Hive teases illuminating launch, smart lighting predicted
Hive, the smarthome arm of British Gas, has teased that there’s a new addition coming to the Hive home.
Sharing via its Twitter account, Hive says that there’s something illuminating coming, with an accompanying video that simply shows flashing lights. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out…
What illuminating news is this? All will be revealed 13.06.16 #HiveControl https://t.co/JjcH4YZqFF
— Hive (@hivehome) June 10, 2016
The Hive Home system started with Active Heating, a natural place for the company born of British Gas. This was expanded to include sensors and plugs to flesh-out the smarthome offering, but a move into smart lighting could be much more interesting for Hive customers.
Whether this is a Hive-branded range of products, or integration with another system, remains to be seen, but we’d certainly welcome a system that would allow integration of heating and lighting products through one app, in combination with Hive’s other sensors.
It makes perfect sense to do so too, for example letting the holiday mode on your Hive thermostat also govern random lighting controls for security, perhaps turning on lights with motion sensors if movement is detected.
This isn’t unique and there are a lot of smart lighting systems already on the market – most notably the excellent Philips Hue – however, if you’re already a Hive customer, the appeal will be fewer hubs and apps to manage your smarthome.
Hive says to expect the announcement on Monday 13 June.
We will keep you posted.
Twitch improves stream discovery with search revamp
Twitch search has never been bad, per se, but it’s fair to say that plenty of folks discover streams by other means — social links, Google or just by scanning the front page. The site is making an effort to improve discoverability on its own site with a new search function. It now updates in real time across games, live channels, users and video, giving you multiple options when you’re searching keywords. Hitting “more” will give you a full list of results in each category, ordered by popularity.
Amazon purchased Twitch in 2014 for nearly $1 billion, but the streaming service is now facing formidable competition from Facebook. The social network just announced it would team with Blizzard to stream the studio’s games on Facebook Live. That, along with new streaming services from YouTube Gaming and others, may have motivated Twitch to get its services up to snuff — both Google (obviously) and Facebook have formidable search. Twitch doesn’t have the userbase of those sites, but its 100 million unique visitors per month are rabid: Each spends an hour and 46 minutes per day on the site, and they sent over 9 billion messages in 2015.
Source: Twitch
Riot used ‘League of Legends’ chat logs to spot bad staff
Sadly, bad language and a general lack of respect is an expected and, now, almost accepted part of playing video games online. It’s a problem that permeates not just the community around each game, but also the people that are working on them. Riot Games, developer of the MOBA juggernaut League of Legends, has looked at employees’ chat logs and found a surprising correlation between their behavior in and out of the game. So if someone has been a jerk or generally difficult in the game, there’s a reasonable chance that they’ve expressed similar behavior in the office.
Riot Games found that a quarter of the people it had fired in the last year had also shown “unusually high” levels of toxic behavior in the game. Armed with this information, it decided to address the problem proactively with its remaining staff. Using in-game chat logs, it hoped to identify and talk to potentially difficult members of staff before they became a larger problem. It singled out 30 of the most divisive employees, all of whom were fairly new to the company, and put them in two separate camps; those who required a stern warning, and those who should be let go.
During these meetings, many employees expressed regret at how they had been conducting themselves in the game. “Pretty much everyone was appalled at their own behavior,” Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar, head of Talent for Riot Games said. “We actually received some essays from employees vowing to change their ways and become not just more considerate gamers, but better people.” The chat logs also factored in the decision to fire some employees who had presented “serious problems” before.
There will always be some differences in the way people behave in person and over the internet. Just because someone is throwing expletives at their teammate on Halo 5: Guardians doesn’t mean they’ll use the same language at work. Or at least, the behavior isn’t guaranteed. However, Riot’s data shows that there is a general trend — a warning, perhaps, if you’ve ever aspired to work at a game developer. Just like your Facebook page, Riot is prepared to dig into the past of League players to determine whether they’re a good fit for the company. Consider yourself warned.
Via: gamesindustry.biz
Source: re:Work
Sony boss confirms PlayStation 4 ‘Neo’ exists, won’t be at E3
In an interview with the Financial Tmes, Sony executive Andrew House has confirmed that a new, more-powerful PlayStation 4, codenamed “Neo,” is coming, but says it will not be unveiled at E3. House, who is the president and global chief executive of Sony Interactive Entertainment, says the new system will be sold alongside the existing PS4 for the entirety of this console generation. “It is intended to sit alongside and complement the standard PS4,” he told the FT, “we will be selling both [versions] through the life cycle.”
The new console will output both video and games at up to 4K resolution. House confirmed reports that all games released this generation will continue to support the base PS4 model. As for what the “Neo” will support, House said “all or a very large majority of games will also support the high-end PS4.” We assume that means all games will run on Neo, but some may not be optimized to offer graphical improvements. Otherwise that’s just crazy talk.
The rest of the interview is light on real news. House said the new console will target hardcore gamers and those with a 4K television looking for more high-res content. He noted that the console will be more expensive than the base model, which is a given, but would not give a price, a release date, or even a date when the machine would be formally announced. The one thing he did confirm? It won’t be at E3 next week.
The reason behind House’s sudden openness on the subject is obvious: Microsoft is widely rumored to be announcing its own set of hardware refreshes at a press conference on Monday. Sony wants investors and the public alike to be aware that something better is around the corner in the world of PlayStation as well.
Source: Financial Times
The Gear Fit 2 is Samsung’s best wearable yet
Samsung has made plenty of wearables over the years, but few were as immediately impressive as the Gear Fit. Its curved screen and relatively slim design almost made us forget the company’s early, clunky Gear smartwatches. Now with the $179 Gear Fit 2, Samsung has refined its original design to make it a lot more useful for athletes. It has built-in GPS, a slightly larger screen and smarter activity tracking. It’s Samsung’s best fitness wearable yet, but it’s still a tough sell compared to competing devices from the likes of Fitbit.
Hardware
The Gear Fit 2 is an evolution of the original Fit’s design in all of the right ways. Its 1.58-inch curved touchscreen display is now flush with the band, so that it no longer sticks out awkwardly. It reminds me of Microsoft’s Band 2, which also benefited from having a curved display sitting right alongside the wristband. The screen is also slightly wider now, which makes it more useful for actually reading information, and there’s less of a bezel around the sides so it’s almost like an edge-to-edge display.
Beyond that screen, the Gear Fit 2 looks restrained. The top half of the device is made from some fetching-looking metal, while the bottom is more of a subdued plastic. There are only two buttons on the side of the device, which serve as home and power buttons. On the bottom there’s a heart rate sensor and two small connectors for its charging stand. The relatively minimalist design is a stark cry from the overly complex wearables we used to see from Samsung.
For the wristband, it looks like Samsung is using the same plastic material from the last model, which remains flexible yet sturdy without feeling too stiff. You can disconnect the wristbands easily from the sides of the device, which will be useful if you ever feel the need for a new look down the line.
Under the hood, the Gear Fit 2 now runs a dual-core 1GHz Exynos 3250 processor and 512MB of RAM. (As someone who remembers being very excited when I got 512MB of RAM on a desktop, I find that latter stat hard to fathom.) Both of those specs are significant upgrades from the first Fit, which had a measly 160MHz processor and 8MB of RAM. It’s no wonder we found the original to be underpowered. There’s also GPS onboard the Fit 2 now, along with 4GB of storage for music and a barometer sensor for stair tracking.
Software
Samsung is using its homegrown Tizen OS to power the Gear Fit 2, something it also uses in TVs andother wearables like the Galaxy Gear 2. And instead of being tied to Samsung’s phones, the Fit 2 is now compatible with any Android phone running 4.4 or above. There’s no word about iOS support yet, though. (Is it even worth the effort?)
Thanks to Tizen, the Fit 2 is much more capable than its predecessor. You’ve got multiple watch faces to choose from (and more can be downloaded through the Gear app), some of which will show fitness stats alongside the time. You can also customize the screens you see as you swipe through the Fit’s interface. I have it set up to show the number calories I’ve burned, the number of steps and stairs I’ve taken, and my heart rate. Naturally, there’s also a screen for quickly logging a workout.
The Fit 2 supports 15 different workout types, including common things like running and cycling, and more specific activities like yoga and pilates. It’s now smart enough too to automatically detect five different types of workouts, something competing health trackers from Fitbit and Jawbone have been able to do for years.
Thanks to its onboard storage (and vastly more functional OS), the Gear Fit 2 can also send locally stored music right to your wireless headphones. It can also control music stored on your phone, and it can tap into Spotify through your phone as well. Basically, if you prefer to run completely unencumbered, or with your phone, the Fit 2 has you covered.
To control the Gear Fit 2, you’ll have to rely on Samsung’s Gear app for Android. And to track your workouts, there’s Samsung’s S Health app. More on those in a moment.
In use
In day-to-day use, the Gear Fit 2 felt just as comfortable to wear as the Apple Watch Sport and Jawbone’s Up24 (which are among my favorite wearables). It sits well on your wrist; most of the time you’ll forget it’s even there. I’d still like to see Samsung make it even thinner, so that it doesn’t rise above your wrist as much, but the Fit 2 is nonetheless on par with competing wearables in terms of thickness.
I also had no problem putting it on, and keeping it stable, throughout the day. The Fit 2 has a simple clasp design that makes it easy to slip on while you’re on the go. That’s a good thing, because I’ve fought with plenty of wearables (especially from Fitbit) that are simply a chore to secure. And even though it’s easy to wear, I also had no trouble with the Fit 2 falling off (which was a killer issue with the Jawbone Up 3).
When it comes to tracking basic things like your steps and stairs climbed, the Gear Fit 2 seemed just as accurate as most other modern wearables. Its heart-rate tracking was also solid, delivering readings in line with what I’ve been seeing from the Apple Watch and recent Fitbit gear. But really, if you’re buying this you’re probably more interested in its GPS tracking, and in that regard it didn’t disappoint. It accurately mapped several of my runs through Brooklyn’s Prospect Park (I have a two-mile stretch that I cover regularly). It was also on par with RunKeeper’s location tracking, which I normally use on my iPhone during workouts.
Setting up a manual workout takes a lot of swiping and menu pressing, if you’re moving between a variety of exercise types. But if you mainly do the same sort of workout, it’s pretty easy to just get up and go. The Fit 2’s touchscreen response is fast for such a small wearable, but even so, it’s not something you’d want to deal with much in the middle of an intense session.
The Fit 2 also surprised me several times by accurately tracking how long I walked during my work commute. That’s something other wearables have been doing for a while, but it’s still a useful addition for Samsung fans. It’s also the sort of thing wearables will have to get smarter about moving forward, so hopefully Samsung will be able to add automatic tracking support for more than just five workout types.
While you can view some basic post-workout details on the Gear Fit 2, you’ll have to turn to Samsung’s S Health app for a more detailed view. It’s a fairly clean looking app: The home screen highlights your most recent workouts, heart rate readings and steps. Tapping into a workout lays out everything you’ve done that day, and you can also step backwards to previous days pretty easily. Despite its minimalist look, I still had some trouble navigating around S Health. And it wasn’t always obvious how to access more detailed information about workouts. But perhaps I’ve just been spoiled by better health apps from Fitbit and Jawbone.
As a smartwatch-like device, the Gear Fit 2 fares well. It can display notifications from your phone, and even though it has a tiny screen, there’s enough room to read short text messages and tweets. It’s not a screen where you’d ever want to read long emails, but that’s true of dedicated smartwatches too. You can also have the Fit 2 open up apps on your phone from its notifications, which helped me quickly reply to Hangout messages and texts on several occasions.
Samsung claims the Gear Fit 2 gets around three to four days of battery life from its 200mAh battery. In my testing, which involved constantly wearing it throughout the day and doing a few runs, it usually lasted around two and a half days before needing a trip to the outlet. Speaking of recharging, I was pleased to find that Samsung moved towards a larger charging cradle for the Fit 2. That may sound paradoxical, but the original Fit’s cradle was so small that I ended up losing it pretty quickly. This new version is better suited to staying in one place on your desk.
The competition
The Fitbit Surge.
Since it’s a GPS-enabled fitness wearable, the Gear Fit 2 is best compared to the likes of the Fitbit Surge ($229) and the Microsoft Band 2 ($175). Aesthetically, it has a lot more in common with the Band 2, but if you can get past its looks, the Fitbit Surge is probably a better buy for fitness junkies. Fitbit has a much more robust fitness platform, as well as better integration with third-party services. As with all wearables, aesthetics plays a big part in the purchasing decision, though, so it’s understandable if you’d rather have a better-looking tracker instead of a more functional one.
Wrap-up
With the Gear Fit 2, Samsung has succeeded in making a capable and stylish fitness tracker. But it also doesn’t do anything significantly better or differently than the competition. It feels like a fitness tracker meant for people who really want something to match their Samsung phones, rather than something every consumer would desire. It’s ultimately unremarkable, but that’s mainly because there are so many decent alternatives out there.
Living the trainer life with ‘Pokemon Go’
Niantic senior product manager Tatsuo Nomura and I are walking directly across the street from San Francisco’s Embarcadero waterfront. It’s a beautiful day for a stroll. His phone vibrates as we amble under the Bay Bridge and we stop. It turns out this “landmark” doubles as a PokeStop in the upcoming Pokemon Go mobile game. We pause and he collects an egg that will eventually hatch into a pocket monster ready for battle.
In this way the Pokemon Go mobile game drops perfectly into the mythology surrounding the phenomenon that recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. The company says to expect both iOS and Android apps launching sometime later this year. Instead of battling your tiny digital terrors from the comfort of your couch, it nudges you (well, actually forces you) outside to catch new Pokemon, hatch the ones you’ve already harvested and battle for supremacy of local “Gyms” (a locale where teams battle for supremacy). Sort of like the characters in the actual game and animated series.
“The whole world of Pokemon is based on the trainer going out into the woods and finding Pokemon with his Pokedecks and Poke ball,” Niantic CEO John Hanke told Engadget. “You can live the story of being a Pokemon trainer.”
Part of living that world is the new Go Plus device (no word on price). It looks like a cross between a Google pin and a Poke ball. Designed and built by Nintendo, it allows folks to keep playing the game without taking their phones out of their pocket by alerting them when they are near a Pokestop. Variations in vibrations and colors will tell gamers what’s going on and with a few taps of the button they can gather up new Pokemon without staring at a screen.
Unfortunately, I did not get to see a demo of the Go Plus device during our quick jaunt around San Francisco. Instead Nomura checks his phone and tells me that because we’re near the bay, the creatures we capture will be water-based. “If you’re in a park there will be more grass type Pokemon. We actually try to map the real world with the Pokemon types,” he said while we head to our next destination.
The second PokeStop is only a few yards away from the one below the Bay Bridge. It’s a series of plaques in the concrete. I’ve never noticed them before. “These are points of interest that people are not aware of. We’re trying to have people visit these places to learn more about their neighborhood. To discover the places that they would normally ignore, “Nomura said.
I’m assured that even in small towns, there will be stops for gamers — many of which were suggested by players of Niantic’s other alternate reality game, Ingress. Those players and the company are constantly adding new waypoints in the real world to visit in the digital. Some of those spots are in Pokemon Go with others constantly being evaluated to see if they will be added to the game.
“‘Adventures on foot,’ that’s our motto,” Nomura tells me after we battle (and lose) to try and oust one of three teams (you can join team blue, red or yellow) from the local Gym. Each of these interactions with the game only took about the time it takes to send a few texts. Pokemon Go is probably destined to be a huge hit. Mostly because it’s Pokemon. But also, it looks like a fun way to explore your town with a game that doesn’t require your constant attention.
ICYMI: Gravitational waves and holographic Holocaust memory
Today on In Case You Missed It: NASA’s mission to figure out where black holes are located won’t actually deploy until 2034, but the science behind the sound experiment is being worked on now. University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies created a 3D video rig to capture people’s memories, saving the video and sound mash-up for future generations to hear first-hand accounts of the Holocaust.
The “In Good Company” shoe for turning off phone notifications automatically is here; in case you’re interested in the human ancestor story, NPR has a good summary here. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
‘Bluetooth 5’ to be Announced Next Week, With 4x Speed and Better Range
Bluetooth 5, the next generation of Bluetooth standard, will be formally announced next week, offering double the range and quadruple the speed of the current low-energy wireless protocol.
Executive director of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, Mark Powell, revealed the news in a published email sent to UK health and monitoring company Blue Maestro. The Bluetooth SIG, which is backed by Apple, Intel, and other major technology companies, will officially make the announcement on June 16 in London.
The standard’s adoption of the title “Bluetooth 5” drops reference to both the version and point number, indicating both a significant revision of the protocol and an effort by SIG to simplify its marketing strategy.
The new standard is also said to offer significantly wider support for smart home devices and enhanced Internet of Things (IoT) functionality, in addition to increased support for location-based connectionless services, such as assistive navigation beacons.
It’s unclear whether Bluetooth 5 will come to existing devices as a firmware update or require new hardware, but the latter is more likely. Previously, Bluetooth 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 devices were not upgradeable to newer versions of the standard, but Bluetooth 4.0 devices could be upgraded to Bluetooth 4.1 via software patches.
In October last year, Apple quietly added Bluetooth 4.2 support to the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPad Air 2, bringing 2.5x faster speeds and up to ten times higher data capacity to the devices.
Rumors of impending upgrades to Apple’s MacBook range typically make no mention of wireless protocols, while iPhone 7 leaks and speculation are also usually silent on the subject.
However, given the increasing likelihood that Apple will remove the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Bluetooth will become the primary means of connecting headphones for most users unless wired Lightning earbuds are included in the box.
Tag: Bluetooth 5
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NYC Apple Stores Being Targeted by Thieves Dressed as Retail Staff
Thieves in New York City are reportedly posing as company employees in order to steal thousands of dollars of hardware from Apple Stores.
According to DNAInfo, last week a man dressed as an Apple staff member walked into the company’s SoHo store and gained access to a backroom, stealing iPhones worth a combined $16,130.
Similar incidents occurred back in March when a store on the Upper West Side was targeted by Apple staff imposters twice. In those thefts, the store lost $50,000 in iPhones.
Gizmodo notes that the tactic appears to have been adopted since Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts introduced a policy which sees all staff wear blue shirts with smaller Apple logos. Ahrendts’ announced the new uniforms internally in 2015 with the catchphrase “Back to Blue… But All New”, which introduced several different styles of shirts for employees to wear.
Previously, Apple staff changed their uniforms on a semi-regular basis, with colors and styles linked to seasonal holidays, specific themes, or product launches.
NYPD has connected the two robberies as “related”, and hasn’t specified whether the thieves were wearing official shirts or close approximations. Either way, the incidents are likely to make Apple revise its security arrangements and look again at its more standardized uniform policy.
Tag: Apple retail
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Spotify Says App Store Changes Don’t ‘Get to the Core of the Problem’
After Apple announced a handful of new changes heading to the App Store under Phil Schiller’s reign — including a new revenue split for subscriptions and ads in search results — Spotify recently commented its opinion on the announcements. Speaking with The Verge, Jonathan Prince, Spotify’s head of corporate communications and global policy, said simply, “It’s a nice gesture, but doesn’t get to the core of the problem.”
One of Spotify’s major hangups centers around the fact that the new rules still prohibit apps from offering “special offers or discounts,” because price flexibility is prohibited. The Cupertino company’s policy makes sure that it’s a constant presence between the customer and developer, “which means developers will continue to lack visibility into why customers churn.”
“Unless Apple changes its rules, price flexibility is prohibited, which is why we can never provide special offers or discounts, and means we won’t have the ability to share any savings with our customers,” Prince continued. “Apple still insists on inserting itself between developers and their customers, which means developers will continue to lack visibility into why customers churn — or who even qualifies as a long-term subscriber.”
Prince also said that the rules make it hard to even determine which customers could be considered as a long-term subscriber – an important factor to take into account now that Apple will take only a 15 percent cut if a user stays subscribed to a service for more than a year. Apple currently takes 30 percent of a subscription fee when users sign up to a service on the App Store.
Spotify’s concerns follow an uptick in subscriber activity in the year since Apple’s rival subscription music service, Apple Music, launched to the public. While the latter platform is on track to gain 15 million subscribers for its one-year anniversary in late June, Spotify has grown from 20 million paid users last June, to 30 million in May of 2016. The company noted that since Apple Music launched it has “been growing quicker and adding more users than before.”
Tags: App Store, Spotify
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