NVIDIA’s ‘mobile supercomputer’ can make machines smarter
Hardware developers looking for a quick way to add machine learning to their devices just got some help from Nvidia. The GPU-centric company announced the Jetson TX1 developer module with an emphasis on machine learning. The device could lower the lead time needed to create machines that rely the on computations needed for dynamic input and computations. This includes: autonomous drones, facial recognition and behavioral analysis within a crowd and computer vision. The TX1 development kit replaces the Nvidia TK1 launched last year. The tiny supercomputer pushes one terraflop of performance, networks via ethernet and 802.11 ac, is under 10 watts and ships with Linux installed. Oh, and you can play Doom on it. The TX1 developer kit will be available for preorder on November 12 and will ship on November 16. The retail price is $599 with educators and students able to grab one for $299. The stand-alone module will be $299 and will ship in the first quarter of 2016.
Source: Nvidia
Apple Music is live on Android devices today
Apple Music launches in beta form today on Android, cementing it as the second Apple program to hit Google’s mobile platform (following the “move to iOS” app). Apple offers a three-month trial to Android users, as it does to Apple customers. Since the Android version is still in beta, it’s missing a few features and upgrades: Apple promises music videos are on their way and the sign-up process will be optimized for Android. To sign up for a family membership, you’ll need a Mac or iOS device for now. Apple Music on Android requires version 4.3 or better, and it’s a 29M download. After the trial period, Apple Music is a $10-per-month service. We gave the iOS version a spin when it launched on June 30th and found it to be heavy on features but a little disjointed. Apple announced the Android version of Music back in June, alongside a promised launch on Apple TV this fall.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Google
Hailo opens mobile payments to all of London’s black cabs
After ditching its private hire business and recommitting to London’s black cabs, Hailo has been pulling out all of the stops to get traditional taxi services back onside. On top of campaigning “every level of government” to protect the industry and reinforcing the benefits of the Knowledge, the company today announced HailoPay, a new service that let London’s 22,500 black taxis offer free mobile payments to customers.
Source: Hailo Blog
Sonos’ automatic speaker tuning feature is available today
Sonos’ new automatic tuning feature Trueplay is rolling out to the masses. The software addition adjusts the strength of various frequencies in order to compensate for a room’s poor acoustics or an ill-placed speaker. The idea is that Sonos speakers should output undistorted music no matter where you put your them. Trueplay has been in private beta since October, but today is the day that it’s widely available to anyone with a compatible Sonos speaker.
SceneSkim movie app does exactly what it says it would
As much as I love watching movies, I’m not doing it for work and don’t really need to worry about finding a specific scene or line of dialogue as fast as possible. But I’m not a film scholar or student, so those folks have it a little tougher when it comes to such matters. To that end, researchers have at the University of California Berkeley have developed SceneSkim. It’s a bit of tech that leverages captions, scripts and plot summaries to speed up searching for scenes in flicks rather than manually fast forwarding or rewinding. There’s a video of it in action below and it looks pretty slick, actually and should be a boon for the people who need quick access to specific movie scenes.
Google just released new AI software that can learn faster
Google is ignoring everything the Terminator franchise taught us and is releasing “TensorFlow”, open-source software that helps computers learn quicker than ever before. The software is a branch of artificial intelligence called “machine learning,” tech that has already found a home in Google Search, Google Photos and Gmail. Tech-giants, like Google, Facebook and Amazon are all working with machine learning to better the services that they offer like smart search, ad targeting and product recommendations. Machine learning is now shifting into a complex realm where researchers are creating computer models that can see and even understand what it’s looking at.
Via: The New York Times
Source: Google
Google explains why some Nexus 5X pictures are the wrong way up
If you recently splashed out on a brand spanking new Nexus 5X, you might be wondering why some of the images you take aren’t the right way up. It turns out that it’s a quirk of how the device was manufactured, thanks to a little insight from Google’s Eino-Ville Talvala. After users began to complain about the issue on Reddit, the engineer popped up to explain where the problem comes from, and how to fix it.
Via: XDA – Developers, SlashGear
Source: Reddit
Visit this digital art museum in real life or VR
There’s plenty of digital art, but it tends to either be meant for the physical world, where it disappears within weeks, or is strictly digital and risks losing some of its impact. However, a team of artists is promising both. Their Digital Museum of Digital Art will both be available in real life at a virtual reality exhibit (currently in Brooklyn from November 14th through December 19th) as well as through Mac and Windows apps you can run at home. The two-pronged approach not only keeps you from missing out, but gives artists a way to reach a wider audience without diminishing the impact of their work
Via: The Creators Project
Android One will become more like Android because manufacturers want more freedom
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We love the idea of Android One – a standardized platform of smartphones, hardware and software, for emerging markets. Unfortunately, it seems manufacturers don’t see it that way and Google is having to change its stance on it. Previously, Google had mandated that components had to come from a list of approved vendors, however this is now being loosened so that manufacturers can use their own vendors. And while Google has tried to keep pricing relatively standard between manufacturers, Android One manufacturers are now also allowed to control the pricing of their devices.
If this is all starting to sound a bit familiar, let’s just add one more thing into the mix. Whereas Google had previously said that Android One would be getting updates straight from Google (because they all had the same hardware, hence this was possible), the change to the arrangement with manufacturers has meant this will change to updates coming from the manufacturers themselves. In case you haven’t caught on already, all these changes mean that Android One is now effectively the same as Android – and apparently this is what manufacturers want. If Google wants to change how devices are made for emerging markets, they may end up having to do it themselves with a low-cost Nexus range.
What do you think about these changes to the Android One program? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Wall Street Journal via Phone Arena
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Google buys Fly Labs, Photos to get in-app video editing
The team at Fly Labs announced on Friday that Google had acquired their company and will be rolling their image-editing technology into Google Photos. “We’ll be pouring the same passion into Google Photos that we poured into Clips, Fly, Tempo and Crop on the Fly,” the company wrote in a blog post. Existing users should note that while Fly Lab’s existing suite of tools will remain free and available in the App Store for the next three months or so, there will be no more updates. Furthermore, if you’ve already downloaded the apps, they’ll continue to work even after this three-month grace period. You won’t, however, be able to re-download them once they’ve been removed from the App Store so make sure you don’t go accidentally uninstalling them.
Source: Fly Labs
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