Field Notes: Grappling With the Sigma DP1 Quattro's Bizarre Shape
Sigma is known primarily for lenses
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Chromecast's Guest Mode lets anyone commandeer your TV
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/11/chromecast-guest-mode/
With the number of content providers that keep coming on board with Chromecast, the next big step for Google is making the device a bit easier to use. Case in point: Today marks the launch of ultrasonic pairing -- otherwise known as "Guest mode." All you need to do is enable Google's streaming stick to connect to a nearby device and voila: Now anyone can cast to your TV from their Android, no WiFi password needed. For now, it's exclusive to Google's own OS, but there's a reason for that. Chromecast product manager Jagjit Chawla says that with iOS, you can't scan for a list of nearby WiFi access points because there isn't an API that'd allow it. Thus, Guest mode on Apple's mobile software isn't going to happen right away. "Either we can solve these tech problems, or, we can release it on Android first, gather user feedback, improve our back-end and find solutions," he said, with the goal of reaching iOS feature parity sometime later.
Guest mode in and of itself is part of a bigger push to make the device easier to use, in addition to getting more cast-enabled apps on board. "If you have more content and it's easier to get to it to the TV, then the whole ecosystem grows," Chawla says. For example, let's say you just bought a movie from Google Play and want to watch it at a friend's house. Before Guest mode, that'd mean the often cumbersome process of getting your pal's WiFi password and plugging it into your phone, or, having your friend log into your phone with their Google account. Neither are particularly ideal and are a bit of a roadblock to just sitting back and enjoying Gravity.
In the early days, just getting Chromecast out the door and into homes was the big focus. This year saw the device's SDK finalized and it getting baked into Google Play Services -- essentially becoming a finished product. For 2015, Chawla says the idea is to expand on ways that Chromecast becomes even more handy. "We look at how we can make the living room more effective and features that make Cast mode easier to use," he says. "If you look at the evolution of the product, like Backdrops, it isn't a core function, but it makes your TV more useful to you." Just how much further Google takes that and what other additions are in the hopper are anyone's guess at this point.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile, Google
Source: Google Chrome Blog
Lytro's Illum camera is expensive, but less gimmicky than we thought
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/11/irl-lytro-illum-camera/
Back in 2012, Lytro's first camera introduced folks to its light-field imaging tech -- letting users tweak focus, perspective and depth of field after a photo is taken. However, that first-gen camera's peculiar body and low-res output limited its appeal. Now, with the $1,599 Illum, Lytro's back, looking to elevate its unique approach from mere curiosity to a legitimate photographic tool. I spent some time with the beefy new model to see how far the company's come.
First up, here's a quick and very basic primer on Lytro's approach. In traditional photography, you (or your camera) pick a spot to be in focus, compose the frame and snap a shot. Generally speaking, after the shot is taken, whatever was out of focus stays out of focus; there's not much you can do to make a blurry background object tack-sharp after the fact. You're better off just reshooting and adjusting the focal point or depth of field. With Lytro's tech, though, the camera sensor doesn't capture just the one focal plane you selected; it gathers light info from a wide range of potential focal points, allowing you to tweak the depth of field and have more control over what is and isn't sharp in post-processing.
Want a rough, musical analogy? Imagine capturing a photo is like making an audio recording of a piano chord. The traditional method would be to select a set of keys before pressing those specific notes down. Lytro's approach would be like mashing down 20 or so adjacent keys and then letting custom software help you sort out the notes you want later. (I did say it was a rough analogy.)
Hardware
On the hardware side, the new camera looks nothing like its predecessor. Whereas the first-gen device resembled a square, aluminum cigarette, the Illum's designers went for a futuristic, wind-swept SLR aesthetic. From the rubberized control rings to the articulated touchscreen, the Illum feels impressively modern. The menus are finger-friendly and easy to navigate and the onboard Snapdragon 800 does an admirable job keeping up as I swipe from screen to screen.
Still, I have some complaints: The left-side panel covering the SD card and USB 3.0 ports can be tricky to pry open. Viewing angles on the 800 x 480 screen could also be better. And then there's the lens hood, which eschews the traditional bayonet-style attachment common to SLRs. Instead, it uses a sort of compression collar and spring-loaded locking pins to stay in place. On my particular unit, the hood's grip was so secure that removing it required an alarming amount of force. Of note, I did experience a few hard crashes that required removing the battery and resetting, but updating to the most recent firmware seems to have fixed those issues.
Despite its form factor, the Illum certainly isn't as quick as an SLR. Focusing by selecting a point on the live view screen can be sluggish and the 30-250mm (equivalent) f/2.0 lens takes its time going from one focal length extreme to the other. Still, in using the Illum, it sort of feels like it's meant to be more deliberate than traditional camera gear. After all, it does its best work when you put a bit more thought into the composition of each frame -- as opposed to the spray-and-pray approach that digital photography has made so feasible.
Lytro eschews megapixels in rating its sensors, instead opting for "megarays." In the Illum's case, we're dealing with 40 megarays -- four times what the first-gen unit had. Representatives hinted that the company hopes to quadruple resolution with every generation. That's ambitious, certainly, but I'm hoping overall speed is a priority as well.
Software
Speed issues occur elsewhere, unfortunately. While the desktop client and mobile apps are well-polished, the software workflow -- from importing to final rendering -- is a time-consuming affair. Using the included USB 3.0 cable, it took nearly 40 minutes to fully transfer about a hundred photos from the Illum to my desktop PC. Exporting a Vine-length, 1080p clip at the highest settings took 13 minutes on my PC's Core i7-4770. Though a 720p clip at lower-quality settings generally took less than a few seconds.
The desktop client offers the standard image-editing controls like exposure and white balance. Beyond those, you also have access to Lytro-specific tweaks, like choosing a different focal point in the image or adjusting the aperture (and resulting depth of field) from f/1 to f/16. A newly added "Focus Spread" option lets you manually select where the focal points start and stop, allowing you to have the blurry background of, say, an f/2 shot with a foreground that looks like it was shot with a narrower aperture. It's a bit like traditional compositing using multiple exposures at different apertures, except it's all done from a single shot. Export options include short animated movies that showcase the Illum's focus magic (focus pocus?). You can also export images to standard 4-megapixel stills, though the quality there certainly doesn't rival a DSLR of equivalent price.
Both the desktop and mobile apps let you upload images to a personal gallery on Lytro's site. You can also view what others have been doing on the public gallery -- especially handy for inspiration if you're stuck in the "What do I do with this?" phase. One neat trick: Lytro images I viewed on the iPhone app responded to the phone's movement, allowing for parallax-style perspective shifts similar to the Perspective Zoom option for iOS wallpapers.
Overall image quality is much-improved over Lytro's first-gen effort. Still, the Illum performs best in good lighting conditions, and it can't compete with modern DSLRs when photons are scarce (though the built-in hot shoe allows for numerous lighting options). And while still images and short movie clips are more common formats, Lytro's interactive photo viewer remains the best way to show off what the camera can do.
You can check out a gallery of shots from the Illum via Lytro's interactive photo viewer here.
Wrap-up
As an everyday tool, Lytro's second-gen effort is still a bit too cumbersome for me to dedicate space in my main camera bag. As a statement of intent, though, the Illum succeeds in demonstrating Lytro's aim of leapfrogging its past efforts. This is a much more useful photographic tool than its predecessor, but it could certainly benefit from faster performance both before and after a photo is taken. Generation three should be pretty intriguing.
Filed under: Cameras
ASUS ZenWatch review: subtle and stylish, with a few shortcomings
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/11/asus-zenwatch-review/
The war for your wrist isn't going to wind down any time soon: We've already seen the industry's biggest players take a stab (in some cases, multiple ones) at perfecting their wearables. ASUS isn't quite as prominent as other names on that list, but that just makes its $200 ZenWatch all the more interesting The Taiwanese company -- probably best known for its quirky phone-tablet hybrids -- has put together am inaugural smartwatch that's dripping with style. In fact, it's the first smartwatch I've worn that's ever attracted random compliments from passersby (in two countries, no less), not to mention the first one that didn't make me feel like a complete nerd while wearing it. Alas, it takes more than just a sweet face to make a smartwatch worth owning.
Hardware
A sense of style and personality is crucial for wearables; it's the difference between tossing something in the drawer after it's technically obsolete and wearing it anyway just because you like it. The ZenWatch falls squarely into that latter category, at least as far as I'm concerned. ASUS has put together a handsome, understated piece of kit that many people will feel proud wearing. So what's so nice about it? Well, for starters, the simple, curvy chassis is hewn from two layers of stainless steel sandwiching a rosy gold, steel midsection that helps to break up what otherwise would've been a monotonous, 75-gram silver slab. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think the rounded "2.5D" body and two-tone trim were smart decisions -- they make the watch feel understated and classy in a market that all too easily forgets what those words mean. In that respect, the ZenWatch lands somewhere in between the first, utilitarian batch of Android Wear watches and newer, flashier models like the Moto 360 and LG G Watch R. Definitely not a bad niche to camp out in.
You might not agree with ASUS' design choices, but you can't blame the company for shooting for style when it has the same dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 and 512 of RAM that've popped up in nearly every other Android Wear watch to date. There's also 4GB of flash storage under the hood in case you want to listen to music on the run without having to lug around a phone while you're at it, though that's hardly novel either.
My review unit came with a caramel-colored, stitched leather wristband that's both fetching and comfortable, a proposition that's tougher to nail than you might think. I'm no watch maven, but I've come across plenty of pretty leather straps that are too stiff and creaky until they're properly broken in. Not so here. The ZenWatch's band felt supple on my wrist from the get-go. And hey, you can swap out that stock leather band with any other 22mm strap you've got lying around. That's probably for the best too, especially if you're the sort to wear snug shirts: At its biggest, the metallic clasp that lashes one end of the band to the other is even thicker than the watch itself, making it sometimes troublesome to pull a sleeve over. On the plus side, the ZenWatch's body is water-resistant, so it'll survive bathroom splashes and other accidents (just try to keep the water away from all that leather).
Right, that's enough fawning -- let's get to the disappointing stuff. Sitting right up top is the square, 1.63-inch AMOLED screen swathed in a de rigueur panel of Corning's Gorilla Glass 3 to keep it from getting banged up. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of bezel separating the ring of steel trim from the screen itself, and it's probably the most disappointing thing about the ZenWatch's looks. All that unused space makes the screen seem smaller than it actually is, and it doesn't help that the bezel has a slightly textured look as if it's just begging to be noticed. Some better button placement would've helped a lot, too. We'll dig into the software in a bit, but here's a quick spoiler: The folks at ASUS seem to be huge fans of the analog clock aesthetic, so a crown wouldn't look too out of place on the ZenWatch. Frankly, it'd make a much better power button than the one we actually got; it's a tiny little thing that sits flush with the rest of the body, so it's tough to find by feel alone.
Display
Let's just get this out of the way now: The ZenWatch's 1.63-inch AMOLED screen isn't eye-catchingly round like some others out there, but that's no reason to write it off. After all, didn't a wise bard note ages ago that it's hip to be square?
Painfully dated jokes aside, the screen's generally a pleasure to cast your eyes on, even if those peepers have been spoiled by the smartphone the watch is connected to. It runs at 320 x 320 (that's a pixel density of 278 ppi, if you're keeping count), making it marginally crisper than the G Watch R, though Sony's SmartWatch 3 still beats it by a hair. Your eyes almost certainly won't notice a few extra pixels per linear inch, though, so there's not much point in getting too worked up over pixel density -- the ZenWatch's display is more than crisp enough to please all but the most scrutinous screen snobs. Oh, and since you'll be glancing down at an AMOLED screen, the bold colors Google likes are lively and vibrant with deep, sumptuous blacks to match. We're still a ways off from the holy grail -- a digital watch face that's as crisp and substantial as a physical one -- but this generation of wearables hasn't exactly left us wanting either.
Then again, there's the matter of all that stuff around the screen. I've already mentioned the expanses of bezel surrounding the screen, and man -- I can't ever not notice it. Maybe it's because the rest of the watch is so clean, so elegant that the bezel just seems like filler. At the very least, it would've been nice if ASUS fitted an ambient light sensor tucked away in there, but no dice. You'll have to choose from one of five brightness levels manually, a process that takes a total of four to five swipes and taps to get where you'd need to go. My time with the ZenWatch has mostly been spent with screen brightness dialed up halfway and I never had trouble seeing who was furiously texting me, even under the light of the harsh winter sun. By default, you can smack your palm down on the screen to shut it off, though 99 percent of the time I just waited the few seconds for the screen to do it on its own.
In use
Go ahead, pick up any Android Wear watch and start poking around. I'll wait. It won't take you long to realize that beyond all the cosmetic niceties -- the chassis, the bands, the different watch faces -- they're all basically the same. The incessant flow of information in the form of Google Now cards and notifications? Mostly impeccable voice recognition for taking notes, issuing responses and launching apps? Tap-and-swipe-friendly navigation? All of the core bits are here on the ZenWatch and work just the way they always have, so forgive me for not dwelling on them much. It's a testament to Google's grip on the platform, but it puts the onus on smartwatch makers to turn something so uniform and consistent into something special.
In the case of the ZenWatch, most of those special bits lean on a separate Android app called ZenWatch Manager. From there, you can customize the colors of the seven included non-Googly watch faces, and fire up extra features like a proximity warning to alert you when you've wandered away from your phone and the option to mute your phone's ringer by clamping your hand over your watch. Useful, though not exactly thrilling. Just beware the occasionally spotty English that pops up now and again -- whenever I modify a watch face, a dialog box cheerfully confirms that my changes have been saved and says, "You could select the watch face on your watch to use it." I could, but should I?
ASUS also crafted a handful of apps for your phone that hook into the ZenWatch hardware, though you'll probably wonder why anyone thought they needed to exist. Consider Remote Camera for instance, an app that turns your watch into a combination viewfinder/remote shutter. It sounds nifty, but it's mostly silly in practice since you'll rarely find yourself in a situation when it isn't easier to just tap your phone's shutter button instead. Group selfies, maybe? You could feasibly use your phone as some sort of GoPro-esque action camera with the ZenWatch as a second screen, but you'd have to remain within Bluetooth range of the phone the entire time.
Since every wearable is concerned with your state of being, there's a heart rate monitor baked into the metal frame to help you keep tabs on your ticker. Unlike the heart sensors built into watches like the Moto 360, though, you'll have to place two fingers on that stretch of metal to get your reading. Problem is, the results are wildly inconsistent. While lounging in an uncomfortable airplane seat, the ZenWatch thought resting my heart rate leapt from 49 beats per minute to 65 to a whopping 172 within the span of about three minutes. If that was at all accurate, I should've asked a flight attendant to find a doctor on board stat, but I survived that flight just fine, thanks very much. An additional Wellness app for your connected phone keeps tabs on your movement and heart rate data (sketchy though the latter may be) and plots it all on a daily timeline for you to skim.
Curiously, the app also lets you view your heart rate in terms of relaxation in case you didn't know how stressed you were at any given moment. Yeah, really. I'd just as soon stick to the Jawbone Up app that comes preloaded on the watch. It's a worthy supplement to Google's own Fit heath-tracking platform. Over the years, I've burned through no less than three Jawbone Ups/Up24s thanks to seemingly shoddy quality control, a bummer considering Jawbone's mobile app is one of the more pleasant on-the-go fitness apps you'll find; it's heartening to be able to use it again with hardware that I'm not constantly fretting over.
If anything, it's the little disappointments that seem to sting the most. I'd occasionally miss a notification (or even worse, an alarm early in the morning) just because the vibration motor thrumming on my wrist was too weak to catch my attention. Oh, and the accelerometer very rarely had trouble keeping up when I brought the watch up to my face, so I occasionally had to crank my wrist like I was revving a motorcycle to bring up the full display.
Performance and battery life
The ZenWatch has the same innards as several other Android Wear devices, like the G Watch R, right down to the 4GB of internal storage for your tunes. Naturally, that means the ZenWatch performs just as well as the rest of its rivals: Swiping through app and notification cards is usually pretty snappy, though you might spot some slowdown when you're trying to dismiss loads of them one after the other. It's still a little tricky to quantify how well these things perform in the real world, but hey -- even at its slowest, the ZenWatch managed never to be outright irritating. Considering all the bits of code and silicon needed to keep a smartwatch running smoothly, that's still a notable feat.
Now we're getting to the part you're probably most interested in: battery life. I used the ZenWatch every day over the course of two weeks, and those days were spent triaging a pretty steady stream of Hangouts messages, emails and Google Now info blasts. Throw in plenty of wrist-talking and you've got a situation that skews more toward the power-user end of the spectrum. On those heavier days, the watch's 369mAh battery would keep ticking for about 13 or 14 straight hours before giving up the ghost. That's about on par with what people are getting out of a post-update Moto 360, and just a hair better than what we saw with Samsung's Gear Live. Here's the thing, though: Your mileage is almost definitely going to vary from mine, depending on how frenzied your average day is. With any luck, your wrist won't be blowing up constantly, so you can enjoy the simple pleasure of looking at the time for longer.
Speaking of, what happens when you just want to use it as a watch, no smarts involved? Well, with Airplane Mode and the always-on display enabled, the ZenWatch generally stuck around for closer to 20 hours or so before it needed a spin in the awkward, little charging dock that comes with it. Naturally, once you shut off the always-on feature, the watch lasts quite a bit longer; I could usually use the thing for nearly two whole working days.
The competition
The number of Android Wear watches out there is starting to swell, and that leaves us with one weighty question to ponder: How does the $200 ZenWatch compare to everything else on the market? Well, its looks and build quality alone are enough to warrant a purchase over the first-gen Samsung Gear Live and LG G Watch, especially considering the latter still somehow costs an extra $30 over the others. The remainder of the ZenWatch's rivals are a bit more style-conscious, and at that point it all comes down to which approach you prefer.
Both LG's G Watch R and the Moto 360 come with those handsome round displays, and they score points for having heart rate monitors that you don't need to mash your fingers onto. Those little advancements are going to cost you though: The new G Watch R will set you back a cool $299 (honestly a little ludicrous for an Android Wear device), while the Moto 360 is a bit easier on your wallet, at $250. To be honest, I swooned hard when the 360 was first unveiled -- and so did many of our readers -- so it just might be worth the $50 premium. Oh, and if you don't mind its purely utilitarian looks and need something that doubles as a workout partner, Sony's $250 SmartWatch 3 might also be a good fit. We're still waiting to officially put that guy through its paces, though early reviews seem plenty promising.
Wrap-up
There's still no such thing as a perfect Android Wear watch, but ASUS' first offering sadly doesn't do much to stand above the crowd. The ZenWatch's design is the biggest reason to own one -- it's subtly stylish and comfortable in a way that other players' efforts just aren't. All things considered, ASUS has a solid grasp on the smartwatch basics, but I spent my weeks with the thing hoping to be pleasantly surprised by more than how good it looks. Performance is on par with the rest of the pack. Battery life is better than middle of the road, but only just. Needless to say, that pleasant surprise never came.
Thing is, it's not entirely the company's fault: We're still watching Android Wear take its baby steps, and not a single company totally understands what features need to be added to the mix. On the flip side, the ZenWatch will only set you back $200 -- a fair bit less than what you'd pay for the Moto 360 or G Watch R. If you absolutely have to own an Android Wear device, then, you could do a lot worse than this, especially if you're tired of smartwatches that look super-masculine or like sports accoutrements. Sadly, months after Android Wear's launch, that'll still be a big "if" for most of you.
Filed under: Wearables, Mobile, ASUS
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Artificial evolution is now possible in chemicals, but life remains elusive
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/09/artificial-chemical-evolution/
We're still a very long way from creating an evolving lifeform from scratch in a lab. However, the University of Glasgow has managed to foster artificial evolution in chemicals. Their technique uses a 3D printing robot to both create oil droplets and choose the next generation based on desirable properties, like stability. No, the chemicals aren't evolving on their own, but the process works much like natural selection -- after 20 generations, the droplets were noticeably more stable. In the long run, the scientists hope to use this discovery both to study the beginnings of life and maybe, just maybe, create it.
That last part may be particularly daunting. If you need proof, you need only look at another study published this week. Czech researchers say they've created the chemical ingredients for RNA (a simpler cousin to DNA) by blasting clay and a chemical mixture with a laser, recreating the conditions from an asteroid impact and thus the circumstances that might have produced Earth's first organisms. While the findings support beliefs that it's possible to create life through bursts of energy, whether from asteroids or laser beams, it didn't actually generate the RNA itself -- and there weren't many chemicals, either. The basic concept isn't necessarily wrong, but there's clearly more involved than what we've seen so far.
[Image credit: Alamy]
Filed under: Science
Source: University of Glasgow
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
