Category Archives: Tech

Samsung’s gorgeous new Galaxy S5 UI may offer Google Now, Metro features

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By Chris Smith

Often criticized for its clunky TouchWiz user interface built on top of Android, Samsung may be working on a completely new UI for the Galaxy S5 and other upcoming phones, a fresh leak originating from @evleaks shows. The same source has recently provided similar images that suggest the South Korean Android device maker may be redesigning its smartphone UI, although the company is yet to make them official. The new leak seems to suggest that the new UI will combine a few elements from Google’s Google Now search-based virtual assistant with elements from Microsoft’s Metro UI found on top of Windows Phone devices.

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CONFIRMED: Man Interrogated By FBI For Wearing Prescription Google Glass At The Movies (GOOG)

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by Jim Edwards

A man who went to the movies with his wife in Columbus, Ohio, was subjected to a terrifying hour-long interrogation by the FBI because employees at the AMC theater saw him wearing Google Glass.

They apparently thought he might be illegally taping the film and didn’t believe him when he tried to explain that the glasses were prescription, and weren’t even switched on.

The incident ought to make Glass wearers think twice about when and where they don their smart spectacles. (It also shows how feeble law enforcement’s knowledge of the new device is, too — it took them an hour before they figured out how to download the device’s content.)

AMC confirmed the incident in a statement to Business Insider:

Movie theft is something we take very seriously, and our theater managers contact the Motion Picture Association of America anytime it’s suspected that someone may be illegally recording content on screen. While we’re huge fans of technology and innovation, wearing a device that has the capability to record video is not appropriate at the movie theatre.

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Wearables are white-hot at CES 2014. So they’re doomed, right?

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A look back at past hot trends at the consumer electronics mega-event reveals an awful lot of mega-fails.

by Roger Cheng

LAS VEGAS — This year’s Consumer Electronics Show will see dozens upon dozens of wearable technology products vie to become this year’s breakout device.

And most — if not all — will be forgotten in the coming months.

That’s because when all the booths are taken down, the convention lights are dimmed, and the last of the tech executives board their flights, we all finally escape the reality-distortion field that is Las Vegas and CES.

A look back at past confabs shows that the hot item at CES is a leading indicator of failure for the rest of that year. Remember how 3D televisions were supposed to be all the rage? Or when ultrabooks were a thing? Not only does garnering hype at CES not guarantee success, it’s become almost an omen of ill fortune.

Read more: http://www.cnet.com/8301-35299_1-57616550/wearables-are-white-hot-at-ces-2014-so-theyre-doomed-right/#ixzz2pWV0q9L8

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Analyst predicts Apple will transform notebook market with 12-inch hybrid ‘iPad Pro’ this fall

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By Neil Hughes

As part of a series of predictions for 2014, Evercore Partners analyst Patrick Wang believes Apple will show a renewed focus on the enterprise market with a new 12-inch iPad hybrid, which he believes would fundamentally change the notebook PC landscape.

Wang made his prediction in a note to investors this week, a copy of which was provided to AppleInsider. He forecasts that a new iPad model with a larger 12-inch display, powered by an Apple-built next-generation “A8” processor will launch in the fall of 2014.

The analyst sees such a device shaking up the traditional, established notebook market — an industry that Apple rival Microsoft has been trying, but thus far largely failing, to overhaul with its own hybrid laptop-tablet devices running the Windows 8 platform.

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Apple and Samsung Could Be Dethroned by Asus’ Radical New Device

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By Sam Mattera

When it comes to the U.S. smartphone market, it’s mostly a two-horse race. Cumulatively, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) and Samsung (NASDAQOTH: SSNLF ) sell two out of every three smartphones, with smaller manufacturers such as HTC and Motorola fighting for what’s left.

But that could change next year, when Asus brings its PadFone to the United States. The device, powered by Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Android, is particularly revolutionary and has the potential to disrupt the mobile market.

Asus’ PadFone combines a tablet with a smartphone
The term “phablet” has arisen to define phones such as Samsung’s Galaxy Note III — too small to be a tablet, yet too large to be a smartphone: a hybrid of form factors. But Asus’ PadFone might be the ultimate phablet: Buyers get both a tablet and smartphone, but none of the trade-offs that traditional phablets entail.

Normally, the PadFone Infinity is a standard, 5-inch smartphone running Google’s Android. It has a high-end processor and 13-megapixel camera. In other words, it’s largely indistinguishable from many other Android smartphones. But it has one huge advantage over its competitors — a proprietary dock.

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Delivery drones are coming: Jeff Bezos promises half-hour shipping with Amazon Prime Air

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By David Pierce

Jeff Bezos is nothing if not a showman. Amazon’s CEO loves a good reveal, and took the opportunity afforded by a 60 Minutes segment to show off his company’s latest creation: drones that can deliver packages up to five pounds, to your house in less than half an hour. They’re technically octocopters, as part of a program called “Amazon Prime Air.” A drone sits at the end of a conveyer belt, waiting to pick up a package — Bezos says 86 percent of Amazon’s packages are under five pounds — and can carry them up to ten miles from the fulfillment center. As soon as Amazon can work out the regulations and figure out how to prevent your packages from being dropped on your head from above, Bezos promised, there will be a fleet of shipping drones taking the sky.

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Winamp Media Player Shutting Down After 15 Years

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By Angela Moscaritolo

After 15 years on the Internet, the once-ubiquitous digital audio player Winamp will soon be just a memory.

According to a brief note on the Winamp website, the formerly uber-popular media player will no longer be available for download after Dec. 20, 2013. This includes Winamp.com and associated Web services.

You probably remember Winamp from the late 90s and early 2000’s when it was one of the most widely used Internet services for listening to music and radio streams. Winamp eventually lost popularity as services like iTunes and Windows Media Player hit the Web, but it’ll always hold a special place in the hearts of many.


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Sony PlayStation 4 review: Welcome to the next generation

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By Sean Hollister, Ross Miller, and David Pierce

Seven years is a technological eternity. Yet the PlayStation 3 has sold well for that long, ever since DJ Fatman Scoop and Ludacris hosted its blowout launch event in New York City in 2006. At launch, the PlayStation 3 was big, heavy, and expensive — it took nearly two revisions and almost a dozen SKUs of PS3 to get Sony to 2013. The console now starts under $200, the controller rumbles, Blu-ray is the dominant physical disc format, backwards compatibility is a moot point, and there’s a large back catalog of titles both physical and digital. PlayStation Move exists now.

But even as the current generation continues to adapt and evolve, Sony has decided it’s time to start anew. Time to do something fresh, to create the console that will sate gamers for seven more years. Sony’s new PlayStation 4 reflects the company’s guess about the future of video games, and displays the many lessons Sony’s learned over the life of the PS3. It’s built a different kind of console for a different sort of purpose as it looks to 2014 and 2021 to see what we’ll want to buy.

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Snapchat’s Teen Appeal Is Also Its Achilles Heel

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By Robert Hof

You can argue until you’re blue in the face whether or not Snapchat is worth the $3 billion Facebook FB +4.52% apparently offered to buy it. But there’s little argument over why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was willing to pay that much for the disappearing-photo-sharing service: It’s attracting the teens that Facebook is losing.

At least, that’s the conventional wisdom. But here’s the problem: If there’s anything more ephemeral than Snapchat snaps, it’s teen attention spans. Today, Snapchat looks unbeatable, at least for what still seems like a rather narrow slice of social activity. But there’s no reason to think that teens will stick with most any app or service for long–all the less so when it seems that there’s a new hot social networking app every month or so these days.

So I’m betting Zuckerberg is a little smarter than that. What he really wants more than just a surge of new teen blood–as he also showed with his $1 billion purchase of Instagram–is to make sure that Facebook owns the most popular and compelling kinds of social networking as they develop. Snapchat clearly appeals to those who want to exchange bits of themselves in a more ephemeral way than they do on Facebook.

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Apple iPad Mini with Retina display rolled out

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By Rex Crum

Apple Inc. completed rolling out its line of re-vamped iPads just in time for the Christmas and holiday season as the company put the new iPad Mini with Retina display on sale Tuesday morning.

The new iPad mini starts at $399 for a model with 16 gigabytes of storage, and goes up to $699 for the 126GB model.

Add another $130 for one that can access cellular data networks in addition to being WiFi capable. The newest slimmed-down iPad model has a 7.9-inch screen, and has two WiFi antennas installed to support stronger performance over WiFi networks.

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