Reply wants to add Smart Replies to all your messaging apps

Two years ago, Google announced a new feature for Inbox called “Smart Reply.” Smart Reply could automatically recommend replies for you to send based on the context of messages you received, and it later expanded to the likes of Allo and Android Messages.

Area 120 is a small “experimental program within Google”, and it’s dedicated to creating unique apps and services — many of them that never see the light of day. One of Area 120’s latest projects is called “Reply”, and its goal is to bring Smart Replies to a heap of other messaging apps.

In an email that was sent out to individuals signed up for Area 120’s Early Access Program, Reply is said to work with Hangouts, Allo, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Android Messages, Skype, Slack, and even Twitter DMs. As you can see in the screenshot below, Reply looks a lot like Google’s native Smart Replies.

However, Reply doesn’t just replicate Smart Replies. Instead, it makes them even better.

In another screenshot that Area 120 shared, the team shows that Reply can take Smart Replies and elevate them to the next level. For example, if you get a text from your significant other asking when you’ll be home, Reply can determine where you’re at, where “home” is, and how long it’ll take for you to get there — resulting in the following:

Additionally, Reply can determine when you’re driving and reply to any texts to let people know you’re behind the wheel, messages that Reply determines are more important than others (such as “Where are you?!”) can still notify you even if your phone is on silent, and vacation responses will automatically be sent out if someone tries to contact you and Reply sees that you’ve noted on your calendar that you’re taking some time off.

Reply is only available for Android users that are part of Area 120’s Early Access Program, and while it’s an ingenious idea, don’t expect a public launch anytime soon. Reply is still very much so in its early development days, and it’s entirely possible that Google will scrap the project at any given moment.

Android Messages is Google’s best chance to compete with iMessage

Apple snags drama series based on Kevin Durant’s childhood

Apple’s slate of original shows keeps growing and growing and the latest addition is a drama based on the early life of Kevin Durant. Swagger will focus on youth basketball players, their families and their coaches and will draw on Durant’s experiences playing basketball with the Amateur Athletic Union in the Washington DC area. Durant, who currently plays with the Golden State Warriors, is no stranger to the entertainment world. He has an incredibly popular YouTube channel and last month YouTube signed a deal with Durant’s Thirty Five Media production company that will bring more sports-centered video content to the platform.

So excited to partner with Imagine and Apple on this series…much more to come @richkleiman @thirtyfivemedia https://t.co/ZC21fSkXIe

— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) February 13, 2018

Though there’s still no word on when we might get to see them, Apple has added a number of shows to its lineup. So far, there’s an anthology series called Little America from the writers of The Big Sick, a space drama from Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica), a sci-fi series from the director of The Hunger Games as well as three shows from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company that will star Kristen Wiig, Octavia Spencer, Jennifer Aniston and Witherspoon herself. There’s also a drama from the director of La La Land in the works as well as a documentary series from the producer of Rock of Ages and a Steven Spielberg-produced revival of Amazing Stories.

Thirty Five Media will produce Swagger alongside Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Television, the production credits of which include 24, Arrested Development and Friday Night Lights. Reggie Rock Bythewood, co-writer of 2009’s Notorious, will write and direct the series. “I am honored to be partnering with Kevin Durant and working again with Reggie on Swagger,” Grazer said in a statement. “These are two people who are superstars in their fields, and bring with them an authentic voice to the project. After Friday Night Lights, I had wanted to make another sports themed series for television, and when I met with Kevin, I knew Reggie would be the perfect person to create this world with compelling characters and a story worth telling.”

Korg Konnect: A smart amp for small audiences

For large gatherings, PA systems keep you from just yelling at a group of people to share your message. For musicians, a PA is necessary to amplify your voice and instrument to an audience. On the surface, Korg’s Konnect PA speaker does pretty much what every other speaker with a few mics attached to it does, make things louder so folks can hear them. But look a little deeper, and you’ll see the Konnect takes what Korg knows about sound and performances and shoves it into a four-channel speaker. One you can control via a companion app that’s surprisingly robust.

The $400 Korg Konnect is about the size of a boombox (ask your parents) with the usual volume knobs on the back. But it also has a voicing characteristics selector (male voice, female voice, guitar, etc) to help fine tune the sound. Plus it has a feedback suppressor button that reduces the annoying feedback whine that starts nearly every corporate get together and forces someone to run across the room to turn down the volume.

While the Konnect is good for public speaking, it’s far more useful for musicians. Many a band (mine included) has had to do its own sound at a venue. That requires someone to leap off stage to make adjustments during songs if something goes awry. For smaller acts with one or two people on stage with a guitar, that’s impossible without stopping the song. That’s where the Konnect companion app comes in. You can just drag a slider on the phone to tame and offending sound.

During my tests, I could easily adjust the master volume and loudness of all the channels. You can also tweak reverb, voicing and panning among other things without any discernible latency — all via the app. I could also add compressor, chorus or delay effects to each channel without delving into submenus — something that would make the tasks almost impossible while performing.

It’s worth noting that once the app is connected to the Konnect, it disables the physical buttons. I found this to be a plus that keeps a “helpful” friend or audience member that wants to “fix” your sound from actually making things worse. If you do have someone that knows what they are doing, just give them the phone with the app. They’ll make you sound good without getting up to fiddle with the speaker.

The audio quality on the Konnect for voice is outstanding. It also produced good clean audio when I a plugged in an acoustic guitar. It’ll also work with electric and bass guitars but I’d recommend bringing actual amps for those. I found that if your band uses guitar pedals or any real deep bass lines, you end up with muddy and distorted noise. But I was impressed at how well it handled mid-range bass guitar tones for something so small. Synths and drum machine input sounds very clean from the high to about the mid lows. Like the bass guitar, 808 bass hits are better off being played through something larger meant for that low of a frequency.

For performances, it’s loud enough to fill a medium size cafe-type venue or medium to large church with a well-behaved crowd. Boisterous talkers in larger venues will more than likely drown out the Konnect.

But this isn’t the PA you’d use in a larger venue with squealing electric guitars and bass-dripping beats. It’s for intimate settings and pumping up the sales team on the third floor. It’s more Shins and Elliot Smith than Sleigh Bells and RTJ.

The Konnect only weighs about 12 pounds, so it’s easy to lug around from cafes to art galleries to the occasional small wedding. Plus Korg will sell you a carrying case and the tiny PA supports the industry standard speaker pole so you can get it off the ground for better coverage at gigs.

The Korg Konnect is for a niche market. The small band or singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar that plays music you could share with your mom as long as she doesn’t listen to the lyrics (we miss you Elliott Smith). Or for the company that needs a PA system that’s easy to manage and set up for the weekly meeting. Its $400 price tag is in line with the Freeplay portable PA with companion app offering from Mackie. It’s not for the Mastedon-influenced rock band doing the bar circuit. They’ll have to play their sweet guitar riffs through something else.

Source: Korg

‘Devil May Cry’ will be free with Twitch Prime on February 27th

Twitch Prime only occasionally offers sweet game deals, but this one might be worth grabbing if you want to brush up on video game history. Twitch and Capcom are offering the Windows version of the original Devil May Cry (specifically, from the HD Collection) for free to Amazon Prime subscribers starting on February 27th. In many ways, this is the archetype for stylish hack-and-slash action titles like Bayonetta — Dante succeeds in his demon hunting saga by mixing up attacks to create an unbroken chain of death. Add in a story inspired by The Divine Comedy and it’s fairly clear why the series spawned both multiple sequels and a remake, even if if they didn’t always live up to the original.

This isn’t a selfless gesture. The Devil May Cry HD Collection is coming to Windows (and PS4, and Xbox One) on March 13th, and this is a convenient way of drumming up hype by showing what you can expect from the other two DMC games you’ll get if you pay $30. Still, it’s hard to complain too loudly. This was one of the PlayStation 2 console’s definitive games, and it should remain fun (if more than a little challenging) 17 years later.

Via: Wario64 (Twitter)

Source: Devil May Cry (YouTube), Capcom

Virgin Galactic’s VR-powered website lets you tour its spaceships

As Virgin Galactic gears up for commercial spaceflights and science research, the company has partnered up with Microsoft and its Edge browser to create a new website that’s both mobile-friendly and WebVR optimized. The new site shows off Virgin’s efforts to create a new space-based travel industry to good effect.

You’ll be able to explore Virgin’s “fleet” via Windows mixed reality devices, too. The site will have hotspots that will present VR tours of the company’s WhiteKnightTwo, VSS Unity and the Galactic team. A simliar tour, in simple 3D, is available for those without a headset. The site works well in Google Chrome, showing off gorgeous footage of Virgin spaceships, crew videos and company information. The site looks pretty great on a mobile phone, too, with the same buttons and fluid animations as in the desktop browser.

Microsoft Edge isn’t the only browser with VR features built in, of course. Google revealed that it has built a VR version of Chrome to work in its own Daydream VR headset. Samsung and Oculus also have their own browsers to handle WebVR content, as well.

Source: Microsoft

MIT’s low power encryption chip could make IoT devices more secure

The Internet of Things hasn’t ever been super secure. Hacked smart devices have been blamed for web blackouts, broken internet, spam and phishing attempts and, of course, the coming smart-thing apocalypse. One of the reasons that we haven’t seen the same sort of encryption as the web affords, however, is that such protection is energy-intensive. MIT is working on a new chip, however, to perform this sort of public-key encryption that only uses 1/400 as much power as a software solution would. In addition, the chip uses about 1/10 as much memory and executes processes 500 times as fast.

MIT researchers used a technique called elliptic-curve encryption, which relies on a mathematical function to secure transactions. The new chip sets itself apart by being able to handle any kind of elliptic curve, which, in addition to low power use and a high speed of computation, makes it much more useful as an encryption solution. “Cryptographers are coming up with curves with different properties, and they use different primes,” said lead author Utsav Banerjee in a statement. “There is a lot of debate regarding which curve is secure and which curve to use, and there are multiple governments with different standards coming up that talk about different curves. With this chip, we can support all of them, and hopefully, when new curves come along in the future, we can support them as well.”

Source: MIT

Vizio SmartCast TVs now play nice with Alexa

Today, Vizio announced that owners of select TV models can now control displays with their voices, thanks to a new Amazon Alexa skill. All 2016 and 2017 SmartCast P-, M- and E-Series 4K models are compatible with this new feature. The 2018 Full HD and HD models will also be able to take advantage of the Alexa skill in coming weeks.

The displays will respond to volume, channel, power and input setting changes with a voice command. Users can also fast forward, rewind and pause on some apps. Note that Alexa isn’t built into the display; this is a skill integration, so it requires an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show or any other piece of Alexa-enabled hardware to work.

To activate this Alexa skill, download the Amazon Alexa app. Make sure you’re signed into the app, and that your Alexa-enabled speaker or product is set up. If your Vizio’s Quick Start mode isn’t enabled, you’ll want to toggle that on or Alexa will not be able to turn on your display. On your Vizio remote, launch Smartcast TV, and then press the up arrow. Click “Extras” on the menu bar that appears, then go to “Voice Settings” and “Pair Display.” Now, on your phone, go to the website address that appears on your Vizio. Create a My Vizio account (or enter your username and password if you have already done that) and sign in. Finally, enter the PIN on your TV screen. You can see a step by step guide in the video below.

Source: Vizio

Highlights of Apple’s 2018 Shareholders Meeting

Apple’s annual shareholders meeting took place at the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park this morning, with shareholders gathering to vote on proposals and ask questions of Apple executives.

Apple does not live stream its shareholders meetings, but several members of the press, such as CNET’s Shara Tibken and Business Insider’s Kif Leswing, were at the event and shared details on what was covered on Twitter.

Image via Shara Tibken
Much of the meeting was spent discussing shareholder proposals, several of which were routine proposals direct from Apple for re-electing the board of directors, compensating executives, appointing Ernst & Young LLP as Apple’s public accounting firm, and approving the non-employee Director Stock Plan. All of these passed with more than 95% approval.

Two proposals from shareholders, one that asked Apple to implement more relaxed rules for letting shareholders nominate directors to the board and another asking Apple to form a human rights commission were defeated. 32 percent of shareholders voted in favor of the first, while just 5.6 percent voted in favor of the second.

During a Q&A session, and during the proposal discussion portion of the shareholders meeting, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a few interesting comments worth highlighting, though much of what was said was a repeat of comments made during Apple’s Q1 2018 earnings call earlier this month.

– iPhone X customer satisfaction is at 99%.

– Apple’s wearables business, which includes AirPods, Beats, and Apple Watch, is “approaching” the size of a Fortune 300 company. Earlier this month, Cook said it was the size of a Fortune 400 company.

– Apple acquired 19 companies in 2017 (10 of those are known, nine unknown).

– Across all products, Apple holds almost a quarter of a billion subscriptions.

– On the topic of Telegram being briefly removed from the App Store earlier this month for elicit content, Cook said Apple has “always curated [Apple’s] properties.” Apple keeps pornography, terrorism, and other questionable content out of the App Store. “I think people are coming around to that actually being a good thing,” said Cook.

– Apple has internal candidates ready to succeed Tim Cook, which is a topic that comes up at every shareholders meeting.

– Cook said mobile payments have “taken off slower than I personally would have thought.” Adoption is speeding up though in key countries like China and Russia. Cook also said he hopes he’ll still be alive “to see the elimination of money.”

– On a question about special dividends, Cook said he’s “not a fan,” but Apple is committed to increasing dividends each year. Apple will provide more info on its capital return program in April.

– On the topic of retail stores, Cook said Apple doesn’t believe physical stores will go away. “We believe that interaction with people still beats anything,” he said.

– Apple won’t open its main ring-shaped building at Apple Park for tours because “we have so much confidential stuff around.” “Keeping stuff confidential is the bane of my existence now,” said Cook.

Shareholders also asked a few frivolous questions, which ate into the Q&A time and limited what we heard from Apple executives. One asked about Apple’s work in oral health, a topic Cook said Apple isn’t focusing on, while another asked when Apple will introduce a waterproof iPhone (iPhones have been water resistant since the iPhone 7).

There was a question on Blockchain, which Cook avoided, and one investor, still using iOS 9, abstained from voting on board re-election because of Apple’s “bad” software updates that have removed features. “I’m not gonna sell my stock or buy the competitor’s stuff because it’s even worse,” he said.

Apple holds its shareholders meetings on an annual basis, with the next one scheduled to take place in early 2019. This year’s meeting had limited attendance due to the size limitations of the Apple Park theater, but shareholders not able to attend were able to vote on proposals by proxy ahead of the meeting.
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