Google is forming a rather hefty team within the company to tackle smartphone-based virtual reality. The latest addition to the team is Matt Apfel, a former VP of content strategy for Samsung’s Milk VR (now Samsung VR). Apfel left Samsung in March and has been hired By Google to work on content for Daydream, Google’s next-gen mobile VR ecosystem, Variety reports. Daydream,… Read More
Plenty of people still like to read their comics on paper, but increasingly, phones and tablets are the devices of choice for keeping up with the Justice League. Last year, Google introduced a new reading experience for comics in its Play Books store for Android that makes it easier to follow along with the story. Today, the company is launching yet another update to the comics reading… Read More
Called “Virtual Network Solutions” and announced in a press release filled with so much corporate jargon it’s barely understandable, the idea is that spinning up, monitoring, managing, protecting, and tweaking networks is hard for businesses dealing with private and public clouds (unless you’re Goldman Sachs, the CIA, or Verizon itself) so why not let a big ole network… Read More
GoldieBlox, the educational toy, book and game maker best known for its line of engineering toys aimed at young girls, is expanding its digital footprint today with the launch of its first paid application: GoldieBlox: Adventures in Coding. As the name implies, the new app’s goal is to teach children, ages four and up, the fundamentals of coding through a puzzle-filled game.
The the… Read More
According to new numbers posted by IDC, smartwatch shipments are down for the second quarter of this year, marking the first drop of its kind. And it’s not insignificant falloff – moving from 5.1 million a year ago to 3.5 million this quarter. That’s a 32-percent decline.
The culprit seems pretty clear for the research firm. IDC lays the blame squarely at the Apple’s feet. Read More
Personalized learning company Cerego is teaming up with VitalSource, the ed-tech arm of book distribution company Ingram.
VitalSource says its BookShelf platform already offers access to a library of more than 1 million electronic textbooks from 1,000-plus publishers. Now with Bookshelf GPS, it’s adding interactive content to those textbooks, tailored to individual students.
So for a… Read More
Aquila will fly for 90 days at a time, blanketing a 60-mile wide area with internet access. But to prove it works, Facebook’s solar-powered plane just completed its first official test flight. Eventually, it will help 1.6 billion people in remote regions gain Internet connectivity. Despite having a wingspan of over 113 feet — bigger than a Boeing 737 — Aquila uses less… Read More
Since Coinbase was founded in 2012, hundreds if not thousands of Bitcoin competitors (typically referred to as alt-coins) were created. But Coinbase ignored the noise and remained focused on supporting just one currency – Bitcoin. But today that changes, as Coinbase is announcing that they are adding site-wide support for Ethereum, a digital currency with a built in programming… Read More
Shopping online for electronics can be overwhelming. First you have the tech blog reviews, and then the forums, and then the product page itself. Finding the right product, at the right price, can be difficult. That’s where Grover (formerly ByeBuy) comes in. For roughly 5 percent of the retail price, users can rent electronics for a month and try before they buy. Plus, users can extend… Read More
Amazon Prime is known for its 2-day shipping service and other perks, like free movies and TV shows for streaming through Prime Video and unlimited photo storage, among other things. But now you can add another benefit to the growing selection of perks that come with being a Prime customer: student loan discounts. Wells Fargo and Amazon announced this morning plans to offer Amazon Prime… Read More
Nobody wants stitches. They suck when they put them in, they suck when they take them out. They feel antiquated, like some holdover from a medieval medical manual, but they get the job done. A team at Tufts University is working not so much to replace as augment the age-old technology, dragging them kicking and screaming into the 21st century by adding an element of connectivity. In a… Read More
Google has begun to further tap into the power of the crowd in order to improve its Google Maps application, the company announced this morning. This is being done through the introduction of a number of features that will allow users to more easily share location details, as well as confirm edits suggested by others. Many users had already seen these changes rolling out, but today Google… Read More
On Thursday, Reuters reported that Samsung invested $450 million in BYD Company Ltd., a Chinese automaker and rechargeable batteries firm. The Korean smartphone giant clearly isn’t about to let Google, Apple and Tesla have all the automotive fun. Samsung said just last week that it was in negotiations with BYD to help improve the company’s automotive chips. But in a press… Read More
When it comes to healthcare and wellness, the population of people needing support is quite diverse. Not everyone has adequate health insurance, disposable income for a gym membership or education about proper nutrition. Digital health solutions are poised to fill this gap, but too often they seem designed for those in the same socio-economic situation as the designers. Design thinking can help! Read More
BBC does radio well, and now Americans can experience the full effect of the UK broadcaster’s audio content expertise with the iPlayer Radio app for iOS and Android. The app contains all of BBC’s radio feeds, including Radio 1 through 6, as well as the World Service. It also has offline support for BBC podcasts, and curated collections of past content. The app was… Read More
Most probably wouldn’t have anticipated a smartphone case being high on Edward Snowden’s to-do list, but an on-going collaboration with Andrew “Bunnie” Huang detailed today during an event at MIT Media Lab certainly comports with some of the NSA’s whistle blower’s chief concerns. The iPhone peripheral is designed to monitor signals sent to the… Read More
Fresh off its $16 million funding round from earlier this spring, popular airfare prediction app Hopper is moving beyond simply helping travelers figure out when to fly in order to snag the best deal. With the launch of Hopper 3.0, out this morning, the app will now also make personalized recommendations regarding how to adjust your trip plans to save more money, as well as point users to… Read More
Convenient that we just revealed self-taught autonomous car creator Geohot will be at Disrupt: Now you, too, can become a self-driving vehicle engineer, in one year, using Udacity’s newly announced nanodegree (via Recode). Udacity is the online education startup helmed by Sebastian Thrun, a former Google employee who actually helped kick off that company’s self-driving car… Read More
Fast processing, hi-res screens, good cameras. Sure, some are certainly better than others, but even the bad ones are capable of things unthinkable on a mobile device not all that long ago. Heck, at the top of the heap, premium handsets are all starting to look the same.
Over the years, Motorola’s done a commendable job setting itself apart — and from the looks of it, the… Read More
Across 1,000 acres of cotton plants in Arkansas, Tyler McClendon is running an experiment. The seeds are the same, as are his company Oxbow Agriculture’s methods of growing them. But just ahead of planting the cotton seeds in April, Oxbow dusted them with a special microbe not usually found on its cotton plants. Their presence is expected to increase McClendon’s cotton yield by… Read More
