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Plus: Our reviews of the Amazon Fire TV Cube, Google Podcasts, and Fujifilm Instax Square SQ6.
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Pick up a SteelSeries Arctis headset for cheap, along with tents, 4K TVs, and more this weekend.
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://www.wired.com/story/gaming-headsets-sale-other-tech-deals via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/ Amazon is addressing one of the larger issues with its Echo Dot Kids Edition — support for Spotify’s streaming music service, with the option to filter out explicit lyrics. The news was announced on Friday alongside new content from Disney for the Kids Edition device. However, Amazon says the Spotify support would not be available until next week. Lack of access to one of the most popular streaming services was one of my personal critiques with the Kids Edition. As a Spotify household, it was hard to use the device here because of its limited support for music services outside Amazon and iHeartRadio Family. Our favorite playlists and music was not available, because we don’t pay for Amazon’s on-demand music service. This will be a welcome change. When Spotify is enabled, Amazon says the explicit filter will also be turned on by default — but parents can turn it off on their FreeTime dashboard. Along with the support on the Kids Edition device, the update will also now allow Spotify customers who don’t subscribe to FreeTime the option to turn off explicit lyrics, as they already can do with Amazon Music and Pandora. In addition, Amazon says the Echo Dot Kids Edition is gaining a host of new content from Disney this week and next. It has already added a new kids skill called Disney Dailies that includes jokes and sketches taking place in the “Zootopia” world, which are updated every day. Next week, there also will be new character alarms featuring characters from Pixar’s “Coco,” Disney’s “Moana” and others. And Disney has updated its Daily Stories with stories from “Incredibles 2,” “Doc McStuffins,” “Wall-E,” “Moana” and more. The Kids Edition is a combo package of an Echo Dot with a protective case and a year of FreeTime Unlimited, which includes exclusive Alexa skills for Kids Edition owners, as well as other content, like games, apps, books and videos. It’s $79.99 on Amazon. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/amazons-echo-dot-kids-edition-adds-support-for-spotify/ via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/
Nintendo's tiny NES and SNES consoles are coming back. How to snag one now.
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Anything Alexa can do, Mom and Dad can do better.
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://www.wired.com/review/review-amazon-echo-dot-kids-edition via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/
A new bike design has two LED strips built into the front fork, offering some guiding light on rides at night.
from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://www.wired.com/story/mission-bicycle-integrated-lighting via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/ Earlier this year, Amazon introduced an Echo Dot for kids, with its $80 Echo Dot Kids Edition device, which comes in your choice of a red, blue, or green protective case. The idea is to market a version of Amazon’s existing Dot hardware to families by bundling it with an existing subscription service, and by throwing in a few extra features – like having Alexa encourage kids to say “please” when making their demands, for example. The device makes sense in a couple of scenarios – for helicopter parents who want to fully lock down an Echo device before putting it in a kid’s room, and for those who were in the market for a FreeTime Unlimited subscription anyway. I’ve been testing out an Echo Dot Kids Edition, and ran into some challenges which I thought I’d share. This is not a hardware review – I’m sure you can find those elsewhere. Music Filtering As a parent of an 8-year old myself, I’ve realized it’s too difficult to keep her from ever hearing bad words – especially in music, TV and movies – so I’ve just explained to her that while she will sometimes hear those words, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to say them. (We have a similar rule about art – sometimes people will be nude in paintings, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to walk around naked all the time.) Surprisingly, I’ve been able to establish a level of shame around adult and inappropriate content to the point that she will confess to me when she hears it on places like YouTube. She will even turn it off without my instruction! I have a good kid, I guess. But I understand some parents will only want kids to access the sanitized version of songs – especially if their children are still in the preschool years, or have a tendency to seek out explicit content because they’re little monsters. Amazon FreeTime would be a good option in that case, but there are some caveats. For starters, if you plan on using the explicit language filter on songs the Echo Dot plays, then you’re stuck with Amazon Music. While the Echo Dot itself can play music from a variety of services, including on-demand offerings from Pandora and Spotify, you can’t use these services when the explicit filter is enabled as “music services that do not support this filter will be blocked,” Amazon explains. We’re a Spotify household, so that means my child’s favorite bedtime music playlist became unavailable when we swapped out her existing Echo Dot for the Kids Edition which had the explicit filter enabled. Above: Parent Dashboard? Where? Maybe a link would help? You can disable the explicit filter from the Parent Dashboard, but this option is inconveniently available just via the web. When you dig around in the Alexa app – which is where you’d think these controls would be found, there’s only a FreeTime On/Off toggle switch and instructions to “Go to the Parent Dashboard to see activity, manage time limits, and add content.” It’s not even hyperlinked! You have to just know the dashboard’s URL is parents.amazon.com. (And not www.parents.amazon.com, by the way. That doesn’t work.) Then to actually disable the filter, it’s several more steps. You’ll click the gear icon next to the child’s name, click on “Echo Dot Kids Edition” under “Alexa Settings,” then click “Manage Music.” Here, you can turn the switch on or off. If you don’t have a subscription music service, the Echo Dot Kids Edition also ships with access to ad-free kid-safe stations on iHeartRadio Family. Whitelisting Alexa skills…well, some skills! Another issue with the way FreeTime works with Alexa, is that it’s not clear that nearly everything your child accesses on the device has to be whitelisted. This leads to a confusing first-time user workflow. Likely, you’ll start by browsing in the Alexa app’s Skills section or the Skills Store on the web to find some appropriate kid-friendly skills for your child to try. For example, I found and enabled a skill called “Math Facts – Math Practice for Kids.” But when I instructed “Alexa, open Math Facts,” she responded, “I can’t do that.” She didn’t say why. As I hadn’t used FreeTime in quite a while, it didn’t occur to me that each Alexa skill would have to be toggled on – just like the third-party apps, videos, books and audiobooks the child has access to that didn’t ship with FreeTime Unlimited itself. Instead, I mistakenly assumed that skills from the “Kids” section of the Skills store would just work. Again, you’ll have to know to go to parents.amazon.com to toggle things on. And again, the process for doing so is too many clicks deep in the user interface to be immediately obvious to newcomers. (You click the gear by the kid’s name, then “Add Content” – not “Echo Dot Kids Edition” as you might think! Then, on the “Add Content” screen, click over to the “Alexa Skills” tab and toggle on the skills you want the child to use.) The issue with this system is that it prevents Echo Dot Kids Edition users – kids and adults alike – from discovering and enabling skills by voice. And it adds an unnecessary step by forcing parents to toggle skills on. After all, if the parents are the ones signing in when visiting the Skills store in-app or on the web, that means they’re the ones choosing to enable the Skills, too. And if they’re enabling a skill from Kids section, one would assume it’s for their kids to use on their device! The problem, largely, is that FreeTime isn’t really integrated with the Alexa app. All of this – from explicit content filters to whitelisting skills to turning on or off calling, messaging and drop-ins – should be managed from within the Alexa app, not from a separate website. Amazon obviously did minimal integration work in order to sell parents a pricier Echo Dot. To make matters more confusing is the fact that Amazon has partnered with some kids skill publishers, like it has partnered with other content providers for apps and movies. That means there’s a list of skills that don’t appear in your Parent Dashboard that also don’t require whitelisting. This includes: Disney Stories, Loud House Challenge, No Way That’s True, Funny Fill In, Spongebob Challenge, Weird but True, Name that Animal, This or That, Word world, Ben ten, Classroom thirteen, Batman Adventures, and Climb the Beanstalk. But it’s confusing that you can immediately use these skills, and not others clearly meant for kids. You end up feeling like you did something wrong when some skills don’t work, before you figure out this whole whitelisting system. In addition, what’s also not clear is that these “Premium” skills come with the FreeTime subscription – most are not available in the Skills store. If your FreeTime subscription expires, it seems you’ll lose access to these, as well. Overall, the FreeTime experience for Echo feels disjointed, and there’s a steep learning curve for new users. Your FreeTime Unlimited 1-year Subscription It’s also frustrating that there’s no information on the FreeTime Parents dashboard about the nature of your subscription. You can’t confirm that you’re currently subscribed to the paid product known as FreeTime Unlimited. You can’t see when that subscription expires, or when your first free year is up. It’s unclear if you’ll just be charged, or when that will take place. And there’s no toggle to turn the subscription off if you decide you no longer need it. Instead, you can only “modify” which credit card you use with Amazon’s 1-click. Seriously. That’s it. I still don’t know where to turn this subscription off – I guess the option to disable it doesn’t even appear until your free year is up? (Even clicking on “FreeTime Unlimited” from Amazon.com’s subscription management page routes you back to this useless Parent dashboard page for managing your 1-Click settings.) So, ask me in a year, maybe? That said, if you are in the market for both a FreeTime Unlimited subscription and an Echo Dot, you may as well buy the Kids Edition. FreeTime Unlimited works on Fire tablets, Android devices, Kindle, and as of this month, iOS devices, providing access to over 15,000 kid-safe apps, games, videos, books and educational content. On Amazon devices, parents can also set screen time limits and educational goals. The service by itself is $2.99 per month for Prime members (for one profile) or $4.99 per month for non-members. It’s more if you buy the Family subscription. Meanwhile, the regular 2nd gen Echo Dot is currently $49.99. So you’re basically looking at $50 + $36/year for FreeTime Unlimited if you bought these things separately as a Prime member. The Echo Dot Kids Edition comes with one year of FreeTime Unlimited and is $79.99. So you’re saving a tiny bit there. Plus, you can always turn FreeTime off, if you’d rather just use the Echo Dot as a regular Echo Dot – while still getting a free year of FreeTime for another device, like the kid’s iPad. Still, watch out because Echo Dot often goes on sale – and probably will be on sale again for Prime Day this summer. Depending on the price cut it gets, it may not be worth it to buy the bundle. Other Perks There are other perks that Amazon tries to use to sell the Echo Dot Kids Edition to families, but the most notable is “Magic Word.” This feature turns on when FreeTime is enabled, and thanks kids for saying “please” when they speak to Alexa. Yes, that seems like a small thing but it was something that a lot of parents were upset about. They thought kids were learning bad manners by barking commands at Alexa. I don’t know about that. My kid seems to understand that we say “please” and “thank you” to people, but Alexa doesn’t get her feelings hurt by being told to “play Taylor Swift.” But to each their own! This feature will thrill some parents, I’m sure. Parents can also use FreeTime to pause the device or configure a bedtime so kids don’t stay up talking to Alexa, but honestly, LET ‘EM. It’s far better than when they stall bedtime by badgering you for that extra glass of water, one more blanket, turn on that light, now crack the door…a little more…a little less…Honestly, escaping the kid’s room at bedtime is an art form. If Alexa can keep them busy and less afraid of the dark, I’m calling it a win. FreeTime with the Echo Dot Kids Edition also lets you set up “Character Alarms” – meaning, kids can configure Alexa to wake them up with an alarm click featuring characters from brands like Disney and Nickelodeon. This is hilarious. Because if you have a kid in the preschool to tween age range who actually require an alarm clock to wake up in the morning instead of getting up at the crack of dawn (or maybe one who has gone through years of training so they DON’T ALSO WAKE YOU UP AT THE CRACK OF DAWN OH MY GOD) – then, I guess, um, enjoy character alarms? I’m sorry, let me stop laughing….Hold on. I’m sure somebody needs this. Sorry for laughing. But please explain how you’ve taught your children to sleep in? Do they go to bed at a decent hour too? No seriously, email me. I have no idea. The Echo Dot Kids Edition can also work as a household intercom, but so do regular Echo devices. You can turn off voice purchasing on the Kids Edition, but you can do that on regular devices, too (despite what Amazon’s comparison chart says.) Plus, kids can now control smart home devices with the Echo Dot Kids Edition – a feature that shamefully wasn’t available at launch, but is now. And that cute protective case? Well, a regular Echo Dot is actually pretty sturdy. We’ve dropped ours probably a dozen times from dresser to floor (uncarpeted!) with no issues. I like how Amazon tries to sell the case, though:
In reality, the case is just cute – and can help the Echo better match the kid’s room. The Echo Kids Edition, overall, is not a must-have device. You’ll have more flexibility with a regular Echo and a little old-school parenting. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/hands-on-with-the-echo-dots-kids-edition/ via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/ Researchers at the Hybrid Robotics Group at UC Berkeley and CMU are hard at work making sure their robots don’t fall over when tiptoeing through rough terrain. Using machine learning and ATRIAS robots, the teams are able to “teach” robots to traverse stepping stones they’ve never seen before. Their robots, described here, are unique in that they are bipedal and use a mixture of balance and jumping to ensure they don’t tip off the blocks. “What’s different about our methods is that they allow for dynamic walking as opposed to the slower quasi-static motions that robots tend to use,” write the researchers. “By reasoning about the nonlinearities in the dynamics of the system and by taking advantage of recent advances in optimal and nonlinear control technology, we can specify control objectives and desired robot behaviors in a simple and compact form while providing formal stability and safety guarantees. This means our robots can walk over discrete terrain without slipping or falling over, backed by some neat math and some cool experimental videos.” The robots are currently “blind” and can’t use visual input to plan their next move. However, with a robot called CASSIE, they will be able to see and feel the stones as they hop along, ensuring that they don’t tip over in the heat of fun… or battle. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/researchers-train-bipedal-robots-to-step-lightly-over-rough-terrain/ via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/ And there we have it: Bird, one of the emerging massively hyped Scooter startups, has roped in its next pile of funding by picking up another $300 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital. The company announced the long-anticipated round this morning, with Sequoia’s Roelof Botha joining the company’s board of directors. This is the second round of funding that Bird has raised over the span of a few months, sending it from a reported $1 billion valuation in May to a $2 billion valuation by the end of June. In March, the company had a $300 million valuation, but the Scooter hype train has officially hit a pretty impressive inflection point as investors pile on to get money into what many consider to be the next iteration of resolving transportation at an even more granular level than cars or bikes. New investors in the round include Accel, B Capital, CRV, Sound Ventures, Greycroft and e.ventures; previous investors Craft Ventures, Index Ventures, Valor, Goldcrest, Tusk Ventures and Upfront Ventures are also in the round. (So, basically everyone else who isn’t in competitor Lime.) Scooter mania has captured the hearts of Silicon Valley and investors in general — including Paige Craig, who actually jumped from VC to join Bird as its VP of business — with a large amount of capital flowing into the area about as quickly as it possibly can. These sort of revolving-door fundraising processes are not entirely uncommon, especially for very hot areas of investment, though the scooter scene has exploded considerably faster than most. Bird’s round comes amid reports of a mega-round for Lime, one of its competitors, with the company reportedly raising another $250 million led by GV, and Skip also raising $25 million. “We have met with over 20 companies focused on the last-mile problem over the years and feel this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity that can have a big impact in the world,” CRV’s Saar Gur, who did the deal for the firm, said. “We have a ton of conviction that this team has original product thought (they created the space) and the execution chops to build something extremely valuable here. And we have been long-term focused, not short-term focused, in making the investment. The ‘hype’ in our decision (the non-zero answer) is that Bird has built the best product in the market and while we kept meeting with more startups wanting to invest in the space — we kept coming back to Bird as the best company. So in that sense, the hype from consumers is real and was a part of the decision. On unit economics: We view the first product as an MVP (as the company is less than a year old) — and while the unit economics are encouraging, they played a part of the investment decision but we know it is not even the first inning in this market.” There’s certainly an argument to be made for Bird, whose scooters you’ll see pretty much all over the place in cities like Los Angeles. For trips that are just a few miles down wide roads or sidewalks, where you aren’t likely to run into anyone, a quick scan of a code and a hop on a Bird may be worth the few bucks in order to save a few minutes crossing those considerably long blocks. Users can grab a bird that they see and start going right away if they are running late, and it does potentially alleviate the pressure of calling a car for short distances in traffic, where a scooter may actually make more sense physically to get from point A to point B than a car. There are some considerable hurdles going forward, both theoretical and in effect. In San Francisco, though just a small slice of the United States metropolitan area population, the company is facing significant pushback from the local government, and scooters for the time being have been kicked off the sidewalks. There’s also the looming shadow of what may happen regarding changes in tariffs, though Gur said that it likely wouldn’t be an issue and “the unit economics appear to be viable even if tariffs were to be added to the cost of the scooters.” (Xiaomi is one of the suppliers for Bird, for example.) from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/bird-has-officially-raised-a-whopping-300m-as-the-scooter-wars-heat-up/ via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/ After years of legal procedures, Apple and Samsung have reached an agreement in the infamous patent case. Terms of the settlement were undisclosed. So is everything clear between Samsung and Apple? Not so fast, as Bloomberg reports that Apple wants to use OLED displays from LG to reduce its dependence on Samsung. You might remember that Apple first sued Samsung for copying the design of the iPhone with early Samsung Galaxy phones. The first trial led to an Apple victory. Samsung had to pay $1 billion. But the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office later invalidated one of Apple’s patents. It led to multiple retrials and appeals, and the Supreme Court even had to rule at some point. After many years, Samsung ended up owing $539 million to Apple. According to Reuters, Samsung has already paid $399 million. If you look closely at the original case, it feels like it happened many decades ago. At some point, the Samsung Galaxy S 4G, the Nexus S and a few other devices looked a lot like the iPhone 3G. But now, it’s hard to say that Samsung is copying Apple. For instance, Samsung is one of the only phone manufacturers that hasn’t switched to a notch design. The Samsung Galaxy S9 and the rest of the product lineup still features a rectangular display. Huawei, LG, OnePlus, Asus and countless of others sell devices with a notch. That could be the reason why it seems weird to spend all this money on legal fees for things that are no longer true. And yet, the irony is that Apple and Samsung are the perfect example of asymmetric competition. They both sell smartphones, laptops and other electronics devices. But they also work together on various projects. In particular, the iPhone X is the first iPhone with an OLED display. It’s a better display technology compared to traditional LCD displays. It’s also one of the most expensive components of the iPhone X. According to Bloomberg, Apple wants to find a second supplier to drive component prices down. And that second supplier is LG. LG already manufactures OLED displays. But it’s difficult to meet Apple’s demands when it comes to the iPhone. Apple sells tens of millions of smartphones every year. So you need to have a great supply chain to be able to become an Apple supplier. LG could be ramping up its production capacity for future iPhone models. According to multiple rumors, Apple plans to ship an updated iPhone X with an OLED display as well as a bigger iPhone. The company could also introduce another phone with an edge-to-edge LCD display with a notch and a cheaper price. There’s one thing for sure — it’ll take time to switch the entire iPhone lineup to OLED displays. from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/apple-buries-the-hatchet-with-samsung-but-could-tap-lg-displays/ via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/ |
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September 2018
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