Hasta La Gadget!

Google Glass might be designed for the average user in mind, but what if one were an athlete who demanded more sports oriented information to be displayed in front of them? Well we guess that’s where Instabeat comes in. Instabeat, which as you can imagine from the photo above, is a device designed for swimmers in mind where a sensor is strapped to the swimmer’s goggles in which performance information can be displayed, such as the swimmer’s heart rate. We know that there already exists heart rate monitors for swimmers, but with the Instabeat, swimmers will be able to continuously monitor their heart rate without having to stop and look at a heart rate monitor watch or a similar sort of device.

The good thing about Instabeat is that it is an attachment, meaning that if you have a favorite pair of goggles, you should be able to attach Instabeat to it. Interestingly though, it seems that Instabeat will be able to detect the wearer’s heart rate through their temporal artery via an optical sensor, meaning that swimmers will not need to strap any additional devices to themselves. As it stands the Instabeat is an Indiegogo project seeking funding, so if you’d like to see it made a reality, head on over to its Indiegogo page for the details.

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We’re sure you guys might have heard that Japanese carrier, Softbank, is looking to acquire a majority stake in one of the major US carriers, Sprint. At the same time it seems that American company, Dish, could be interested as well and seems to be thinking about making a counter-offer of their own. Dish even goes as far as saying that their acquisition of Sprint could be better for national security. In any case it would seem that Softbank might have stumbled across a hurdle, but at the same time it looks like the Japanese carrier may have found themselves an ally in the form of Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini, who in an email sent to FCC chairman, claims that he supports Softbank.

According to the email, Otellini was quoted as saying, “Son-san’s vision to build a high speed competitive third national network is very compelling […] We need this competition in the wireless space as the ATT / Verizon model is not giving that to consumers at this time.” We’re not sure if Otellini’s message of support will play a role in helping the regulatory bodies decide if this acquisition should be allowed to happen, so we guess we will just have to wait and see.

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Linus Torvalds has pulled the big red lever marked Version 3.9, unleashing the latest Linux kernel onto the world and at the same time bringing some good news for Chromebook tinkerers. The update builds on the Chromebook Pixel tweak we saw back in February by adding support for components in “Chrome laptops sold by many companies” — with the changelog specifically mentioning the x86-powered Samsung Series 5, Acer C7, HP Pavilion 14 as well as support for the Pixel’s touchscreen, all of which should make it easier to run your preferred distro in place of Chrome OS on those machines. Other general improvements include better support for Intel power-saving features, the ability to use an SSD as a hard drive cache as well as KVM visualization for users with ARM-powered gear. Just make sure there’s no NVIDIA hardware inside any of those boxes — you know it makes Linus cranky.

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Via: PC World

Source: Gmane

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has dismissed the long-term potential for tablets, arguing that time is running out on slates and – perhaps still stinging from the PlayBook failure – suggesting they’re a bad business model. Heins, who had been suitably ebullient about the likely success of the recently-released BlackBerry Q10, predicting sales in the tens of millions, was equally critical of tablet options. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore” he predicted.

Speaking at the Milken Institute conference in Los Angeles this week, Bloomberg reports, Heins vaguely outlined his reasoning behind the dark prediction. “Maybe [you’ll have] a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such” the CEO suggested. “Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

You certainly can’t blame Heins for being pessimistic about slates, given the failure of the BlackBerry PlayBook. RIM – as it was known back when the PlayBook was released – launched its 7-inch iPad rival back in 2011 as a companion device to BlackBerry 7 handsets, but the tablet’s limited standalone functionality left consumers non-plussed, and by the time the OS – a precursor of the BlackBerry 10 platform on the Q10 and Z10 – was reworked, the company had already resorted to slashing prices in order to clear shelves.

Heins has since suggested that, while a tablet isn’t necessarily off the table, BlackBerry will need to see the opportunity to do something uniquely special before it’s tempted back into that particular market. “I want to gain as much market share as I can,” he said in an interview back in January 2013, “but not by being a copycat.”

The negativity around slates has led to suggestions that BlackBerry is in no hurry to – and may in fact never – replace the PlayBook, despite originally arguing that one of the strengths of the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 OS is its cross-platform flexibility across phone and tablet-scale devices. One possibility, meanwhile, is that increasingly powerful phones could be used to drive the “big screen in your workplace” Heins mentioned; the Z10 and Q10 already support HDMI output to a separate display.

BlackBerry PlayBook sequel unlikely as Heins slams tablets is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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WhatsApp is a popular messaging platform available for smartphones. It allows users to send videos, photos and even audio clips to one another, but could the developers behind WhatsApp be thinking about possibly adding push-to-talk capabilities in the future? According to the folks at 9to5 Mac, they claim to have received several tips so far which has suggested that the developers behind WhatsApp could be looking to add a push-to-talk feature in the app.

This was revealed via an email allegedly from the WhatsApp team to a Hong Kong developer, asking the developer to help the company translate several new strings into Chinese. The strings, according to the email, include Camera button on/off, and a push-to-talk button. Of course this email could have easily been faked, but adding push-to-talk functionality isn’t exactly groundbreaking, plus it would give users a reason to stay with WhatsApp instead of switching to push-to-talk apps such as Vox. Take this with a grain of salt for now, but what do you guys think of push-to-talk coming to WhatsApp? Is this a welcome feature?

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