Amazon Echo Dot (2016) preview: Alexa for those who use their own speakers
Alongside a European launch for its Echo speaker, Amazon announced that an all-new Amazon Echo Dot is coming to the UK, US and Germany soon.
Unlike the fully-fledged Amazon Echo, the Dot doesn’t have full speaker drivers of its own, just a smaller speaker for voice feedback and alarm functionality – it’s not great for music, for example. Instead, it has a line-out for a wired connection to a separate AV receiver or speaker system. It can also connect to a Bluetooth speaker wirelessly.
It offers the full Alexa voice-controlled system, as with the larger Echo.
Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based information bot, that responds to vocal commands and can be used to find information on the web or control many smart devices around your home.
For example, we used it to control Hue lighting connected to the same network, and to play music through a mighty speaker stack in the corner.
Pocket-lint
The small, puck-like Echo Dot is simple to install and use. You connect it to the power, hook it up to your wireless network and away you go. Bark “Alexa” at it and it wakes up ready to be instructed with other commands.
You can find out football results, forthcoming fixtures, even get it to read books to you.
It has been around in the US for a while, but this new model is faster and more efficient. It also has regional accent variations depending on your location. Our demo was with the UK edition, so it spoke with a British accent – sounding a little like a computerised version of Holly Willoughby.
We will need to give it a thorough test to find out what it’s fully capable of, especially in a UK sense considering it can hook up to Sky News and other local services, but for now, its £50 price point seems like good value for something that could change the way you interact with your home.
I can also work independently to the main Amazon Echo, so you can scatter several around the home, but you would, in that case, need multiple separate speakers to get the most from it.
The Echo Dot is available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk now, in either black or white, and will ship in the autumn.
VR documentary puts you inside the 2016 NBA Finals
The National Basketball Association began experimenting with virtual reality last year, when it used the medium to stream the first game of its 2015 season. Now, the league has teamed up with Oculus on a VR documentary about last year’s championship matchup, between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers. Titled Follow my Lead: The Story of the 2016 NBA Finals, this 360-degree video experience aims to take you where traditional TV can’t, giving you a first-person look at the action on and off the court.
The 25-minute story, created by Brooklyn-based production company m ss ng p ecess (“missing pieces,” get it?), is narrated by actor Michael B Jordan (Friday Night Lights, Creed). And it doesn’t just focus on Game 7, which Cleveland won at Oracle Arena in Oakland, but rather the entire series. I had the chance to check it out and walked away fairly impressed. The best part about it is that, unlike watching a film on my TV or phone, the VR headset gave me the option to explore and focus on whatever I wanted to.
I spent most of the time paying attention to highlights of the basketball games, but it was nice to also be able to spin my head and watch how fans in the arena celebrated a LeBron James dunk. In general, though, that’s the beauty about virtual reality experiences — they’re different for everyone. Here’s a perfect example of the value of this kind of storytelling: remember that cameraman who, during Game 6, fell down as he followed LeBron to the locker room? Well, here you can see it actually happening, whereas on TV you only knew because of the botched camera shot.
So whether you want to see crowd reactions or something else entirely, chances are your experience won’t be the same as mine. At first, I was worried about the length of the documentary, thinking by the end of it I would have a massive headache. You know, after “coming back.” But, thankfully, that wasn’t the case. If you have a Samsung Gear VR headset, you too can watch Follow my Lead: The Story of the 2016 NBA Finals starting today. Better yet, it’s a free download from the Oculus Store.
Microsoft probably won’t release a Band 3 this year
Microsoft has no plans to release a new Band this year and reportedly disbanded a team that was working on a port to Windows 10, according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. In response to a question about the device’s future, it said it will continue to sell and support the current Microsoft Band 2, but was otherwise noncommittal. Sources inside the company, meanwhile, say that no new device is coming in 2016, and if one launches one after that, it’ll still run custom firmware, not Windows 10.
Microsoft instead emphasized the Microsoft Health platform in a statement, saying it’s “open to all hardware and apps partners across Windows iOS and Android devices.” That jibes with its current strategy of porting bread-and-butter apps like Office 365 to other platforms, rather than emphasizing Windows 10 Mobile as before. Microsoft Health helps iOS, Android and PC users monitor exercise, nutrition sleep quality and more, like similar platforms from Nokia, Apple, Google and others.
Microsoft wanted the Band 2 to be a big piece of its Health strategy, but downplayed its role recently. It now seems, again, that it will rely on hardware from other companies, unless it surprises us with a Surface Watch or something. The Band 2 originally cost $250 when it launched in October of last year, but Microsoft has since cut the price to $175.
Source: ZDNet
Newton is a great new email app that costs way too much
Despite the frankly ludicrous number of apps in the iOS app store, it’s been difficult to find a truly great email app lately. If Outlook isn’t to your liking, it quickly gets tough. The official Gmail app is a joke compared to the Android option, Mailbox is dead, and options like Airmail and Google’s Inbox are nice, but a bit complicated.
CloudMagic has been an option worth checking out for a few years now. It’s laser-focused on simplicity, but there are some powerful features lurking underneath the surface. Today, the app formerly known as CloudMagic is being reborn as Newton — it’s still a deceptively simple affair, but there are some noteworthy new features on board like snoozing messages, read receipts and a send later function. It works on iOS, Android and on the Mac. But it’ll cost you: Newton carries a $50 annual subscription fee, something almost unheard of in apps these days. Is it worth such a large cash commitment?
The high price tag is certainly off-putting, but there was definitely a lot to like in the time I spent testing Newton on my iPhone, iPad and Mac. For starters, you can add just about any email account you can think of. I tested Gmail, a corporate Google Apps account, iCloud mail and Outlook and they all worked with zero issues. And once you create a Newton account, you can easily transfer setting and accounts across any devices you use.
Once the app is set up, it’s very reminiscent of using the dearly departed Mailbox. Long and short swipes do different things, so it’s easy to trash, archive, snooze or otherwise file your messages — it’s great for quickly triaging your inbox on the go.
People are pretty split on whether snoozing emails is helpful or just screwing your later self; I personally like using it and am glad to see Newton include the feature. It works just as you’d expect, with options to defer messages to later in the day, the next day, the weekend, the following week and so forth. So far, they’ve come back into my inbox reliably.
Other new features that are pretty handy include the ability to undo sending an email — Gmail has had this for a while, but it’s good to see it pop up in another mobile app. You can also schedule emails to send at particular times and enable read receipts for your messages, even if the recipient isn’t using Newton.
Sender profiles are also handy — tapping on the sender of a message will pull up relevant details about them from the internet, when available. They’re a holdover from CloudMagic, as are the Connected Apps, which let you plug Newton into various other services like OneNote, Trello, Pocket and Evernote.
For me, these are nice features to have, but the most important thing about Newton is that it is fast and efficient at sending, receiving and managing your email. The rest is really just gravy. It’s also by far the best email app I’ve used on the Apple Watch — I can actually archive or delete messages when they come to my watch as notifications and everything syncs reliability and immediately. The same can’t be said for a lot of Apple Watch apps (note that I tested this with iOS 9 and WatchOS 2).
The elephant in the room is the price, and it’s a really large elephant. As solid as my time with Newton has been, I just don’t think I can justify shelling out that kind of cash. The team behind Newton and CloudMagic before it say that the cost will help them continue to invest in building a solid product, cover recurring server costs, and help sustain the business to avoid having to sell their product off or shut down entirely. If you look at the fate of some beloved apps like Mailbox and the Sunrise calendar, you’ll see just how hard it is to stay around in this marketplace.
Newton’s plan makes sense, but I’m afraid it’s just going to be too expensive to find the adoption the company is looking for. It won’t fail due to quality — the app is pretty great, and if you use a variety of platforms it’s an excellent option, particularly if you value minimalism. But when Inbox is free and I can get Airmail on my Mac and iOS devices for $15 out the door, $50 a year is a real tough pill to swallow. Fortunately for some at least, the Newton team is giving former CloudMagic users who’ve paid for that app a free year of Newton. It’s definitely worth trying in that case — and there’s a chance you get hooked on it.
Twitter comes to the Xbox One, Apple and Amazon TV boxes
Much like Shia LaBoeuf declaring that he isn’t famous anymore, Twitter is now out and proud about not being a social network. No, instead, Twitter is now a broadcasting platform, which means that it needs to put itself in the sort of places you use to watch TV. That’s why the company has announced that it’s launching apps for Apple TV, Amazon’s Fire TV and Microsoft’s Xbox One. It’ll be on these that you can watch some of the new video content that’s coming to the service, including Thursday Night Football.
Twitter isn’t just for NFL nuts, and has signed deals with other sports outfits including MLB Advanced Media and Pac-12, which covers college sports. If you’re more into current affairs, then you’ll be able to view footage from Bloomberg News and tech/finance/video for millennials startup Cheddar — which does two shows a day from the floor of the NYSE. Twitter’s ace up its sleeve is that it also has video platforms of its own: Vine for edited comedy clips and Periscope for live events.
In addition, those using the app on Apple TV are entitled to watch video and have Twitter’s video clip service running alongside. At least, that’s how the release reads, although it’s not clear why people would necessarily want to be distracted from gripping sports events with Harambe vines. What’s more valuable is that Twitter will offer-up a commentary overlay from members of the public that’ll run alongside live events. Company CFO Anthony Noto is quoted as saying that “Twitter has always been a great complement to TV, and now fans can enjoy even more premium video with live Tweets.”
Back in the day, there was an online service called Zeebox that took Twitter’s social component and used it exclusively for adding commentary to live TV. Twitter (and broadcasters) would eventually cotton onto the same idea, turning the service into a real-world peanut gallery that went alongside big name reality shows. But being the most beautifully created peanut gallery doesn’t earn you much money — which is why Zeebox transformed into a beauty blog called Beamly and then became a marketing agency.
Twitter needs to get more eyeballs pointing at its product, because it’s got something of a user growth problem. It has a core audience of passionate tweeters, but that appeal hasn’t translated across to the broader mainstream. Its monthly active user count has remained roughly stable at just over 300 million, putting it well behind services like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. Wall street has often punished Twitter for not being as popular as its rivals, even though Twitter’s cult appeal deserves preserving.
Live video, especially sports video, could be the magic bullet that Twitter needs both to invigorate its user base and broaden its appeal. It’s not the only tech firm that’s come to this conclusion, with Amazon reportedly ramping up its interest in bringing sports to Prime. Twitter will also have to fight with Facebook, which considered buying those same Thursday Night Football rights and is also making forays into live sports. Unlike those other companies, however, Twitter doesn’t have a huge war chest that could be used to buy such rights. But given that the big networks can earn up to 21 million viewers for a single game, it may be worth the risk.
Of course, Shia LaBoeuf’s still famous and Twitter’s still a social network, albeit one which is attempting to be many different things to different people. That’s why, in addition to making a big push into broadcast video, it’s encouraging people to come to Periscope with notifications and turning DMs into a WhatsApp-esque chat service. The company is also hoping to make some sort of progress in counting its toxic atmosphere through algorithmic-based abuse removal.
The new apps are launching today, with each platform offering a slightly different global footprint. Twitter for Apple TV is launching wherever you can purchase the device, while the Fire TV edition is only available in the US and UK. If you’re a rocking an Xbox One, you’ll be able to get at the goodies in the US, UK, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.
Valve is changing how Steam reviews work
Valve is cracking down on Steam reviews in an effort to prevent developers from artificially inflating a game’s review score on the service. Valve says that the fixation on review scores is driving some developers to use nefarious means to boost them, thus potentially driving sales higher.
“The majority of review score manipulation we’re seeing by developers is through the process of giving out Steam keys to their game, which are then used to generate positive reviews,” a post on Steam says. “Some developers organize their system using Steam keys on alternate accounts. Some organizations even offer paid services to write positive reviews.”
So as a result, Steam reviews stemming from key redemptions won’t factor into a game’s overall score. Score-affecting reviews will only come from purchases made via Steam itself. “We’ve now taken action by banning the false reviews and will be ending business relationships with developers that continue violating our rules,” the company writes.
All told, Valve says review scores will change for “at least” 160 games (roughly 14 percent) on the service. This isn’t a perfect solution, though. As Ars Technica notes, digital versions of Kickstarter games are distributed via Steam keys. That’s to say nothing of reputable third-party sellers like Humble Bundle.
As you might expect, many developers are bristling, saying that this will adversely affect their chances of getting noticed on the digital storefront. “We’re hearing lots of positive response to this update, and some criticisms,” Valve’s Doug Lombardi tells Gamasutra. “Like all updates we issue to our games and services, we will be monitoring the community reaction and incorporating that feedback into the next set of changes we make to improve the service for everyone.”
Via: Gamastura (1), (2)
Source: Steam
Mockups Show AirPods in Apple’s New Jet Black Color
Inspired by Apple’s new Jet Black color for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, designer Martin Hajek recently created a few mockups of what the company’s all-new wireless AirPods could look like if the accessories had a similar dark color option.
In his blog post, Hajek said he “modeled these earphones and rendered them in brand-new iPhone gloss black,” making them visually identical to the new, shiny finish of the iPhone 7 in Jet Black.
Hajek even visualized the AirPods charging case in Jet Black. When inside of the case, the AirPods can get up to 24 hours of battery life, according to Apple. On their own, the Bluetooth headphones have up to 5 hours of music playback on a full charge.
Although most hardware announced at Apple’s September 7 event is debuting later this week, on September 16, the AirPods still have an unspecified launch in “late October.” If you want to check out more of Hajek’s renderings of the Jet Black AirPods, visit the designer’s website.
Tags: Martin Hajek, AirPods
Discuss this article in our forums
Apple Makes More iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus Stock Available to Upgrade Program Members
Last week, a number of customers enrolled in the iPhone Upgrade Program were unable to pre-order the specific iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus model they wanted due to limited stock when orders began at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday.
Apple had already warned that demand would outstrip supply as usual, but unlike regular customers, iPhone Upgrade Program members were not given the option to pre-order a new iPhone online for home delivery.
Instead, would-be upgraders were directed to a separate queue that only allowed reserving the iPhone from a local Apple retail store — many of which were sold out. The experience led to frustrations and even a class action lawsuit, prompting Apple to collect information from customers affected in an attempt to make the situation right. Now, the company appears to have delivered on that promise.
Recently, it appears that Apple may have reallocated iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus stock specifically for iPhone Upgrade Program members. Over the past 24 hours or so, several MacRumors readers enrolled in the program have been able to reserve the iPhone model they desired for pickup at a local Apple Store later this week.
MacRumors reader Ryan Lister:
I was one of the people who ran into the shortage on launch day from the iPhone Upgrade Program, but stock must have been recently updated and I was just able to make a reservation on launch day for the black iPhone 7 Plus.
MacRumors reader Nathan Walczak:
I’m not sure why, but I was just able to reserve an upgrade for an iPhone 7 Plus. Pickup this Friday. Yesterday all stores in my area were out of the iPhone 7 Plus models. I currently am enrolled in the Upgrade Program from Apple. Seems Apple is trying to fix the glitch?
While availability is still limited, and varies between stores, it is clear that Apple is working to satisfy as many of its customers as possible. iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus officially launch on September 16, including the first pre-order deliveries and the start of in-store purchases split between those who reserved for pickup and walk-in customers on a first come, first served basis.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
Tag: iPhone Upgrade Program
Discuss this article in our forums
Xiaomi is launching the Mi Air Purifier 2 in India on Sep. 21
Xiaomi is all set to launch its first product in the Mi Ecosystem in India. The company has sent out invites to the media for an event on September 21, where we’ll see the Mi Air Purifier 2 make its debut in the country.
Xiaomi launched its Mi Ecosystem sub-brand earlier this year with a $150 rice cooker, following it up with a $250 vacuum cleaner. Earlier products from the manufacturer, like the Mi Air Purifier, and smart lights, are now a part of the Mi Ecosystem as well.
The first Mi Ecosystem product to launch in India will be the Mi Air Purifier 2, which offers a Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR) of 388 cubic meters an hour. The device comes with a pre-filter, a HEPA filter, and an activated carbon filter, and makes just 30db of noise when in quiet mode. The air purifier is sold in China for ¥699 ($104), and it is likely the device will cost under ₹10,000 in India.
With the rise in pollution levels — particularly in North India — companies like Philips are seeing an uptick in sales of air purifiers. With its disruptive pricing, Xiaomi has a chance to grab an early foothold in the segment. Unlike standard air purifiers, you’ll be able to control the Mi Air Purifier 2 remotely through the Mi Home app.
We’ll bring you all the details from the ground, so stay tuned to Android Central for more from Xiaomi.
Galaxy S8: Model numbers revealed as analysts predict early launch
Samsung reportedly skipping ‘unlucky’ model number for next flagship, which may launch earlier in 2017 due to the Note 7 recall.
We’ve already heard how the Galaxy S8 might come in two edge-screen models with 4K displays, and now further details on Samsung’s internal designation for the new flagships have come to light. SamMobile, which has a pretty good track record for these things, says the big and small GS8s (Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, perhaps?) are in development under the codename “Dream” and “Dream2.”
The site also reports that the model numbers for the two Galaxy S8 models are SM-G950 and SM-G955, which makes sense considering the GS7s were 930 and 935. The move would have Samsung skipping past 940, which could be attributed to the number four’s status as an unlucky number in some Asian cultures. (SamMobile notes that Samsung has previously skipped past “fours” in its model numbers.)
Meanwhile the Korea Herald quotes one analyst who thinks the Galaxy S8’s release could be brought forward following the fallout from the Galaxy Note 7 global recall.
“Smartphone demands have polarized: advanced and emerging markets, and premium and budget phones,” said Kim Sang-pyo, an analyst at [KB Investment & Securities]. “If Samsung’s flagship smartphone launch is delayed to the end of the first quarter of next year, the profitability of the mobile business division could be worsened next year.”
“Regardless of the sales resumption, an earlier launch of a new quality flagship model seems to be the most realistic solution to dealing with the current recall crisis,” he added.
The Korea Herald notes that this fits with another analyst report from Mirae Asset Securities.
With 70 instances of battery fires reported in the United States alone — and Note 7s now singled out as “dangerous” by most major airlines, which have banned their use in flight — it’s increasingly unlikely the Galaxy Note 7 will be salvageable. In Europe in particular, the Note 7 recall has scuppered Samsung’s chance of having a “phablet”-class phone to compete with the iPhone 7 Plus, as major retailers like the UK’s Carphone Warehouse now quote October shipping dates for new Note 7 purchases. As such, common sense suggests that Samsung might want to move onto its next major flagship sooner rather than later.
Samsung’s usual Galaxy S launch venue of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona begins February 27 next year. If the company is keen to bring forward the Galaxy S8’s launch, perhaps a standalone event in early February might be on the cards.
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 recall: Everything you need to know
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
- Here are all four Note 7 colors
- Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
Verizon
AT&T
T-Mobile
Sprint
