the drama surrounding its Mate 10 Pro flagship this year, Huawei’s best and most powerful phone was the Mate 9. The Mate 9 was first released in late 2016 followed by a launch in the United States in January of 2017, and while it may not be as visually striking as its younger brother, it still packs an impressive punch to this very day with a price that often dips well below $500.

As many things as the Mate 9 gets right, however, one sore spot has been its now-outdated software. The phone’s been running
Android Nougat since its release, but it looks like an Oreo update is finally rolling out to unlocked models in the United States.

The Mate 9 has been getting the Oreo treatment in other markets since December, but this marks the first time a rollout in the U.S. has been spotted. Unlocked Mate 9 units in the U.S. carry model numbers MHA-L29 and MHA-L09, and when the update hits your device, you’ll be rocking and rolling with Android 8.0.

In addition to the regular Oreo goodies, this update for the Mate 9 also brings a cleaner user interface with EMUI 8.0, AI optimizations for better performance, 3D panorama and portrait modes for the rear cameras, January 2018 security patch, and a lot more.

The OTA update should be hitting devices now, so be sure to hop to your settings to see if it’s waiting for you.

Huawei Mate 9

• Huawei Mate 9 review
• Huawei Mate 9 specs
• Where to buy the Mate 9 in the U.S.
• Porsche Design Mate 9 unboxing
• All Huawei Mate 9 news
• Join the discussion in the forums

Jet.com
Amazon

Amazon’s Tom Clancy series ‘Jack Ryan’ premieres August 31st

Want to see how well Tom Clancy’s fictional world of spies, soldiers and terrorists translates to streaming services? You now have a date to mark on your calendar, although it’ll be a while. Amazon has announced that Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan will premiere on August 31st, and it’s already offering its Super Bowl trailer to show what the fuss is about. As mentioned back in 2016, the series depicts an untested Jack Ryan (played by The Office’s John Krasinski) as he takes his first CIA field assignment and discovers a “new breed” of global terrorism — it wouldn’t be a Tom Clancy story if it were just a routine op, would it?

The trailer definitely gives a feel for what to expect. This is classic spy thriller fare with gunplay, explosions and sex galore — not that you’d expect a nuanced, tender drama given the subject matter. It does look promising, though, and the involvement of Lost’s Carlton Cuse (as executive producer) and Imitation Game’s Morten Tyldum (as director) gives it a good pedigree.

And did we mention that this is Amazon’s first-ever Super Bowl ad for a Prime Video show? It not only suggests that Amazon has a lot of confidence in Jack Ryan, but shows how far the company’s video ambitions have come since Instant Video hit the scene in 2011. Where it used to be a warehouse for old movies and TV shows, it’s now amassing originals that can justify the level of promotion you’d expect for a Hollywood blockbuster.

Source: Prime Video (YouTube)

Hasbro’s viral video-inspired headgear scores your mood for lulz

Teen YouTube is a strange place to the over-30 set, populated with pranks, game streams and possibly most inscrutable of all, challenge videos. YouTube challenges basically ask people to film themselves doing some hard or ridiculous thing, like flipping a water bottle onto a table or eating spoonfuls of ground cinnamon. Some have even garnered some mainstream fame — The Tide Pod challenge has been making headlines lately, if only because it’s so dangerous. One particular group of challenges that’s been growing in popularity are the ones where people “try not to” do things like laugh, cry or get annoyed. However, that last one may get a little more attention if Hasbro’s viral video-inspired Don’t Lose Your Cool game takes off.

The idea of the “try not to get mad/annoyed” challenge is that participants film themselves watching a video on YouTube designed to be as anxiety-inducing as possible. Of course, the entire thing is on the honor system, with the kids self-reporting how they feel, leaving the opportunity to either exaggerate their response for the camera, or suppressing it in order to “win.” Hasbro’s made the feedback less subjective by throwing a bit of tech into the mix — the person trying to keep their cool has to wear a plastic headband that measures their heart rate. If it goes too high — right off the meter, in fact — then you lose the round.

It’s a ridiculous looking thing. So ridiculous, in fact, that I couldn’t get a single co-worker to agree to wear it for a photo. (My friends, thankfully, had a little less shame.) There’s a blue plastic pod that sits atop your head, attached by an adjustable strap on each side. In the front hangs a small disc with a heart rate sensor embedded in it, which should rest in the middle of your forehead. Somehow, this isn’t even the most ridiculous looking part of the contraption.

The pod is topped by a six-inch bar of lights, a sort of cartoonish exclamation point sticking straight up from the top of your head. When a player puts it on and hits the calibration button, the optical sensor takes a base reading, which tends to take a minute or so. Once ready, it beeps and flashes green once, and the turn begins.

The other players roll a set of three dice with vague instructions on them, annoying things like close talking, oinking like a pig and singing. For 30 seconds they perform whatever those actions might be in an attempt to annoy the person in the headgear. The bar of lights will ascend, the colors ranging from green to an angry red, as the person’s mood shifts and their heart rate increases. Everyone gets three 30-second turns wearing it, and wins a point for every round they don’t set off the heart sensor. It didn’t actually go off that many times while we played: I worried that maybe it hadn’t calibrated properly or that it couldn’t read us that well. Then again, maybe we just don’t get ruffled that easily — we watched a few of the original “try not to get mad” videos and found them more funny than annoying.

Viral sensations don’t always translate well into games — I remember playing one particularly heinous title called What the Meme? which copied Cards Against Humanity’s mechanics but with famous viral images instead of fill-in-the-blank text cards. It leaned heavily on being gross and shocking instead of creative or clever. Any attempt to capture the magic of YouTube in a kid’s game could have easily gone the same way, and I didn’t expect much from Don’t Lose Your Cool. The instructions on the dice seem pretty dull at first, but left lots of room for creativity. Close talking? Well, it’s doubly awful if the other person just ate guacamole chips. Cluck like a chicken? We ended up doing our best Bluth Family impressions. Sing? Well, time to break out George Michael’s “Careless Whisper.” The headgear might look goofy as hell, but in the end the person wearing it was the least ridiculous one in the room.

It may have been inspired by a viral hit, but Don’t Lose Your Cool stands on its own just fine. It’s a crazy premise, but you don’t need to have watched a single challenge video to understand it. And, while none of my friends wanted to play it at first, we were laughing hysterically by the end. It’ll hit stores this fall for $20, just the right time and price for my family to embarrass itself on Thanksgiving.

Microsoft will preview the Edge browser for iPad next month

Though Microsoft has been rolling out Edge to more devices, iPad users have been left waiting. But it appears that the browser will finally be making its debut on the iPad sometime soon. As Neowin spotted, Sean Lyndersay, an Edge program manager, tweeted that the iPad version will be previewed through Microsoft’s TestFlight next month and should see a wide rollout soon thereafter.

Shh, don’t tell anyone, but the iPad version is in internal testing and looking great. It’ll take a little longer to bake, so we’re going to roll out it to our TestFlight users early next month and get feedback from them before making it widely available. Thanks for using Edge!

— Sean Lyndersay (@SeanOnTwt) January 25, 2018

Microsoft began testing Edge for Android and iOS last October and while it launched those versions almost two months later, it did so without support for the iPhone X’s aspect ratio. That took a couple of more weeks.

Though there’s no date yet for an official iPad support rollout, it’s a good sign that the preview version will be released soon. That should mean iPad users will be able to get their hands on the browser in the not too distant future.

Via: Neowin

Source: Sean Lyndersay (Twitter)

Samsung sets record Q4 profits ahead of Galaxy S9 launch

Samsung’s head honcho was found guilty of bribery last year and its vice-chairman stepped down due to “unprecedented crisis,” but that didn’t affect the Korean conglomerate’s cashflow at all. In fact, the company did very well in the fourth quarter of 2017 and the year as a whole: it posted a $14 billion operating profit for the quarter and $50 billion for 2017, thanks mostly to its strong memory and display business. That dwarfs its $8 billion operating profit for the fourth quarter of 2016, though that year’s earnings were admittedly tainted by the Note 7 fiasco. One of the biggest reasons why Samsung’s display division did so well in Q4 2017 is Apple, whose exclusive orders for the X’s OLED displays helped it offset the rising won.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the company’s mobile division become its top earner, though, and that definitely didn’t happen in the fourth quarter. Samsung’s mobile biz earnings were affected by the hike in marketing costs over the holidays, and the division’s operating profit was down YOY from $23 billion in Q4 2016 to around $22.54 billion in Q4 2017. While Samsung saw a decrease in shipments for its low-end phones, its Galaxy Note 8 shipments were up from the previous quarter.

The chaebol, expecting a “growing replacement demand for premium smartphones,” believes its mobile division will bounce back once it starts selling the Galaxy S9. It’s scheduled to unveil the upcoming flagship on February 25 and will make it available for purchase soon after. Of course, Samsung also has big plans for its top-earning components business: it will expand its NAND production this year to be able to meet the growing demand for chips. In addition, it’s putting a spotlight on OLEDs, which it believes will become a “mainstream panel in the smartphone industry.”

Source: Samsung

Apple’s Phil Schiller on HomePod: We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible

Over the weekend, Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller did a quick fifteen minute interview with Sound & Vision, where he once again explained some of the technology behind the HomePod, shed some light on why Apple ultimately decided to create an in-home speaker, and explained how the HomePod will stand out among other smart speakers on the market.

Schiller believes that Apple is in a position to create a “new kind of music experience” that not only “sounds incredible,” but is also “fun to interact with.” He says that’s the driving force behind Apple’s work on the smart speaker. Apple’s focus, though, isn’t on a single product — the company wants to design a unified experience that’s the same throughout the day.

We don’t think it’s just about HomePod though, or any one product, it’s about creating an experience that moves with you throughout the day — so the experience you have at home, is replicated in the car with CarPlay, at work with iPad and Mac, and when you’re out for a run with Watch and iPhone. You can listen to the same music, control your home accessories or ask Siri to do something for you, wherever you are.

Schiller says that Apple Music, Siri advancements in personal music discovery, and Apple’s innovative audio work “come together” in the HomePod to deliver an “amazing music experience” to customers.

He went on to explain many of the technological advancements that improve sound quality in the HomePod, including machine learning to allow the HomePod to sense and adapt to its environment, the A8 chip for real-time acoustic modeling, audio beam-forming, and echo cancellation, and a more advanced thinking of speaker arrays to “create a wide soundstage.”

Schiller also explained in detail how the HomePod’s spatial awareness features work. From the moment it’s plugged in, the HomePod senses its location. The built-in microphone array listens to how sound reflects from neighboring surfaces to determine where it’s located in a room and what’s nearby, adjusting audio accordingly. The A8 chip beams center vocals and direct energy away from walls that are detected, while also reflecting ambient reverb and back-up vocals against the wall for better dispersion into the room.

The end result is a wide soundstage with a feeling of spaciousness and depth. This entire process takes just seconds and it doesn’t stop with the initial setup. Every time you move HomePod, it uses the built-in accelerometer to detect a change in its location and continues to make sure the music sounds great and is consistent, wherever it’s placed. We’ve also done some great things to help minimize the audible side effects of compression artifacts by developing studio level dynamic processing to optimize for rich, clean bass even at loud volumes.

Thus far, it appears Apple’s efforts to focus on sound quality have been successful. While full HomePod reviews have not yet been shared, initial first impressions from reviewers who were able to spend a short amount of time with the HomePod have been positive. Many reviewers were highly impressed with the sound quality of the device, which has been described as “warm,” “astonishing,” “precise,” and an “aural triumph.”

Apple will, however, need to convince its customers that sound improvements are worth the premium price the company is charging for the device. HomePod is more expensive than competing products from Google and Amazon, but some reviewers have questioned whether the average consumer will value sound quality more than affordability.

Phil Schiller’s full interview, which goes into more detail about Apple’s aim with the HomePod, how voice recognition works, HomeKit integration, and more can be read over at Sound & Vision.

The HomePod, which is priced at $349 in the United States, can be pre-ordered from the online Apple Store. The first HomePod orders will be delivered to customers starting on Friday, February 9, the official launch date of the device.

Related Roundup: HomePodTag: Phil Schiller
Discuss this article in our forums

CNN Blames Apple for Apple News Bug That Caused Repeat Notifications

Earlier this afternoon, a bug with the Apple News app caused notifications for a single CNN news story to be sent out to iPhone and iPad users over and over again.

The issue, which lasted for approximately 15 minutes, appears to have impacted all Apple News subscribers who had alerts turned on for CNN based on a slew of complaints that popped up on reddit, Twitter, and the MacRumors forums.

It wasn’t clear if the problem was with CNN or the Apple News app, but on Twitter, CNN claims it was the latter. According to the news organization, CNN only sent a single notification, and the company is working with Apple to identify the problem.

We are aware that some Apple News users recently received multiples of the same alert. Our server log shows CNN sent only one. We are working with Apple to identify their issue, as users on CNN-owned platforms did not experience a problem. Apologies to those who did.

— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) January 30, 2018

Customers who were affected by the repeated notifications received somewhere around a hundred notifications, and the notifications in question were interrupting normal device operation. It appears that the issue centered around a single CNN news story, but we’ve also seen reports that some notifications from Fox News also repeated.

@MacRumors is anyone getting nonstop @CNN alerts about the Hawaii false alert? I have the alert turned off and still getting them. pic.twitter.com/zKLeDMhng7

— Tom Cheung (@tommyknockrs) January 30, 2018

The only fix for the issue at the time was to turn off Apple News notifications, but the problem was resolved by Apple quickly and customers who did turn off their notifications due to the CNN alert bug can now safely re-enable them.

Tags: Apple News, CNN
Discuss this article in our forums

Dune! is easy & addictive….what else do you want?! (review)

When you’re looking for a new game, what are you looking for?

Well, something not too complex, right? A game you can pick up, play for seconds, to minutes, to an hour or more. Or just seconds. Whatever….you just want to pick it up when you have time, play, and then put it down; without penalty.

But it has to be fun, of course! What good is a game if it’s not at least enjoyable, right?
And the  fun should border on addicting. There’s plenty of “fun” games that most people will only play a time or two, before being forgotten until the inevitable deletion. the game needs to grab you, and make you want to try it “just one more time” before putting it back down.

Well I’ve found such a game, it’s called Dune!, from the Developer Voodoo. Dune! is a family-friendly casual mobile rhythm game (True story: my 12-year old boys put me on this game; said they were addicted to it). It’s extreme simplicity, clean visuals, and even more extreme replay-ability make it worth sharing here for your consideration.

Setup

Setup is simple enough; just download from the Play Store and open the game.

Behold, the entirety of your tutorial.

Upon entering Dune!, you are greeted with your overall ‘tutorial’; which amounts to a single screen with all your control instructions: press your screen to accelerate (while on the ground), release at the end of the ramps to get air, and then hold once again (while in the air) to dive back to earth. Then off you go!

Gameplay

This of course is the heart of it all. And this is where Dune! shines. The objective of the game is super simple: You are to launch your ball/icon using speed and timing, getting above the line on the screen. Each time you get above the line you earn 1 point (more with multipliers; more on this in a minute). Your goal is to score as many points as possible.

Launching big air

Your game ends when you crash (my term here) hard; meaning you either manually dive into the front face of a hill, or you hit the aforementioned front face while in a turbo mode (again, more on this very shortly). Once you crash, you start over….simple.

There are a few ways to score more points. The first is making smooth landings on the backside, by way of timing your dives correctly. This can give you a 2x or 4x multiplier on your next time over the line, though at the cost of going “turbo” and launching you higher.
Another way to add to your score is getting really big air. The moon is shown way up there, and every time you can get that high, you are immediately awarded 4 points. Also, going above the moon (“and beyond!”, as the game goes) means an additional 8 points. Again, this adds some risk, as it makes it a lot tougher to land without crashing. So you’re left to balance the quick point of big-air with the risk of an early game over. You can choose your strategy to implement; and it seems, at least in our house, that opinions definitely vary.

My boys could not get over trying to top their record scores (and each others’). Even I got caught up into it and it quickly turned into a daily challenge and trash-talk subject.

Visuals/Graphics/Sound

The visuals in Dune! are very clean and fun; bright but not distracting. Gameplay visuals are generally smooth, though I did encounter a bit of stutter sometimes (playing on a 2017 LG G6). Sound is…..nothing. Literally nothing, as there isn’t any sound. Just a choice to have vibrate on or off, for when you get a turbo or crash.

Settings/Customization

Again settings amount to turning vibrate on & off, so that’s that.

Choose your ball.

Choose your hills.

Choose your background

The game does allow for a decent amount of customization. By way of accumulating playtime experience, you gain access to different balls/icons to fling into the air (by simply playing more and making more jumps), different ramp/foreground themes (by way of different jumping & landing quantities and qualities), and background themes (also by way of different quantity & quality challenges).

The variation of thiscustomization in Dune! can itself be a draw, particularly if you’re, say, around 12 years old. That said, I have to admit I also have a pretty funky customized look to my game as well. 🙂

Overall I highly, highly recommend Dune! as your next game option on your device. It provides quick & fun gameplay, without any commitment needed by you.

Download Dune! from Google Play here.