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BT is looking for the speaking clock's next voice
It's almost baffling to think that despite the many ways we can check the time, especially in our display-saturated era, BT's speaking clock still receives roughly 12 million calls each year. Dial 123 on most phones (at a cost of at least 45p!) and you'll hear the voice of Sara Mendes da Costa telling you what's what "at the third stroke..." Her almost decade-long tenure will come to an end this year, though, as BT has launched a competition to find the speaking clock's next and fifth "permanent" voice.
Time's 'Life VR' will 'showcase the world through virtual reality'
NextVR just announced its virtual reality broadcasting tech will bring live concerts home in a partnership with Live Nation, and today it's announcing a team-up with Time Inc. Life Magazine has historically provided a peek into different areas of the world via photojournalism, and the new Life VR project will offer "immersive, next-level storytelling" from Time Inc. media properties like Time Magazine, People, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly. Word of the launch came at today's NewFronts event in NYC, and the two say it should result in three to five VR events each year, available in the NextVR app.
Terrence Malick's universe documentary reaches IMAX October 7th
Director Terrence Malick's movies frequently cover grand concepts (just ask anyone who saw The Tree of Life), but his latest might just top them all. After a long development process, his all-encompassing documentary Voyage of Time will reach IMAX theaters on October 7th. The studio is shy about Voyage's exact contents, but the flick covers time from the "birth of the universe to its final collapse" -- it doesn't get more comprehensive than that. Brad Pitt is narrating the 40-minute IMAX version, while Cate Blanchett will do the same for the as-yet undated 2-hour movie version.
Time Inc buys... MySpace?
MySpace still exists. Crazy, right? The once monolithic social network had been fading into irrelevancy until it was relaunched with a little help from Justin Timberlake back in 2013. The fresh coat of paint wasn't enough to reinvigorate the platform, however, and it's now being sold as part of its parent company Viant to Time Inc. Yep, that's the same Time Inc that publishes Time, Fortune, Entertainment Weekly and a whole bunch of other magazines. The company described the acquisition as "game changing," most likely in reference to Viant's broader ad-tech business. MySpace does, supposedly, still have a part to play in that offering, but it's notable the site was barely mentioned in the footnote of today's press release.
Pebble Time smartwatch apps are getting voice dictation
If you're a Pebble Time owner and would like to respond to emails or texts without pulling out your phone, we've got good news. Starting today, Android users can employ the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel to reply to those messages using their voice. The feature is scheduled to arrive on the Pebble Time Round on November 8th. What's more, the wearable company has teamed up with Nuance for the voice-driven tools and the duo is releasing a Dictation API for third-party developers to build apps for both iOS and Android. The functionality is limited to emails and text messages for now, but we'll be interested to see if more voice commands arrive in the future.
The surprising joy of Time's virtual reality cover starring Palmer Luckey
It's amazing to see Palmer Luckey -- creator of the Oculus Rift and custodian of the tech industry's current obsession with virtual reality -- on the cover of Time magazine this month. It's another sign that virtual reality has a real shot at entering the mainstream conversation, following previous signals like Facebook buying Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, and Sony, Valve, HTC, Samsung and dozens of other companies revealing their own VR headsets. As amazing as Luckey's Time cover is, it's also really, really odd. Why is he on his tippy-toes? Does he really need to be squatting like that? What are his hands doing? Where's the controller? And why the hell is he in front of a fake beach? The world may never know, but through the power of photo-editing tools, we certainly can imagine. See some of our ideas below and please add your own chops in the comments (feel free to use our cutout).
You can now pre-order the Pebble Time smartwatch for $200
If you missed out on nabbing a Pebble Time smartwatch through the company's Kickstarter campaign, now's your chance to order one. The wearable is available for pre-order starting today for $200 through Best Buy in the US and in Pebble's online store if you live outside of the States. While the company says exact shipping dates and in-store sales are still in the works, Best Buy product pages indicate that your Time should arrive by July 20th -- if you order today, of course. The smartchwatch is available in three colors (black, white and red), and if you're looking for a certain hue, all three options are available in both stores. Still on the fence about splurging for one? Read through our full review for all the detailed info.
Pebble Time's iOS app hasn't been approved by Apple yet (update: it's live!)
The iOS faithful who already received their shiny new Pebble Time smartwatches are likely more than a little disappointed. The wearable is shipping to Kickstarter backers, but there's one big problem: the Pebble Time Watch iOS app hasn't been approved by Apple yet. Despite pushing minor bug fixes for approval on May 22nd, and asking that the folks in Cupertino fast-track the request, the software needed to get the gadget up and running isn't in the App Store. Even though a version of the app was approved on May 18th, it can't be released "due to quirks in the App Store submission process and rules."
Save 'Sports Illustrated' articles anywhere you want, automatically
What was that? You wanted to get some recipes going for news-content automation in addition to push notifications to grab an umbrella for tomorrow? Well, lucky you because Time Inc. announced it's adding IFTTT (If This Then That) support for five of its publications: Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, People, Sports Illustrated, and of course Time. The outfit says it's using in-house tech to make it easier to automate stuff like sending all NFL articles to Pocket so you can read 'em on the subway, for example. Another is getting a weekly movie summary sent straight to your email from Entertainment Weekly. This update benefits both Android and iOS users alike and it's available right this minute. Now its just up to you to see if too many cooks can spoil these recipes.
Tim Cook makes TIME's shortlist for 2014 "Person of the Year"
Apple CEO Tim Cook has made the shortlist for TIME magazine's 2014 Person of the Year, joining seven other candidates from across the social, political, and entertainment sectors of the world. TIME is recognizing Cook for both his business and social achievements this year. Here's its synopsis of why he's Person of the Year material. Tim Cook, who introduced Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple Watch, and Apple Pay this year, and whose decision to come out made him the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were incredible successes for Apple this year, selling millions of units and crushing records the month they were released. In just the first weekend of sales, Apple sold 10 million units between the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. While the Apple Watch wasn't released this year, excitement for the device is high after it was introduced earlier this year. As mentioned in TIME's nomination, Tim Cook became the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company in October. At the time, Cook explained why he had never addressed the subject publicly before, and what prompted the revelation. I don't consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I've benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it's worth the trade-off with my own privacy. Cook joins other public figures including the Ebola caregivers, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Taylor Swift, Russian president Vladimir Putin, the acting president of the Iraqi Kurdish Region Masoud Barzani, and the Ferguson protestors in the nominations. TIME will announce its person of the year on the Today show Wednesday morning.
The Daily Grind: Have you considered how much time you spend gaming?
I typed /played on a Star Wars: The Old Republic alt the other day, and I was surprised to learn that I've spent nearly 26 hours of my life on a throwaway MMO character! Granted, 26 hours out of approximately 700,000 (assuming I live to the ripe old age of 80) isn't very much. But still, it seems like a significant amount of time to devote to disposable entertainment. What about you, Massively readers? Have you done a /played on one of your characters recently? Have you ever stopped to consider how much time you spend gaming? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Researchers have created an oscillator that could silence the mechanical watch
You're running late to a meeting, glaring at your wrist in disbelief that it's fifteen minutes past the hour. Are you really that late? Lifting the watch to your ear you hear the all-too familiar tick of its internal mechanisms. Yes, it works -- and you are indeed late. This scenario could soon be a thing of the past, mostly because the mechanical watches of tomorrow may not tick at all. Researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have created a new, silent oscillator that could potentially be used to make watches with fewer mechanical parts.
Never enough time
One of the absurdities of playing an MMO for any length of time, much less for ten years, is that you see certain cycles repeat again and again. For instance, I've seen players make the same assumptions about personal experiences in the game being universal so many times that I could republish that post every two weeks and it would be relevant. Another way I've seen the same cycle repeat multiple times since the end of Burning Crusade is this - people always complain (myself included) that the expansion is taking too long to get here and we're sick of the old content, and then, as soon as the new expansion is announced, we start panicking (myself included) to get certain things finished that we could have done long, long before the expansion ever got close to done. I mean, I have six characters on various stages of the legendary cloak quest, that I just never bothered to finish up on because reasons. I don't think I can argue I haven't had enough time. It's September. Nine months seems more than adequate to have gotten that done, and yet, nope. Just never bothered to do it. In a way I feel like the extreme length of the content drought lulled me into a false complacency. A year in SoO seemed so monumentally long that it never really sank in that yes, it is long - but it still had an end date.
Chronulator: how to make world time both ugly and confusing
I work with people all over the world and it's useful to know in advance what time it is where they are to schedule voice and video calls. Frankly, it's not that complex. The basic iOS Clock app has that covered. Or you could just ask Siri. And there are an endless number of apps that can help you visualize the time difference. Somehow Chronulator manages to make the task of figuring out the time somewhere else a real trial. This free app requires iOS 6.1 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5. Here's a test: using the main display from the Chronulator app, tell me what time is it in London? Chronulator uses a large dial set on a black background and displays city or location names as some sort of curved flag or banner. Some, but not all of the locations also include a thin line connecting to a 24-hour clock around the dial's face. The banners make it difficult to quickly glance at the display and determine what time it is in various locations. That defeats the purpose of the app. The app is made even more confusing for those of us who do not think in a 24 hour or "military time" clock. That's another conversion you have to do in your head (what time is 1500 hours?). Yes, I can do math, but the point of an app like this is to make it easy to see what time it is somewhere else, not calculate it. For fun, here's the same display with the app's maximum of 7 locations: I still don't know what time it is in London. You can touch this display dial to turn the clock, so to speak, and see what time it will be in Tokyo when it's 2 P.M. where you are. Apparently you will still be unable to tell what time it will be in London. It's also confusion that Zero hour (12 A.M.) is at the bottom of the dial, not the top. I don't find this app to be useful. I find it much easier to just ask Siri, "What time is it in Tokyo?" Frankly, you don't need any 3rd party apps for this. If you want to see the times in multiple world cities just use the built in iOS clock, which you can quickly display by sweeping up from the bottom of the screen. It's a clean, easy to understand display and it's built right in. If you do need a reference display I recommend the very nicely designed Every Time Zone web site. It works great as a web app on your iOS device, too. Also, check out The Time Is Now. Don't bother with Chronulator. There's enough confusion and ugliness in life as it is.
Converter app makes measurement swaps a snap
Perhaps one of the staples of most forms of math and science is learning how to convert units of measurement from one form to another: cups to ounces, inches to yards, and of course mastering the nightmarish differences between US and metric measurements. Besides being one of the few things you learn in math that you actually will use with you beyond the classroom (please tell your teachers!), the idea of value conversion affects very practical facets of life, especially in finances and the culinary arts. And so, it would be natural for the iPhone to have an app for that too, and Converter - Universal Conversions is probably the only one you'll need. Requiring iOS 7.0 or later, the free app is available for iPad and iPhone, but is standardized for iPhone 5. The app's developers have had the good sense to jump on the iOS 7 bandwagon, with their graphics specifically streamlined and optimized for that software update. And the screen is a visual feast -- clean and modern while still being functional. It is neither aesthetic for aesthetic's sake, nor is it boring and unilaterally functional. I say that because I was simply not expecting an app dealing with one of my least-favorite subjects could be so attractive! Users have numerous options from which to choose. There are thirty-two different categories of dimensions, ranging from the standards of area, density and distance to clothing sizes, time zones, and even a calculator. Picking a particular category takes the user to a new screen where the conversions are side-by-side and all that must be done is typing in a numerical value and scrolling through the two lists until one finds the desired units. The in-app keyboard has a button to easily reverse the units, along with a shortcut to the calculator. Separate search fields are available if users wish to search by unit in each list. There is even a history option, organized within each category, to show which conversions have been made for that day. There is also the option to bookmark a particular unit or even an entire dimension. Currencies are kept up-to-the-minute current via a special update key on the in-app keyboard. It would appear this app's designers thought of everything. The shoe size feature is divvied up by stage of life and gender, and users can see what a man's US size 6 shoe is in the UK, Europe, and several other units (and swap between them). With the percentage function, users can find any percentage of a particular numerical value (e.g., 85 of 1000 is 8.5%), or, with the swipe of a finger, move to a screen where they can determine the value of a given percentage (e.g., 49% of 67 is 32.83). With the timezone function, one can display multiple time zones at once and even use a slider to find times at any time of day or night, not just the current time. (I especially appreciated this function, as it is extremely useful to have any possible time at one's fingertips instead of having to work backwards or forwards mentally from the current timezone.) The app also has a function that can determine the hardness of various metals. This was really the only portion of the app that had absolutely no relevance for me, since I have no reason to test the hardness of, say, cartridge brass, and have no idea how to understand the various unit options within any of the categories. But this will certainly prove useful and just as thoroughly outfitted for iPhone users who must employ such measurements in their employment and other endeavors. The presence of such a function did not in any way detract from my overall enjoyment of the app and my positive opinion of it; indeed, I was actually pleased at how extremely thoroughly the app was prepared for virtually every possible measurement need. I wonder if this is the only kind of conversion app even the most casual iPhone user could ever want. The proliferation of iPhone apps for virtually every conceivable interest and need never ceases to fascinate me. Discovering an app that will instantly tell me how many square inches there are in an acre, what time it will be in Denver when I am fast asleep at 3 am EST, or the size shoe I'll need if I ever stumble across a sale in Paris was no different. While some people might think this kind of an app is silly or even frivolous, the Converter app only confirmed to me the inherent genius which is the iPhone. It has potential for creating a more creative, practical, and delightfully aesthetic world.
See what time it is around the world with Time Zones + World Clock Time Converter
Although the included Time app from Apple is useful enough, Time Zones + World Clock Time Converter (free with in-app purchase) goes Apple a few steps better. The attractive GUI features the ability to rename locations, so you can call a place "Mom and Dad". The app displays the time differential in hours for all the locations you enter, and a 'quick check' mode lets you look up a date and time anywhere in the world, converting it to your local time. I could see that being useful for business calls in different time zones. As the day moves along, the colors of the GUI change to reflect the time of day. The app is ad supported, and when you open the app a full page ad comes up that has to be dismissed, which I judge mildly intrusive. A in-app purchase of U.S. $4.99 removes the ads, but I think that is a bit too expensive. I'm getting along with the free version, and if the developer would lower the purchase price to $0.99 I think he would get more takers. Time Zones + World Clock Time Converter is a nicely done app. It's more useful that what Apple provides, and has a nice look and feel. The app requires iOS 7 or later. It seemed to work fine using iOS 8 beta 5, so I don't foresee any issues going forward. Another app with similar features is World Clock Time Zone. It's free too but has a $1.99 in-app purchase which removes the ads. The screens are a little more cluttered, so I prefer Time Zones + World Clock Time Converter for quick ease of use.
The Big Picture: Filming 360-degree video of the Aquarius underwater Reef Base
When Fabien Cousteau embarked on a month-long underwater mission at the Aquarius science lab, Time wanted readers to enjoy as much of the journey from the comfort of their PC as possible. The solution? An interactive 360-degree video. Easy to say, less so to achieve. It took three shoots with strong currents working against them, and a special 360-degree underwater rig to get the footage they needed. But as you'll see, the result is totally worth the effort. [Image: Edward Linsmier / TIME]
Swatch's robot-made wristwear offers classic Swiss time at a tiny price
For many watch lovers, Swiss mechanical movement is the gold standard. However, it's also staggeringly expensive -- it's all too common to spend several hundred (if not several thousand) dollars just to see "Genève" on your wrist. That's what makes the US launch of Swatch's Sistem51 so special. While the watch still behaves like a conventional Swiss automatic with visible mechanisms, it's built using a fully robotic process that gets rid of the elaborate hand-crafting that drives up the price. As a result, you'll only pay $150 for the privilege, or about as much as an ordinary quartz timekeeper.
Scientists simulate time travel using light particles
We may never see practical time travel in our lifetimes, if it's possible at all. However, a team at the University of Queensland has given the Doc Browns of the world a faint glimmer of hope by simulating time travel on a very, very small scale. Their study used individual photons to replicate a quantum particle traveling through a space-time loop (like the one you see above) to arrive where and when it began. Since these particles are inherently uncertain, there wasn't room for the paradoxes that normally thwart this sort of research. The particle couldn't destroy itself before it went on its journey, for example.
Know Your Lore, Tinfoil Hat Edition: What Storms May Come
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. This one isn't your usual Tinfoil Hat edition - it is going to be one of the weirder ones. Why, you may ask? Well, it's because of Heroes of the Storm, the upcoming Blizzard DOTA style game. And specifically, how that game interacts with Warlords of Draenor. You see, I'm starting to believe that our travel to Draenor is only the beginning of a much longer, much stranger trip that will have us dealing with the consequences of actions we undertook long before - a travel through a crisis point of unimaginable, unfathomable extent. The defeat of Deathwing in our world, the breaking of the future we saw in the End Time instance may have had further reaching consequences than we could have guessed. Our choices were simple - allow ourselves to die at the Destroyer's talons, or fight - but we still saw Nozdormu, the Aspect of Time, charged with maintaining time make choices that seem almost unfathomable. He chose to send us back to ultimately steal the Dragon Soul, to help us use it against Deathwing.