India get its first beach with free public Wi-Fi

Visitors to Malpe beach in the southern Indian district of Karnataka will now be able to surf the Internet along with the waves thanks to a free public Wi-Fi network set up by the Indian government.

This makes it India's first beach to get free public Wi-Fi. The Internet service is being provided by the state-run telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) and supported by the Indian government.

Situated in the Udupi district in southern Karnataka, Malpe's golden sand beach attracts a large number of tourists. Visitors will be be able to access the Wi-Fi network round-the-clock, but the free service lasts for only for 30 minutes. This duration will be extended later.

As part of its Digital India initiative, the Indian government recently announced plans to install 2,500 Wi-Fi hotspots at 256 locations by the next fiscal year with the help of BSNL. The move, the government hopes, will help take India's Internet subscriber base from 400 million to 500 million users by March next year.

Google has also partnered with Indian Railways to set up Wi-Fi services at 100 major train stations across the country by the end of 2016.

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A fishing boat at Malpe Beach in Karnataka.

BY SONAM JOSHIINDIA1 HOUR AGO

Apple's not-so-secret car is further along than we think, Daimler CEO says

t's no secret that Apple is working on a car. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said he thinks the company is serious about building an electric car, and now the CEO of German car company Daimler, Dieter Zetsche, has chimed in to say an Apple Car is further along than we may have thought.

After meeting with about 70 companies in Silicon Valley, Zetsche German newspaper Welt am Sonntag (via Reuters) reported that Zetsche and his company's senior managers believe Apple is making great progress on development of its car, codenamed "Project Titan."

"Our impression was that these companies can do more and know more than we had previously assumed," Zetsch told Welt am Sonntag. "At the same time they have more respect for our achievements than we thought."

Zetsche added that Google, too, is making significant strides in building its own car, though it's public knowledge the company is working on a self-driving car of its own.

Zetsche's optimistic outlook, rather than one filled with fear of Apple and Google eating its lunch overnight, mirrors recent thoughts from other automotive bigwigs.

When asked if thought Apple and Google could build "successful car franchises," Don Butler, Ford's executive director for connected vehicles and services, told TrustedReviews he thinks Apple and Google "can do it."

"We welcome others joining. We welcome the activity that's in the space. We think it's exciting. It's actually change that we are embracing," Butler said.

Not much is known about the so-called Apple Car. Apple reportedly has up to 1,000 employees working on the electric vehicle, which could be autonomous.

While Zetsche's comments suggest the company's project is progressing nicely, all may not be going swimmingly. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Steve Zadesky, an Apple veteran who has been working on Apple's car project for two years, will be leaving the company. Whether his departure will set back the car's projected 2019 launch date is unclear.

Earlier this month, Apple snatched up three car-related domains (apple.cars, apple.car and apple.auto), adding more fuel to the fire that's moving full steam ahead with a vehicle.

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Google Street View opens the Guggenheim Museum to the world

Traveling New York to experience the city's many epic museums isn't something exactly affordable, which is why a new online tour of the famed Guggenheim Museum will be a welcome addition to Google Street View.

Captured using tripod-mounted cameras, Street View trolley cameras and even drones, anyone with Internet access can explore the museum's well-known spiral staircase, which has been featured in scores of movies.

By navigating to a special Google-created site, users can virtually stroll through the museum's halls and peer up through the structure's Frank Lloyd Wright–designed circular skylight (known in the museum as the oculus).

IMAGE: GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM VIA STREET VIEW

Once you begin your virtual journey, you can check out roughly 120 pieces of art, including a special exhibition from last year called "Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim." In addition to the 2015 exhibit, users can take a deep dive into the museum's 2013 exhibit "No Country: Contemporary Art For South and Southeast Asia."

A kind of virtual elevator, just beneath the navigation control interface, lets you instantly move from the first floor of the museum to the sixth floor in much the same way as you would via a normal elevator.

IMAGE: GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM VIA STREET VIEW

Unlike some of Google's more recent virtual tours, this one doesn't feature live video and human curators. But if you're accustomed to exploring locations via Google Maps' Street View feature, the presentation and interface will feel incredibly familiar.

Launched in collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute, later this year the Guggenheim's online presentation will add artists from North Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

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Self-driving cars will come to car sharing before showrooms, GM says

DETROIT — Turns out, the first self-driving car you will ride in won't be one you own; it'll be one you order up on your smartphone from Lyft.

"The first mainstream deployment of autonomous vehicles won't be to customers but to a ride-share platform," General Motors President Dan Ammann told Mashable at the North American International Auto Show.

"We're going to have a car that operates only in downtown Austin that has a maximum speed of 30 mph and operates in controlled conditions"

Ammann later clarified he was speaking hypothetically; Although GM recently announced a partnership with Lyft, self-driving robo-taxis in Austin are not imminent.

SEE ALSO: The 5 best luxury cars from the Detroit Auto Show

This revelation comes just days after GM announced it was investing $500 million in a strategic partnership with the ride-sharing company.

The GM-powered Lyft cars could be more than just self-driving Chevy Volts or Malibu Hybrids, they will be digitally personalized to you — even before you open the door.
With your Lyft profile, the car will know who you are and your preferences and will arrive preset with all the things you like — think Spotify playlists and ideal seat settings. All you'll have to do is tell it where you're going within downtown Austin and it'll take you there autonomously.

Though Ammann was unwilling to give a specific timeline for the rollout of this autonomous test fleet, he said it would be sooner than a self-driving car being offered for sale to customers. There are two strong reasons why. First, the average car today sits unused 95% of the time, which is hugely inefficient. An autonomous Bolt in a Lyft fleet would be in use around 60-70% of the time.

A Chevy Volt proudly displaying the Lyft emblem on the dash.
Plainly, full autonomous technology is expensive — so is battery-electric technology as well as hydrogen fuel cells (Ammann tossed those three in together — not me). So right out the door, the economics are stacked against the likelihood of a customer choosing a self-driving car over a human-driven one. Lyft, however, could afford to pay such a price because it could run the car 16 hours a day while earning income for years on end. It makes much more sense.

The second reason is that it is easier for GM to create a car that works in a known city within certain limits at or below 30 mph. Unlike a car you might drive to the mountain or past a parade or through a desert, the autonomous system has much less programming to handle.

Importantly, expanding into car-sharing, General Motors isn't sacrificing its current business model but rather expanding it. Ammann explained that the majority of the carmaker's profits come from selling trucks and SUVs to people who live outside urban centers. Changing their business model inside cities doesn't affect that but rather opens up a big new profit opportunity.

That said, Ammann does see a business case for offering self-driving cars to retail customers some time down the road. In the short-term, however, GM is going to cut its autonomous teeth with Lyft.

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Olympus PEN F is the gorgeous retro digital camera you've been waiting for

There's no company that knows how to build retro cameras the way Olympus does.

The new PEN F is quite possibly the most retro mirrorless digital camera the company has ever created. I dare say it's even more retro than the company's high-end OM-D mirrorless cameras. It's not just old-school aesthetics — the camera's got a dial on the front for quickly switching between different color modes to emulate the look of film.

The digital PEN F's design pays homage to the original PEN F film camera released in 1963. The resemblance is obvious when the cameras are next to each other. You can tell just by looking at it that the engineers and designers sweated all of the details from the font to the knurled metal dials.

Like Olympus's other Micro Four-Thirds format mirrorless cameras, the PEN F's top is covered with dials and the backside has buttons crammed into every piece of its body. In the era of touchscreens, the dial and button overload may feel a bit much, but I love it.

The OM-D E-M5 Mark II introduced the ability to take several images and stitch them together into a 40-megapixel shot. The PEN F, with its higher resolution images, takes eight photos and composites them together into a 50-megapixel picture.

New for an Olympus camera is the ability to register information (lens name, focal length, aperture) for old Olympus lenses, for inclusion in your images's EXIF data.

As mentioned earlier, there's a Color Profile Control dial on the front of the camera that applies live filters during shooting to help recreate a film-like aesthetic in images. Twist it and you can switch between several modes (Monochrome Profile Control, Color Profile Control, Art Filters and Color Creator).

For the first time on a PEN digital camera, there's a built-in electronic viewfinder (EVF). You can buy an external EVF and clip it on via the hot shoe on Olympus's existing PEN digital cameras, but it's an extra cost, not to mention it looks ugly. The OLED EVF on the PEN F has the same clarity and resolution as the E-M10 Mark II with 2.36 million dots. It also has the same simulated optical-viewfinder (S-OVF) mode that recreates the feeling of looking through an optical viewfinder (i.e. larger dynamic range) on a DSLR. The EVF is positioned to the left side of the camera, just like a rangefinder, and as such, it makes it a versatile camera for street photography.

IMAGE: OLYMPUS""

On the backside of the camera, there's a 3-inch touchscreen that flips out with its vari-angle hinge. The hinge is useful for taking photos from different heights and squeezing the camera into tight places. Flipping the LCD screen also protects it from getting scratched up.

Once again, Olympus has chosen not to include any 4K video recording. The PEN F records video at up to 1080p full HD resolution and also shoots 4K timelapses (which are composited together into a video clip)— same as the OM-D E-M10 Mark II.

The PEN F costs $1,199.99 for the body. Lenses sold separately.

IMAGE: OLYMPUS

There's no denying the fact Olympus has built a gorgeous camera that's packed chock-full of technology and features. As you'd expect, a premium camera comes with an equally premium price. The camera body alone will cost $1,199.99 when it's released in March. The company says it has no plans to sell any bundles with lenses.

That's $100 more than Olympus's OM-D E-M5 Mark II and $550 more than the OM-D E-M10 Mark II, so do your homework before making any buying decisions.

App designed for children with autism now lets you track your kids with one click

For parents, knowing their child is safe can be one of their biggest worries. Parents of children on the autism spectrum may worry even more.

But tracking children may not be enough in an emergency.

AngelSense, an app and wearable device, was updated last week with a new feature for such emergency situations called First Responder Alert. The feature pings parents about the location of their child, as well as data on how long it takes them to leave and arrive at certain locations.

The GPS tracking and alert system was developed by parents Doron Somer and Nery Ben-Azar, who both have children with autism and were searching for a better way to keep track of their whereabouts.

SEE ALSO: 5 Autism Simulations to Help You Experience Sensory Overload

The wearable GPS tracker — a small rectangular-shaped, sensor-filled box that fits into the pocket or attaches to clothes via its internal magnet — and an app collects location data every 10 seconds and can send text alerts to parents when it senses the child's phone is moving. The device includes a microphone so parents can listen in to get an idea of the situation; according to AngelSense's website, the battery can last from 12 to 14 hours.

With one click, parents can send a text to a list of contacts with details about the child’s location, including Google Street View images and directions to get there.

The AngelSense Guardian app updates users with location information, maps and Street View images.

According to a 2012 study in Pediatrics, 49% of parents with a child on the autism spectrum said their child attempted to wander or run away after the age of 4. Wandering can lead to a multitude of dangers, including traffic hazards and drowning. The National Autism Association recorded 32 wandering-related deaths in 2015.

"I know exactly how families feel and have experienced [this before]," co-founder Ben-Azar toldMashable.

AngelSense first launched in 2014. The system has already helped save the life of a 17-year-old autistic child from the Bronx, and the co-founders said that the child, Hanzel, left his home and drifted around Manhattan and Queens. Hanzel's mother was able to use the new First Responder Alert to locate and get him back home safely with the help of others.

Earlier in 2015, a 15-year-old girl with Asperger syndrome was kidnapped near her home in Dallas, Texas.

"AngelSense sent the mother an alert that the girl went to an unexpected place," Somer, one of the cofounders, said.

The mother used the listen-in feature of the device and heard a struggle as her daughter was assaulted.

"The [kidnapper] saw the tracker on the girl and asked her what it was," Somer added. "After she said 'it's a GPS tracker,' he insisted she take it off. But the girl told him only her mother could take it off with a special key, so the kidnapper ran away."

Her mother, Kathy Gilray, wrote about the experience in a blog post, citing that with the AngelSense's tracking information, police were able to track down the kidnapper.

The small GPS tracker can be attached to any garment with a magnetic lock, and communicates with the parent's phone.

IMAGE: ANGELSENSE

However, it's certainly possible that so much access to a child’s location can create even more anxiety and cause parents to obsessively check on their child’s status.

There are other tracking devices similar to AngelSense, such as PocketFinder and Amber Alert GPS, but they are more easily removable, and many don’t have text alert features. For children who might remove their clothes, an AngelSense belt ($19.99) is available that can only be opened with a magnet.

The customer care team, which is available to help with questions or emergency situations, is made up of mothers active in the autism community who use the app, Ben-Azar said.

AngelSense is available for $59 until Jan. 31 and will cost $149 thereafter. The app is available for download via Android (Google Play link) and iOS (iTunes link)

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Australia will have a 5G network by 2020, says Vodafone CTO

That high-tech future isn't too far off, according to Vodafone. The company's Australian chief technology officer Benoit Hanssen told reporters at an event in Sydney Tuesday he believes Australia will soon have the super-speedy mobile service.

The development of 5G, the fifth generation mobile network, which is predicted to bring seriously faster download speeds, has prompted a flurry of investment worldwide. Not only will it help you watch crisp movies on your phone, there are hopes 5G will provide the backbone for everything from the "Internet of things" to driverless cars.

Hanssen said he believes Australia will be among the first countries to adopt 5G by 2020, "plus or minus a year here or there." He pointed to Australia's track record of early adoption: "Australia adopted the smartphone enthusiastically — smartphone penetration is one of the highest in the world," he said. "There is a readiness to adopt new things, and you have a population that can largely afford to adopt new things.

"We do think that as [5G] comes out, Australia will be there."

4G, which arrived in Australia around 2011, has been widely adopted. According to Hanssen, more than 70% of Vodafone customers are now on 4G phones, and he expects it to reach 90% penetration in 2016. Still, some are hanging on. "We still have a few 2G customers, if you can believe," he said.

In 2015, Vodafone struck a deal with telecommunications service provider TPG to extend its fibre network, putting the company in a better position to bring 5G Down Under. It's a work in progress, however, with Hanssen sharing Tuesday that the bulk of the network is yet to be rolled out.

It's still early days, but there are plenty of indications 5G is going to be a game changer. While not a real world test, in 2015, British scientists claimed they broke speed records during tests of 5G data connections, reaching one terabit per second. According to the BBC, with such a speed, it "would be theoretically possible to download a file 100 times the size of a feature film in about three seconds."

When asked what kind of speeds we can expect with 5G in 2020, Vodafone Group Technology Officer Johan Wibergh said Tuesday, "short answer: we don't know."

"We need more spectrum to get higher speeds," he added. The release of spectrum is still being negotiated globally, with the local telecommunications industry lobbying the Australian government to release new frequency bands.

Another of Australia's large mobile providers, Telstra, has also indicated it's on the 5G bandwagon. At Telstra's 2015 annual results briefing, former CEO Andrew Penn confirmed reports the network aims to bring 5G to Australia by 2020. "[5G] addresses the world of an Internet of things," he said, according to the Australian Associated Press. "You can imagine a world in 2020 where almost anything that could be connected will be connected."

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