Hasta La Gadget!

There are some 90 million homes in the U.S. without any security system whatsoever. Many of them are renters who don’t want to invest heavily in a place they don’t own, among hundreds of thousands of home owners who are simply priced out. There has never been a convenient, all-in-one system that could offer home security at an affordable rate, much less one you could pick up at the local Best Buy.

But that all changes with Canary, the latest crowd-funding sensation to hit Indiegogo. We caught up with NYC-based founder Adam Sager to discuss the project.

Canary is a little console, slightly smaller than the size of a paper towel roll, that’s packed with a host of sensors, a mic, and an HD camera.

For $200 down, this little guy will connect to the Wifi, sync with your phone, and constantly watch your home. I say watch, and not monitor, because Canary can only see as far as its sensors will allow, whereas most home security systems are wired in to monitor every crack and crevice of a home. Canary can only hear as far as the mic allows, or the camera sees, or the sensors can sense.

However, Sager believes that when you place the Canary in the central part of your home, near the front door perhaps or watching over the living room, that a real threat, like a burglar, will likely set off the Canary no matter where it enters from.

Plus, if you have a larger space or want added security, you can always link more than one Canary (up to four, Sager tells me).

Canary’s sensors include night vision, motion detection, temperature, air quality and humidity, along with a live feed to the HD camera at any given time. The phone will instantly alert the user whenever the home experiences a random change, like a temperature fluctuation or sudden movement.

But Canary is also smart enough to learn your home, sensing the difference between a burglary and a pet. It even understands when regularly scheduled events occur, like the arrival of a nanny or a dog walker at the same time each day, so that you don’t have a panic attack each time Rover needs to take a wizz.

Canary’s distribution model is different from any other home security system in that you will eventually be able to go pick one up at a local electronics store on the cheap. This has never really been available before, and the potential market is huge with 90 million homes completely unprotected and priced out of the alternatives.

Sager admits that margins on the hardware itself won’t be that high, but the plan is to offer value-added services like monitoring (delivered by a TBD third-party) for $10/month.

Canary has been on Indiegogo for four days, and has blown far beyond its $100k goal to be at $550k at the time of writing. It only took a few hours to reach $100k, according to Sager.

If you’d like to back the project, head on over to the Canary website or check out the Indiegogo campaign.

If you thought Foursquare was going to abandon the smallest of the small, the cheapest of the cheap in smartphone technology, you were wrong. Here this week the folks developing Foursquare have released the app for the Nokia Asha 501. This is a device that does not have GPS abilities – this would normally hinder an app that largely depends on such data – but no worries! This version of the app will use location data picked up by your network connection.

This app is one of the few available on essentially any smartphone you’re able to pick up – here on the Asha 501, it deserves a medal for good effort. What you’ll be doing here is checking in as you normally would on any other smartphone with Foursquare, here working with a simplified user interface to make sure the entirety of this smartphone’s relatively tiny and low-resolution display is made use of.

Users will still be able to add friends, seek notifications, and work with location searching. Supposing your connected to mobile data you’ll be able to search nearby locations for places of interest, check the locations you’ve been to make sure you’re still Mayor, and check information on locations such as, for example, if they’ve got free wi-fi.

You can see photos from locations, keep track of your own profile, and of course: check in. The graphics are simple, the app is small, and the whole experience looks to be just about as cut-down while remaining usable as it possibly could be.

Sound like a winner? This app is free – of course – and should be available for download by you immediately if not soon, if you’ve got a Nokia Asha 501 on hand, that is. If you’ve got any other smartphone – you’ll probably be able to download Foursquare there as well.

VIA: Nokia Conversations

Nokia Asha 501 gains Foursquare app: even without GPS is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While Google has no qualms releasing their products as apps on Apple’s iOS ecosystem, it seems that they aren’t too eager at giving Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform a helping hand. This has led to third-party alternatives, some of which are […]

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It Original content from Ubergizmo.

We knew the Google Play Games app would be arriving in the Play Store some time today, and now it is officially available for download. The same app will come pre-loaded on the newly announced Nexus 7 tablet, and will serve as a central hub of sorts for viewing game achievements, leaderboards, checking out what friends are playing, and all that good stuff.

Word surfaced about the Google Play Games app from Google at its event earlier today, with the news perhaps being drowned out by the excitement surrounding the new Nexus 7 and Android 4.3. As its name suggest, this is a dedicated gaming app, and makes it easier to stay on top of one’s Android gaming habit, and makes it a bit easier for friends to check out what you’re up to.

The app is only 2MB in size, and is available for devices running Android 2.2 and higher. Google is hailing its biggest features as a unified system of sorts that brings all the aspects of Android gaming together. With the app, users can discover new games by seeing what their friends are playing, and vice versa.

Players can play games with their friends, and see all the pertinent details related to that. The Google Play Games app can also be used to jump into multiplayer games, and to compare scores with other gamers playing the same app. There’s also achievement tracking, letting gamers see, for example, what they’ve unlocked for a particular game, and what achievements are left to earn.

In case you missed it, the Google Play store was also in news today for adding a textbook category, giving it a further push into the educational market. The category allows students to either rent or purchase textbooks, depending on need and availability.

SOURCE: Android Community

Google Play Games app now available is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google announced Android 4.3 Jelly Bean today, keeping with the Jelly Bean, but adding a few new features and performances improvements. One of the more interesting features, however, is multi-user account support along with restricted profiles, which will give parents more piece-of-mind when they hand over their device to their kids.

With restricted profiles, users can set up different, customized environments for each user, and adjust what content and apps that each user has access to. Google says that restricted profiles are ideal for “friends and family, guest users, kiosks, point-of-sale devices, and more,” but we think a big market for this feature will be for kids.

With the recent influx of parents handing over their tablet to their kids and those kids buying apps without permission, companies with app stores have been making it an effort to control this issue. Apple recently posted a feature in the iTunes App Store educating users on how to use it, with the focus on making sure kids don’t have access to paid apps in the app store.

Google’s answer is restricted profiles in Android 4.3. The owner of the tablet can control which installed apps are enabled in any given profile and which apps are not enabled. This means that owners can block other users from accessing Google Play to download more apps or other digital content.

Each restricted profile offers an isolated space with its own local storage, home screens, widgets, settings, etc. However, these different profiles are based on the tablet owner’s own environment, such as what apps are installed. So essentially, every user will have the same apps that the owner has — no more and no less, but this should make it easier for parents to control what their kids do on such devices, and cut down on unnecessary spending on useless apps.

Android 4.3 restricted profiles: Google’s answer to kids accidentally buying apps is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.