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Wednesday 13 March 2019
Microsoft's AI app for the blind helps you explore photos with touch
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Sony expands PlayStation Now to seven more European countries
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Microsoft's phone-screen mirroring beta hits Windows 10 this week
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Senate bill proposes stricter privacy controls for children
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The GravaStar is a Bluetooth speaker with robotic charm
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Windows 10 can automatically uninstall updates with serious bugs
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The trailer for 'CRYPTO' just dropped, and cryptocurrency is good now
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Usain Bolt promotes e-scooters in New York, where it’s illegal to ride them
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Save $164 on a TP-Link mesh WiFi system to power high-speed internet through your home
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How to tell if your flight is on a Boeing 737 Max 8 before you book it
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Could you be Irish? Save $40 on AncestryDNA and find out for St. Patrick's Day.
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A second 737 Max crash raises questions about airplane automation
Regulators, airlines, and Boeing need to grapple with how much information pilots are given as systems become more complex.
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The Dubler Studio Kit lets you use your voice to control synths, drum machines and other MIDI gear
Vochlea Music, a U.K. startup and alumni of Abbey Road Red, the music tech incubator from Abbey Road Studios, is launching a crowdfunding campaign today for “Dubler Studio Kit,” a new device and app that turns your voice into a MIDI controller for synths, drum machines, DAWs and other music gear.
Described as a “vocal MIDI controller,” the Dubler Studio Kit consists of a bespoke USB microphone and a desktop application for Mac and Windows. It claims to be able to listen to you sing or beatbox and turn those sounds into MIDI notes and other MIDI control messages in real time.
Designed to be responsive enough to use live or for use in a recording studio, with a bit of practice, its makers say you’ll be able to hum a synth pattern (depending on your ability to sing in relative tune), beatbox to trigger a virtual drum kit or manipulate effects and filters vocally.
Vochlea Music demoed an early version of the technology at SXSW last year and won the festival’s pitch competition for its live vocal recognition for music making. While in pre-launch beta testing, Dubler Studio Kit has been used by Mercury Prize-nominated grime MC and producer Novelist, alongside other musicians and producers.
In a call with Vochlea Music founder and CEO George Wright, he explained that the Dubler Studio Kit was created in part to lower the barriers to generating and recording musical ideas, especially for those who are unable to play an instrument.
It’s common for artists, such as singers, to make a vocal note of their melody ideas using the iPhone’s voice memo app or similar mobile recording apps. However, being able to create MIDI notes and other MIDI data using your voice, instead of raw and often badly recorded audio, has the advantage of being able to edit and manipulate those ideas later within MIDI, including patching the resulting MIDI data to different sounds and effects.
Perhaps even more exciting is the way Dubler Studio Kit can be used in addition to playing an instrument, such as a synth or other keyboard, to control various parameters and effects. Traditionally, you have to lift one hand off the keyboard to make tweaks to the sound, or use a foot pedal. Dubler Studio Kit adds a fifth limb, so to speak.
Furthermore, Dubler Studio Kit doesn’t use the VST or Audio Unit plugin format for integration with a DAW. Rather cleverly, once the software is installed, the Dubler Studio Kit is recognised by your Mac or Windows machine as a standard MIDI controller so that it can be used by any software that accepts MIDI, including Logic or Ableton or the hundreds of virtual instruments on the market.
Related to this out of the box experience is the choice to couple the Dubler Studio Kit software with a Dubler-branded low-latency USB microphone. Wright says he wanted to avoid the user needing to have to conduct lengthy calibration with the Dubler machine-learning powered software, which would be the case if third-party microphones were supported.
In the future, that doesn’t prohibit Vochlea Music developing a version of Dubler Studio Kit for iPhone — where device specs are well-known — but will make supporting Android more tricky.
Live on Kickstarter, Vochlea Music wants to raise £40,000 for the Dubler Studio Kit over the next 35 days. During the campaign, backers have the opportunity to pledge to be amongst the first owners of Dubler Studio Kit at what promises to be an early-bird price starting from £175.
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Time is Ltd. uses data from Slack and other cloud software to help companies improve productivity
Time is Ltd., a Prague-based startup offering “productivity software analytics” to help companies gain insights from employees’ use of Slack, Office 365, G Suite and other enterprise software, has raised €3 million in funding.
Leading the round is Mike Chalfen — who previously co-founded London venture capital firm Mosaic Ventures but has since decided to operate as a solo investor — with participation from Accel. The investment will be used by Time is Ltd. to continue building the platform for large enterprises that want to better understand the patterns of behaviour hidden inside the various cloud software on which they run.
“Time is Ltd. was founded… to help large corporations and companies get a view into insights and productivity of teams,” co-founder and CEO Jan Rezab tells me. “Visualising insights around calendars, time and communication will help companies to understand real data behind their productivity.”
Powered by machine learning, the productivity software analytics platform plugs into the cloud software tools that enterprises typically use to collaborate across various departments. It then analyses various metadata pulled from these software tools, such as who is communicating with whom and time spent on Slack, or which teams are meeting, where and for how long as per various calendars. The idea is to enable managers to gain a better understanding of where productivity is lost or could be improved and to tie to business goals changes in these patterns.
Rezab cites the example of a large company undergoing “agile” transformation. “If you want to steer a massive company of 5,000 plus people, you really should understand the impact of your actions a bit more much earlier, not after the fact,” he says. “One of the hypothesis of an agile transformation is, for example, that managers really get involved a bit less and things work a bit more streamlined. You see from our data that this is or is not happening, and you can take corrective action.”
Or it could be something as simple as a large company with multiple offices that is conducting too many meetings. Time is Ltd. is able to show how the number of meetings held is increasing and which departments or teams are instigating them. “You can also show the inter-departmental video meeting efficiency, and if the people, for example, often need to travel to these meetings, how long does that takes versus digital meetings — so you can generally help and recommend the company take specific actions,” explains Rezab.
Sales is another area that could benefit from productivity analytics, with Time is Ltd. revealing that most sales teams actually spend the majority of their meeting time inside the company, not outside as you would think. “The structure of these internal meetings varies; planning for these events or just on-boarding and education,” says the Time is Ltd. CEO. “You can, so to speak, follow the time from revenue to different teams… and then see over time how it changes, and how it impacts sales productivity.”
Meanwhile, investor Mike Chalfen describes the young startup as a new breed of data-driven services that use “significant but under-utilised datasets.” “Productivity is one of the largest software markets globally, but lacks deep enterprise analytics to drive intelligent operational management for large businesses,” he says in a statement.
That’s not to say Time is Ltd. isn’t without competition, which includes Microsoft itself. “Our biggest competitor is Microsoft Workplace Analytics,” says Rezab. “However, Microsoft does not integrate other than MS products. Our advantage is that we are a productivity platform to integrate all of the cloud tools. Starting with Slack, SAP Success Factors, Zoom and countless others.”
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British Panel Calls for Stricter Antitrust Rules on Tech Giants
Big Tech is reducing consumer choice and harming innovation, according to a report ordered by the country’s top economic official.
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How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 (Not So Easy) Steps
Step No. 10: Buy a decoy house to fool the D.M.V.
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Uber Settles Drivers’ Lawsuit for $20 Million
Uber settled a lawsuit with drivers who sought employment status, resolving a longstanding legal issue ahead of its initial public offering.
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The Anxiety of Having a Famous Follower on Twitter
A social-media status report, with Barack Obama, John Cusack, Conan O’Brien and Joss Whedon.
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This Animal Activist Used to Get in Your Face. Now He’s Going After Your Palate.
Bruce Friedrich spent decades trying to persuade people to stop eating meat. When that didn’t work, he turned his focus to creating better alternatives.
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Pi Day
Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Regardless of the size of the circle, pi is always the same irrational number: approximately 3.14. Thirty years ago, physicist Larry Shaw created a Pi Day celebration […]
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Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (if you have a Pixel)
Voice recognition is a standard part of the smartphone package these days, and a corresponding part is the delay while you wait for Siri, Alexa or Google to return your query, either correctly interpreted or horribly mangled. Google’s latest speech recognition works entirely offline, eliminating that delay altogether — though of course mangling is still an option.
The delay occurs because your voice, or some data derived from it anyway, has to travel from your phone to the servers of whoever operates the service, where it is analyzed and sent back a short time later. This can take anywhere from a handful of milliseconds to multiple entire seconds (what a nightmare!), or longer if your packets get lost in the ether.
Why not just do the voice recognition on the device? There’s nothing these companies would like more, but turning voice into text on the order of milliseconds takes quite a bit of computing power. It’s not just about hearing a sound and writing a word — understanding what someone is saying word by word involves a whole lot of context about language and intention.
Your phone could do it, for sure, but it wouldn’t be much faster than sending it off to the cloud, and it would eat up your battery. But steady advancements in the field have made it plausible to do so, and Google’s latest product makes it available to anyone with a Pixel.
Google’s work on the topic, documented in a paper here, built on previous advances to create a model small and efficient enough to fit on a phone (it’s 80 megabytes, if you’re curious), but capable of hearing and transcribing speech as you say it. No need to wait until you’ve finished a sentence to think whether you meant “their” or “there” — it figures it out on the fly.
So what’s the catch? Well, it only works in Gboard, Google’s keyboard app, and it only works on Pixels, and it only works in American English. So in a way this is just kind of a stress test for the real thing.
“Given the trends in the industry, with the convergence of specialized hardware and algorithmic improvements, we are hopeful that the techniques presented here can soon be adopted in more languages and across broader domains of application,” writes Google, as if it is the trends that need to do the hard work of localization.
Making speech recognition more responsive, and to have it work offline, is a nice development. But it’s sort of funny considering hardly any of Google’s other products work offline. Are you going to dictate into a shared document while you’re offline? Write an email? Ask for a conversion between liters and cups? You’re going to need a connection for that! Of course this will also be better on slow and spotty connections, but you have to admit it’s a little ironic.
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Gmail, YouTube, and other Google services are experiencing an outage
Several Google services are impacted as users are unable to access Gmail, YouTube, and Drive.
If you're unable to send emails in Gmail or upload files to Drive, you're not alone. Google seems to be experiencing an outage that is affecting several of its services, with the issue affecting customers across the U.S., Canada, Japan, Malaysia and Australia. According to Down Detector, Gmail and YouTube started seeing disruptions at 10PM ET on March 12.
The G Suite Status Dashboard notes that Gmail and Google Drive users are seeing a lot of "error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior."
Google has also acknowledged that its Cloud Engine is facing disruptions, and that the engineering team is working on a fix:
We are still seeing the increased error rate with Google App Engine Blobstore API. Our Engineering Team is investigating possible causes.
Mitigation work is currently underway by our Engineering Team. We will provide another status update by Tuesday, 2019-03-12 20:45 US/Pacific with current details.
We'll let you know as soon as we have more information. Are you also affected by the outage? Let us know in the comments below.
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Cover your whole home in Wi-Fi with the TP-Link Deco M5 system for $44 off
Stay online.
TP-Link's Deco M5 mesh networking system 3-pack has dropped to $135.99 at Amazon. We shared a deal recently when it dropped to around $156 and thought that was a nice price, but this one is $20 better. This is the lowest price we've ever seen for a system that has sold as high as $200 recently and sells for an average of $180.
A single Deco M5 device is $80 on its own, so you're actually getting three for less than the price of two with this deal.
The Deco M5 replaces your Wi-Fi router and any other devices you've been using to make up for dead zones like range extenders. It can cover up to 4,500 square feet of your home in strong, stable wireless signal. TP-Link HomeCare gives the system security. Adaptive routing technology lets it choose the fastest path to keep your network running smooth. With the TP-Link Deco app, all you have to do is follow the on-screen instructions to get the system up and running as soon as possible. TP-Link covers the Deco M5 with a two-year warranty.
At Amazon, over 700 customers left a review for the Deco M5 resulting in a rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars.
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DirecTV Now gets 2 new plans, HBO included
DirecTV Now's other plans are staying put at their current prices, for now.
DirecTV Now today (finally) took the lid off a couple new plans for its streaming service. Here's what you need to know:
- The two new plans are called PLUS and MAX. (And that'll be the only time we use them in all uppercase.)
- Plus costs $50 a month.
- Max costs $70 a month.
- Both plans include local channels and a handful of network channels that you'll find on the other DirecTV Now plans.
- But both plans have fewer channels than you'll find on any of the other DirecTV Now plans.
- The Plus plan includes an HBO subscription.
- The Max plan includes HBO and Cinemax.
- These plans will be available starting March 13.
Here's the full post from AT&T:
We know you love HBO—and NOW you won't miss a moment when you stream with DIRECTV NOW! Tomorrow we're debuting two new AT&T* video packages that include premium access to HBO. With HBO, customers can now enjoy every episode of the best shows like Game of Thrones, Veep and Big Little Lies, plus blockbuster movies, family favorites, documentaries and more – live, streaming and on demand.
In addition to HBO, our new DIRECTV NOW PLUS (for $50) and MAX (for $70) packages come with dozens of live TV channels, including local ones,** and an extensive on-demand library of great movies and TV shows. Both new packages provide slimmer, quality-driven content lineups at competitive prices and with no annual contract. With the MAX package, you get more live sports channels, video-on-demand choices and HBO and Cinemax® included.
DIRECTV NOW PLUS and MAX are just two of the choices we provide for live TV and great video-on-demand. Existing DIRECTV NOW customers can continue to enjoy their current lineup of channels, if they prefer. At launch, more details on DIRECTV NOW PLUS and MAX and other video entertainment choices we offer will be available.
It's important to note that the other five DirecTV Now plans that have been available are not — repeat: NOT — changing price as of yet. (They all got bumped up a bit last year.) AT&T says to expect even more details about the two new plans — presumably, the precise channels each will comprise — at launch. They did, however, get spilled by AT&T last week, and so here's what we're going on:
DirecTV Now plans and pricing
More: The best alternatives to DirecTV Now
Also: How to cancel DirecTV Now
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Take your Apple Watch on the road and protect it while it charges
Being able to charge your Apple Watch on the go can be a tricky thing to do, but if you have the right portable charger, you'll never have to worry about running out of juice again! Here are the best portable chargers available that'll let you charge your Apple Watch.
Keychain meets power bank
Griffin Travel Power Bank Backup Battery
Staff Favorite
If you're looking for a reliable, compact, and portable Apple Watch battery charger that's small enough to fit on your keychain — but powerful enough to provide up to two and a half full charges for your Apple Watch — then take a peek at the Griffin Travel Power Bank. This battery charges easily with any 5V USB charger or USB computer port, while an LED light will indicate its status. If there are any issues with the Power Bank, you can take advantage of the product's one-year warranty.
Strap in
BatteryPro for iPhone & Apple Watch
The BatteryPro for iPhone & Apple Watch is a beautifully-designed portable charger for your Apple Watch and iPhone, and it's no surprise that it's a favorite around iMore. This portable battery is built to be small enough to carry comfortably in your back pocket. A protective strap also keeps it secure while charging, so you can pop it in your bag and easily charge on the go! The BatteryPro even comes with something called Nightstand mode, which is perfect if you do a lot of traveling. The best part? You can get over two whole weeks of Apple Watch charges and over 3+ days of iPhone use with this powerful little battery.
Dual charging
Belkin Valet Charger Power Pack
The Belkin Valet Charger Power Pack can charge both your Apple Watch and iPhone at the same time, with some key features like quality connectors, a low noise inductor, temperature sensors, an aluminum shell finish, LES indicator lights, a Micro-USB port, and so, so much more. You can recharge your Apple Watch nearly eight times over without ever recharging the power pack on its own (you can charge your iPhone three times fully).
Protective and durable
Moretek Hard Protective Charing Case for Apple Watch
If you're looking for a charging case that's also durable and adds a layer of protection to your gear, then you might want to check out this Moretek case. This particular charger is made from a tough, shockproof material that protects your Apple Watch as its battery boosts. The soft nylon interior protects your Apple Watch from scrapes, dust, and the perils of the outside world, while a soft silicone and magnetic docking potion secure your Apple Watch while it charges. It also comes with a zipper closure and is incredibly portable.
Is there a charger that we missed on our list that you count on for charging your Apple Watch on the go? There are so many options out there that we have a hard time choosing a favorite, but we really love the look and feel of the Griffin Travel Power Bank Backup Battery — I mean, the thing clips to your darn keychain. What's not to love?!
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What type of film do you need for the Kodak Printomatic?
Best answer: The Kodak Printomatic doesn't use any sort of traditional film, but rather a heat-activated paper called Zink paper.
- The right paper: Zink Zero Photo Paper (50 Pack) ($24 at Amazon)
- Get the camera: Kodak Printomatic ($68 at Amazon)
Not film, but paper
If you ever used an instant camera back in the 80's — like an old-school Polaroid — you likely know that those cameras used a special type of film/paper. Fast forward a few decades and new instant cameras like the Kodak Printomatic are using a different type of paper to get the job done.
Without getting too technical, Zink paper doesn't require any ink to print photo but rather each sheet is covered in a layer of heat-activated crystals that turn different colors when exposed to different heat levels. It's pretty neat technology and it works pretty fast, the Kodak Printomatic can print out a photo in under a minute.
Not all Zink paper is the same
Zink paper isn't produced by Kodak directly, but rather by a company called Zink Holdings, which licenses their Zink paper to companies such as Kodak, Polaroid, and Canon. Plus, different cameras use different sizes, so it can be slightly confusing to make sure you have the right kind of Zink paper.
The Kodak Printomatic uses the 2-by-3-inch Zink paper, which features a sticky back that allows you to turn your photos into stickers after printing.
The Kodak Printomatic can hold up to 10 sheets of Zink paper at a time, and each bundle of 10-sheets comes with a blue color calibration sheet, that allows the Printomatic to calibrate the printing process so your photos turn out rich, vibrant, and the right colors.
The Paper
Zink Zero Photo Paper (50 Pack)
Print and stick anywhere
Kodak's Zink Zero Photo Paper delivers bright and vibrant instant prints that are sure to make any photo pop once it's printed. The Sticky-backed paper even allows you to peel the back of your photos and stick them anywhere allow you to decorate almost anything with your favorite photos.
The Camera
Kodak Printomatic
Straight forward and easy-to-use
With the 2-by-3-inch Zink paper, the Kodak Printomatic uses its 10-megapixel and f/2 aperture to take excellent photos that you can print out instantly.
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How to pair Apple AirPods with a Windows PC
Apple's AirPods are designed for use with other Apple products, but that doesn't mean you can't use them with your Windows PC. Pairing AirPods with a PC for the first time isn't exactly intuitive at first, because you have to use the charging case along with the AirPods, but it's easy once you know the process.
Products used in this guide
- AirPods for your earholes: Apple AirPods (from $159 at Amazon)
- Pair with Surface: Surface Go (from $399 at Microsoft)
How to pair AirPods with a Windows device
To pair and connect a new pair of Apple AirPods with your PC, just follow these simple steps:
- Insert AirPods into their charging case, and make sure they're at least partially charged.
- Open the lid of your AirPod charging case (do not remove AirPods from the case).
- Tap and hold the circular button on the rear side of charging case for a couple of seconds, until the light inside the case blinks white.
-
Open your Windows PC's Bluetooth settings by clicking the Bluetooth icon in the system tray all the way to the right of your taskbask, or by searching for "Bluetooth" in your taskbar search field and clicking the "Bluetooth and other devices settings" option when it appears.
- Click "Add Bluetooth or other devices" at the top of the settings screen
-
On the next "Add a device" page, click the top option for Bluetooth.
-
Click the AirPods option from the list of discoverable devices.
-
After a few seconds, you should see a connection confirmation screen once your AirPods and PC are paired and connected.
- Note: If you get a connection error, close your AirPods case and your PC's Bluetooth settings, and repeat the process above.
- Remove AirPods from their case.
- Stick them in your ears, and you're good to go.
Connecting AirPods to a PC is just as easy as connecting any other Bluetooth device. And when you're ready to disconnect them, just put your AirPods back in their charging case and close the lid.
How to reconnect paired AirPods and a Windows PC
Your AirPods should automatically connect to your PC after a few seconds every time you remove them from your charging case. But if for some reason they don't, you can easily reconnect them by following these easy steps:
-
Open your Windows PC's Bluetooth settings by clicking the Bluetooth icon in the system tray all the way to the right of your taskbask, or by searching for "Bluetooth" in your taskbar search field and clicking the "Bluetooth and other devices settings" option when it appears.
-
Scroll down to the Audio section under the "Bluetooth and other devices" list, and click on the AirPods listing.
-
Click Connect to reconnect your AirPods and PC.
-
You'll hear an audio confirmation if you're wearing your AirPods, and your Bluetooth settings screen will read "Connected voice, music" beneath AirPods listing.
If for some reason your AirPods still won't reconnect, insert them back into their case, close your Windows Bluetooth settings and repeat this above process. If you're still having issues repeat this process, but on Step No. 4 choose "remove" to unpair you AirPods and then begin the pairing process detailed above once more.
Our top equipment picks
To connect AirPods and a Windows computer, you need only some AirPods and a PC.
Windows-friendly audio
Apple AirPods
Apple's trademark 'buds, minus the wires
Apple's AirPods are perhaps best paired with iOS devices, or at least other Apple computers. But because they use Bluetooth to connect wirelessly to tech gear, they work well with Windows PCs, Android phones and other mobile devices. They're also easy to pair up and connect.
Additional equipment
You should be able to connect and use your AirPods with any PC, but for the purposes of this tutorial, we used a Surface Go.
Surface Go
Surface Go is the most portable and affordable Surface PC from Microsoft. And it pairs well with some AirPods.
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