At CES Sony announced the Sony SmartBand, which is a bracelet that keeps track of your activities throughout the day. It is apparently comfortable and wearable in the water. The battery lasts up to five days. You can toggle music using the button on the bracelet, and a companion application called LifeLog lets you look at all of the data being collected by the SmartBand.
The bracelet part is available in many different colours and designs.
Looks rather good.
Google today started rolling out the latest version of its Google Play services for Android. Version 4.1 brings a number of incremental changes to the company’s service for integrating Google services into mobile apps. The rollout is currently in process and should arrive soon on your Android devices within the next few days.
The update brings support for turn-based multiplayer games to Play services. With this, developers can easily build asynchronous games with up to eight participants. Every time a player takes a turn, the data is uploaded to Google’s servers and shared with the other players. Google has integrated this service with its tools for matching players with others, too.
Also new in this update is improved support for Google+ sharing. Google says, this will make it “even easier for users to share with the right people from your app.” As part of this update, users will be able to get auto-complete support and suggested recipients for all Gmail contacts, device contacts and people on Google+.
Developers can now also use Play services to access Google Drive through a new API that’s now in preview. With this, they can read and write files in Drive. Users will be able to work on these files offline, and changes will be synced automatically.
For developers who use Google’s ad products, this new version introduces full support for DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Search Ads for Mobile Apps. What’s most interesting for advertisers, though, is that publishers can now also use a new location API to give Google access to a user’s location when requesting ads. Location-based ads are likely to perform better than generic ads, after all, though users have generally been a bit nervous about sharing this data with advertisers given the potential privacy ramifications.
One other feature most users will likely appreciate is improved battery life. While Google isn’t sharing any details about this, anybody who has Google Location Reporting turned on should see longer battery life after this update but no stats were revealed as to the difference expected.
Episode 6 of “Gav & Dave’s Tech Podcast” which I co-host with Dave from UKMobileTech is now alive.
To subscribe click here for iTunes or copy and paste this link into your favourite podcast app.
If you like what you hear please if you can leave a review on iTunes.
Episode 6 of “Gav & Dave’s Tech Podcast” which I co-host with Dave from UKMobileTech is now alive.
To subscribe click here for iTunes or copy and paste this link into your favourite podcast app.
If you like what you hear please if you can leave a review on iTunes.
Apple and Samsung CEOs have just agreed to attend mediated settlement discussions no later than February 19th, to potentially avert a trial in March (and likely future legal action) with regards to the ongoing patent trial.
I cannot see any reason for anything to be agreed at this meeting, other than to satisfy court proceedings that they did try and mediate for a settlement.
Intel® Edison, a new Intel® Quark technology-based computer housed in an SD card form factor with built-in wireless capabilities and support for multiple operating systems. That is the technical blurb for the above.
What you have is a computer for wearable tech, like smart watches. It talks to multiple operating systems, and more importantly needs no battery to function.
This could really innovate future wearables.
Microsoft has announced at CES that it’s seeing high penetration for its Windows Phone platform.
Christopher Flores, director of communications for Microsoft, claimed that Windows Phone devices now have second place in 14 markets around the world, and are outselling Apple’s iPhone in 24 markets too, making it the fastest selling smartphone platform globally.
I would imagine this is due to its low cost handsets like the Lumia 520 whereas Apple sells high value high profit devices.
Nintendo announced it sold 16 million 3DS game handhelds despite smartphone competition.
It expects 2014 to be just as buoyant.
The 3DS is the only present I’ve bought that didn’t come with a charger or even a usb lead. No wonder Nintendo is still making money.
Google has just implemented a change to Google+ and Gmail that will enable you to email other Google+ users without having to know their email address. If you want to send an email to somone on Google+, but do not know their email address, simply type their name in the ‘To’ field in Gmail, and they’ll appear as one of your Google+ Connections. Google insists that Google+ contacts can’t see your email address until you send them an email.
This sounds very suspicious and the next step to Google+ replacing every Google product.
Update – if you log on to Gmail on your PC , go to settings you can turn this feature off.
Mophie unveiled a new battery case that offers extra storage and battery power. The Space Pack case works with iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 versions, providing protection against drops, an extra 1,700mAh battery that doubles the battery capacity of the handset, as well as 16GB or 32GB of additional memory for the iPhone. In order to manage content stored on the Space Pack, users will be able to download from the App Store a free iOS companion application called Space. Additionally, the extra memory can also be managed via a regular Lightning connection to a computer.
A useful case, just a shame it adds so much extra bulk.
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