Google robot turns your selfies into line-drawn art
BARCELONA — This year's Mobile World Congress is a huge sea smartphones (yay!), networking gear (meh) and people wearing VR headsets (uh...), but in between all the suited-up business folks and sweaty, stinky reporters was one booth that had something really charming.
At the Android Experiments tent (thankfully, located outdoors), Google brought out developers from its Creative Lab to show off a few of the weirder apps that people can create with Android.
One such experiment was the IOIO. After you take a selfie, the image data is converted into triangulated coordinates for the triangle-shaped robot to plot out on paper. Armed with the plot points, the robot then gets to work drawing your special selfie portrait using its attached ink pen.
Three minutes later, you've got yourself a line-drawn interpretation of your selfie:
It's fun, geeky and I have to admit a little empowering. The whole reason for the Android booth, after all, was to promote how easy it is to work with the software's open-source code and encourage developers to make new things.
Microsoft is ditching Android app ports for Windows Phone
Mobile app developers who wanted to easily port their apps from Android or iOS to Windows 10 devices were in luck when Microsoft announced it created tools to help with that transition last year. But now Microsoft is going back and dropping the Android bridge, focusing on just iOS.
In a blog post, Microsoft announced that while it has been updating the Windows Bridge for iOS, it is dropping the Windows Bridge for Android project with an interesting explanation.
“We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing,” wrote Kevin Gallo, director of Windows' developer platform. “We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs.”
The two projects for iOS and Android were very different in how they bridged apps from those platforms to Windows and were obviously platform specific. While many app developers create apps for both iOS and Android, there are Android-only developers that are now missing out on the Windows Store market unless they want to rewrite their app.
The solution for this is the acquisition of Xamarin, which is an app development company. Xamarin allows developers to use a homogenized C# language which easily moves between all three platforms. This is more of a forward-looking move, as it won’t help developers who already have their apps on iOS or Android.
There is some speculation from Extreme Tech that the Android bridging was canceled because being able to seamlessly port any app would cancel out the need for developers to create Windows-optimized apps.
India's Tata Motors renames its controversial Zica car Tiago
Indian automaker Tata Motors has rebranded its latest hatchback after its original name Zica attracted controversy for being similar to the mosquito-born Zika virus. The model has now been renamed Tiago.
The name was selected after an international crowdsourcing campaign which invited people to send names for the car. The final name was chosen after a social media poll in which participants were asked to choose between Tiago, Civet and Adore. Tiago received the highest votes among the three entries.
Tata Motors is one of India's largest automobile companies, and owns the iconic British brands Jaguar and Land Rover. It had chosen the name Zica, an abbreviation of zippy car, before the outbreak of the virus in the Americas. The small car was already being promoted in an advertising campaign starring Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi.
While Tata showcased the car under its old name during the Indian Auto Expo 2016 earlier this month, it had said that it would change the name before its market launch. The company said that the decision to rename the car was "the right and responsible action following the hardships caused by the virus outbreak across many countries." It now plans to launch the car by March-end.
India's Tata Motors renames its controversial Zica car Tiago
Indian automaker Tata Motors has rebranded its latest hatchback after its original name Zica attracted controversy for being similar to the mosquito-born Zika virus. The model has now been renamed Tiago.
The name was selected after an international crowdsourcing campaign which invited people to send names for the car. The final name was chosen after a social media poll in which participants were asked to choose between Tiago, Civet and Adore. Tiago received the highest votes among the three entries.
Tata Motors is one of India's largest automobile companies, and owns the iconic British brands Jaguar and Land Rover. It had chosen the name Zica, an abbreviation of zippy car, before the outbreak of the virus in the Americas. The small car was already being promoted in an advertising campaign starring Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi.
While Tata showcased the car under its old name during the Indian Auto Expo 2016 earlier this month, it had said that it would change the name before its market launch. The company said that the decision to rename the car was "the right and responsible action following the hardships caused by the virus outbreak across many countries." It now plans to launch the car by March-end.
If you always get lost in museums or malls, you'll love 3D indoor navigation
BARCELONA — We all use mapping apps to get from one location to another when we're outside, but we could soon use them for indoor navigation, too.
At Mobile World Congress on Monday, I got to experience for myself how indoor navigation works with a Project Tango device. (Google's Project Tango is supposed to help our phones and tablets better understand the 3D world we live in.)
Lenovo invited reporters out to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya for demos. I was expecting to see the final — or a near-final — version of the Project Tango smartphone the company announced at CES, but nope.
Instead, Lenovo used old prototype Tango tablets to show how to navigate from one room to another.
With the tablet held up in my hands, I started my tour looking at a map of the various rooms on the floor. Creating a navigation route was as simple as tapping on a room and setting it as the destination.
A squiggly line then showed the indoor path from my location to the destination. I felt like a kid again following this path through the rooms. If I veered off the path, my location dot also veered off; the tracking was very precise and I didn't notice any lag in tracking when I moved freely around the room.
If I wanted to, I could also tap on a button to turn on an augmented reality first-person perspective view. The app switches on the cameras and constantly scans the room, while overlaying a path of dots for you to follow.
Project Tango
Using the augmented reality view for indoor navigation.
Project Tango reps told me it'll be very easy for developers to create floor plans quickly and getting indoor navigation up and running requires very little coding work.
Once I made it to my desired room, I could then touch the location marker on the screen to bring up a panel with more information on an artist or the artworks inside. Tapping on the play button brought up a slideshow of paintings with an audio summary. Tapping on the play button brought up a slideshow of paintings with an audio summary.
Meanwhile, selecting the AR button activated the Tango tablet's 3D-sensing cameras. With the augmented reality feature on, I could walk up to specific paintings and tap on them to get additional information. On one particularly large painting with many different faces, the app used facial recognition to keep track of all of them; I tapped their faces to bring up more factoids on that specific person.
None of these features are particularly groundbreaking; the Louvre has been using Nintendo 3DS handhelds as interactive guides for years. Though I've never seen anyone use a 3DS as a guide in the few times I've been to the Louvre, you can if you want to.
The museum demo may seem niche, but imagine applying this kind of indoor navigation for use in a huge shopping mall or in an indoor parking lot. We'd never get lost anywhere ever again.
Samsung announces Aussie pricing and dates for Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge
If you're in Australia and hoping to get your hands on one of Samsung's new Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge smartphones, you won't have to wait too long.
On Monday, the company announced that the two products will be on sale Down Under from March 11. The Galaxy S7 will be priced at A$1,149 and the Galaxy S7 Edge will set you back A$1,249. If you're super keen, you can register for pre-sale from February 26.
The latest Samsung smartphones were launched Sunday in Barcelona at the 2016 Mobile World Congress. Both products feature an appealing design with the S7 Edge offering a curved glass face. Each device runs the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system, but the S7 Edge comes in a little larger with a 5.5 inch (13.97 centimetres) screen compared to the S7's 5.1 inches (12.95 centimetres). For the clumsy among us, the smartphones also apparently boast around 30 minutes worth of water resistance in up to 1.5 metres of water (5 feet).
If you want to get into the specs, here is Mashable's complete breakdown.
Samsung also launched the Samsung Gear 360 camera in Barcelona, a device that will help average punters create virtual reality video content. The device should also be available in Australia in 2016, but exact dates and pricing have yet to be announced.
U.S. Justice Department files motion to compel Apple to cooperate with FBI
The Department of Justice on Friday filed a motion to compel Apple to help the FBI break into an iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino attack in December.
The motion comes three days after a federal judge ordered Apple to unlock the phone. Apple CEO Tim Cook responded in an open letter opposing the order.
Apple has until Feb. 26 to respond to Tuesday's order from the judge.
A hearing related to the Justice Department's new motion has been scheduled for March 22.
What does this change
Although a new motion from the Department of Justice sounds as if it is adding new information to this case, the truth is, it isn't.
Much of the Department of Justice's filing is a reiteration of its earlier arguments. The substantive arguments are not different.
What is different is that the Department of Justice is directly responding to Apple's open letter. The letter, which is include as evidence with the motion, appears to be the impetus for this filing.
Additional arguments detailed by the Department of Justice that go beyond the facts of the case also appear to answer what it believes Apple's legal objections will be, based on the company's open letter.
In other words, this is a political opportunity for the Department of Justice to reframe the conversation in context with Apple's public statements.
For its part, the Department of Justice has also used this motion to argue that Apple's rationale for objecting to the order "appears to based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy."