Airbnb goes instant: book stays for tonight or tomorrow, starting today
It’s been a long 24 hours. First, that assassin woke you up with attempted murder. Then, after plunging to the Paris streets, you narrowly avoided death while leading your assailant on a high-speed chase through the backstreets of the 6th arrondissement. Thankfully, you managed to make that flight to Los Angeles from Charles de Gaulle. But oh no! Zeut alors! You don’t have somewhere to stay in LA! What’s a raconteur to do? Airbnb may be your new solution. The company known for facilitating stays in individually owned properties (rather than, say, a hotel) is expanding into the immediacy market, today adding the book it tonight/tomorrow function to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of course, that’s just the beginning, with more cities to come in the coming months. Perhaps Paris?
Airbnb’s mobile app is the main use case for the new service, with bookings for tonight/tomorrow showing up under the Discover area and in search results. Why San Francisco and Los Angeles? Well, SF because that’s where Airbnb is based (surprise!), and LA because it’s a major market. That the company’s seen a lot of demand for such a service there also doesn’t hurt.
Of course, with instant access to Airbnb vacancies, the elephant in the room is illegal activity: drug trafficking, prostitution, etc. The obvious stuff people will do because human beings are human beings. Fear not! Airbnb uses a form of two-factor authentication to verify both sellers and buyers; in so many words, Airbnb is being extra careful about these listings and the folks using them. It’s another reason for the limited rollout, in fact.
The company’s also experimenting with a new discoverability option, offering packages called “This Weekend.” Say you’ve got a free weekend and some extra dough. Need some ideas? “This Weekend” is your jam. The perfect option for lucky folks with the perfect blend of too much money and time on your hands. Hey, can we borrow some of that stuff?
The Xbox One price drop isn’t just to boost sales, says Microsoft
This morning, less than a year after Microsoft unveiled its Xbox One, the game console’s price dropped from $500 to $400. How’s Microsoft making up for the price difference? By removing Kinect, of course. The camera/microphone peripheral introduced halfway through Xbox 360′s life cycle was a standard in every Xbox One sold since launch last November, but no longer. As of this June, a second option will exist on retailer shelves. A less expensive option. And Xbox marketing lead Yusuf Mehdi is all about that option:
“We have 80-plus million Xbox 360 users today who want an Xbox One, and many of them tell us, ‘For me, it’s an affordability issue. I’m gonna get there, it’s just a question of time. If you make it more affordable, then I’ll upgrade faster.’ So this is an opportunity to really make it easier for them to get there at their pace.”
Of course, providing that option is in the interest of spurring sales. The issue isn’t that Xbox One consoles aren’t selling, it’s that they’re not selling as fast as Sony’s PlayStation 4. Currently, Xbox One is a couple million units behind PlayStation 4, and it’s impossible to cite those numbers without considering today’s news as directly attributable. Mehdi doesn’t agree.
“For us, it has not really been about that,” he told us in a brief interview this afternoon. First, it’s about that aforementioned choice. Second, the folks at Xbox feel as though, at this point, they’ve completed their goal of “defining a next-generation console.” As such, moving on makes sense (to Microsoft, anyway).
The Xbox One is designed around voice control. You turn it on with your voice. You open games and browse Netflix and everything else, all through voice. For anyone who’s tried navigating Xbox One without Kinect, you already know the sad truth: it’s a mess. Microsoft is thankfully aware of this issue, and is working on a fix. “We do want to find ways to give you some of those shortcuts and make some of the things that we have with Kinect easier with the controller,” Mehdi said. “You can expect to see us do a bunch of things over the coming months to make the experience easier and easier, even if you don’t have a Kinect.”
The changes aren’t coming before E3, but not far after. “We’re still kind of working through that,” he said.
So, beyond pricing, what else inspired the price drop? Kinect voice localization “was not a factor,” Mehdi said, but the upcoming launch of Xbox One in China certainly seems a likely culprit in the removal of Kinect. At very least, it’s a major technical hurdle “You have to develop a local voice model for each country. That takes a bunch of time to get there,” he said. Should the Xbox One show up in new territories without Kinect, you’ll have to forgive the lack of surprise on our faces.
Filed under: Cameras, Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD, Microsoft
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION, the game, headed to Android later this Year
DeNA and Hasbro have a Transformer game headed our way later this year, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION. The new title will be the official game for the new movie that is hitting theaters June 27. The title is in active development but today’s press release clues us in a little to what the game will look like and how it will play out.
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION will be a combat runner style game with some of your favorite Autobots.
“The TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION mobile game will deliver an explosive interactive entertainment experience on mobile devices for TRANSFORMERS fans and consumers looking to extend their movie experience after the credits roll,” said Barry Dorf, vice president of partnerships and alliances at DeNA. “This isn’t your typical runner game; this game puts the player in the middle of an action-packed Hollywood blockbuster where it’s destroy or be destroyed!”
The title will come in the free-to-play format, so you can expect some degree of real money spending. I would imagine it will be tailored to unlocking other Autobot friends and upgrades like armor and weapons and such. Speaking of weapons, part of the press release offers up a freebie to those that want to sign up for pre-registration through www.transformers-mobile.com with their Facebook account. If you choose to do that, you will get a free Rare Transmetal Rocket Launcher.
They don’t give us a solid date for the launch of the game other than “later this year”, we hope it is close too, or shortly after, the theatrical release of the new film though.
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BBC’s iPlayer revamp goes live for everyone
The BBC unveiled a heavily redesigned iPlayer web client a couple of months ago now, but if you ignored the prompt to opt-in and see the new UI for yourself, we’re afraid you can’t fight change any longer. Today, the BBC’s taken the fresh-faced iPlayer layout out of “preview” mode, thereby retiring the old interface and ushering users to embrace the new one. Aside from looking different, there’s now a greater onus on finding new content to watch, and between the launch of the new iPlayer and now, the BBC’s already added more ways to filter programmes within the category and favourites tabs. Redesign virgins are best off jumping in and checking it out, and if you’re sad you didn’t get to say goodbye, the updated apps for set-top boxes and other TV-connected gear are still in preview mode, and the Android and iOS apps are still just like you remember them until they get made-over in “the coming weeks.”
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, Software
Microsoft lowers Xbox One price to $400 without Kinect
Is the $500 asking price of Xbox One too rich for your blood? Turns out you’re not alone, and Microsoft’s responding: the price of the Xbox One is dropping to $400, and the company’s dropping Kinect from the box as well. Starting June 9th, the Xbox One will be sold in a second bundle sans Kinect (a standalone version of Xbox One’s Kinect will be available “this fall,” should you wish to add one later on). It’s not clear if the $500 model that currently exists will continue to exist after June 9th, though it is clear why Microsoft made today’s move: sales numbers. Though the Xbox One is doing well at around 5 million units, it’s lagging behind Sony’s PlayStation 4 to the tune of several million units.
“There’s a lot about Kinect that I really love,” Xbox head Phil Spencer says in a video released alongside the news. “We’ve also heard from people that they just like to play games with a controller in their hand.” Spencer and co. are painting today’s news as a response to consumers — the blog post is titled, “Delivering More Choices for Fans,” even — but it’s hard to see it as anything other than a straight business decision. Microsoft’s initial coming out for Xbox One was held up by three pillars, one of which was going “all-in” on Kinect. Today’s news rolls back that pillar.
It’s not a question of people using Kinect, apparently. Microsoft says that over 80 percent of Xbox One owners are “actively” using Kinect. The other 20 percent are assuredly stewing in anger over saying “Xbox On” six or seven times without it working.
Today’s news is the latest walkback from Microsoft’s initial vision for the Xbox One, unveiled last May in a day-long Redmond, Wash. event. The price cut is just one of two major announcements from Microsoft’s Xbox division today: the long-running Xbox Live service is taking a variety of services out from behind its paywall (known as an Xbox Live “Gold Membership”), making them free to all Xbox One and 360 users.
Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and other services now open to all on Xbox One, Xbox 360
In a move that bucks the standard set by Microsoft itself back in 2005, both the Xbox One and Xbox 360 will drop the requirement for an Xbox Live paid membership to access services like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube. Microsoft announced this morning that it would be streamlining its offerings and bringing its prices and structure more inline with those offered by Sony. That means not only cheaper hardware, but also abandoning the need to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription for access to apps and streaming media. It’s a move that certainly makes sense given that sales of the Xbox One are several million units behind the Play Station 4.
Until now, if you’ve wanted to watch Netflix on your Xbox you’ve needed to cough up for Live as well. That’s another $5 a month (at least) for the privilege of enjoying your existing subscriptions — something that never really sat well with many consumers. Reducing the total cost of ownership is one of the key ways to suck in new users. To compliment its efforts on the media front, Microsoft is also bringing Games with Gold and Deals with Gold to the Xbox One in early June. That means free games every month and steep discounts on titles like Ryse: Son of Rome. Now that the playing field seems a little more level (at least in terms of cost) the next-gen console wars will boil down to just a few things: exclusive games, additional functionality and marketing.
Wanna know the full breakdown? Microsoft’s made this handy chart to help out:
Syrmo teaches you to skate better, captures your sick tricks
Skateboards have seen their share of electronic add-ons lately, but most are designed to take the effort out of cruising around. But leveraging some tech to conquer 360° kickflips and other tricks sounds far more interesting, especially when failed attempts pile up and you could use a helping hand. A trio of skaters armed with hardware and software skills have finally tackled the problem, and their solution is Syrmo. It’s a device that fits under your board’s trucks and adds motion tracking, Bluetooth and internal memory to to your otherwise low-tech deck, which you can sync with the companion app. The software aims to capture 3D-rendered replays of tricks coupled with stats on height, air time and distance — letting you see if that ollie was really as high as you thought. In addition to skimming through the day’s progress, it plans to provide social, geo-location and automated video editing features. Those high-drama moments when the board’s in mid-flight can be automatically enhanced with slow-motion effects and trimmed into easy-to-share video clips. The Kickstarter page is live if you want to cruise on over to show your support. Who knows, Syrmo may just take some of the pressure out of learning to land those flips.
Filed under: Peripherals, Software
Multiple Verizon Motorola DROID devices seeing KitKat OTA’s, others getting bug Fixes
It isn’t much of a secret that the Motorola DROID line of devices was the first line of Android powered devices that brought Motorola back into the spotlight. A curious amount of variants sprung up after the first DROID RAZR hit the scene and many of us were pretty excited to Motorola back in the game. It slowed a bit for them until the more recent Moto X and Moto G hit the scene. While the DROID line is aging, it isn’t entirely dead. Heck, I still know a few people locally that use their DROID RAZR MAXX daily and have no plans to trade it in anytime soon. If you happen to be one of those die hard DROID fans with Verizon then we have some great news for you. It looks like you probably have an update waiting for you.
That is correct, a rather large list of devices has hit the Verizon support pages and almost all of them are scheduled to be gaining Android 4.4.2 KitKat. That list includes the RAZR M, RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD. You guys will be looking at, not only an OS update, but also an updated version of the DROID zap app, security patches, Wi-Fi fixes and roaming issues resolved. The RAZR HD and RAZR MAXX HD will also be picking up some HDMI implementations, but the specifics aren’t clear yet.
On the other side of the coin, the DROID Mini, DROID Ultra and DROID MAXX also have a set of updates starting as well. Sadly, it isn’t Android 4.4.2 , yet. You guys will be getting some bug fixes and roaming enhancements along with the swap for the KitKat white notification icons in your status bar. We can only hope that these devices will see kKitKat 4.4.2 some time shortly after this obviously smaller maintenance update.
As always, these updates will be rolling out in stages. Don’t be surprised if you don’t see it immediately. You can always head into settings and ping for the update if you really want too. If you do see the update pop up, make sure you have well over 50% battery life, a solid Wi-Fi connection and some time to kill to download and install the file.
Source: AndroidPolice
Update info pages:
Motorola DROID RAZR HD / RAZR MAXX HD
Motorola DROID Ultra / DROID MAXX
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International Galaxy S5 receiving update, faster camera and finger print scanner Improvements
A firmware update is underway in the UK for the Samsung Galaxy S5, SM-G900F. SamMobile states that there are two very noticeable differences. First being a much quicker launch time when bring bring up the camera app along with a quicker launch time for the gallery app. The second important aspect of the update is related to the finger print scanner being more accurate.
The update will trickle around the globe slowly with it starting in the UK. Samsung has the update available for manual installation vie Samsung Kies, but a traditional OTA is also being rolled out. Of course updating through Kies will prevent you from having to wait very long for the update.
As always, don’t forget to have well over 50% charge on your device before doing any firmware updates regardless if it is an OTA or through Kies. If you are able to snag the OTA, then also make sure you have some time to kill and a solid Wi-Fi connection.
Source: SamMobile
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Don’t freak out: Firefox is testing advertisements in new tabs
You know those rectangles that appear when you open a new tab in the Firefox internet browser? They show your most frequently visited websites — convenient! — but soon they’ll also show a mélange of Firefox sites “and other useful sites on the web.” Bummer? Maybe. These are just the tests, still mainly aimed at fresh installs of the Firefox web browser and always to beta users, before the rollout of sponsored tiles.
It does sound like adverts are in the pipe, but it depends on the reaction to Mozilla’s initial tests. Mozilla’s Jonathan Nightingale says that, last time around, the reaction wasn’t as positive as his company hoped. “It didn’t go over well,” he states. Further, he insists that Firefox won’t become “a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder; without user control, without user benefit.” Nightingale and Mozilla are treading thin ice in this respect, as the company is associated directly with the open source movement. In so many words, the company risks offending its most hardcore, longest-running users: its core fanbase.
As Nightingale puts it, “Sponsorship would be the next stage once we are confident that we can deliver user value.” Don’t expect glaring McDonald’s ads anytime soon.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Source: Mozilla
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