compare-your-gadgets – Page 4 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Scientists stretch metal to make it stronger

You’d think that stretching metal would make it weaker, but just the opposite is true… on a very small scale. Researchers have developed a technique that pulls nanoscopic metal crystals to eliminate defects. By gently and repeatedly stretching the crystal, scientists move “dislocations” (rows of atom-level defects) to free surfaces, where they’re ultimately forced out. The result is a metal that is considerably less likely to crack or otherwise fail over time. You may not see this technique used to improve larger (that is, visible) metal, like what you see in buildings or vehicles. The same trick that improves nanoscale metal tends to make things worse at the macro level. However, it could be very helpful for processors and any other device where even the tiniest breaks could cause big problems. Don’t be surprised if you’re one day using electronics that last for years longer than you’re used to. Source: Carnegie Mellon University , PNAS

Waze’s maps and traffic app gets a cleaner and smarter design

Waze is one of the most popular maps and traffic apps on iOS and Android. For good reason, too: It’s fast, intuitive and, often times, more accurate than the highly rated Google Maps. Today, Waze’s making its mobile application even better, thanks to an overhaul designed to offer a cleaner, prettier user interface and quicker access to useful actions. With a single tap, you can now send directions, location or estimated time of arrival to your contacts. You can also get traffic-based reminders, making it easier to get to any destination on time — as long as your calendar is synced with Waze. Last but not least, this new version of the app “significantly” reduces battery consumption, according to the company; if true, that’ll definitely be appreciated by users who rely on the app for their daily commutes or casual trips. The 4.0 update is already available for iOS , while Android’s expected to get it ” soon .” [Image credits: AFP/Getty Images] Source: Waze

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Waze’s maps and traffic app gets a cleaner and smarter design

Lenovo’s flagship Yoga 900 laptop is an improvement in every way that matters

The Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro was one of our favorite laptops of 2014, but mostly for impractical reasons: At 2.62 pounds and half an inch thick, it was exceptionally thin and light, even for an ultraportable, but it suffered from relatively short battery life and performance that trailed some rivals. Fortunately, the company just announced a new flagship, the Yoga 900, and it appears to improve on its predecessor in every way that matters. For starters, it movies from one of Intel’s low-powered Core M chips to a sixth-gen Core i5 or i7 CPU. Between that and a new option for 16GB of RAM, the performance here should be faster than it was just a year ago. At the same time, Lenovo didn’t have to compromise much on weight: the Yoga 900 is just heftier, at 2.8 pounds and 14.9mm (0.59 inch) thick.Slideshow-330250 That addresses performance. As for battery life, Lenovo bumped up the battery capacity by about 50 percent, promising between eight and nine hours of runtime. Last year’s model lasted around seven and a half hours in our tests, so if the new model can indeed reach nine, that would be a marked improvement. Lenovo also increased the base storage from 128GB to 256GB, and plans to offer a 512GB on the highest-end configuration. This time, too, the Yoga starts with 8GB of RAM, going up to 16GB on the top-tier model. Additionally, Lenovo made a couple tweaks to the hardware, though this was admittedly one of the Yoga 3 Pro’s strong points in the first place. For one, Lenovo ditched last year’s five-row keyboard for a six-row setup, allowing the user to adjust things like brightness from the top row without holding down the Function key. Also, though the”Watchband” hinge in the back looks the same, Lenovo tightened it so that it feels sturdier when you’re flipping the 3, 200 x 1, 800 screen into different usage modes. Indeed, I noticed in my hands-on that the flex I complained about in my review was gone; no more creaking sound when you rotate the display back into tablet mode.Slideshow-330251 The Yoga 900 starts at $1, 200, and is available today at Best Buy and on Lenovo’s website. Colors include gold, silver and “clementine orange, ” and this time, the watchband hinge around back matches the rest of the chassis. Given that this is the direct replacement to one of our favorite laptops from last year, you can bet we intend to review this as soon as we’re able to get our hands on one. Until then, enjoy the hands-on photos.

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Lenovo’s flagship Yoga 900 laptop is an improvement in every way that matters

Xiaomi will let you replace the brains in its new smart TV

Xiaomi is more than just a phone manufacturer — it makes almost every kind of consumer electronics now, including TVs , wearables and GoPro-style action cameras . Today, the company is expanding its living room lineup with a 60-inch 4K TV , which measures 11.6mm at its thinnest point and costs only RMB 4, 999 (roughly $786). That’s a lot of display for your money, although it’s not quite as sleek as the $645 Mi TV 2S Xiaomi announced in July. Plenty of dongles and set-top boxes can transform your old TV into a “smart” one — but what if you could do away with them entirely, and get the same features out of a TV speaker instead? That’s the idea behind Xiaomi’s “Mi TV Bar, ” anyway. To the naked eye it looks like a classic soundbar, but inside there’s a MStar 6A928 processor, 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 8GB of flash storage. Once connected through the Mi Port — which also carries power — you’ll gain access to MIUI TV, Xiaomi’s Android-based smart TV platform. It’s designed to work in conjunction with the Mi TV 3, although you can also buy it separately and hook it up to any TV, monitor or projector. According to Xiaomi, a TV’s motherboard usually accounts for 20 percent of its overall cost — and it’s also a part that customers have to replace every 18 months. By taking the related components out and putting them in a separate device, Xiaomi hopes they’ll be easier to upgrade and replace — meaning you, the consumer, can just focus on buying (and keeping) a stellar display. It’s the same argument behind modern TV set-top boxes, although here you’re also getting a beefy speaker thrown in too. It’ll set you back RMB 999 ($157) on its own — for comparison, the new Apple TV costs $149 in the US, while Amazon’s 4K Fire TV is up for $100. These devices are meant for China, however, and we don’t expect either of them to be sold in the US or Europe anytime soon. Xiaomi might have online accessory stores for both of these markets, but it’s a long way off selling all of its electronic wares to the world. Source: Xiaomi

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Xiaomi will let you replace the brains in its new smart TV

Xiaomi brings Segway to the masses with $315 Ninebot mini

We’d be throwing money at our screen right now, if we could. Chinese company Xiaomi has launched a small Segway device, the Ninebot mini , for a mere $315 (£203), on the same day it revealed a $790, 60-inch 4K TV . If you’ll recall, Xiaomi is a major investor in Ninebot, the China-based company that recently purchased Segway . This is the first device the companies have launched since the acquisition, and while the self-balancing scooter looks a bit like the original , it costs less than a twentieth the price. The performance is nothing to sneeze at, though — it can move at up to 16km/h (10 mph), tackle 15 degree hills and run up to 22 km on a single charge. It’s portable at 12.8 kilograms (28 pounds) and “fits easily in the trunk of your car, ” according to Xiaomi. You can also upgrade the firmware and monitor your speed, traffic data and systems via a smartphone. Sure, Xiaomi’s marketing the Ninebot mini as a “cool youth toy, ” according to the rough translation — but it looks like it could get you around nicely, too. You’ll have to put your checkbook away for now, though. The self-balancing device is coming to China on November 3rd, but there’s no word on Xiaomi’s plan for a wider launch. That said, Ninebot has updated its French website with an offer to be “informed of the availability.” That means it’ll likely be sold in Europe, so it may come to the US after all. We’ve reached out to Xiaomi for more information. Via: Engadget Chinese Source: Xiaomi (translated)

Amazon’s grocery service now requires a $299 yearly membership

Amazon warned late last year that it would eventually require a $299 yearly membership just to use its AmazonFresh grocery delivery service. And like or not, the internet giant is making good on its word: shoppers in New York City, Philadelphia and Seattle (and possibly other cities) are finding out that they need that pricey Prime Fresh subscription before they can go food shopping. The outlay gives you free delivery on all orders over $50, on top of the benefits of a regular Amazon Prime membership, but it’s now considerably more expensive if you only occasionally want groceries shipped to your door. So far, tests that would open the door to standard Prime members (who’d always pay delivery fees) haven’t led to anything concrete. The pricing doesn’t stack up well next to rivals like Instacart, which both costs less up front ($99 per year) and waives the delivery fees at a lower threshold ($35). However, it’s doubtful that Amazon will have a change of heart in the near future. The company is one of the old hands in the online grocery delivery business, and it had a long time to do the math — it’s likely convinced that an all-encompassing $299 plan is more sustainable than a groceries-only option. [Image credit: Andrew Hitchcock, Flickr ] Via: GeekWire Source: AmazonFresh

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Amazon’s grocery service now requires a $299 yearly membership

Facebook explains the tech behind its 360-degree videos

Facebook made 360-degrees videos viewable on the News Feed back in September, but it was apparently no easy feat making it possible. The latest post on its Engineering blog explains the problems they had to deal with, including the difficulty of stitching footage together without producing distorted images. To prevent making videos look like they came out of a warped nightmare, the engineers created a video filter that uses a common CG method called ” cube mapping .” It works by dividing a frame into six squares to form a cube: the top and bottom 25 percent of the frame are compressed into two images, while the middle part that makes up 50 percent of the frame is divided into four. Now, that six-image frame is still flat. So, what the filter does is wrap it around a virtual sphere inside a cube, with each square expanding to fill the cube in every direction you can view: up, down, left, right, front and back. That allows Facebook to render each frame with 25 percent fewer pixels than the original video, making the finished product easier to view from our end. Fewer pixels also mean faster processing times and smaller file sizes, which are essential for the social network to be able to produce 360-degree videos quickly. In fact, its engineers decided to split the job across several powerful machines, which the company can definitely afford , for faster encoding. While these 360-degree videos are perfectly viewable without VR glasses, they indicate the arrival of more content on the website optimized for virtual reality. Mark Zuckerberg revealed earlier this year that the company’s focusing on VR tech, as he believes it’s the “next major computing and communication platform.” Not to mention, FB dropped $2 billion last year to acquire Oculus VR. No doubt he’d want the News Feed to be more immersive, especially since the consumer version of Oculus Rift will be available for purchase in Q1 2016. As for what’s next for the team, Facebook engineers Evgeny Kuzyakov and David Pio had this to say: Of course, hurdles remain. We haven’t cracked automatic detection of 360 video upload yet — right now the false-positive rate inhibits our ability to fully implement this. Facebook’s scale is so large that even a 0.1 percent false-positive rate would mean we would incorrectly declare thousands of regular videos as 360 video. That’s a specific example, but there are a lot more broad, exciting challenges to tackle as well. Higher resolutions, 3D video, and 360 video optimized for virtual reality are all part of the near future of this space. It’s an exciting time to be working on video. We hope you enjoy the experience we built today and look forward to launching more in the future. Star Wars: The Force Awakens Immersive 360 Experience Speed across the Jakku desert from Star Wars: The Force Awakens with this immersive 360 experience created exclusively for Facebook. Posted by Star Wars on Wednesday, September 23, 2015 Source: Facebook Engineering

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Facebook explains the tech behind its 360-degree videos

6 flying cars that let you soar over traffic

By Cat DiStasio The dream of flight has entranced humans for centuries, and modern innovators won’t quit until the flying cars of sci-fi movies are realized. Although today’s traffic jams still happen on the ground level, plenty of engineers have their eyes and minds on the sky. It’s fascinating, if not intoxicating, to dream of the day when we might one day be able to take to the skies in a vehicle of our own, but until then, we can revel in prototypes built by dreamers with the capital to turn their high-flying ideas into a reality. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.Slideshow-329306

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6 flying cars that let you soar over traffic

AT&T NumberSync lets one phone number rule all your connected gadgets

We’re encumbered with more connected silicon than ever before, and having to juggling multiple phone numbers for a phone, a smartwatch and a tablet, well, really sucks. To that end, AT&T just announced NumberSync, a free service that links all your other connected AT&T gizmos (think 3G smartwatch or tablets) to your main phone number. Better yet, incoming calls and text messages will get routed to all those devices at once — none of this hokey call-forwarding nonsense. When you add a NumberSync-enabled device to one of AT&T’s Mobile Share plan buckets, you’ll get the option to turn on NumberSync totally free of charge . AT&T SVP Jeff Bradley says the feature will launch later this month with one supported device from a hush-hush phone maker (our money’s on Samsung), with a few more to follow by the time the holidays roll around. Ultimately, the carrier would like to see its full line of connected devices play nice with NumberSync’s sharing tendencies, but that’s a little easier said than done. And for folks like me, who have no less than five phone numbers running at the same time because of review phones, NumberSync doesn’t really help. It’s all about those other, non-phone connected gadgets AT&T wants to sell you. What AT&T’s basically doing here is taking advantage of the network upgrades it developed while rolling out Voice over LTE to kill a growing consumer headache and give their hardware partners a better shot at selling stuff at the same time. Clever clever. But why the slow rollout, especially if most of the heavy lifting is handled on AT&T’s end? Can’t they just flip the switch for everyone at one? I asked Bradley what the deal was, and it’s because NumberSync isn’t a completely one-sided affair — phone makers have to modify software like the dialer and messaging apps to play nice with AT&T’s network modifications. Thankfully, most of this technical legwork *should* be invisible to you and me — enabling NumberSync on a secondary device like a tablet would require one final new step at the end of the normal setup process. “The good part, ” Bradley pointed out, “is they get better [at integration] once they get the first one under their belt.” One of the few good things about the way our domestic wireless carriers work is that they’re totally fine stealing good ideas — it might give the originator ammunition to fire back, but whatever. In the end, it means benefits eventually flow to all consumers instead of just one subset of customers, and AT&T isn’t the only carrier that’s working on a network infrastructure that makes NumberSync possible. AT&T might have the head start on this, but seriously, the rest of you carriers had better get cracking too.

August unveils a Homekit-enabled lock, keypad and doorbell camera

August Home Inc, makers of the August Smart Lock , announced the forthcoming release of three new products as well as a new service at a press event in San Francisco today. The new product lineup includes a second-generation Smart Lock, a Smart Keypad and a Smart Doorbell Camera. The lock itself offers a number of design improvements over its predecessor including a magnetic faceplate that won’t pop off every time you manually engage the lock as well as a stainless steel indicator on the lock sleeve. Plus, being Homekit-enabled, the new Smart Lock will allow users to issue voice commands through Siri rather than opening the app itself. It’s available for order today and will retail for $230. The older generation locks will be discounted to an even $200. The weather-proofed keypad will make granting temporary access to service providers (say, the delivery guy or your dog walker) much easier. Instead of forcing folks to download the August app just to use a one-time Bluetooth code, users will be able to program a 4 – 6 digit PIN into the keypad themselves and then share the code via text message or what-have-you. And, like the older shared BT codes, these PINs can be set to last for as many hours, days or uses as you’d like. The keypad will retail for $80 when it becomes available in the next few weeks. The Doorbell Cam is also weather-proofed, Wi-Fi enabled and pretty darn clever. It’s equipped with a standard motion detector but will also turn on the camera when it detects movement near the door. So instead of issuing a push notification every time a car drives past your house, the motion detector will also turn on the Wi-Fi camera (which is equipped with human-detection software) to ensure that the movement is actually a person standing on your stoop, not just parking at the curb. The camera will retail for $200. What’s more, the camera integrates with the rest of the August devices allowing you to remotely unlock your door for the delivery guy and record both him entering and exiting the residence. This ensures that he doesn’t swiped stuff from your house while dropping a package in the foyer. Plus, this way, you’ll never miss a delivery. The only drawback is that the camera is powered by your existing doorbell wiring so if you don’t have a doorbell already installed on your door (like me) you are SOL. Finally, August is expanding the scope of its temporary access system to allow services, not just individuals access to your door. “We’re announcing a new service that we call Access, ” August co-founder Jason Johnson told Engadget . “Probably the best way to describe it is, much like, new transportation apps like Uber helps consumers find service providers [in this case, drivers for hire – ed.] are in third party transportation logistics, we’re in third party service logistics. We help consumers find services that have integrated with our platform and we help them connect in a trusted and secure way.” The company announced 12 initial launch partners today including Sears, Postmates, Pro.com, Handy, Fetch, Shyp, BloomNation, Envoy, Rinse, HelloAlfred, Wag!, Pillow, and Doorman. Instead of having to give partial access to a delivery person every single time you order from Postmates, users will be able to grant access to Postmates the company. This may seem like a security issue however it’s not that far off from what many August users already do with trusted service partners like these. Plus, the lock maintains copious logs about who opened which August-locked door with which access code so tracking down the responsible party should your valuable go missing during a delivery will be a piece of cake.

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August unveils a Homekit-enabled lock, keypad and doorbell camera