Let's Talk Tech
The cameras found on Nokia flagship phones are certainly formidable, but no gadget is perfect, and there’s ALWAYS room for improvement.
Here’s how I (and others who have commented on this blog) would tinker with Nokia’s camera software.
We’re still waiting on the Moto360 and whatever watch Apple might eventually bring to the table, but the market isn’t standing still. Now Samsung has taken the wraps off of the newest entry to their Gear line of smartwatches.
The Gear S is another Tizen offering, which will not use Android Wear like the Gear Live, but features a curved AMOLED display. It looks like it should wrap around the wrist in a slightly more comfortable way than some of the other rectangular screened watches available.
It wont be packing the camera or IR blaster found in the Gear 2, but it will add in a 3G cell radio and WiFi, making it more of a standalone data enabled device, similar to what Timex recently announced with their rugged watch. Using an almost comically small on screen keyboard or S-Voice will allow users to reply to incoming message, and the 3G connectivity will provide voice calling features as well. It could prove to be a decent stand alone experience for folks who want basic communication and media streaming while working out and don’t want to pack a bulky smartphone.
Gear S should be available in October, with pricing info to follow soon. Full PR below.
Continue reading “Samsung Gear S Smartwatch to Feature Curved Screen and 3G Cell Radio”
Google Maps Street View is the go to application for getting a look at an area from a pedestrian perspective. While that kind of mapping and visual location data is handy, Amplifon thinks they can improve the experience by adding sound.
The Sounds of Street View is a project designed to provide a 3D soundscape of an area to correspond with popular search locations on Google Maps. Wearing headphones gives one the sense of being surrounded by the area’s audio, and panning around the scene will change the “focus” of the audio as well.
Playing around with some of the sample locations, the loops used were fairly short. Kids giggling in one area started to sound REALLY creepy with the short mechanical repetition for example, but it was an interesting way to augment the “feel” of looking at a Street View scene.
Amplifon is making a developer framework available, which will allow others to create their own 3D audio samples. You can read more on the project at the Amplifon website, or see their teaser video below.
We recently covered the news that California will become the second state to mandate a smartphone kill switch on all new smartphones sold after July 1, 2015.
Of course, that’s almost a year away, and for you folks using an Android here’s how you can better protect your phone or tablet today!
After months of debate in the CA senate, Governor Brown signed off on the smartphone kill switch law yesterday, following Minnesota as the second state to combat the growing rates of smartphone theft. The general idea being, if the phone is completely disabled or “bricked”, it wont be valuable to thieves, so it’s less likely to be stolen.
With very few exceptions (mainly for older handsets) any company wishing to sell a smartphone in the state must have some option for completely disabling it in the event it’s lost or stolen. There’s a $2500 fine per device for any company which fails to offer this feature. The law will affect any phone sold after July 1, 2015.
While carriers make up the bulk of phone sales, manufacturers will likely be responsible for developing the actual process that locks the phone down. Google for example sells their Nexus phone directly to consumers, so whatever process they develop will likely be embraced by other Android manufacturers.
Apple already has a fairly robust “Lost Mode” built into iOS, requiring someone to enter their Apple ID password before the phone can be used. This pass code continues to lock the phone down even if someone else factory resets the phone.
Microsoft has built in tools to find, lock, and erase, and we’ve reviewed Google’s Device Manager which offers up similar features, but neither of those company’s solutions will survive a hard reset.
California’s kill switch law will not affect tablets, another commonly stolen item, but if manufacturers improve the ability to remotely manage and lock phones down, these features will likely make their way into other data connected mobile products.
Hyperlapse is becoming something of a buzz word. It’s essentially a time lapse video, but with more (and smoother) movement. Microsoft recently showed off an incredibly complex and beautiful method to achieve fluid time lapse video. Now Instagram is taking the wraps off of their solution.
It’s novel in its simplicity. Many phones incorporate some form of electronic image stabilization. Instagram’s Hyperlapse app will use the sensors in your phone to detect movement, and then it’ll filter that movement out to give you a smoother tracking shot. As it detects movement in real time while recording, it’s unknown if the app will be able to import and smooth out previously shot video.
The UI is incredibly simple. Push big red button to capture video. Once Finished capturing, there’s a slider to change playback speed from 1X to 12X, and then you have the option to share that video with Instagram or Facebook.
As this is Instagram, it’s iPhone only for now, as they’re sorting out Android API’s, and it’s doubtful we’ll see this on Windows Phone (and those incredible Nokia cameras) any time soon. It is live now for you iOS folks though on the App Store.
See another sample from Hyperlapse below!
Continue reading “Instagram Shows Off Hyperlapse App to Smooth Out Video and Time Lapse”
I almost always have either a pocket knife or a tool kit on me, and now this multi-tool case from IN1 will make sure I’m never left high and dry for some tweezers or a pen! This might just be the perfect phone case for former Boy Scouts. Let’s take a look!
We’ve been watching this sale unfold over the last several weeks, as Google/Youtube initially pushed forward with an offer, and now Amazon has swooped in to seal the deal. Twitch will be under the Amazon umbrella of services by end of year.
Twitch is a relatively young, but insanely popular video game broadcasting service, where people can share game play and host video game content. As it was starting to struggle under the weight of its own popularity, it made sense that it would eventually get swallowed up by a larger entity. Youtube seemed likely, as it already pushes a mind boggling amount of video every day, but Amazon’s cloud services and servers should also be a huge shot in the arm for Twitch’s stability as a platform.
What should be interesting to watch is the continued battle over Copyright. Recently Youtube started muting videos of game play over music rights issues. Twitch also recently implemented a music ID scan which can mute portions of a broadcast if it detects Copyrighted audio, and whether Twitch sold to Google or Amazon, the deal probably depended in part on their plans to enforce Copyright. As Amazon is an incredibly popular media distribution service, yet they didn’t have a Youtube-like service constantly in lawyer’s sights, moving forward many gamers will be watching to see if Amazon’s approach is stricter than Google’s might have been.
You can read Amazon’s full PR below.