Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/11/google-chrome-beta-releaase-32-identify-noisy-tabs/
Metro Modern version looks more similar to the experience you'd get on a Chromebook. Curious? The download page is the third site we link to in our sources list below.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Google
Source: Google (1), (2), (3)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/11/seiki-sears/
It's not quite an impulse buy, but it's getting close. And hey, who's to say we wouldn't swing by the electronics section after picking up a couple of power tools? Just in time for the holidays, Seiki's rolling out a 55-inch 4K set for the nice price of $1,499 -- a followup to the $700 39-incher we saw back in June. And look, the company's even tossing in a USB port and an HDMI 1.4 cable in for good measure. Can't beat that. Interested parties will have pop into a Sears or visit the store's site to take Seiki up on its offer.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/11/google-glass-play-music/
If you thought the latest Glass update was designed solely to help with your schedule and commute, you'd be mistaken. The sneaky devs in Mountain View quietly added support for Google Play Music in the XE11 upgrade, laying the groundwork for a future feature announcement. After sideloading the app onto Glass, a new "listen to" voice command appears on the the hardware's home screen, a feature that Glass head of Marketing Ed Sanders tells USA Today it is "important to have" for the headset. Right on time, the Glass team has posted a new Explorer Story video featuring music producer Young Guru explaining how Glass can help him discover new sounds to sample, showing off playback and the existing Android Sound Search feature.
By uttering the new phrase and speaking the name of an album, artist, playlist or song, the company's guinea pigs can listen to tunes they've uploaded to Google Play Music or those available through All Access, provided they have a subscription. Once a user confirms their choice and the music starts, a card with album art and playback controls (Pause, Play, Previous, Next, Stop, Radio and Volume) is pinned to the wearable's timeline. As you might imagine, the audio quality through the bone conduction speaker isn't spectacular, and while the device's forthcoming earbud may offer some improvement, the foreseeable musical future of Glass Explorers is in mono.
Update: Google has informed USA Today and the New York Times that a set of earbud headphones will be available next month for $85, which you can spot in the video after the break. It also appears that the Google Play Music tricks discovered will be officially unveiled later today, and probably won't require any sideloading shenanigans.
Filed under: Wearables, Google
Source: Phandroid
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/12/lenovo-vibe-z-k910/
Lenovo's been using a lot of MediaTek chipsets for its phones of late, but don't worry, it hasn't forgotten to share some love with Qualcomm. What we have here is the Vibe Z aka K910, which is a Snapdragon 800 cousin of the MT6589T-powered Vibe X, but with the same anti-fingerprint finish on the back. By comparison, the former is bigger and 1mm thicker (at 7.9mm), but it does pack a 5.5-inch full HD IPS display, a dual-SIM tray, a 13-megapixel f/1.8 main camera (with dual-LED flash) and a 5-megapixel wide-angle front imager. For the Sony IMX135-powered main camera, Lenovo says it's capable of shooting up to 10 stills per half second, plus its proprietary low-light algorithm apparently produces notably brighter pictures with effective noise reduction. We'll believe it when we see it.
While no battery size is mentioned just yet, Lenovo claims a lab-tested standby time of 278.5 hours for the WCDMA + GSM model. There will also be a CDMA2000 + GSM model for China Telecom users, as well as an LTE + GSM flavor for the international market. Interestingly, the company is offering an S View Cover-like flip case for the Vibe Z, but it comes with the added trackpad that lets you receive or reject calls in the usual spot, instead of having to poke inside the window. We doubt Samsung is going to be happy about this, though LG, Pantech and some others have borrowed this idea before.
Lenovo China's website says it will soon be taking pre-orders for its latest Android device, but you'll have to stay tuned for the pricing and availability for the rest of the world. %Gallery-slideshow121380%
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Lenovo
Source: Lenovo (Chinese)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/11/google-earth-tour-builder/
Google has used Earth and Maps to tell tales of unfolding tragedies and soldiers fighting for our country. Now its opening up those tools to the public, allowing users to build what they're calling "Tours" through Google Earth. Tour Builder was released in honor of Veterans Day and it allows users to create narratives tied to points on a map. The process is pretty simple: you drop a marker, add some text, photos or videos and you're on your way. As you piece together your tale, dropping pins, you can pull the viewer down into Street View or fly to a particular angle on a 3D landmark.
While the release of Tour Builder was inspired by Google's work on projects like Map The Fallen and VetNet, it obviously has much broader application. Whether it's spicing up your typical vacation slideshow or building a presentation to teach students about the Civil War. Check out the video demo after the break.
Source: Google Lat-Long Blog
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/vowch-2013-11
Jesse Itzler, also sometimes referred to as Jesse Jaymes, left his relatively successful career as a rapper to become an entrepreneur.
During his rap career in the nineties, Itzler had two songs in the Top 100 billboards charts, one of which was called "Shake it Like A White Girl" (see video below). At the age of 22, he wrote and recorded "Go New York, Go" — a song that has since become the official theme song for the New York Knicks basketball team. Itzler also wrote an award-winning song called "I Love This Game" for the NBA.
"When I was 24 I realized I could never be one of the best rappers but I knew I had some of the best ideas," Jesse Itzler tells Business Insider.
After leaving the rap game, Itzler went on to help create Marquis Jet, one of the largest private jet card companies in the world, which eventually sold to Warren Buffett. Itzler was also an early aprtner in Zico Coconut water, which sold to Coca-Cola. He's now married to Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx and the youngest female self-made billionaire.
“Jesse is a cool guy, he knows everybody," Vowch co-founder David Parker tells Business Insider. "Together we came up with the idea of this concept of Vowch.”
At its core, Vowch is a social recommendation platform. With Vowch, you can easily get a snapshot of who someone is based on what they vouch for. Users can vouch for things like movies, TV shows, musicians, hotels, conferences — you name it.
The more you Vowch, the better your chances are for becoming a true "boss." "Bosses"on Vowch have the most street cred in the app. There are fashion bosses, reading bosses, music bosses, and so on.
So how do you become a boss? Well, if I were to Vowch something, and someone revowches it, I'll get points. The more points you get, the closer to a boss you become.
I've been testing out the app for the last week or so ! and I'm pretty into it. Just last week, Apple featured Vowch as one of the best new apps in the U.S..
Vowch is by no means the first startup to try to tackle the recommendation space. But given the team behind the app, Vowch may end up faring better than some of its predecessors.
Be sure to check out Itzler laying raps on tracks:
Now, check out some Vowch screenshots below:
SEE ALSO: SA 100 2013: The Coolest People In New York Tech
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/10/rachel-haot/
"The foundation of New York City's digital strategy is access," explains Rachel Haot, fresh off her Expand press day opening remarks. "We define that as access for all New Yorkers, regardless of income level, regardless of the resources you may have in your household. Libraries play a very vital role in this; schools do as well, [along with] recreation centers run by the city's parks department -- and we've even invested in senior centers, where we are connecting more seniors with the internet and providing training." Haot's served as New York's chief digital offers for three years or so, tasked with the seemingly overwhelming goal of making technology available to the citizens of the largest city in the country.
The question of income gaps plays a key role in the city's continued push to bring high-tech jobs to New York as the cost of living threatens to push out potential startups. Haot counters that the city continues to offer affordable spaces in the five boroughs. She also offers up a list of perks the Big Apple provides over those areas we've come to know as tech hubs. "New York City is a completely unique destination that presents completely unique opportunities for any entrepreneur," she adds. "One of the reasons we hear people come here is, first and foremost, diversity. You look at a lot of other tech hubs and it's a one-horse town. It ends up being an echo chamber, or a bit of a bubble. In New York City, you're always kept humble, because there are so many industries, and they're always intersecting. I think that provides and enables enormous creativity and collaboration."
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/hidden-features-of-google-2013-11
Google is great. That's not a secret. But the search giant can do more than you think.
For example, did you know you could make your Google Translator beatbox in German? How about give you an easier way to track packages?
These totally cool hidden features of Google just make us love it more.
Just go to www.google.com/Mars
Source: http://gizmodo.com/these-fantastic-funnels-filter-faucets-as-fast-as-they-1461040297
Whirlpool is tackling the issue of wasteful plastic water bottles with a new product that finally lives up to the company's namesake. The EveryDrop looks a giant plastic drip, but when turned upside down it works as a funnel that filters water from a faucet as fast as it flows—so there's no waiting hours for thousands of methodical drips to fall.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/watch-these-crazy-animations-of-how-three-cities-commut-1460638525
New York City mostly rides transit, Los Angeles loves its cars, and San Francisco has a dedicated population of bike commuters. UC Berkeley planning Ph.D. student Fletcher Foti recently built a brilliant data visualization that brings these facts to life by animating commuting patterns for the Bay Area, L.A., and NYC.
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/littlebits-and-korg-synthkit/
Here's a pro tip: if you want to make this editor smile, hand me something that makes a bunch of noise. There are few things more satisfying than pressing some buttons and turning a few knobs to generate an avalanche of digital sound. And if what makes that noise is something you built yourself, all the better. LittleBits has been encouraging kids (and childish adults) to build their own electronic doodads and projects for some time now. And some of those creations even had the capability to make noise. But, the new Synth Kit released in collaboration with Korg is dedicated to DIY audio cacophony. Inside the gold and black packaging is a pile of snap-together components that will let you build the analog synthesizer of your dreams... so long as your dreams is a simplified MS-20. The box holds a pair of oscillators, envelope and filter units, a keyboard, a four-step sequencer, a random noise generator, a two-channel mixer (and a splitter so you can create two independent audio sources), a delay effect and, of course, a power source and a speaker. It's more or less a deconstructed version of Korg's clasic MS-20. Just like previous Little Bits kits, all the pieces are color coded: blue for power, pink for input, green for output and orange for wires. Each component has magnets on either side that snap together only in one direction, preventing you from assembling a circuit in the wrong way and potentially damaging the components.
While the number of parts is fairly limited, they're all pretty flexible. The keyboard, for instance has two modes (hold and press), as does the noise generator and the sequencer. Even the oscillators can be switched between square and saw waves. That means those 12 bits in the box can actually generate quite a wide variety of sounds, from deep bass rattles and percussive ticks to swooping synth dives and arpeggiated leads. It's quite simple to get started designing your own instruments, and you'll probably even learn a bit about synthesizer design along the way. Of course, you can combine it with other LittleBits kits and add light sensors or displays to your homebrewed synth.
Founder Ayah Bdeir likes to claim that it's the easiest to use modular synthesizer with this sort of power. And she's probably right. While nobody is going to mistake you for the next Daft Punk, you can still create an impressive set of sounds. Some of which might even prove usable in actual music.
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Filed under: Misc
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/ioximeter-pulse-monitor-insert-coin/
Connecting health-monitoring hardware to smartphones is a no-brainer. The phone does the heavy processing, offers up power and screen, and thus makes the hardware cheaper and more importantly , smaller. However, you still need to power the thing, which can be tough when you're trying to gauge vitals overnight or longer. Insert Coin competitor iOximeter reckons it's solved that issue by taking what it needs, power-wise, from your headphone socket. Using a special pulse sensor (that it already owns the intellectual property rights for), iOximeter drops the power requirements down to under 8mA, which means it frees up the typical smartphone battery port (micro-USB or Lightning; it's iOS- and Android-compatible) to continue charging.
"Because we can add more features through the smartphone app, unlike some relationships, it's going to get even better over time."
The sensor we toyed with at Expand was accurate to within 2 BPM at resting heart rates (it gets even better when you're riled), while it can also count the level of blood oxidation -- thus the name. That isn't where the capabilities stop however, and future development focuses on both respiration rate (intake per minute) and heart-rate deviation, which sounds like a scary metric that would deserve some monitoring. "Because we can add more features through the smartphone app, unlike some relationships it's going to get even better over time", said iOximeter's Yale Zhang, with a sigh. Aside from health business applications, where a cheap long-term monitor could make remote care a whole lot more feasible, the team has already seen interest from, oddly, yoga and meditation groups. These people are apparently looking to log and monitor exactly how relaxed (precisely!) they're getting during their mantras. No price has been set yet, although the team is promising it'd be an accessible one. We'll update when we get a price tag.%Gallery-slideshow119586%
Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.
Filed under: Cellphones
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/blinkscan-scanner-insert-coin/
Your scanner is stupid. You might not know that, but it is. Thankfully, Expand NY Insert Coin semi-finalist BlinkScan is here to give you what you never knew you needed. It's a device that scans images, documents or even objects like many other scanners out there, but unlike those dumb machines, BlinkScan tailors its output. Instead of producing a single image with everything lumped together, it crops out the individual items scanned (so that the background is completely eliminated), straightens the resulting images and exports them as separate files to your photo editing software of choice -- all in about three seconds. BlinkScan also delivers super-high-quality pictures thanks to its unique image-capture method, which the company calls "perfect color capture." To get such fidelity, the device takes three separate 10-megapixel monochromatic images (red, blue and green) and combines them into a 36-bit, 30-megapixel image. %Gallery-slideshow119582%
Filed under: Misc
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/08/simple-tv-second-gen-hands-on/
Simple.TV gave us a peek at its second-generation streaming DVR back in September, and today it's committing to a US launch. The dual-tuner set-top should arrive stateside on December 12th, when it will sell for $250 in a basic kit with both recording and live streaming to local devices. Matching new software, also available for the first-gen device, delivers TV to native Android and iOS apps alongside previous support for browsers and Roku players. Avid viewers can spring for a premium service that offers remote viewing, automatic recording and downloading either as an after-the-fact subscription ($60 per year, $160 lifetime) or bundled with the hardware ($300 per year, $400 lifetime). We gave the media hub a spin at Expand here in New York -- read on for our impressions of the pre-release gear. %Gallery-slideshow119615%
Filed under: HD
Source: Simple.TV
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/09/intel-acquires-kno/
Intel has long been cozy with the e-textbook developers at Kno, going so far as to license their hardware and preload their software on its own tablets. The chip giant clearly wants to take that relationship further, however, as it just acquired Kno outright. While Intel isn't providing the terms of the deal, it's not shy about revealing the motivations -- it's determined to grow its educational content library, which now includes over 225,000 titles thanks to the Kno deal. Not everyone is happy with the new alliance, though. TechCrunch has discovered that Kno founder Osman Rashid turned down a chance to join Intel after disagreeing with the bigger corporation's focus on international rollouts over concentrating on North America. While that's a significant loss, we doubt that Intel is complaining much. The buyout still gives it a rich educational content ecosystem that could help fend off rivals like Amazon, which recently bought TenMarks to bolster its own schoolroom cred.
Filed under: Tablets, Software, Intel
Source: Intel Newsroom, TechCrunch, CSR@Intel
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