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Walyou

Control Your Smartphone Using Head and Eye Gestures with Umoove
Samsung Event Officially Anounced: is it for the Galaxy S5?
New ‘Dataminr’ Tool Can Predict Twitter Trending Topics
Microsoft Invests $15m in Foursquare for a Slice of Mobile Data
Full Chromecast Support Coming Soon to All Your Devices

Control Your Smartphone Using Head and Eye Gestures with Umoove

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 11:30 AM PST

There was a recent rumor about Galaxy S5 coming with head- and eye-gesture control, but it looks like an Israeli tech startup got ahead of Samsung in this aspect.

Umoove Experience, as the iPhone app (oh, the irony!) developed by the company is called, shows how face tracking technology can be used for playing games, even though the applications of this revolutionary control method go beyond that. As a proof that Umoove doesn’t intend to tease Samsung and the Android platform endlessly, the company promised that soon there would be a version of the app for Google’s mobile OS, as well. More than that, Umoove hopes that both Android and iOS developers will include this technology into their own apps and games.

Yitzi Kempinski, the CEO of Umoove, explained in an interview with Gizmag that “Umoove is not coming to replace touch, it is coming to add another layer and it opens an opportunity for new types of interfaces. A classic example is a first person shooter where you would shoot using touch and you could walk using a touch joystick, but you would aim and look around just by where you face.”

Some may be concerned about the accuracy of the motion capture, but Kempinski reminds them that “The tracking is both accurate and very sensitive, it senses movement as small as represented by one pixel of the image the camera captures. And we had to do it all at very low CPU, to not take over the device resources and leave room for the actual apps/games to run.” It’s great to know that the app and the technology itself is not power-hungry, especially considering today’s feeble smartphone batteries.

Kempinski also explained how the technology works: “Umoove is tracking the face and eyes. These body parts have been moving and involved in the user’s experiences even before technology began watching and tracking them – have you ever seen someone play a game such as a flight simulator with a frozen or still face and body? Users get involved in the experience and move their bodies even though it has no real effect on the game. So the key from a [user experience] perspective is to respond to movements users naturally do in the real world and not make the user start doing new types of movements.”

New technologies give birth to new types of content, and that’s exactly what Kempinski is expecting: “Think of an object or product on the 2D screen that acts as if it is 3D because it changes based on the angle you are looking at the screen. You can move around the object on screen as if you were looking at an object that is really in front of you.”

You can download the Umoove Experience from the iTunes Store. Flying Experience, the game used by the company to showcase the technology, is included in the app. An SDK enabling iOS developers to track head movements in 2D (3D head tracking is a work in progress) has been made available, while the one for Android will surely come soon.

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Samsung Event Officially Anounced: is it for the Galaxy S5?

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 06:00 AM PST

Samsung may be prepping to announce the Galaxy S5 in under a month at their Samsung Unpacked 5 event during Mobile World Congress.

An invitation to Samsung Unpacked 5 has been officially tweeted out by Samsung, and the event is set to occur February 24^th—During MWC—in Barcelona, Spain. The past few generations have been announced by Samsung at standalone Unpacked events, so this would definitely be a change of pace for the industry leader.

Per usual, the invitation says "Episode 1," which is consistent with previous "Galaxy S" line launches, with other "Galaxy" branded lines, such as the Tab or Note, coming later in the year for “Episode 2.” This doesn't mean Samsung will play by the same pattern, though. We could very likely get a new rendition of the Galaxy Gear at MWC and have a separate launch event for the Galaxy S5 as we did for the other 4 iterations of the phone.

Rumors continue to swirl around this device as there always are, so the device that will be announced is still a mystery. Some of the rumors, such as an eye scanner, can pretty easily be dismissed as there is no eye scanning technology small or cheap enough to miniaturize for a smartphone, but we can definitely expect a reasonable bump in specs as we have seen in the past, and one of the most exciting rumors is that Samsung will also launch a premium metal variant dubbed the Galaxy F.

This is welcome news to many as one of the chief complaints regarding the past few iterations of Samsung's lineup has been regarding the design lacking in design quality opting for a cheaper feeling plastic body. A metal Galaxy phone will hopefully give the brand a more premium look and feel more akin to an iPhone 5s or HTC One.

Whatever is announced on the 24^th, the speculation will be over soon. There is no solid news yet on when the devices will actually be available for purchase, and such information isn’t always announced at the same time as the device, but hopefully we will have an official device and approximate time frame in the next few weeks.

Sources: USA Today, Design & Trend, Gotta Be Mobile

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New ‘Dataminr’ Tool Can Predict Twitter Trending Topics

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 05:00 AM PST

Ever wonder how journalists are somehow able to have facts on a story as it happens? It's hard work but Twitter's new Dataminr tool aims to make that easier.

It was just a familiar blue icon and a 140 character phenomenon a few years ago but now, in 2014, Twitter is a bonafide news gathering tool. When natural disasters strike with little time to evacuate people individually, emergency services turn to the social media site to get the word out. It's the same for unsafe areas in which crimes are taking place – avoiding fatalities using tweets is now a thing that the world knows and understands. Furthermore, it's even been used to spark revolutions around the world, as well as creating world-changing debates, all with the help of a tiny micro-blogging message. Now, Twitter, working with CNN, have created 'Dataminr', a tool that can predict which of these things will create the most conversation and become popular trending topics before many people have even heard of them.

To call it by its full name, Dataminr For News is just that; a news gathering tool, meaning that rather than spammy marketers taking advantage of trends by getting ahead of the curve, Dataminr can and will be utilised by journalists to better shape the picture around their stories. CNN have been testing this out, helping Dataminr (the name of the actual company behind it) create the tool, having tested it out for the past 6 months. The features that Dataminr offers and that CNN have likely been using is that unlike Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, Dataminr is "a tool for when you don't know what you're looking for" and it finds these obscure trends by analysing tweets based on several parameters, including geo-location and and clustered reports.

Dataminr can come in handy even more so with its alerts, which can be sent to via email, mobile app, the Dataminr desktop client or even via the newsroom's existing editing software and it can help journalists identify whether or not the budding story is from another journalist or from a citizen reporter, making stories more likely to be breaking news, rather than rehashed information and therefore making the story more newsworthy. CNN say that approximately two of their stories a day are generated thanks to Dataminr and while they also add that it doesn't necessarily replace old news gathering ways (e.g fact checking and following up with sources), it does act somewhat like a police scanner, albeit one that costs money as Dataminr For News is set to be a paid service (although price plans have yet to be announced).

We'll keep you posted once we know more.

Source: Wired

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Microsoft Invests $15m in Foursquare for a Slice of Mobile Data

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 04:30 AM PST

Windows Phone may not be the best mobile OS in the world, but it’s Microsoft’s brainchild, so the company needs to improve it continuously. This partnership with Foursquare will bring mobile users entertainment and restaurant suggestions at their fingertips.

Cortana, the voice-activated assistant that Microsoft is working on, will provide location data from Foursquare, thanks to this collaboration. The Redmond company wants more than just to provide an app for checking-in, as it intends to make the whole experience a lot more interactive. By doing so, Microsoft will take on Apple’s Siri and Google Now.

Dennis Crowley, CEO of Foursquare admitted that “This is huge validation for the stuff we've been working so hard on. It’s one of the leaders in the space we work in looking at us and saying we can really help power the next generation of devices.”

Cortana is going to be one of the revolutionary features of Windows Phone 8.1, which is supposed to be launched in a few months, Samsung Huron being among the main devices to sport the new version of this operating system.

Zig Serafin, a VP in Microsoft’s Bing search unit, explained how Cortana’s location data will change things: “We’re building some contextually aware experiences to power some upcoming products in Windows Phone. This will be for anywhere you get a Bing-powered experience.”

While I’m not a big fan of Windows Phone (OK, OK, I admit it, I’m an Android fanboy), I think that this operating system progressed quite a lot since its launch. Yes, it moved slowly, but the changes are impressive. Moreover, I’m glad to see such strategic partnerships, especially when Foursquare is involved in them.

I read a few months ago an article about how this service would vanish completely, now that Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are so widely used. The author of that article argued that all these social networks, which enable their users to check-in, render Foursquare obsolete, but I’d beg to differ. One tiny example that sets 4sq apart from all the others is the ability to see a history of your check-ins. Want to visit a city you haven’t been to in a few years? Browse the approximate period and find out exactly the names of those restaurants or touristic attractions that impressed you the most.

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Full Chromecast Support Coming Soon to All Your Devices

Posted: 05 Feb 2014 04:00 AM PST

After more than 6 months of gleeful streaming, the Chromecast Software Development Kit is finally being made available to the masses.

The Chromecast is likely one of the most significant, yet underappreciated products of last year. The $35 HDMI dongle receives a handoff from your device and does the brunt work of streaming and frees your device for whatever you want to do while your Netflix, Google Music, Youtube, or whatever remains viewable on your TV.

Chromecast is one of the most truly platform agnostic services as it will work from an Android phone or table, iPhone, iPad, PC or Mac using the Chrome brower + Chromecast extension. I literally replaced a laptop plugged into my TV via HDMI with a remote controlled dongle that hides nicely behind my TV. Beautiful.

Likely the biggest complaint against the simplistic streaming device has been its lack of app support. Most people use it nearly exclusively for Netflix, but there is a lot more content we would like to get off of our phones, tablets, and computers and onto our TVs.

There is a massively under-utilized second screen market that we will likely see begin to fill now, because the wait is over. Google has officially released the Chromecast SDK so developers can start hacking, tinkering, innovating, and playing around with the Chromecast and begin actually publishing new apps and releasing updates to bring support to existing applications.

Be it streaming apps that were previously denied permission to publish Chromecast functionality, or entirely unseen territory, such as second screen games second screen movie/TV apps, we will begin seeing an entirely new genre of functionality introduced in our homes.

Many developers—such as LynxFit—have already found ways to build in Chromecast functionality, but have had to wait until now to be allowed to publish their updated apps. I'm sure many others will follow as well. Something as simple as being able to multitask by sending your Twitter of Facebook feed to autoscroll from your TV while you continue playing Candy Crush would be well received.

It will be exciting to see the innovations to come, but for now, I'm completely content with continuing to stream Netflix while I wait.

Sources: Engadget, Geek

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