I’ll admit that I’ve warmed up pretty quickly to the Osmo Pocket. The original post from earlier today is pretty skeptical, owing in no small part to the price point. And while I stand by the earlier assessment that $349 is prohibitively expensive for the consumer market the company appears to be going after, I’ve become fairly enamored after a couple of hours with the device.
We plan on doing something a bit more thorough with our video team in a couple of weeks, but in the time I spent with the Pocket after today’s announcement, I see a lot of potential here — particularly in the hands of far more capable videographers.
That’s not to say that this is a pro-level device. In fact, it’s intended to be the opposite. In spite of essentially costing double the standard Osmo, the Pocket is intended to be a more democratized take on the category — kind of the DJI Spark of the hand-held gimbal category. As such, it leans pretty heavily on pre-created scenes, ones similar to the kind you’ll find on the Mavic drones.
They’re pretty straightforward — and certainly the Osmo Pocket has far fewer points of failure than a drone. Among other things, if you manage to crash it into a tree, that’s entirely on you. Out of the box, you download the app, plug the Lightning or USB-C dongle into your phone and choose a scene. From there, it will walk you through the process of shooting and then neatly package it up, complete with edits and cheesy music.
It’s basically pre-made for sharing on social. And that’s really the core audience for a product like this. Serious shooters likely won’t be super inclined to lean heavily on the device, but with pretty minimal effort a first-time shooter can create some impressive stuff. I mean, I captured a bunch of neat-looking footage after puttering around the Times Square subway station for an hour.
That’s just commuters coming and going. You can imagine the sort of stuff you can grab when embedded in a more inspiring locale. And the miniature size means you can maneuver it into tighter spots. It’s not likely to serve as a GoPro replacement, but a bunch of optional cases and mounts mean you can probably pull off some interesting action cam-style shots.
The product certainly has the underlying technology to create some impressive and innovative shots. The pre-loaded scenes lower the barrier of entry, but pro users can customize things plenty, while the built-in display means you can do live shots without tethering to the camera. The screen is small, however, and what you’re able to accomplish on it is still pretty limited.
I stand by my earlier assessment that the Pocket is a product without a clear audience, particularly given the price point. Given what it can do, however, it’s sure to find a devoted fan base.
Source: TechCrunch
Feng Zhang, quien demostró que la herramienta podía usarse para editar el ADN de células humanas y, en consecuencia, de los embriones, lanza un comunicado en el que afirma que, dado el estado actual de la tecnología, los riesgos de este tipo de investigaciones superan todavía a sus posibles beneficios
Source: MIT
Un análisis de tuits geolocalizados durante la Copa Mundial de Fútbol de Rusia revela que, a excepción de Perú y Arabia Saudita, los mensajes relacionados con esta bebida se disparan en cada país mientras juega su selección, y decaen en cuanto esta es eliminada del torneo
Source: MIT
Sennheiser is under fire for its HeadSetup PC utility that could open up your computer to malicious hackers. Due to weak cryptographic keys, a hacker could easily decrypt the keys and perform a man-in-the-middle attack.
The post Sennheiser’s flawed headphone software is a Trojan horse hackers could exploit appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
A string of attacks hobbled the city of Atlanta, multiple hospitals, and more. The feds now think they know who did it.
Source: Wired
Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the chipmaker, has plans to invest up to $100 million in artificial intelligence.
Specifically, Qualcomm says it will provide capital to startups building on-device AI, which is AI that runs on the end device, like a smartphone or vehicle, rather than in the cloud. The fund’s leader, Qualcomm investment director Albert Wang (pictured), says on-device AI is the future.
“Today’s AI processing is very computationally intensive,” Wang told TechCrunch. “When you’re talking to Alexa, nothing is processed on your device, it gets taken to the cloud and gets scrunched there. There are a few problems with that — performance deteriorates, it consumes a lot of bandwidth and there are privacy issues. Imagine you have an Alexa that is more private and user-friendly, you ask the questions and can get the answers instantly. It doesn’t take the round trip all the way to the cloud.”
Qualcomm has previously made AI investments out of its evergreen venture fund, including in SenseTime, a Chinese AI facial recognition company, and GM-acquired Cruise, which is building AI-enabled autonomous driving technology. The AI fund’s debut investment was in AnyVision, an AI startup based in Tel Aviv working on face, body and object recognition technology. Qualcomm participated in the company’s $28 million Series A funding round, which was led by Bosch in July.
The corporate VC typically hands out cash to 12 to 15 startups per year. As for the AI fund, it’s not sure just how many companies it will back, but says its investments will range between $5 million and $15 million per deal.
Qualcomm doesn’t typically set aside capital for specialized funds, opting instead to rally behind its evergreen flagship vehicle. The firm did, however, launch a digital healthcare fund, which deployed capital to Fitbit, among others, years ago. As for AI, Wang says they bring a pretty unique set of resources to the table.
“Qualcomm is very big on the mobile platform and it’s gaining ground in the IoT space, so there are a lot of tech partnerships we can provide, a lot of market insight we can provide from both the hardware and software perspective, and just given our exposure, in general, we have a pretty big portfolio of companies.”
Source: TechCrunch
In the wake of a report from the WSJ last week that detailed how low demand for Apple’s latest iPhones was prompting the company to cut orders for the devices, particularly the iPhone XR, an Apple VP is detailing that the XR is the company’s best-selling model available right now.
The disclosure comes from Apple VP Greg Joswiak in an interview with CNET. It’s not a particularly juicy quote, only detailing that the device has “been our most popular iPhone each and every day since the day it became available.”
Joswiak didn’t specifically comment on the WSJ report. The assertion regarding iPhone XR sales relative to other iPhone models doesn’t really tell us a ton either, without some solid numbers.
The fact that the $749 XR is the best-selling of the iPhones available now isn’t wildly surprising. It was introduced as a crowd pleaser with a lower cost build that didn’t actually make many sacrifices in terms of compute power. The company’s iPhone XS retails for $999; they also are continuing to sell last-gen models at lower prices.
What’s interesting about this interview snippet is that this is just a slice of the detail we would generally get in a quarterly earnings report, but Apple recently decided that it’s not going to give that data moving forward and will instead just leave it at the revenues for its iPhone segment. In other words, this is about as good as it’s going to get moving forward in terms of insights about model breakdowns for device sales.
The company’s reasoning for not discussing unit sales moving forward pretty much boiled down to the fact that it wasn’t necessarily reflective of the company’s health, but the timing of this pertinent realization comes as analysts believe demand for the devices could start to slow.
The company’s stock price has taken about a 20 percent dive since it shared its most recent earnings.
Source: TechCrunch
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The deal is part of a broader effort to expand the Jam City portfolio of games and geographic footprint. In recent months the company has inked agreements with Disney — taking over development duties on some of the company’s games like Disney Emoji Blitz and signing on to develop new ones — and launching new games in conjunction with other famous franchises like Harry Potter.
The Bingo Pop acquisition will bring a gambling game into the casual game developer’s stable of titles that pulled in roughly $700,000 in revenue through October, according to data from SensorTower.
“We are so proud to be continuing Jam City’s rapid global expansion with the acquisition of one of the most popular bingo titles, and its highly talented team,” said Chris DeWolfe, co-founder and CEO of Jam City, in a statement. “This acquisition provides Jam City with access to leading creative talent in one of the fastest growing and most exciting tech markets in the world. We look forward to working with the talented Jam City team in Toronto as we supercharge the live operations of Bingo Pop and develop innovative new titles and mobile entertainment experiences.”
Founded in Los Angeles in 2009 by DeWolfe, who previously helped create and launch Myspace, and 20th Century Fox exec Josh Yguado, Jam City rose to prominence on the back of its Cookie Jam and Panda Pop games. Now, the company has expanded through licensing deals with Harry Potter, Family Guy, Marvel and now Disney. Jam City has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Bogota and Buenos Aires.
Source: TechCrunch
The automaker’s electric charge builds on the E-tron SUV with the E-tron GT, a four-door that will do 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds.
Source: Wired
Fiat Chrysler’s first midsize pickup in a hot minute is coming out of the gates swinging.
Source: CNET