Bing Maps Preview now lets you explore more cities in 3D
Microsoft’s been hard at work on enhancing the Bing Maps experience within Windows 8.1, and it all started with the release of a preview application last year. With one of the focus areas being 3D exploring, Bing has announced that Maps Preview can now provide a 360-degree view of 15 more cities, both from the US and abroad. Here in the States, this includes Montgomery, Alabama; San Francisco, California; Tallahassee, Florida; and Seattle, Washington, to mention a few. Meanwhile, in Europe, Bing has added 3D mapping access to Duisburg and Dresden in Germany, as well as Marbella and Murcia in Spain. The Redmond-based outfit says we can expect the list to keep growing, too, as it is always working to support additional places.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft
Source: Bing
Sony’s Core-equipped SmartBand and Lifelog app arrive in March (video)
We caught a glimpse of Sony’s Core activity sensor back at CES, and it seems the masses will be able to outfit their wrists with one this spring. At Mobile World Congress, Sony announced that the SmartBand (SWR10) that houses the Core and its accompanying Lifelog app will be available in March. If you’re in need of a refresher, the Bluetooth and NFC-compatible activity tracker is waterproof with a micro-USB port and will arrive in only in Black… initially. Color options are set to arrive after launch with a 2014 FIFA World Cup model as part of the group. The Lifelog app is the control center for the Core, collecting your daily stats, tracking sleep, logging places and storing other activity on an Android device. Similar to other activity tracking software, Lifelog allows you to set goals and monitor progress right from your mobile device. When you’re heading out of range or when you need to get out of bed, the SmartBand will alert you to keep things in check. Tweets, emails, calls and other messages will prompt the SmartBand to vibrate as well. When used alongside Sony’s Walkman app, the wearable can be used to play, pause, and skip tracks. Unfortunately, there’s no word on pricing, but we’re sure to get more info on that when the exact release date is announced.
Filed under: Wearables, Software
Source: Sony
RealPlayer Cloud Goes Global
Today RealPlayer Cloud announced that it is available globally. Five months ago the app was introduced as a U.S./Canada only app and, as always, was bombarded with international angst. Now the app can be picked up all over the world.
“We’re excited to bring RealPlayer Cloud to consumers worldwide. In just five short months, we’ve experienced extensive user growth and now have more than 500,000 users in the U.S. and Canada,” said Rob Glaser, founder and interim CEO of RealNetworks. “Clearly there is a real need and demand for RealPlayer Cloud, which is essentially Dropbox for videos.”
If you don’t know what the heck we are talking about, then here is the skinny. RealPlayer Cloud is an app that was released by RealNetworks Inc. The services is geared specifically towards allowing you to upload videos to the cloud for easy streaming, sharing and casting. It supports all major mobile device OS’s along with your PC, Roku and Chromecast devices. It supports all the popular file formats FLV, WMV, MKV, DIVX, XVID, MOV, AVI and MP4.
The app is free, but only offers you 2GB of free storage. You can earn more space by referring your friends, 1GB per friend. The updated global app also offers SMS capabilities. This allows you to share that video link to your friends and family via a text instead of the original method, email. The receiver of the video link doesn’t have to have RealPlayer Cloud to watch it, so don’t worry about Mom. If she can open a text or email and click a link she is set.
They now support French, German and Spanish with Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese coming soon. Head over to Real.com for info about the service and pick up the Android app down below.
Press Release Below
REALPLAYER CLOUD NOW AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE
SEATTLE, Feb. 24, 2014 – RealNetworks, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) today announced the global roll-out of RealPlayer® Cloud, allowing users to easily move, watch and share videos on any device or operating system, anywhere in the world. Consumers can now use RealPlayer Cloud on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 8 Modern UI, Windows, Kindle Fire, Roku and Chromecast.
“We’re excited to bring RealPlayer Cloud to consumers worldwide. In just five short months, we’ve experienced extensive user growth and now have more than 500,000 users in the U.S. and Canada,” said Rob Glaser, founder and interim CEO of RealNetworks. “Clearly there is a real need and demand for RealPlayer Cloud, which is essentially Dropbox for videos.”
The amount of video being captured on smartphones and tablets is exploding, yet not all platforms and devices get along. With RealPlayer Cloud, consumers no longer need to worry about converting videos, or carrying HDMI and USB cables to connect devices to each other to watch videos. RealPlayer Cloud simply works across all devices, including TVs connected with Chromecast. RealPlayer Cloud is powered by SurePlayTM, a revolutionary cloud technology from RealNetworks, which enables seamless auto-formatting of videos to fit the device type, size of screen, available bandwidth, and storage space of any device.
With today’s international launch, people around the world can privately share videos with their friends and family in other countries – even if their loved ones don’t yet have RealPlayer Cloud downloaded. If a video has wider appeal, people can easily share with their social network on Facebook or Twitter.
In addition to the global expansion, RealPlayer Cloud has added new features, including:
- · “Refer-a-Friend”: Now available globally, users can earn 1 gigabyte of free space for each friend who creates a RealPlayer Cloud account. The friend also receives an extra 1 gigabyte of free space.
- · SMS Text Capabilities: iOS and Android app users can now easily send videos – reformatted in the cloud for all devices – via SMS text message, in addition to email.
RealPlayer Cloud offers 2 gigabytes of cloud storage for free to all users and provides additional storage through subscription plans that start at $4.99 per month. In addition to English, the app is now available in French, German and Spanish. Versions in Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese are coming soon. Visit Real.com for more information on RealPlayer Cloud.
HTC wants to combine all your Android phones to cure diseases (video)
With smartphones packing so much processing power these days, HTC reckons we can combine them all to do some meaningful number crunching à la SETI@home and Folding@home. We’re talking about curing diseases (AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s and more) as well as searching for alien life. As such, the mobile company has teamed up with UC Berkeley’s Dr. David Anderson, co-creator of SETI@home, for the HTC “Power To Give” initiative. To take part, you simply grab the app from Google Play, install it and it’ll run in the background when your phone’s being charged up plus connected to WiFi.
HTC claims that the combined power of 1 million Ones is almost just as good as a one-petaflop supercomputer, so the more the merrier — including those from other brands. But for now, HTC will first offer its app’s beta release to the HTC One family and the Butterfly series, and it’ll gradually add more compatible Android devices over the next six months. Isn’t it awesome that even Nokia phones can soon partake in this, too?
Update: The good folks at HTC have now published a couple of videos explaining this initiative. Check them out after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, HTC
Live at Mark Zuckerberg’s MWC 2014 keynote
Given Facebook’s recent $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg’s Mobile World Congress keynote just got a lot more interesting. Hopefully he’ll illuminate us more about how the chat app will fit into the social network’s plans, since that’ll be top of mind. Either way, we’ll no doubt hear more about Highlights, Paper and Trending Topics. To get his take on all that and catch anything juicy, tune in right here at the time below.
BBM coming to Windows Phones this summer
BlackBerry is slowly, but surely covering all its bases in an effort to turn BBM into a cross-platform messaging monster. The quest to return the standard-bearer to its former glory started with iOS and Android, but this summer it’ll be coming to Windows Phones as well. According to the Canadian company, it will ship with all the same functionality as its counterparts on other OSes, including stickers and voice. More importantly though, BBM Groups (which allows you to chat with up to 50 people at once) and Channels will be included as BlackBerry works to fight off challenges from the likes of WhatsApp and Hangouts. Sadly those are all the details we have for now, but hopefully Waterloo will lock down a release date sooner, rather than later.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Microsoft, Blackberry
Via: SlashGear
WhatsApp to add voice communication by summer
When the announcement hit that Facebook was snapping up WhatsApp (beating out Google in the process), the gargantuan $19 billion price tag was hard to justify. But, with 465 million active users per month, there’s a lot of potential for other, perhaps more profitable services. Today at MWC, TechCrunch has heard from WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum that a new service is indeed coming to the platform relatively soon: voice communication. Of WhatsApp’s now 330 million daily user base, those on Android and iOS will get the feature first when it rolls out in second quarter 2014, followed by those on “some Nokia and BlackBerry phones.” We’re not clear on exactly how it’ll work — whether you’ll send voice messages like Voxer, or make calls like Skype — or if we’ll be expected to pay for the privilege. (You can record and send audio clips within WhatsApp conversations already, but it’s not exactly elegant.) Given there are a number of free voice-based services available to us already, however, we imagine it being part of the standard subscription. Assuming WhatsApp actually want us to use it, anyway.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Facebook
Source: TechCrunch
Firefox OS getting interface revamp, lots of spit and polish
Firefox OS is still very young and about to endure something of a growth spurt. In the coming months Mozilla’s fledgling mobile platform will see a pretty dramatic reinvention of its UI. A core piece of that reinvention is EverythingMe, a contextual search interface that delivers results from the phone and the web simultaneously. Pulling down slightly from the title/address bar will open the search dialog that doubles as an application launcher. That new launcher will provide an entirely new way to interact with the phone, while bringing a welcome level of polish and modernity to the OS. The company also aims to banish the app store model and the ubiquitous install button. Instead searching for an app will offer you a direct link to launch it (which is made possible by Firefox OS’ heavy reliance on the web).
Additionally, a number of UI elements will be shifted around. Now, instead of opening the notification drawer, pulling down all the way from the top of the screen will initiate a task switcher. For quick and fluid app switching, simply swiping left or right from the edge of the screen will toggle between open applications, just as it does on Windows 8. The notification drawer will find a new home at the bottom of the interface, and opens with an upward swipe.
Subtler changes are also being made under the hood that will make Firefox OS faster and more responsive. Especially when scrolling and panning. The on-screen keyboard will also use predictive algorithms to guess what letter a user will enter next and will invisibly enlarge the touch target. There wont actually be any visible cues for the person typing, but it should lead to less mashing of backspace.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Source: CNET
Robot research firm Willow Garage closes its doors
Rumors of Willow Garage’s death may have been very premature, but they’ve come true all the same. Businessweek reports that company founder Scott Hassan shut down the robotics research pioneer in January to become the dedicated CEO of Suitable Technologies, Willow Garage’s telepresence-focused spinoff. The closure means that you won’t be seeing follow-ups to machines like the PR2 or TurtleBot 2. However, the firm may have created an enduring legacy through its open source robotics platform — when Baxter and numerous other automatons are using the code, you could be hearing about Willow Garage’s work for some time to come.
Source: Businessweek
Microsoft is cutting Windows prices to compete with Android and Chrome OS
At present, it’s tricky to make Windows PCs that cost as little as basic Android tablets and Chromebooks. While Microsoft charges vendors $50 to use Windows, Google often gives its software away. The crew in Redmond may have found a way to narrow the price gap, though. Bloomberg claims that Microsoft is cutting Windows 8.1′s license fee to $15 for any device that sells for less than $250, letting builders offer very cheap Windows PCs without destroying their profits. The developer isn’t commenting on the reported discount, but this would be a familiar strategy; Microsoft slashed Windows XP’s pricing to wipe out Linux netbooks a few years ago. There’s no guarantee that the company will repeat its earlier success if the lower Windows 8.1 prices take effect. However, it may feel compelled to act when PC shipments are still declining and mobile OS tablets are on the rise — the status quo clearly isn’t working.
Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, Software, Microsoft, Google
Via: The Verge
Source: Bloomberg
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