Technology news

VB EVENT: We’re delighted that Robert Hoffer, the mastermind behind the world’s most popular bot experiment so far, will join as a speaker at MobileBeat 2016, our event that starts tomorrow in SF. It’s the first significant event about A.I. and conversational user interfaces.
The bot he created, SmarterChild, had 30 million users in its IM buddy list on AOL, the platform where it lived at the time. The bot accounted for 5 percent of all IM traffic, and was sending hundreds

As livestreaming continues to proliferate throughout the internet, issues have started to emerge that causes people to think about how to best use these services. A concern creators, including broadcasters that are integrating their systems into tools like Periscope and Facebook Live, may have is how to better control who can see their videos. Until today there hasn’t been an official way to really constrain broadcasts by geography — so someone has created one.
Called Levee, this app

Tomorrow is the second annual Amazon Prime Day, which means two things. The first is that in the future, we will have international holidays that are actual exclusive branded events — woe betide those who forget to re-up their Christmas subscriptions in December. The second is that if you’re currently paying for Amazon Prime, or you’re able to sign up for the 30-day free trial period Amazon offers, July 12th could be a chance to pick up some very solid deals.
Prime Day is avail

Today is the second annual Amazon Prime Day, which means two things. The first is that in the future, we will have international holidays that are actual exclusive branded events — woe betide those who forget to re-up their Christmas subscriptions in December. The second is that if you’re currently paying for Amazon Prime, or you’re able to sign up for the 30-day free trial period Amazon offers, July 12th could be a chance to pick up some very solid deals.
Prime Day is availabl

Movies based on video games haven't had the best track record, so what's the next logical step? Try turning them into TV shows, instead! Paramount Television has announced that it's optioned the rights to create a series based on EA's multiplayer shooter Battlefield. Production company Anonymous Content will be partnering with the studio on the project, with Spotlight producer Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta serving as executive producers.
Battlefield has been a successful franchise since th

The dream of turning your smartphone into a laptop will never die. From Motorola's Atrix to this crazy HP Windows Phone, there have been a number of companies that have tried (and largely failed) to build a smartphone that can be attached to a dock and turned into a laptop.
In a somewhat new twist, a company wants to sell you just the laptop shell, while letting you use your current Android phone and an app to power it. The Superbook is a 11.6-inch laptop shell built by the team behind

Pokémon Go, the mobile app that’s reignited the cult of Pokémon for millions of berserk, smartphone-wielding fans, works on Chromebooks. But only certain Chromebooks — those that already support Android apps and the Google Play Store.
GamesBeat got it running on Acer’s 2015 Chromebook Flip. Sort of. Here’s your step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Rationalize
Why on earth would anyone want to run Pokémon G

As people around the United States gather at parks and other public spaces to capture and train their augmented-reality creatures in Pokémon Go, the three companies responsible for the the mobile app are probably having a difficult time counting all of their money.
Pokémon Go debuted on Wednesday in the United States after launching in Australia and New Zealand the night before, and by Thursday, it was the top downloaded and top-grossing iOS and Android game in all three marke

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Tesla for not notifying investors of a fatal crash in May when Autopilot was active, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Tesla previously said that the fatal crash was "not material" information to shareholders after reporters at Fortune accused the company of misleading investors. In an unusual blog post last week, Tesla said that Fortune had mischaracterized an SEC filing from the company and that there was no attempt to mislead sharehold

Jonathan Zarra knew something about Pokémon Go that most people didn’t. As a beta tester this summer, the 28-year-old freelance developer had early access to the smash hit mobile game — and as a result, he could see that it offered users no way to chat with one another inside the app. And so Zarra built GoChat, an independent app that lets Pokémon Go users leave notes for each other at in-game locations.
"This is a feature that really should be there," Zarra says. "Espe

The PC market continues to slowly but surely decline. Both Gartner and IDC have found PC shipments were down globally, again.
Gartner estimates worldwide PC shipments fell 5.2 percent to 64.3 million units in Q2 2016, the seventh consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines. The only good news was that PC shipments in North America increased for the first time in five quarters.
The top six vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Asus, Apple, and Acer. As you can see in the chart below, Gartner found that

GUEST: Last week I helped to kick off Delaware State University’s inaugural Android Bootcamp as lead instructor. I welcomed a total of 13 students, with little to no programming experience, with the intent of teaching programming and Android fundamentals. The program, hosted by historically black college Delaware State University (DelState), is mostly composed of black men, ranging in age from 18 to 35.
Day One – Who we are, why are we here, and 1%Our day one began imm

Not satisfied with your noisy old PC cooling fan? Then consider upgrading to Corsair’s latest ML-series fans, which use maglev technology in order to bend the very forces of physics to your PC-cooling will.
With earlier, now outdated models, wear was caused by friction from the rapid rotation of the fan, generating noise and heat that were detrimental to performance. However, the ML-series magnetically suspends the fan blades away from the central bearing of the motor, resulting in a drama

If you hang out on Hacker News, a developer-oriented online discussion forum that was spun out of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator last year, then you probably can’t remember every single one of the threads that you thought were great. Sure, you can see what you’ve upvoted, but people upvote a lot of stuff. Today Hacker News is introducing a new favorite button on each post and comment that will add it to your collection of favorites.
To see your collection of favorites, you j

VB EVENT: VentureBeat today announced the finalists from the first ever international botathon, which took place over the weekend. More than 200 teams participated in this hackathon for bots. Finalists from Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, and Tel Aviv, as well as the online division, will present their new bots at MobileBeat 2016 in San Francisco July 12 and 13, where winners will be chosen by event attendees, expert judges, and online voting.
Here’s a summary of the fin

Asus’ Chromebook Flip is a good device limted by a 10-inch screen. Now, Asus might be giving us an equally good device but with more local storage and a larger display. B&H lists Asus’ C301SA as coming with Intel's Celeron N3160 quad-core Braswell processor, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 1080p, 13.3-inch display. The device is expected to next month for only $299.
We’ll be satisfied if Asus can replicate the Chromebook Flip’s quality but with a bigger screen

A new dwarf planet has been found lurking in the Kuiper Belt — the large cloud of icy bodies that orbits at the fringes of the Solar System. The object, named 2015 RR245, was spotted by a team of international astronomers in February of this year, after looking over data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The discovery was made as part of the Outer Solar System Origins Survey, an ongoing observation looking for objects beyond Neptune. Continue reading…

Solid state drives have become a lot more accessible since I bought a 60GB Intel SSDfour years ago just to install Windows 7 and a few games. Samsung’s 850 EVO Series is one of the most popular SSDs on Amazon, and you can get the 500GB version for what my puny Intel SSD cost when I first built my desktop — about $150.
Now, Samsung is introducing a 4TB version of its best-selling SSD, which should be enough storage for well, anything. The 4TB version is priced at a hefty $1,499,

 The Walt Disney Co. is kicking off the third session of its corporate accelerator this week, and revealed 9 new companies admitted to the program. A full list follows at the end of this post.
The companies are developing everything from cinematic virtual reality and holographic content, to robots with human-like facial expressions.
Because alumni of the Disney Accelerator have scored big… Read More

For the next five days, Walmart will offer free shipping on all orders with no minimum purchase price, and is rolling out discounts on a host of products across its online store. The promotion comes just a day before Amazon’s second annual Prime Day, during which Prime subscribers gain access to hundreds of deals.
Unlike Prime Day, which is limited to Prime subscribers, the five days of free shipping apply to all of Walmart’s online customers, not just subscribers to its Shippin

 When you use Google to sign into Pokémon Go, as so many of you have already, the popular game for some reason grants itself (for some users, anyway) the highest possible level of access to your Google account, meaning it can read your email, location history, pretty much everything. Why does it need this, and why aren’t users told? Also this is definitely the last Poképost for a while. Read More

 Pokémon Go is off to a big start in the U.S., but just how big? The company hasn’t yet revealed any official numbers, but we have estimates to provide an idea of the scope of downloads and revenue the mobile game is generating. App analytics company SensorTower used its predictive model of the App Store and Google Play, which takes hundreds of thousands of data points from its partners… Read More

This brave new world of Pokémon gaming can be surprisingly dangerous.
Pokémon Go launched for mobile in the U.S. on July 6, and it has immediately become a hit. However, some people are using the location-based game for disturbing reasons. Specifically, muggers have used Lures (which make Pokémon more likely to appear in a specific location) to attract potential victims. The people behind Pokémon Go are urging its players to be careful.
“We are aw

Gaming has become a $99 billion market, with mobile games accounting for $36 billion of that in 2016, according to market researcher Newzoo. And Facebook says its own statistics show that games have spread out more than ever before.
Facebook’s data from 12 countries shows that 43 percent of mobile gamers are parents, and those parents mostly play during the prime-time TV hours of 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Among mobile game parents who spend money, 90 percent play mobile games as a family activ

Disney has released a new illustration depicting the physical layout for its upcoming Star Wars theme park expansions — in an idealistic, concept-arty kind of way. According to the Disney Parks Blog, the artwork went up today on a fence in Frontierland in Disneyland, near a trail that will serve as an entrance to the new land when it eventually opens. It depicts a sprawling series of marketplaces and buildings, nestled amongst trees and foliage, with the Millennium Falcon attraction s

Pokémon Go has become wildly popular in the days since its release last week, but the app may be hiding a serious security issue. In many cases, users who sign into the app through a Google Account are often inadvertently granting broad permissions over all information linked to the account, including the power to read and send emails. At no point in the sign-in process does the app notify users that full access is being granted.
There's no indication that developer Niantic Labs is active

Notetaking software company Evernote today revealed the identity of its new chief technology officer: Anirban Kundu, a 10-year veteran of Yahoo who most recently worked as vice president of engineering and distinguished engineer at GoDaddy. Kundu is starting his new job just after Evernote announced major pricing changes that permit people to sync notes from only two devices at once, prompting some users to start exploring alternatives.
But Kundu — who replaces Dave Engberg, Evernote&rsquo

The Pokémon Go craze is real, and it's forcing ghastly pale nerds like me who have never felt the kiss of Earth's sun to catch some dang virtual pokémans. (Other plural forms of Pokémon include Pokémen and Pokésmons.)
An unexpected side effect of Pokémon Go has been accidental exercise, as shown in this Gizmodo article documenting dozens of players reporting sore legs from walking around. One Pokémon Go player found a sneaky way aro

The reason you keep bumping into other Pokémon Go players is because millions of people are trying to catch ’em all.
Approximately 7.5 million iOS and Android owners have downloaded Pokémon Go in the United States since Wednesday, according to app-market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The rush to download it (and spend money on it) has pushed Nintendo’s stock up 25 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The location-based augmented reality game puts digita

If you’ve chosen iDevices as your IoT provider, you’ve been stuck controlling your smart devices manually through their companion app. What a bummer. Now, though, you’re getting the opportunity for a big lifestyle change. iDevices’ products are compatible with the Echo. Just like any of its other 1,400 skills, iDevices’ commands show up in the Echo’s companion app or by asking Alexa to enable a new skill. I love some IoT synergy.Continue reading…

A car built by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and automaker SAIC might be the most connected in the world. The new OS’Car RX5 SUV has a special version of Alibaba’s YunOS operating system, normally used in everything from smartphones to refrigerators and other smart home appliances.
The idea is to make a smart operating system "the second engine of cars" with data as "the new fuel," said Dr. Wang Jian, chairman of Alibaba’s Technology Steering Committee, in a statement.
Aliba

Paramount TV and Anonymous Content have bought the rights to make a television series based on Electronic Arts‘ Battlefield video game series.
Michael Sugar, the producer of Academy Award Best Picture winner Spotlight, and Ashley Zalta from Anonymous Content will serve as executive producers. Battlefield is a natural for TV since it has amassed more than 60 million players worldwide since the first Battlefield game debut in 2002, and EA has plans to launch another installment, Battlefield

Much like its Gear VR headset, Samsung's Gear 360 camera only works with a few high-end Samsung smartphones like the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. But it was only a matter of time before someone dug into the software and opened the hardware up to a larger audience.
XDA developer Bin4ry has modified Samsung Gear 360 Manager — the app used to control the Gear 360 — to allow most Android smartphones running Android 5.0 or higher to operate the camera. Bin4ry also removed the res

For April Fools’ Day 2014, Google invited players to catch pokémon inside of the Google Maps app. The pop-up game was simple, akin to Where’s Waldo, but the goliath company promoted the special event with a faux trailer that looks in hindsight like a target video for Pokémon Go.
Here’s the original trailer for 2014’s Pokémon Challenge:And here’s the launch trailer for Pokémon Go:Pokémon Go isn’t quite as ambitious as the orig

The gaming industry in the United States is about to open up about some of its most guarded data.
The sales-tracking intelligence firm The NPD Group is expanding its monthly gaming report to include point-of-sale information for digital games sold through PlayStation Network, Xbox Store, and Steam. Those are the three major distribution channels for digital console and PC sales in the United States — although it does leave a gap when it comes to Nintendo products sold through the eShop on

When playing with Cozmo, Anki’s palm-sized artificial intelligence robot, it’s easy to forgot all of the engineering and software running behind the scenes. Every action, from Cozmo’s audible chirps of victory when it wins a game to its childlike mannerisms when it recognizes your face, conceals tens of thousands of lines of code.When the product launches this October, Anki hopes consumers won’t think of its AI robot as undecipherable technology. Instead, the company want

A couple of weeks after pulling back the curtains on its smart toy called Cozmo, today Anki announced that it will also be releasing a developer SDK in beta that lets anyone tap into the power of this robot, including its sensors, computer vision, and path and motion planning capabilities. Both Cozmo and the SDK will be available in October.
Cozmo is a playful, intelligent robot with an essence of artificial intelligence. As VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi described it, it’s “some