Scosche BTFREQ car charger

Many of us own more than a single smartphone or mobile device these days, and more often than not, the power bank is an essential tool that we bring around in order to make sure that there is always some juice on hand just in case our handset runs out of power in the middle of the day. It is also not amiss to see more and more vehicle owners purchase a charger that plugs into their ride’s 12V socket, and Scosche has upped the ante with their latest Scosche BTFREQ. The Scosche BTFREQ might be a small device, but do not let its looks deceive you since it is mighty in nature with a clever design that packs in a slew of technology solutions which ranges from in-vehicle hands-free communications to entertainment, Power Delivery, and Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, Alexa.

Offering convenience and power, the Scosche BTFREQ dual-port (USB-A 12W/USB-C 18W with Power Delivery) charger will allow you to power up a couple of compatible devices simultaneously, doing so quickly at the same time. In fact, USB-C PD is able to charge up to three times faster compared to a regular charger while providing adaptive charging, where it delivers the fastest safest charge for each individual device. In addition, the BTFREQ also supports Apple and Samsung Fast Charge. With USB-C becoming the globally adopted standard for charging and data transfer, you can be sure that there is a degree of proofing against the future, so you do not have any more need to fret concerning compatibility when it comes to purchasing newer handsets in the months to come.

Offering convenience, safety and value to a vehicle, I would highly recommend this since it can also be a great value added service for ridesharing operators. You can hook up to it while in the vehicle via Bluetooth or an aux-in cable, enabling users to gain access to Amazon’s Alexa. Using Alexa, users are able to ask it to play their favorite tunes, hear the latest happenings on the news, and check out the weather, among others. Since Alexa lives in the cloud, it constantly refines itself to be smarter while adding on new capabilities that are delivered to the device automatically. The BTFREQ will also work with Apple’s Siri and Google Voice when paired to a smartphone.

The Scosche BTFREQ has been carefully designed in order to deliver clearer voice activation with less noise pollution. It boasts of an ingeniously designed satin silver arc in order to accommodate a second microphone at the optimum distance from the first. Made from premium automotive grade ABS plastic, it should not be a problem blending it into most other vehicles. There is no word on pricing just yet, but the Scosche BTFREQ is tipped to arrive this coming fall 2019.

Press Release
[ Scosche BTFREQ car charger copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Apple Requires App Subscriptions To Display Full Amount Before Signup


There are countless apps that sell you an in-app subscription either to unlock premium content or features. Apple wants to ensure that users easily know how much they’re on the hook for if they decide to purchase a subscription. For this reason, the company has updated its developer guidelines for in-app subscriptions. It is now mandatory for apps to display the full subscription amount before signup.

The change to the developer guidelines means that the price of a monthly subscription has to be shown clearly within the app. The conversions into yearly savings or advertising copy of the same sort will need to be less prominent now compared to the actual amount that customers will be in each renewal cycle.

Apple’s new rules related to in-app subscribers are mentioned in the Human Interface Guidelines and App Store documentation. The examples shown above are in line with the company’s guidelines which state that “the amount that will be billed must be the most prominent pricing element in the layout.” You can thus expect a similar interface in apps selling you a subscription going forward.

This change extends to free trials as well. Developers will have to clearly mention the price that will be billed to subscribers once the free trial is up in addition to any renewal terms that might be applicable.

Apple Requires App Subscriptions To Display Full Amount Before Signup , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Senate Committee Delays Vote On William Barr Amid Democrats’ Concerns

Democrats worry Trump’s pick for attorney general might not make public a final report on Mueller’s Russia probe.

Braille Gaming Dice: Feel the Pips

If you’ve ever wondered how blind people play tabletop and RPG games, here’s your answer. Braille dice. A lack of sight doesn’t have to keep you from enjoying a good game of D & D. These cool dice were created by Jack Berberette as part of his Dots RPG project, which is all about making tabletop gaming more inclusive to the blind.

You can find the 3-D printing shapefiles for free HERE, or you can purchase finished dice several colors and sides from his Shapeways shop. Dice collectors will want to get their hands on these too. They come in all of the dice varieties that you need to play your games: D6, D10, D20 and everything in-between.

They look pretty sci-fi to me. One thing’s for sure, you won’t be able to fool your blind friends anymore by telling them they rolled a different number. You’re terrible for doing that by the way. Now they are going to wonder why their game is getting so much better, and it was all your fault. Jack really did a good job on these. They are very easy for blind gamers to use, and with a bit of learning the rest of us can figure it out too.

[via Boing Boing via Geekologie]

Casper announces the Glow — a portable, sleep-friendly light

Over the past few years, mattress company Casper has expanded its product lineup to include everything from dog beds to nap pillows. (It’s also opened its own nap store.) The latest addition: the Glow, an $89 light.

While the company has never made this kind of Internet-connected hardware before, Chief Strategy Officer Neil Parikh pitched the Glow as part of Casper’s mission to improve sleep. And although there’s already whole categories of sleep-friendly light bulbs and smart lamps, the Glow has a couple of smart touches that could make it particularly appealing.

The basic use of the Glow is pretty straightforward. You turn it on by flipping it over, and it fills your room with warm LED light. The light then dims to darkness over a 45-minute period — as Chief Product Officer Jeff Chapin put it, it’s “mimicking the setting of the sun and it helps you get sleepier as it dims into lower and lower amplitudes.”

You can control and customize the Glow with a smartphone app, but Chapin said, “There are some people who are never going to download the app and that’s fine.” That’s because the Glow can also be controlled by gesture — flipping it to turn it on and off again, twisting it (when it’s set on a flat surface) to adjust the brightness and wiggling it to get a low light.

Glow charging stand

The Glow is also portable, so if you wake up in the middle of the night and need to get a glass of water or use the restroom, you can just pick it up and carry it with you, rather than turning on a bright kitchen light. You can also set a wakeup time so that the Glow gradually lights up again.

“We’ve leveraged the good and the bad of light so that it would help you fall asleep, stay asleep and go back to sleep into the night,” Chapin said.

In fact, if you’re a frequent traveler who struggles with jet lag, you can even “freeze” the settings, pack the Glow in your suitcase and take it with you to your destination, though Chapin admitted, “We don’t know how many people are going to do that.”

In addition to buying a single Glow for $89, you can also get a two-pack for $169. The light comes with a small base for wireless charging.

The Casper team sent me a couple of Glows to try out for myself. I wasn’t able to download the app, but the Glow was indeed largely controllable by gesture. (My only real complaint is that the wiggle-for-dim-light only worked sporadically for me.)

Keep in mind that I didn’t have a particularly sophisticated or sleep-friendly lighting setup before this, and that it’s hard to know how I would have slept on any given night without the Glow. Still, I can say that I found myself getting sleepier as the light dimmed, and I seemed to pass out more quickly and reliably than normal. And since the Glow is pretty small (five inches tall and three inches wide), it was easy to find room for it in my cluttered bedroom, and to carry it around when necessary.

It sounds like Casper has plans more products that go beyond bedding, addressing broader environmental factors that affect sleep.

“You can expect a lot more from us in the same vein, trying to help people [sleep] across the board, in a multivariate way,” Parikh said. “It’s a very complicated problem.”

Breakthrough flexible material transforms WiFi signals into electricity

Researchers are always looking for new materials that can help power electronics and medical devices in the future. MIT has made a breakthrough with a new material that makes that goal closer to reality. The breakthrough is thanks to a fully flexible device that can convert WiFi signals into electricity that could power devices. A device that converts AC electromagnetic … Continue reading

Report: Just Two Groups May Be Behind $1 Billion in Cryptocurrency Hacks

Just two groups of “highly sophisticated cyber criminals” may be behind an estimated $1 billion in cryptocurrency thefts, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Read more…

Huawei denies US sanctions and trade secret charges

Huawei isn’t taking kindly to the US’ charges of sanction violations and trade secret theft. A spokesperson told Engadget the company was “disappointed” to hear of the charges and flatly “denies” it or an associated company (namely Skycom) committed…

Scosche BTFREQ car charger

Many of us own more than a single smartphone or mobile device these days, and more often than not, the power bank is an essential tool that we bring around in order to make sure that there is always some juice on hand just in case our handset runs out of power in the middle of the day. It is also not amiss to see more and more vehicle owners purchase a charger that plugs into their ride’s 12V socket, and Scosche has upped the ante with their latest Scosche BTFREQ. The Scosche BTFREQ might be a small device, but do not let its looks deceive you since it is mighty in nature with a clever design that packs in a slew of technology solutions which ranges from in-vehicle hands-free communications to entertainment, Power Delivery, and Amazon’s cloud-based voice service, Alexa.

Offering convenience and power, the Scosche BTFREQ dual-port (USB-A 12W/USB-C 18W with Power Delivery) charger will allow you to power up a couple of compatible devices simultaneously, doing so quickly at the same time. In fact, USB-C PD is able to charge up to three times faster compared to a regular charger while providing adaptive charging, where it delivers the fastest safest charge for each individual device. In addition, the BTFREQ also supports Apple and Samsung Fast Charge. With USB-C becoming the globally adopted standard for charging and data transfer, you can be sure that there is a degree of proofing against the future, so you do not have any more need to fret concerning compatibility when it comes to purchasing newer handsets in the months to come.

Offering convenience, safety and value to a vehicle, I would highly recommend this since it can also be a great value added service for ridesharing operators. You can hook up to it while in the vehicle via Bluetooth or an aux-in cable, enabling users to gain access to Amazon’s Alexa. Using Alexa, users are able to ask it to play their favorite tunes, hear the latest happenings on the news, and check out the weather, among others. Since Alexa lives in the cloud, it constantly refines itself to be smarter while adding on new capabilities that are delivered to the device automatically. The BTFREQ will also work with Apple’s Siri and Google Voice when paired to a smartphone.

The Scosche BTFREQ has been carefully designed in order to deliver clearer voice activation with less noise pollution. It boasts of an ingeniously designed satin silver arc in order to accommodate a second microphone at the optimum distance from the first. Made from premium automotive grade ABS plastic, it should not be a problem blending it into most other vehicles. There is no word on pricing just yet, but the Scosche BTFREQ is tipped to arrive this coming fall 2019.

Press Release
[ Scosche BTFREQ car charger copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Google Testing More Search-Friendly Omnibox For Chrome On Mobile

Image credit – Android Police

Creating an efficient UI is paramount to a good user experience. If the design is cluttered or confusing, there will be less reasons for users to use an app or service. Google has made some changes and improvements to Chrome’s UI over the years, one of which is the introduction of the Duet interface on mobile.

This introduced a button at the bottom that when you pressed, would jump to the address box where users could perform a search. However the only “problem” was that based on the current iteration, it would highlight the existing URL which confused some users. Google has since “fixed” that in the latest Chrome Dev where when the button is pressed, it will take users to the address bar as per usual, but it will also clear it so that it is more intuitive to users that they need to type.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the version on the left is the old Chrome, and the version on the right is the new Chrome where the address bar is empty. There will be a microphone icon for voice search, and there will also be the URL of the website you’re currently on below it where you can tap to edit it or copy/share it.

Since these changes are only in the Chrome Dev version, it means that regular users won’t be able to see it yet. There is no word on when these changes will be rolled out to the masses, but we’ll keep our eyes peeled.

Google Testing More Search-Friendly Omnibox For Chrome On Mobile , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.