Ozobot’s Evo is a smarter, more social coding robot
Ozobot’s Bit impressed us a few years ago with its simply take on programming education: kids just need to draw lines on a piece of paper or mobile device to program the tiny robot. As they get more comfortable, they can start to program on mobile devices and computers. Now Ozobot is taking a major step forward with the $100 Evo, a new robot that has sensors to interact with its environment, lights, a speaker and social capabilities. Basically, it’s like a tiny Star Wars droid that you can program on your own.
While Ozobot’s previous devices were aimed directly at kids, it’s hoping that Evo can break through to high schoolers and even college students, according to founder and CEO Nader Hamda. The new bot has a shot of appealing to older students simply because it can do a lot more than before. It can also explore autonomously and react to changes in the environment — for example, if you blocked it with your hand or picked it up — with a personality of its own, thanks to the addition of lights and sounds.
You can remotely control Evo from a new Ozobot app, which is also where you can program it and interact with other Evo owners. The social capabilities are particularly interesting: You can team up with a friend anywhere in the world and mirror your bots movements. You can also build on Evo routines with others, allowing you to go back and forth to design something like an elaborate dance sequence. The company is also trying to build up a small social network of its own by allowing you to chat with friends from its app.
In addition to the basic line-based programming that Ozobot originally popularized, you can record actions using the mobile app. You can also program Evo with the OzoBlockly language (based on Google’s Blockly), which lets you build commands with a block-like interface. It’s based on Javascript, so you can think of it as training wheels for proper coding.
It’s a better time than ever to get kids into programming; the hard part is figuring out which of the many solutions out there are worth your time. Based on my brief experience with the Evo, it seems more polished than most of the competition. Mostly, that’s because Ozobot has spent the past few years building a name for itself among educators. The company says its previous bots are now in around 2,000 schools, reaching nearly 500,000 kids globally.
The Ozobot Evo will be hitting stores on November 1st for $100. It’ll come in white and black variants, and you can also add covers to give them a bit more style.
Twitter can tell you when friends and celebs start livestreaming
Twitter is all about live content on this fine Monday morning. First up, Twitter has added a new notification option that alerts users when someone they follow shares live video in a tweet. To enable the function on mobile, navigate to the page of someone you follow and tap the new notification icon next to the follow icon. Then select the final option, “Only tweets with live video,” and you’re all set. The next time that account goes live, a red alert bar will pop up along the bottom of your feed, allowing you to tap and start watching.
Don’t miss a live moment! Turn on notifications to join in when someone you follow shares live video on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/dddk81GuCH
— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2016
Second on Twitter’s totally live Monday to-do list is a partnership with Cheddar, a news network that specializes in live technology and business coverage. Twitter has the live broadcasting rights to Cheddar’s Opening Bell and Closing Bell shows, which are hosted daily from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ MarketSite. Both shows break down the daily markets and business news, alongside interviews with CEOs and in-depth earnings coverage. Twitter will be the only place to watch these shows live for free.
“Twitter is the fastest way to find out what’s happening in the world and to engage in the live conversation about it,” Twitter CFO Anthony Noto says. “Partnering with Cheddar will give people on Twitter another way to watch and discuss the day’s top stories as they unfold live all on one platform.”
Excited to partner with Twitter on live video @anthonynoto pic.twitter.com/rVS8rtAEhX
— Cheddar (@cheddar) September 12, 2016
Last week, Twitter rolled out an update that makes it harder to creep on your friends’ live Periscope broadcasts and another that essentially turns DMs into a chat app.
Source: @Twitter, PRNewswire
ZTE wants your help bringing crowdsourced ideas to life
When ZTE launched its Project CSX challenge to crowdsource ideas for a mobile device, it was hard not to wonder which of those grandiose visions would make the cut. Well, now we know: ZTE has unveiled the three ideas that made it to phase two of the competition, where people will submit product concepts that translate those ideas to reality. Each of the winners is rather unusual, but just realistic enough that ZTE could put it into production.
One is a self-adhesive smartphone that sticks to most any surface, and uses eye tracking to help you scroll through books without touching the screen. There’s also a Power Glove-style wearable that guides you through high-dexterity tasks like playing the piano or typing. Lastly, an augmented reality diving mask would give you digitally enhanced experiences both underwater and on solid ground.
You have until September 30th to submit a product concept based on these ideas, and voting will run between October 1st and October 10th. The grand prize voting (which decides what ZTE will build) will take place between October 12th and October 19th. You won’t see a physical product until sometime in 2017, but you now have an inkling of what to expect.
Source: ZTE (eye tracking), (glove), (diving mask)
Facebook Messenger chatbots now support payments
The latest version of Facebook Messenger adds a new feature to the 30,000 or so chatbots that currently inhabit its platform. Starting today with version 1.2, those Messenger bots can now accept payments directly in the chat without sending users to an external website.
The feature was announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt by Facebook’s Messenger chief David Marcus, who noted that the payments system will support most credit cards and payment services including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Stripe, PayPal and Braintree. From the consumer side, users will see “Buy Now” links popping up in relevant chats. Tapping the link will bring up a quick payment confirmation tab that automatically defaults to whichever credit card a user has tied to their Facebook or Messenger account. The feature is currently available for certain developers as a closed beta, but businesses and devs can still apply to be included in the test run before it rolls out to all developers.
In addition to the speedy new payment system, the latest version of the Messenger Platform also allows developers to pull in additional UI elements like quick responses, shipping notifications or flight updates, as well as the ability to make Newsfeed ads point directly to Messenger chats. Finally, there are some new share features that allow users to forward individual chat messages or invite friends to start their own thread with a particular bot.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Facebook Newsroom
MSI says its VR backpack computer is the lightest yet
Remember the virtual reality backpack PC design MSI showed off at Computex just a few months ago? It’s already obsolete. MSI has unveiled the finished product, the VR One, and it looks nothing like the prototype you saw in June. There’s a good reason for that, though: the official hardware is billed as the world’s “lightest and thinnest” VR backpack, weighing a more reasonable 7.9 pounds versus the 10 of before. It won’t be quite so noticeable when you’re spinning around the room, in other words. And that’s not the only improvement — MSI has taken concerns over performance and battery life to heart.
The VR One not only gets an upgrade to faster GTX 1070 mobile graphics (on top of an overclocked Core i7 processor), but runs about 50 percent longer than the Computex model at 1.5 hours of VR use. And since there are now dual battery packs, you don’t have to shut down entirely to keep playing. You can hot-swap batteries as much as you like, which is particularly handy if you’re either an avid player or want to share the backpack with others.
MSI hasn’t divulged launch details for the VR One, although it had promised that a back-mounted system would be available by the end of the year. It’s reasonable to say this won’t be cheap given both the higher-end parts and VR-specific requirements, such as those gigantic removable batteries.
Source: MSI (1), (2)
The PS4’s HDR-friendly update arrives September 13th
Sony has been talking about the PlayStation 4’s big version 4 update for weeks on end, and now it’s (almost) here. The company has confirmed that the new software will reach existing consoles on September 13th, and it’ll have even more than first promised. You know about headliners like high dynamic range video support, home screen folders and a revamped Quick Menu. However, there are a few perks, some of which are hardware-dependent. If you snag a PS4 Pro, you’ll get 1080p Remote Play and Share Play streaming, 1080p Twitch live broadcasts and 1080p YouTube broadcasts at 60 frames per second. It’s also easier to transfer data to a new PS4 thanks to support for shuffling data over a local wired network — you won’t have to re-download content from the internet just to pick up where you left off.
Some of the previously unmentioned tweaks will run on any system. That new Quick Menu has an upgraded music section that helps you control Spotify music without launching Spotify’s app. You’ll likewise see improvements to the What’s New and content information screens, both of which should have simpler interfaces and better at-a-glance views of what’s going on. In short: between new PS4 hardware and the version 4 update, Sony is determined to keep the PS4 fresh amidst competition that isn’t standing still.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Razer launches its own venture fund to support VR and gaming
Razer might be best known for high end gaming hardware and lightning fast peripherals, but the company is now ready to expand from its core business into everything from the Internet of Things, to Virtual and Augmented Reality, to robotics and big data analytics. To get there, Razer has announced zVentures — a new $30 million venture fund meant to explore new startups and technology in these arenas.
“Our focus is to bring value by sharing the solutions of our portfolio companies with the Razer community,” Razer CEO and co-founder Min-Liang Tan told TechCrunch, “supporting them with our hardware and software expertise and making available our global retail and distribution networks.”
ZVentures builds on two smaller funds at Razer, including the one that built the low-cost OSVR devkit and a separate fund that bought up the Android gaming console OUYA last year. According to TechCrunch, the company has already made several other deals in VR, e-commerce and gaming, but is not quite ready to disclose them at this point.
Moving forward, zVentures will be making strategic investments in the $100,000 to $1 million range and will be looking for early-stage startups that it may be able to leverage in the future. In addition to the cash infusion, the startups in the zVentures portfolio will have access to Razer’s 20 million active users. For anyone who thinks they’ve got a startup worth of Razer’s time and money, there’s a handy for for submitting a pitch right on the new fund’s homepage.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: zVentures
Tweetdeck adds location and date search filters
Twitter spews an amazing volume of information into the world, yet its search function has never been precise. To be fair, it’s faced far greater pressure to combat abuse, like it did releasing tools to cut trolls out of notifications last month. Today they’re enriching that functionality even further, but just for Tweetdeck: Users creating search columns can now filter by location and date.
You’ll have to create the column first before tweaking its area-specific settings and only unprotected tweets that are geotagged will show up. But that’s still better than the erratic results when folks deign to include place names in their precious 140 characters.
New! Location and date filters so it’s easy to find Tweets from a specific place or time. https://t.co/VADmrWrctc pic.twitter.com/CfxmBJEE4m
— TweetDeck (@TweetDeck) September 12, 2016
Source: Twitter support blog
ING Bank’s main data center was shut down by a loud noise
Members of ING Bank found themselves unable to use their debit cards this weekend due to a completely unexpected technical failure: it was just too dang loud. More specifically, a loud noise caused by a fire extinguisher test knocked out a few dozen hard-drives at the bank’s main data center in Bucharest Romania. It’s an uncommon, but not unknown phenomenon — sound causes vibration, and hard-drives hate being jostled.
The bank was testing an electronics-safe fire suppression system in the main data center, but a pressure discrepancy caused the system to emit a loud noise while expelling inert gas. According to the bank, the sound was measured a over 130dB — apparently loud enough to knock the HDD’s physical components out of alignment.
That makes sense, but why hasn’t something like this happened before? In a paper about hard-drive fragility and fire suppression systems, IBM researchers blame the march of progress: “Early disc storage had much greater spacing between data tracks because it held less data,” The paper reads. “Which is a likely reason why this issue was not apparent until recently.” Modern hard drives are less tolerant, and will fail if its read/write arm nudges 1/1,000,000 of an inch off of its data track. Good to know for folks building data centers with potentially loud fire suppression systems — but maybe this is just yet another sign that solid state storage is the future.
Source: Motherboard, Data Center Journal
First iOS 10 Apps Start Hitting the App Store
Ahead of the official launch of iOS 10 tomorrow, apps designed for the new operating system update have started hitting the iOS App Store, including those that will be available in the Messages App Store.
Rock-Paper-Scissors [Direct Link], for example, a Messages app that allows two people to play a classic game of Rock, Paper, Scissors right in Messages, is now in the App Store. It is not, however, showing up in the dedicated Messages App Store, which will presumably launch tomorrow. Other apps for Messages, like Snappy Browser, are also starting to become available.
The Messages App Store is an app storefront located within the Messages app, accessible on a device running iOS 10 by tapping the app icon, opening the app drawer (tap the icon that looks like four circles) and then choosing the “+” store icon.
Using the Messages App Store, iOS 10 users will be able to install a huge variety of sticker packs and apps to enhance the chat experience in Messages. Stickers are used a lot like emoji but can be animated and stuck on top of chat bubbles, photos, and more, while apps can do things like offer weather updates, a Safari browser for looking things up without using Messages, provide collaborative food ordering tools, and more.
iOS 10 offers a huge number of new features for developers, and in addition to Messages apps, we’ll also be seeing apps that can take advantage of the new features in Maps and apps that offer third-party Siri support. Expect to see significant app updates coming out throughout the week, leading with tons of app releases tomorrow.
Related Roundup: iOS 10
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