Even though the Interactive portion of South By Southwest now draws more attendees than the Music portion, the festival’s musical roots still resonate throughout its entire duration. For tech companies debuting their newest music gadgets, it makes sense that they come to SXSW to try to make a scene. Watch the video above to see the three coolest, never-before-seen music gadgets we got to play with while in Austin. Goodbye headphones, hello neckbands. Next-generation headphones will wrap around your neck, instead of going on your head—or at least, that’s what Sony intends. At
Lenovo has restructured its operations as part of a management shakeup, and some interesting names have been promoted. Former Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci, who is Lenovo's Group president and chief operating officer, is now in charge of Lenovo's PC and Smart Devices Group, previously known as the PC Group. Lanci joined Lenovo in 2012 after he was fired from Acer in late 2011 over disagreements about product strategy with the company's board. Acer then sued Lanci for allegedly violating a non-compete clause. Lanci led Acer through profitable times during a boom in netbook sales. But Acer's fortunes fell when netbook shipments nosedived after the introduction of the Apple iPad in 2010, and the company has since struggled. Now Lanci will lead the development of Lenovo's venerable PCs, including ThinkPad, and tablets. He'll also be in charge of developing smart devices for the Internet of Things.
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If data science can be used to Australia-based Domino's Pizza Enterprises has created an autonomous delivery vehicle named Domino’s Robotic Unit, or DRU, and begun limited testing on restricted streets in Queensland. The device, announced Thursday, is a four-wheeled vehicle with compartments built to keep the customer’s food hot and drinks cold. A "friendly persona" aims to help customers identify and interact with it.
My phone tells me I’ve walked 45 miles since Monday. Nothing like a little Game Developers Conference to build those leg muscles. This week we’ve talked But there’s still more we didn’t get around to. Like a
Get the weekend started with the latest Android apps and games.
A last-minute request by the FBI to call witnesses to next week’s court hearing in the San Bernardino iPhone case indicates the agency might feel some weakness in its legal arguments, Apple says. On Wednesday evening, the FBI asked for an evidentiary hearing, which means the court will hear live testimony from expert witnesses from both sides. Apple agreed to the FBI’s request on Thursday. Speaking on Friday with reporters, lawyers for Apple said the FBI’s request was a surprise, and they don’t understand why the government wants to present witnesses to the court. If lawyers believe they have a strong legal case, they typically want to get up and argue it without bothering with witnesses in these types of hearings, so the request perhaps indicates the FBI isn’t as comfortable as it was in relying solely on legal arguments, an Apple lawyer said.
Another fashion maker wants to put an Android Wear watch on your wrist. The just-announced Michael Kors Access line combines the trendy looks of the popular designer with Google’s growing wearable platform. Watches will go on sale this fall and start at $395. The new line is clearly for those with requisite fashion sense, as demonstrated by a promo video with a group of young women with better lives than you driving through the streets of Beverly Hills. Michael Kors will include custom-designed watch faces, which has become a common offering when a company rolls out a new watch.
Even the worst gamers enjoy fleeting AMD Gaming Evolved can now create automatic highlight bookmarks in those games buy automatically identifying key in-game moments such as deaths, kills, bomb plants, and killstreaks. That means no editing is necessary to get your highlights up on sites like Reddit, Facebook, and Plays.TV. The Raptr client, which AMD uses rebranded and reskinned as Gaming Evolved, added these features earlier in March.
Should the FBI prevail in getting Apple to offer a backdoor for an encrypted iPhone, the agency may have trouble getting anyone to build it. At least that’s the word from several current and former Apple employees—including security engineers—who Apple is currently
Just a day after releasing a revised Windows 10 app, Twitter today said it would halt updates to the Windows version of TweetDeck in four weeks. TweetDeck, which was launched in 2008 and acquired by Twitter three years later, has been popular among hard-core users because of its dashboard-style approach to organizing a large number of feeds. "To better focus on enhancing your TweetDeck experience, we'll no longer support a standalone Windows app," the company announced Thursday in a post to a In a reply to a follow-up question, a Twitter spokeswoman said that after April 15, the firm will stop updating the TweetDeck app on Windows. Those who already have the app will be able to continue using it, however.
Intel could dump Nvidia for a licensing deal with AMD as the chip giant tries to prop up its patent portfolio. Currently, Intel is under a $1.5 billion licensing agreement with Nvidia, which the two companies signed in 2011. At the time, the two companies had spent years fighting each other in courts over patent licensing, and the agreement put all that litigation to rest. Intel’s Nvidia deal is set to expire on March 17, 2017, and a recent report by Bloomberg claimed that Intel is now looking to cut a deal with AMD instead. (Strangely, the report does not appear on Bloomberg’s website, but was cited by analysts and
When T-Mobile CEO John Legere said he wanted any capable video provider to join the
Quick: What are the most important apps on your phone when it comes to getting stuff done? If you’re like most people I’ve asked, “the keyboard” probably wasn’t one of the first things that came to mind. When you stop and think about it, though, the interface that lets you input text plays a critical role in your mobile productivity. Whether you’re editing documents or simply sending an email, it has more of an impact on your on-the-go efficiency than almost anything else on your device. And yet, it’s all too easy to settle on one keyboard—whether you downloaded it yourself or just stuck with your device’s default—and then never revisit the subject again. Even I’m guilty of that: I started using SwiftKey years ago and hadn’t given much thought to other options since. It wasn’t until
The FBI and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned on Thursday that the rising use of computers in vehicles poses increasing risks of cyberattacks. The warning comes eight months after a high-profile demonstration Manufacturers see great promise in designing vehicles with advanced networking capabilities for everything from entertainment to fleet management. But computer security experts have criticized the industry for not taking stronger steps to prevent software vulnerabilities that could have lethal consequences.
Windows Phone users who might have been nervously awaiting Windows 10 Mobile have been told they can relax. Unlike Microsoft’s aggressive tactics to migrate users from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 (which have ticked off customers), Windows Phone users won’t have to accept Windows 10 Mobile upgrades if they don’t want to. Microsoft began rolling out upgrades from older Windows Phone 8.1 phones to
Though Microsoft released Windows 10 and its Edge browser about nine months ago, it has totally lacked the extensibility that other modern browsers have included for years. Microsoft’s latest Insider beta of Windows 10, Build 14291 finally adds that back, along with a jumbo scoop of new features. Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 14291 is actually available for both PC desktops as well as mobile phones, as long as they’re in the Fast ring of updates. Unlike recent builds, which have focused more on bug fixes, the list of capabilities the new build adds is long: the Edge extensions, pinned Edge tabs, the updated Maps, Alarms & Clock apps, plus a new one-handed Japanese “kana” keyboard and text input canvas. Finally, there’s the new Feedback Hub that Microsoft has promised for some time.
Pathology, revenge, survival, marriage, and good old-fashioned Peanuts-style kindness are all on display in this week's movies.