Tone
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Amazon Halo is a subscription fitness wearable and platform
Amazon's launching its own Fitbit rival, with a screen-free wristband and an app that can do at-home body fat scans.
LG wins $168 million lawsuit against knockoff headphone makers
Last year LG filed a $200 million lawsuit against companies producing counterfeit versions of its wraparound Tone headsets. Now, the presiding judge has spoken. While the amount the company was awarded wasn't as high as it asked for, $168 million for damages plus court costs and interest, isn't anything to sneeze at.
IBM's Watson can sense sadness in your writing
Artificial intelligence won't be truly convincing until it can understand emotions. What good is a robot that can't understand the nuances of what you're really saying? IBM thinks it can help, though. It just gave Watson an upgrade that includes a much-improved Tone Analyzer. The AI now detects a wide range of emotions in your writing, including joy or sadness. If you tell everyone that you're fine when you're really down in the dumps, Watson should pick up on that subtle melancholy. Watson is also better at spotting social tendencies like extroversion, and studies whole sentences (important for context) rather than looking at individual words.
Sonos' limited-edition Play:1 has a design that's meant to blend in
Following its collaboration with Blue Note Records, Sonos has a new pair of limited-edition Play:1 speakers. The Play:1 Tone takes the same great audio quality we've experienced from the gear and drapes it in an all-white or all-black soft-touch shell. It may not be as visually striking as the Blue Note device, but that's kind of the point. It'll certainly blend in a bit better with your existing home furnishings or living room (or multi-room) tech as black and white speaker grills replace the silver/gray on the regular Play:1. Sonos just released an update for the Play:1 too, delivering improved audio that better complements a Sub when they're used in the same setup. There's only about 5,000 of each color, so if you're already planning to nab one, you'll want to act quickly when they hit the Sonos store on July 21st at 10AM CET for folks in Europe and 1PM ET for shoppers in the US and Canada. If you're fast enough claim one, expect to shell out $250 ($280 CAD, €250 and £220) when the time comes.
Chrome add-on shares your web links through sound bursts
If Google has its way, the days of sharing web links through copying text (or bumping devices) will soon be over. The internet giant has released Google Tone, an "experimental" Chrome extension that shares your browser's current web address to other computers through specially crafted sound bursts. So long as the recipients are within microphone range and use Tone, they don't have to lift a finger -- their machines will pick up the audio cue and start surfing. There are a lot of variables that could sour your experience (don't try this in a noisy room, folks), but this could still be ideal if you just have to send cat videos to everyone within earshot.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Grim and gritty vs. light and funny
A few weeks back, I saw a comment from a reader mentioning that the biggest problem with Champions Online was that it felt goofy. And that's true to a point. Certainly it never gets to the extremes of the Silver Age, but there's a definite feel of larger-than-life heroes battling it out without too much concern for plausibility. I'd peg it at late '70s to early '80s in terms of corresponding comic book eras. For some people, this is a problem. And it's one that's worth discussing because each of the major titles has approached its overall theme slightly differently. But all of them have hit what I feel is a very important note insofar as all of them are unabashedly games about superheroes. Superheroes are weirdly inconsistent partly because many of these same heroes have been in stories for nearly a century. It's really hard to reconcile a version of Batman who shoots and kills his foes with the modern incarnation or the modern brooding character with the light-hearted antics of the Silver Age. This is problematic when you have fans of different kinds of Batman all playing DC Universe Online.
Tunable app shows musicians what pitch-perfect means as they play (video)
Musicians who've had some degree of practice will know the lack of sophistication involved in getting an instrument in tune and on time: a light-up tuning box and a swinging metronome may be their only real resources. Affinity Blue knows that mobile apps allow better, and recently unveiled Tunable as a one-stop shop for more exacting performers. The Android and iOS release provides a live graph that shows where the sweet spot is for pitch, and how closely the music has followed along for the past few seconds -- a boon for brass players, vocalists and others who need to sustain a note for more than a moment. There's also a simple tone generator and a customizable metronome that's easily seen from a distance. While it's $1 to try Tunable, that might be a pittance for anyone who'd rather spend time mastering a riff than rehashing the basics.
The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar is serious business
Science fiction. It's a genre all about man's eternal struggle against space aliens, cyborgs, and people with British accents in very large flagships. Or, you know, about things larger than humanity, about exploring the unknown, and about the sense of wonder at exploring strange new frontiers of a world similar to our own but unfamiliar at the same time. It's a chance for us to step beyond the boundaries of our own world and into the great beyond just a few paces at a time. But it's mostly the cyborgs and flagships. That stuff is really cool to watch. WildStar is a science fiction game. But it takes more than a few cues from a show that also had the audacity to lend a lot of the wild west to a deep space setting. It's hard not to pick up on the Firefly vibe from the previews, after all. But it's been very illuminating to see what the designers have to say about influences and the direction they want to take the game's storytelling because it's very different from other science fiction games on the market right now.
LG's first VoLTE Bluetooth headset revealed: Tone + packs 'high-quality' audio codec
LG isn't short of a few Voice over LTE handsets, but this neck-hugging Bluetooth handset promises to offer similarly crisp voice calls, if the feature's available, without the need to fumble around in your pockets . The Tone + headset totes a pair of in-ear buds, is available in both white and black and will even vibrate in Battle Royale terror style when you receive a call. LG has built in a "professional grade audio codec", the aptX, to improve audio performance alongside that VoLTE compatibility. The headphones can event pair to two devices (even two smartphones) and read out your received SMS messages. You can expect the micro-USB rechargeable Tone+ to last around 15 hours of talk-time, or 500 hours on standby. Pricing is yet to be confirmed, but LG promise to launch the device in the US, Korea and China by the end of the month.
WoW Archivist: How each WoW expansion set the tone, part 2
The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold. Previously on WoW Archivist, I discussed how the tone of Warcraft and its associated world changed drastically as time went on and the first expansion pack, The Burning Crusade, was released. Each time World of Warcraft changes its setting, the tone of the game (from the way the environments make the player feel to the actual mechanical development of the product) changes significantly. The tonal change makes WoW a unique specimen in the MMO sphere, allowing it to grow, adapt, and target a vast array of audiences opposed to growing stagnant over time. Incorporating each new tone and focus with each new expansion lets World of Warcraft move forward despite its age. For a long time, we jokingly referred to Wrath of the Lich King as "The Frozen Crusade" because Blizzard took the best parts of The Burning Crusade and began to build the next expansion. It was hard to understand the tone of the newest expansion before you actually played it. In the beginning all we saw was two new ores, 75 more profession skill points, and greens that were going to replace our purples again. For me, the tone looked like it was going to be "here we go again" -- that is, until I first stepped into Northrend.
WoW Archivist: How each WoW expansion set the tone, part one
The WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold? Before we learned about Mists of Pandaria and where we stalwart adventurers would be exploring in the coming months, I wrote a post discussing how an expansion about Pandaria, specifically its title, would change the tone of World of Warcraft. Mists of Pandaria would be the first expansion that does not directly reference or reveal the main villain of the expansion's storyline. Blizzard and the WoW development team has been incredible stewards of tone, from the early days of Warcraft to Cataclysm's world-breaking motif. Tone is one of the most important aspects of the MMO because your game world needs to be compelling enough to call back players at any point. Good MMOs set good tone. Tone has evolved in WoW after each expansion pack, changing considerably each time we swap settings and install the latest content. Alex asked me to write an article that spanned the history of World of Warcraft, and I could think of nothing more dynamic than the tone of the story and how masterfully Blizzard has handled it.
The Guild Counsel: A closer look at leadership style
There's a little saying that dogs and their masters often tend to resemble one another. That can also be true for guilds and their leaders. The atmosphere and feel of a guild, more often than not, is a mirror of the leader's personality. If a guild is running roughshod across the server, laying waste to the countryside, chances are that it's being led by an aggressive, type A personality. Similarly, if there's a guild that charms the pants off the server and is known for its friendly tone, there's a good chance it has a leader with a matching style. But sometimes, a certain leadership tone can work effectively in some ways and fall flat on its face in others. This week in The Guild Counsel, we'll look at three common leadership styles -- the yeller, the motivational speaker, and the den mother -- to see how each works well and how each can fall short of the mark.
Apple submits patent application for magnetic and sound-based peer-to-peer technology
A patent discovered by Patently Apple suggests that Apple may use a magnetic compass and supersonic tone technology to share data between your iPhone and other electronic devices. In this new peer-to-per communication system, a magnetic compass is used to monitor the magnetic signature of a compatible electronic device. Once these devices are close together, they could automatically recognize one another and share information seamlessly without user intervention. In another scenario, a device with a speaker could output an encoded supersonic tone that changes the local magnetic field. This change in the magnetic field can be detected by the receiving device. The supersonic tone is not audible to human ears, but it may drive your dog bonkers. Once the tone is detected by the compass on the portable device, the two devices will open a connection and share contact information, images, media and other files. Similar to a MAC address for a Wi-Fi-enabled device, these signatures may be unique to each device. Once detected, the signatures could be stored and recognized for later use.
ToneCheck's revised email plug-in scans your messages for aggressive, brash overtones
Last year, Lymbix released this so-so software that checked over your typed email messages for signs of "unintended tone." Scumbag. You know, short and explicit phrases that could easily tick somebody off. Jerk. Now, however, they've got a revised version that plays nice with Microsoft's Outlook, and rather than flooding one's screen with idiotic pop-ups that further enhance one's anger, there's a subtle bar that spans 1 to 5 in order to show a user just how hot and bothered the message that they're about to send really is. Cheapskate. Speaking of, it's actually a free download for now, so if you've been sending the wrong message time and time again, you might want to stop making a fool of yourself and hit the source link. Don't even bother thanking us, punk. Ugh.
Nexus S 2.3.3 update adjusts screen's color temperature, we go eyes-on
We've been hearing reports about Nexus S' Android 2.3.3 update adding a yellow tint to the screen and even washing out its colors, but according to Google's Ry Guy, said patch is indeed intended to tweak the display's color temperature. Here's the full quote from Google's support forum: "With your new OTA complete, you may notice a slight difference in the way colors are displayed on your Nexus S. For Nexus S, we have adjusted the color temperature settings to more accurately reflect darker colors at all brightness levels. The Gingerbread UI being darker, we found that the colors were not as accurate when the device was being used at lower brightness levels. For example, some users reported that the initial color temperature was too high leading to some darker greys having a reddish tone; with the new color temperature this is no longer the case." So while this display tweak is well-intentioned, it looks like many commenters on both the forum and XDA-Developers aren't too happy with this. Being curious geeks that we are, we went ahead and manually updated our own Nexus S (and by the way, be sure to match your build number with the appropriate patch). As you can see in our comparison photos (shot with the same manual camera settings and medium screen brightness), the new overall color temperature is no doubt subtly warmer, although the dimmer brightness settings no longer suffer from the aforementioned red tone. Interestingly, we actually approve this change, and the Super AMOLED display certainly doesn't look washed out to us, nor do we see any noisy dithering that some have reported. Surely we can't be alone. Well, there's only one way to help solve this mystery: if you happen to be a fellow Nexus S owner who's applied this update, why not chime in below? [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] %Gallery-117684% %Poll-60799%
Dear Apple: It's (past) time to let us customize our alert tones
Picture this: you're hanging out at a friend's house, and the familiar "doodle-dee!" of the iPhone's Tri-tone alert sound goes off. But four people simultaneously start reaching for their iPhones, because they're all using that sound for SMS/MMS alerts. Or how about this: you're on a bike ride and getting audio feedback on your pace from RunKeeper Pro. As you ride along, you hear the Tri-tone alert go off half a dozen times. Is it someone sending you an important text message, or is it just Twitter spamming you with @reply notifications? If you're using Tri-tone for Messages alerts, there's no way to tell the difference unless you stop pedalling and check. Now imagine that your iPhone is more than 10 feet away from you, or you're in a room where the ambient noise is above whisper level, and you get a new email. How would you know? The New Mail notification sound is so unobtrusive, even with the iPhone's volume maxed out, that it barely ever registers. I don't know about you, but I've encountered all three of these scenarios with distressing frequency. It's well past time that Apple allows us to customize our alert tones.
TUAW's Daily App: Soundrop
Soundrop isn't really a game -- it's more of a musical instrument, although you can play with it for quite a while. The app presents a small hole that constantly drops balls out at a certain rate, while you draw lines on the screen with your finger. Where the balls hit the lines, a tone is sounded, and by positioning the lines in the right places, you can make an interesting sort of music. The app itself calls it "musical geometry," and it is surprisingly fun, even if you aren't a musician. With headphones, you can actually hear the whole thing in stereo, which makes for another fun factor of the experience. The app is a free download, although you only get a demo for free, with the ability to just draw white lines anywhere. Paying US $1.99 opens up the full functionality, and you can change physics, add more spouts, or change the colors of the lines that are drawn, creating different musical noises with each color. It's a good time -- play with the free version to see if it hits you right, and then if you're interested, you can buy in for the two bucks and have the whole app.
EpicWin aims to turn your real-life tasks into a social game
Given the amount of iPhone and iPad apps coming out these days, I'm not all that interested in getting excited about an app before it comes out. There's already plenty of games and apps available now, so worrying about not-yet-released apps isn't all that important. That said, this app called EpicWin is gaining quite a bit of attention -- it's a very originally designed to-do list masquerading as a game that gives points for accomplishing things in real life. If this idea sounds familiar, it's because we've seen it before -- Booyah Society was supposed to be a game that rewarded you for real-life accomplishments, and there have been a few other apps like it poking around. Most of them haven't worked very well -- the issue has always been that there's no validation, no proof that you've done what you said you did in real-life. But EpicWin has some solid developers behind it (the folks that worked on Little Big Planet for the PS3, and MiniSquadron for the iPhone), and a very intriguing art style and tone, so maybe it'll be more intriguing than what we've seen along these lines in the past. EpicWin is "coming soon" to the App Store -- we'll keep an eye out for it, and let you know when it's out.
Video hints at customized iPhone ringtones
Chris Hughes -- the gent who brought us the RoombaWii -- is up to new shenanigans and this time with an iPhone. Apparently using a bit of software that is "... close to being releasable ..." he was able to add the "CTU" ringtone -- yeah, we know, poor choice -- to his iPhone. Of course, this would be dead-easy to dupe -- and we can't verify 100 percent either way -- but his honest demeanor, striking resemblance to Matt Damon, and previous tricks help us to at least hope that there is a shred of truth in this. Check the vid after the break.[Via Wirelessinfo.com]
Emotive's Push Ringer overrides ringtones; pranksters overjoyed
Forget personalized ringtones and ringbacks, the next tween obsession has arrived in the form of Push Ringer, which "enables a caller to push an outgoing ringtone to the receiving phone -- allowing the caller, not the called person -- to set the tone." We're assuming you're either elated or sighing mightily after reading that, but there's 7.7 million reasons why you wish you would've implemented it first. A group of deep-pocketed investors have sunk $7.7 million into Emotive Communications' flagship idea, which temporarily overrides the phone's preset ringer, and moreover, allows the recipient of the surprise sound-byte to "instantly buy a copy" if they so desire. Notably, this very service has already taken the VoIP world over, as Skype users are probably more familiar with the RingJacker concept. Now, who's down for inventing the Push Ringer Reverser to send a "you got punk'd" clip back at the egotistical sender?[Via The Raw Feed]
