Action cameras are a gadget that mostly cater to a person’s wish to see themselves in a certain way: Most people aren’t skiing off mountains or cliff diving most of the time, but they aspire to. The issue with most action cameras, though, is that even when you actually do something cool, you still have to shoot the right angle to capture the moment, which is itself a skill. That’s the beauty of Rylo, a tiny 360 camera that minimizes the skill required and makes it easy to get the shots you want.
Rylo is compact enough to have roughly the footprint of a GoPro, but with dual lenses for 4K, 360-degree video capture. It has a removable battery pack good for an hour of continuous video recording, and a micro USB port for charging. In the box, you’ll get either a micro USB to Lightning, or micro USB to micro USB and USB C cables, depending on whether you pick up the Android or the iOS version, and you handle all editing on the mobile device you already have with you always.
The device itself feels solid, and has stood up to a lot of travel and various conditions over the course of my usage. The anodized aluminum exterior can take some lumps, and the OLED screen on the device provides just enough info when you’re shooting, without overwhelming. There’s no viewfinder, but the point of the Rylo is that you don’t need one – it’s capturing a full 360-degree image all the time, and you position your shot after the fact in editing.
Rylo includes a 16GB microSD card in the box, too, but you can use up to 256GB versions for more storage. A single button on top controls both power functions and recording, and the simplicity is nice when you’re in the moment and just want to start shooting without worrying about settings.
The basic functionality of Rylo is more than most people will need out of a device like this: Using the app, you can select out an HD, flat frame of video to export, and easily trim the length plus make adjustments to picture, including basic edits like highlights, color and contrast. Rylo’s built-in stabilization keeps things surprisingly smooth, even when you’re driving very fast along a bumpy road with what amounts to nearly race-tuned tires and suspension.
Then, if you want to get really fancy, you can do things like add motion to your clips, including being able to make dead-simple smooth pans from one focus point to another. The end result looks like you’re using a gimbal or other stabilized film camera, but all the equipment you need is the Rylo itself, plus any mount, including the handle/tripod mount that comes in the box, or anything that works with a GoPro.
You can even set a specific follow point, allowing you to track a specific object or person throughout the clip. This works well, though sometimes it’ll lose track of the person or thing if there’s low light or the thing it’s following gets blocked. The app will let you know it’s lost its target, however, and in practice it works well enough to create good-looking videos for things like bicycling and riding ATVs, for instance.
Other companies are trying to do similar things with their own hardware, including GoPro with the Fusion and Insta360 with its Insta360 One. But Rylo’s solution has the advantage of being dead simple to use, with easily portable hardware that’s durable and compatible with existing GoPro mount accessories. The included micro USB to Lightning cable isn’t easily replaced, except for from Rylo itself, and it’s also small and easy to lose, so that’s my main complaint when it comes to the system as a whole.
In the end, the Rylo does what it’s designed to do: Takes the sting out of creating cool action clips and compelling short movies for people working mostly from their mobile devices. It’s not as flexible for pros looking for a way to integrate more interesting camera angles into their desktop workflow because of how tied content captured on the Rylo is to the Rylo app itself, but it seems clearly designed for a consumer enthusiast market anyway.
At $499, the Rylo isn’t all that much more expensive than the GoPro Hero 6. It’s still a significant investment, and the image quality isn’t up to the 4K video output by the GoPro, but for users who just want to make cool videos to share among friends using social tools, Rylo’s ease of use and incredibly low bar in terms of filming expertise required is hard to beat.
Source: TechCrunch
LinkedIn this morning is rolling out a new feature for job searchers that allows them to better leverage their network of connections when looking for a new job. The company is introducing “Ask for a Referral,” which places a button next to the jobs where you know people who work at the company advertising open positions. You can then send your connections a message through LinkedIn, asking them to recommend you for the job in question.
As with many things, getting a job – or at least getting that interview – is about who you know. Referrals greatly help job seekers get a call back compared to an application sent on its own, LinkedIn says. If fact, you’re four times more likely to hear back from a recruiter at the company if you’ve been referred, and nearly half of recruiters say that referrals are the leading source of quality hires.
To get started, LinkedIn has made it easier for you to see just those jobs where you know someone who works at the company. On the desktop, you can click on the new job search filter to look for those jobs “in your network.” This can be combined with other filters, like location, industry, and more, to help you narrow down the positions you may want to apply for.
You can then tap the “Ask for a referral” button at the top of the job listing, and choose the person you want to reach out to. LinkedIn will prompt you to write a message, offering pre-populated text that you can personalize to your inquiry. The company recommends you remind them of how you know each other, or what you have in common, like going to the same school, before explaining why you’re interested and think you’d be a good fit.
The recipient can then choose to follow up on your message by referring you to the job through whatever methods their company supports.
The business networking platform has rolled out a number of new features focused on jobs and hiring in recent months, including a Career Advice program to help users find mentors who can help them figure out how to take their next steps; new data analytics tools for recruiters; and even a resumé-building assistant in Microsoft Word that’s powered by LinkedIn data.
While LinkedIn has largely cornered the market on professional networking, Facebook recently took steps to challenge LinkedIn with the expansion of its Jobs dashboard to 40 more countries worldwide. While many of its jobs are more entry-level, blue-collar, or low-skilled, it could move more heavily into professional jobs in the future, and leverage its own network of connections along the way, if it chose. That potential threat to LinkedIn’s business, which earned Microsoft over a billion in revenue in Q4 2017, shouldn’t be overlooked. LinkedIn will need to find a number of ways to cater to job seekers and recruiters alike through tools and services that help the right people get connected to the right jobs.
The new Ask for a Referral feature is live now across LinkedIn.
Source: TechCrunch
Chipmaker Xilinx is betting its new Everest design will accelerate today’s computing chores — and appeal to programmers, not just hardware nerds.
Source: CNET
Consumers are no longer restricted to traditional car buying and leasing methods. Here’s out guide to find out if a car subscription service is for you.
Source: CNET
They called me the nameless one, the ghost who commutes, the silent passenger who refused to get a transport card.
Source: CNET
There’s a delete button next to every tweet. One Facebook executive, in the midst of a scandal, used it to remove statements he’d made. But the internet didn’t forget.
Source: CNET
Thicker glass and a sturdier frame should make the latest superphones harder to break, right? Tests by warranty outlet SquareTrade breaks down that claim.
Source: CNET
Uber might begin selling its autonomous driving systems to outside companies, including major automakers, according to a new report from Japan’s Nikkei. The report claims that Uber has had talks with Toyota regarding supplying the automaker with self-driving tech, and that the two are currently in negotiations around how this would work, with talk of putting the autonomous tech developed by Uber into a Toyota-made minivan.
The deal comes as a Toyota VP and Toyota Research Institute CEO Gill Pratt met with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi at Uber’s Pittsburgh Advanced Technologies Group R&D center. Uber has also teamed up with Volvo to co-develop self-driving technology, and uses the XC90 SUV as its test platform for its own current autonomous vehicles.
For Uber, partnering with more automakers could mean speedier development of its own AV systems, and a way to prime the market for a network of autonomous ride-hailing vehicles sourced from consumer and automaker fleets. Rival Lyft is making its own autonomous systems with Magna, one of the world’s leading auto suppliers, and the fruits of that collaboration could put it in fine form to see its products introduced in many automaker vehicles.
Meanwhile, Toyota has just introduced a new company springing out of its Toyota Research Group – TRI-AD, or Toyota Research Group-Advanced Development, which will focus specifically on brining TRI’s work on autonomous driving to market. This recent move could be an indicator that TRI’s work on self-driving isn’t translating to something ready for commercial products quite quick enough, so teaming with Uber could be a means to try to help accelerate those efforts.
This isn’t a done deal yet, however, according to the report, so anything could happen. But it’s an interesting glimpse into the autonomous driving strategy at both Uber and Toyota.
Source: TechCrunch
The PoulBot is teaching researchers about flocking behavior and about the cues animals need to fall in love with their robot overlords.
Source: Wired
The software can detect tone and emotion in both customers and agents, then offer motivational suggestions.
Source: Wired