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QBlinks Is A Multi-Use Remote Control And Notification Center For Your iPhone
Qblinks wants to be the Swiss Army knife of iPhone remote controllers. The Bluetooth LE device, which is currently seeking $35,000 on Kickstarter, can be used to alert you to notifications from different apps on your smartphone; as a camera remote shutter; to activate Siri; play music; and help you find missing phones by prompting it to ring even when it is in silent mode. Qblinks even has… Read More
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Hands On With The Production Version Of The Myo Gesture Control Armband
Thalmic Labs is a Waterloo-based startup with a very ambitious goal – to change the way we interact with our everyday computing devices. To that end, they’ve developed the Myo armband, a gesture control device that fits around the meaty part of your forearm and detects slight muscle movements, arm rotations and even electrical impulses as you gesture, translating all that… Read More
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Thiel Fellow’s Elegant Sleep Tracker, Sense, Crushes Kickstarter With $120K In A Few Hours
When I first took a look at Sense, a smart sleep sensor launching today on Kickstarter, it reminded me of two things. Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium and Google’s old, discontinued Nexus Q product. “Those are two of my favorite things,” said James Proud, a former Thiel fellow who went on to found a startup behind the device called Hello. “I wanted to… Read More
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Apple’s Busy Year-End Could Include A Fitness Wearable, 12″ Retina MacBook And 4K Products
Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri both have claimed excitement about the fall, but we have yet to get a glimpse at the total product pipeline. New reports from 9to5Mac claim a whole host of new info around specific launch timelines, however, including a mid-September event and launch for the iPhone 6 and iOS 8, as well as late 2014 or early 2015 launches of OS X Yosemite, a 12-inch… Read More
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Vysk QS1 Is An Otterbox For The Privacy Freak
On Saturday NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden called developers to design products that protect users’ privacy and Constitutional rights, saying he plans to promote such technologies.But Vysk Communication’s CEO Victor Cocchia has been working on developing such technology since 2012, long before Snowden addressed the Hope X conference last weekend. Cocchia spoke to me about his… Read More
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Samsung Backs GamePop As BlueStacks Adds $13M In New Funding
Samsung’s venture arm has contributed to a round of funding that adds $13 million to the total raised by BlueStacks, the virtualization startup that debuted its GamePop platform earlier this year to offer over-the-top mobile gaming for living room and TVs. Samsung’s investment backs the company’s vision of delivering GamePop as a white-label solution aimed at TV makers and… Read More
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The Sync Smartband Is A Health And Location Tracking Device For Both Kids And Grown-Ups
Wearables for kids are coming. A company called ActvContent is today launching the Sync smartband, which was initially aimed at parents looking to keep track of their wandering children. Today, as the product goes live on Indiegogo, the company is broadening its focus to appeal to families and adults as well, with a variety of health tracking functions, including a fitness tracker and… Read More
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Airware Preps Launch Of Its Commercial Drone Operating System With $25M From Kleiner
Building a drone’s hardware and software from scratch is tough and expensive, but open source drone kits are inflexible. So to power businesses looking to customize drones for commercial uses from agriculture to industrial inspections, Airware has raised a $25 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins. The money will fund the launch of Airware’s drone operating system later this… Read More
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Can’t Manage A Standing Desk? Meet Cubii, The Sitting Exerciser
Sitting down — and the sedentary lifestyle it encourages — is killing you, slowly but surely. The problem is, standing desks aren’t for everyone. Making the switch is a big deal. I love mine but it took a week of pain and suffering to go from seat to feet, and it still feels pretty tough on calves and soles after a full day-long standing stretch. So here’s a third… Read More
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Hands On With The Amazon Fire Phone
Announced last month, the Amazon Fire Phone is the company’s first attempt at mobile hardware. Like its cousins in the Kindle Fire line of tablets, it runs a fork of Android and gives you quick access to everything in Amazon’s large (and growing) content library. Read More
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TCTV
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Microsoft Confirms Decision To Kill The Surface Mini
Remember the Surface Mini, a device that got axed at the last minute? Microsoft gave it a shout out in its earnings report today. The company noted in its hardware section that its “[c]urrent year cost of revenue included Surface inventory adjustments resulting from our transition to newer generation devices and a decision to not ship a new form factor.” Ding. Read More
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China Drove Big iPhone And iPad Sales For Apple During Q3 2014
Apple‘s earnings are out, and there’s a narrative contained therein of the emerging importance of China and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries in general – the company revealed to the FT that iPhone sales are up 55 percent year over year in the BRIC nations, and Chinese iPhone sales are up 48 percent, with the iPad sales in that country rising 51 percent year… Read More
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Apple Sold 35.2M iPhones, 13.3M iPads And 4.4M Macs In Q3 2014
Apple has released its latest quarterly earnings report, and the hardware story is one that you might have heard before: For the most part, the company sold more devices year-over-year, with the notable exception of the iPad, which continues to see slight declines as it did last quarter. By the numbers, Apple sold 35.20 million iPhones, 13.27 million iPads, 4.41 million Macs and 2.96… Read More
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Apple’s Mixed Q3 2014 With $37.4B Revenue, $7.7B Profit And $1.28 EPS
Apple has just released its fiscal Q3 2014 earnings, reporting $37.4 billion in revenue, $7.7 billion in net profit representing $1.28 per share. Compared to the year-ago quarter, it corresponds to a growth of 5.9 percent in revenue, and 19.6 percent in EPS (adjusted for the 7-for-1 split). Fortune’s consensus among analysts was for Apple to report earnings of $1.26 per share on… Read More
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The Defender Is What You Get When You Combine A Camera, Automated 9-1-1, And Pepper Spray
Safety first! That’s what my mom always says. Which is why it’s somewhat shocking that technology hasn’t already been leveraged to provide additional personal protection to people on the go. But the Defender looks to change all that. It’s a new pocket-sized device that combines a camera, a 24/7 monitoring system for police and health services, and pepper spray to… Read More
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Some Brief Thoughts About Apple’s MacBook Air ‘Stickers’ Ad
Yesterday Apple released a new ‘Stickers’ ad for the MacBook Air. I found it interesting for a few reasons. Read More
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Apple’s Cash Machine Is Back
Later today, Apple will announce its quarterly earnings for Q3 2014. For the past couple of years, the April-to-June quarter has been the slowest quarter of the year for the company. Before that, Apple used to refresh its iPad lineup in the spring. Now, it seems like nothing is happening during the Q3 quarter. But gross margin is on the rise and should make this quarter more impressive… Read More
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Google Opens $1M Contest To Shrink A Power Inverter
Google opened up applications today for the Little Box Challenge, announced in May, with plans to give away $1,000,000 to the group that can create a smaller and cheaper power inverter. Inverters take direct current from power sources such as solar panels and turn it into alternate current so that it can be used in homes, cars and businesses. Making the inverter smaller allows for more… Read More
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For Its First Google Glass Effort, EBay Adapts Its RedLaser Product Finder App
Back in March 2013, eBay said it would start to work on applications for Google Glass — the idea being that the Android-powered, head-mounted computer could help consumers shop for things online and in the real world more seamlessly than pulling out your smartphone (and even less so, a full-fledged computer). Read More
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Wacom Launches Bamboo Paper On Android, Windows 8 And Kindle Fire
Drawing tablet and digitizer hardware maker Wacom is expanding the availability of its homegrown note-taking app today, with a launch that brings the previously iPad-only app to devices powered by Android and Windows 8, and to Amazon Kindle Fire tablets. The note-taking app is optimized for handwritten notes and doodles, and works with Wacom’s Bamboo line of tablet styli, and the… Read More
