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GoPro unveils Twitch-like streaming service for thrill-seekers
GoPro.com will soon be a destination for live action video streams.
Amazon is undercutting Facebook's own Portal sale
Ahead of Valentine's Day, Facebook is discounting its Portal products by $30 each -- and it's added $50 discounts for bulk-buying into the mix, too. While this isn't quite as good a deal as Facebook's previous Black Friday offering, the 'buy one, get one reduced for someone close to you' deal could well be appealing. Not one to be outdone, though, Amazon has gone one better and is right now not only matching these discounts, but beating them on most of the Portal models and including the $50 bulk-buy discount to boot.
Pocket Casts will give existing desktop customers Plus for life
Earlier this week the popular podcast app Pocket Casts announced some big changes. In addition to making the mobile app free, Pocket Casts unveiled a new paid subscription tier, Pocket Casts Plus. It said customers who previously paid for desktop access (a one-time fee of $9) would be given three years of access to the new Plus version. That didn't go over well with existing customers, so Pocket Casts has backtracked. Now, the company says anyone who paid for the desktop version will be given lifetime access to the new Plus tier.
GoPro Plus now offers unlimited uncompressed video storage
When GoPro launched Plus -- it's subscription service for cloud storage -- it was a modest offering. For $5 a month, you could store a bunch of your photos and videos online, access a library of music to use in your edits, and a get a 20 percent discount on accessories. Early last year, the company added a new benefit -- a no questions asked camera replacement scheme and bumped photo storage to unlimited. Today, the company extends that unlimited feature to video, and importantly at native resolution (i.e. 4K videos won't be compressed at all).
Goodbye Google+, you beautiful, squandered opportunity
When Google+ launched in 2011, people were already fed up with Facebook -- and Google was still cool. After Plus' closed invite garnered significant consumer desire, everyone's hopeful "Facebook killer" nabbed a sweet 300 million active monthly users by 2013 (by comparison, Twitter had 230 million). No one could have predicted that on a random Monday seven years later, the tech giant would hang its head, admit a middling API-access privacy hole and the existence of tumbleweeds on the service, and then announce it was shuttering Plus to the public.
Samsung's ISOCELL Plus camera sensor upgrades low light performance
While Samsung may be playing catch up in some fields, it continues to charge ahead with its smartphone camera tech. Today it's unveiled its new ISOCELL Plus technology, which means sharper and more accurate photos even in challenging light environments.
GoPro's Plus service will replace your busted camera
GoPro has amped up its Plus subscription in a big way. The offering, which was mostly a back-up service for your photos and videos, now comes with device replacement for the same price. GoPro says if you break your camera, it'll replace it for you with no questions asked -- so long as you only go in twice per 12 months of subscription. If you break your GoPro a third time within a year, you're on your own... and you probably need to think of a way to keep your camera safer when you go on your wild adventures.
Leaked HTC U11 Plus video reveals a bigger battery and screen
A hands-on video featuring the upcoming HTC U11 Plus has been leaked to Facebook, showing that the flagship phone will be available in a translucent option, as well as black and silver. Evan Bass, who's known for leaking tech specs, also confirmed the translucent option in a tweet. The video has since been taken down, but the inevitable copies still available online show the U11 Plus will have a six-inch display, 4,000 mAh battery and 128GB of storage (other storage options, if any, are yet to be confirmed). A closer look also reveals a coil beneath the shell, which could indicate wireless charging capabilities.
'Timberscrapers' could soon dominate urban skylines
They just don't make 'em like the Sakyamuni Pagoda anymore. Built from wood in 1056 in the Shanxi province of China, the building has remained standing to this day, despite seven earthquakes rattling the region within its first 50 years of existence. Since then, it's held up against a slew of seismic events, even when more-modern structures have failed. Now, thanks to recent advancements in timber technology, modern architects are rediscovering the benefits of working with wood.
Teaming humans with robotic AI will remake modern manufacturing
Your public school education exists, in large part, thanks to the Second Industrial Revolution. When the revolution took hold of America in the 1870s, 30 years after the end of the first, half of the US population still spent their days toiling in fields. Education was typically voluntary, assuming the family was wealthy enough to afford tutors or school fees, and usually reserved for boys. With the development of commercial fertilizer and the internal combustion engine, productivity exploded while the number of farmers dropped to less than two percent of the population. It lessened the demand for child labor which in turn led to increased support for compulsory education for both sexes.
Robot bears are coming for your grandparents
Not content to simply blame millennials for killing practically everything, baby boomers are now expecting the younger generations to care for them in their agedness. The nerve. Indeed, some 13 percent of the American population is now 65 or older, though a recent report from the Pew Research Center suggests that figure will nearly double by midcentury. Given that the current annual median price of a nursing-home room is around $92,000 (and rising), and because we can't just up and dump a quarter of America at the Springfield Retirement Castle, robots will have to start lending elderly folks a hand. Because if there's anybody who inherently trusts new and confusing technologies, it's the olds.
We're not getting Luke Skywalker's prosthetics any time soon
In 1937, robot hobbyist "Bill" Griffith P. Taylor of Toronto invented the world's first industrial robot. It was a crude machine, dubbed the Robot Gargantua (PDF, Pg 172) by its creator. The crane-like device was powered by a single electric motor and controlled via punched paper tape, which threw a series of switches controlling each of the machine's five axes of movement. Still, it could stack wooden blocks in preprogrammed patterns, an accomplishment that Meccano Magazine, an English monthly hobby magazine from the era, hailed as "a Wells-ian vision of 'Things to Come' in which human labor will not be necessary in building up the creations of architects and engineers."
LinkedIn tries to be your tech news source with 'Trending Storylines'
Most every social network offers a news aggregation service to help keep its users abreast of what's happening in the world around them. However, many of these feeds (looking at you Twitter and Facebook) tend to devolve into echo chambers as users both consciously and unconsciously filter out dissenting opinions. On Wednesday, LinkedIn announced that it is debuting its own aggregation service, dubbed "Trending Storylines", which aims to help members of its community break out of their respective bubbles and find more diverse news sources.
GoPro's Hero5 Black and Session bring overdue improvements
Recently, GoPro unveiled an entirely new product lineup. Not just the new Hero5 Black ($399) and Hero5 Session ($299), but also the Karma drone, a surprise hand-held gimbal -- known as the Karma Grip -- and a brand new cloud service called GoPro Plus. While it's going to be another week or so before we can get our hands on the Karma drone, I had a chance to spend some time with the new flagship Hero5 Black and its sidekick, the Hero5 Session. Both come with some exciting, long-awaited new features, which I'll lay out in detail below. With many of the upgrades addressing common pain points, it's clear that this year, GoPro was mainly focused on polishing the user experience.
The Pax Era aims to be the Keurig of vaporizers
Out of all the ways to ingest THC, oil concentrates are far and away the messiest, stickiest and most irritating method. Unlike shatter, crumble or even wax, all of which maintain their shape and texture to some degree, oils have a knack for getting everywhere. It's especially tricky when you're trying to dribble minuscule amounts of oil into teensy Smurf-size cartridges used by mixed-media vapes (I'm looking at you, DaVinci Ascent). The new Era pen vape from Pax, however, solves that issue by taking a page out of the Keurig playbook and operating on a pod-based system.
I found a secondhand telescope, now what?
It's amazing what you can find on the streets of San Francisco. No, the actual city streets, not the '70s cop drama starring Michael Douglas. I recently came across a scavenger's treasure in the city's Sunset neighborhood: a fully operational Meade NG-70 Altazimuth Refractor Telescope. It was just sitting there on the curb with a handwritten note simply stating "Free" taped to its barrel. Now, I'll tell you, I'm not much of an astronomer -- inasmuch as I have never used (even touched) a telescope or ever had much interest in learning. The idea of standing around outside in the dark, fiddling with dials always seemed too much hassle to make very distant sparkly objects to appear slightly larger. But what I am also not is a sucker -- and a free telescope is a free telescope -- so into my car's trunk it went.
Philips improves upon its color-changing lightstrips
The idea behind Philips' Hue Lightstrips was pretty neat -- a line of LEDs that change color according to your whims -- but they suffered in the execution. After all, the hardware couldn't offer white light, so you were forced to shut them down if you weren't in the mood for a splash of color. Then there was the fact that the strips were only two meters long, making it pricey to run them down your dramatic entrance hall or under your kitchen cabinets. That's why the firm has spent the last year working on an upgrade, so please be upstanding for the new Philips Hue Lightstrip... Plus.
Google+ adds page view counts to user profiles
Earlier this month, we learned that Twitter's considering introducing view counts to individual tweets, and it looks like Google+ just flipped the switch on a similar initiative. Follower counts are now joined by the total number of page clicks, which includes the sum of your profile, post and picture views since October 2012. Some profiles have already begun showing the count by default, but you may need to check a box in your profile settings before it appears for you. Similarly, you can disable the feature by unchecking the box.
PS Plus weekly: Remember Me, Street Fighter X Tekken free
PlayStation Plus members, don't forget: Remember Me for PS3 and Street Fighter X Tekken for PS Vita will be free to download to your Instant Game Collection starting tomorrow. This week also marks the release of Gunslugs, which will be discounted to $1.99 until February 25. Lastly, if you need some brainteasers in a nice little to-go package, this week is your last chance to download Smart As... to your Vita for free. [Image: Sony]
BioShock Infinite free for PS Plus members tomorrow
BioShock Infinite will be available to download on PS3 tomorrow, and it'll be completely free for PS Plus members as part of the Instant Game Collection. That's a hefty freebie. The 14 for 14 Vita and PS3 sale is also happening now, with games up to 75 percent off for Plus members, including Crysis 3 for $5, Lone Survivor: The Director's Cut (a Cross Buy title) for $5.25, Puppeteer for $7 and The Wolf Among Us season pass for $13.50.
