Hasta La Gadget!

If you grew up in the 80s you might recall Big Track: a programmable kids robo-truck that could be made to perform a handful of actions, like moving a set number of units in a certain direction, firing a faux laser or tipping out the contents of its dumper truck at a pre-set destination (assuming your parents’ had shelled out for that accessory).

Well, Big Track mostly sucked but only because the concept was ahead of what the technology could affordably deliver. Playing with Big Truck meant repeatedly driving into walls as you underestimated the number of units required to negotiate the space between the kitchen table and the door. What the toy maker got right was that kids are easily excited about robotics. Fast forward a few decades and enter mOwayduino: programmable Arduino-based robot toys designed to be used in conjunction with mobile apps (e.g for radio controlling the device via the phone’s accelerometer) plus hardware add-ons — creating a rich environment for learning by playing around with hardware and software building blocks.

Or that’s the idea. At the moment, mOwayduino is at the concept/prototyping stage.  The Spanish company behind the project is apparently aiming to crowdfund the idea via Indiegogo. For now, you can register your interest via their website. Update: mOwayduino’s makers say the Indiegogo campaign to fund production will launch in less than two weeks. “If we succeed, in three months, it will be on market. For people supporting the Indiegogo project, mOwayduino will be available at a special price,” the company tells TechCrunch. “If we exceed the money we need for the production, we will develop a graphical programming app for tablets.” It also intends to have an open API for users to develop their own apps.

The basic design of the mOwayduino robot looks a bit like a desk-mounted pencil-sharpener that’s wandered away from its duties. On the base there are three wheels to facilitate free, circular turning movements. Each robot then has various on-board lights and sensors (line sensor, light sensor, obstacle sensor, microphone, speaker etc) plus a USB-rechargeable battery that’s good for two hours of use.

Then, up top are expansion slots where additional modules can be plugged in to augment and extend its powers. For instance, there will be a vision system expansion module for capturing real-time images and sending them to a PC screen. (Just imagine the apps you could create to spy on your siblings!) Another planned expansion module adds Wi-Fi so the robot could be controlled from a mobile device or send emails when it has completed certain tasks.

The combination of a feature-rich basic robot unit plus the ability to augment and extend functionality — with support for programming via Ardunio IDE, Phyton, Java and the kid-friendly Scratch language, and the ability for multiple mOwayduinos to talk to each other and operate in sync — suggests this tech will easily kick Big Track’s ass. Or it will if it gets off the ground.

mOwayduino follows in the footsteps of other learning focused hardware such as the Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Key to the latter device’s success has been its low price tag so it will be interesting to see what price-tag mOwayduino will carry. Hopefully the base units won’t be prohibitively expensive so that kids can get their home-hacking on.

As part of its Napster (and Napster International) acquisition from a while back, Rhapsody promised it would spread the music service across more places worldwide, with one of the many focuses being to have a stronger presence in Europe. Well, staying true to its word, Rhapsody’s announcing today that it’s bringing the ripened Napster to more countries in The Old Continent, such as France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and more. For those Euro folks interested, the Napster membership is set to cost €9.95 per month, which includes, among other things, offline features and unlimited streaming of over 20 million tunes on both desktop and mobile apps. But, hey, if you’d rather see how it stacks up against similar services first, then maybe you oughta take up Rhapsody on its 30-day free trial offer at the source link below.

Psst… you’ll find the full list of new countries where Napster’s now available in the PR past the jump.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Internet

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Source: Napster

Europe may be enjoying deeper and deeper integration, but that doesn’t extend to mobile connectivity; citizens are still whacked with hefty roaming rates. European digital commissioner Neelie Kroes hopes to change this, telling business leaders that she’s planning to push through a single mobile telecoms market before she retires in 2015. Speaking at the European Business Summit, she said she had “no intention to retire until [she’d] knocked down all the barriers to a single market,” which was her “major priority” for the rest of her term. Hopefully those on that side of the pond will never again have to fork over $8 per day just to check Vine.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: EUObserver

Fresh from last week’s Verizon Lumia device launch, Nokia has taken the wraps off a new smartphone in its Windows Phone-based Lumia range at an event in London today. The Lumia 925 is its first flagship for T-Mobile in the U.S. This means that following the Lumia 928 launch on Verizon, and factoring in Nokia’s initial launch of the Lumia 920 on AT&T last year, Nokia now has a flagship Windows Phone ranged on all three major U.S. carriers. Globally the Lumia 925 will be ranged with Vodafone in Europe, coming to markets including Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. (priced at €469), and in China with China Mobile and China Unicom. The device will ship in June in Europe, with a U.S. launch slated for soon after.

The Windows Phone 8-based 4G Lumia 925 continues Nokia’s strategy of emphasising the camera smarts of its flagships Windows Phones, including PureView branding, Carl Zeiss optics and an 8.7MP lens with image stabilisation tech inside. But the camera hardware in the 925 is a little different to the 928 and 920, with one extra lens. This sixth lens improves photo performance in bright sunlight, according to Nokia, as well as sharing the low light performance abilities of its fellow flagships. In addition to that new camera hardware, the phone includes new software, called Smart Camera, that’s aimed at extending the photography experience by giving users new ways to capture and share photographs.

The camera software on the device includes a burst mode which allows up to 10 shots to be captured at a time. The software also has three new capture modes that take advantage of this burst feature, namely: Best Shot, for composing a composite shot from the best elements of several images; Action Shot for snapping a series of stills of action shots, such as sports, that can then be edited and shared as a sequence; and Motion Focus, a Lytro-style mode that allows the snapper to pick different elements to be in or out of focus after the shot has been taken. Nokia confirmed to TechCrunch that the latter featured is the first bit of software to make use of technology Nokia acquired when it bought imaging company Scalado last July.

“Whatever you do you can go back and edit again and again,” said Jo Harlow, head of Nokia’s smart devices unit — pictured above left, with SVP of product design chief Stefan Pannenbecker at the London launch. “The Nokia smart camera is our latest uniqie experience for our Nokia Lumia portfolio.”

The Smart Camera software is exclusive to the Lumia 925 initially but will be pushed out as an over-the-air update called Amber to Windows Phone 8-based Lumias in Q3, the company said. Nokia looks to be trying to bolster its efforts against Samsung here, which included a raft of new camera features on its flagship Galaxy S4 device, such as Dual-Shot and Drama Shot. The lack of Instagram for Windows Phone continues to hamper Nokia’s photo-focused efforts however, but also today it announced a partnership with Oggl, Hipstamatic’s new photo community app — noting that since Oggl has a relationship with Instagram, users will be able to access the latter service via that app.

Design wise, the Lumia 925 is the first Lumia device to include metallic trim. A silver aluminium band runs around its four edges, and doubles as the phone’s antenna — taking its cues from the iPhone’s design (but with “rigorous testing” to ensure no repeat of antennagate, according to Nokia). The mobile maker’s trademark polycarbonate clads the back of the device, so there’s a two-tone look and feel.

Nokia says the plastic back is designed to make it feel nicer and grippier in the hand. It may also be about keeping the weight down (to 139g), since heavy handsets is something Nokia has been criticised for. It certainly felt lightweight and slender during a brief hands on. Handset colour options are muted rather than the usual bold Lumia offerings, with black, white and grey options for the plastic back. Wireless charging shells, sold separately, can reintroduce the usual Lumia splashes of yellow, cyan and red.

Under the hood there’s a 1.5GHz Dual-Core Snapdragon chip, and 1GB of RAM. On board memory is 16GB (Vodafone will also get a 32GB variant) plus 7GB free cloud storage on Microsoft’s SkyDrive. The 4.5 inch AMOLED display has a resolution of 1280 x 768. Dimensions are 129 x 70.6 x 8.5mm. The 2000mAh battery is good for up to 12.8 hours of talk time on 3G, or up to 6.6 hours video playback, according to Nokia.

A ‘true PureView’ Windows Phone device — codenamed EOS — has been rumoured for several months, and the Lumia 925 looks to be that device. However it certainly does not include the 41MP sensor and pixel oversampling techniques featured in the Symbian-based 808 PureView. It seems unlikely that bona fide PureView technology will ever make it to Windows Phone, not least because it’s something of a camera pro curiosity, rather than a consumer-friendly mainstream feature. Rather Nokia is extending the PureView branding — to associate it with a range of camera-centric features, not just that original huge sensor.

Harlow closed the presentation by hinting at further new device launches from Nokia “later this summer”. “I can’t wait to see you later this summer when we will continue to bring new innovation and new experiences to our Lumia portfolio,” she said.

Nokia has given its Series 40-based range of touchscreen Asha smartphones another push to try to keep up with the low end reach of Google’s Android platform today. The mobile maker has announced a new addition to the range — the Asha 501 (pictured left & below) — which also ushers in a new version of the Asha touch UI that’s designed to be quicker and slicker, and has a focus on swiping gestures to make it feel more fluid.

The three-inch capacitive screen Asha 501, which has Wi-Fi but no 3G and costs $99 before taxes & subsidies, is expected to start shipping in June, via some 60 carriers in more than 90 countries worldwide. Nokia’s Asha range typically targets emerging markets in Africa, Asia and South America but Asha devices have also been ranged in Europe.

Although Nokia has retired its other in-house platform Symbian, to concentrate its smartphone efforts on Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS, it has continued to expand its portfolio of low end Android alternative S40-based devices — adding in a variety of new hardware and software features to devices in the range, including full Qwerty keyboards; dedicated keys for Facebook/WhatsApp; refreshed industrial design; its Bluetooth sharing technology Slam; its Xpress browser to lighten the data consumption load; preloaded social networking apps; free games downloads; and a focus on long battery life.

But keeping up with low end Androids also means improving Asha’s usability — and that’s what its latest platform refresh is all about.  The Asha 501 is in fact the first fruit of Nokia’s 2012 acquisition of Smarterphone, a Norwegian company that made mobile OSes for feature phones designed to give them smartphone looks and capabilities.

Nokia said the new Asha platform is faster and more responsive. It also introduces a touchscreen UI refresh — with a dual homescreen view: the Home screen is a “traditional icon-based view for launching individual apps or accessing a specific feature”, while the new Fastlane view changes based on device usage, showing things like “recently accessed contacts, social networks and apps”.

Fastlane “provides a record of how the phone is used, giving people a glimpse of their past, present and future activity, and helping them multi-task by providing easy access to their favorite features”, according to Nokia’s press release. The feature sounds a lot like certain portions of Motorola’s Android skinning software — such as the widgets deployed on 2012 devices like the Motorola Motosmart.

The overall idea of the design refresh is to make it easier for Asha users to get to the apps and features they’re after, according to Nokia – with the two main screens accessible by a “simple swipe”. ”Fastlane is integral to the whole Nokia Asha 501 experience, but so is the ‘swipe’ motion,” a spokeswoman told TechCrunch. “With swipe as you experience it on the device, we were able to make optimal use of screen space, so you see just what you need. You swipe to everything else, including pull-down menus and of course, Fastlane. The whole user experience is faster and more responsive.”

New Asha, New Apps

So what about apps? The new Asha platform does require developers to rework apps for it — either by writing them afresh or porting them over. Which does mean Nokia is pushing the reset button yet again, but the company would probably argue that at this price point with these price-conscious consumers, users aren’t expecting hoards of apps — just select key apps. It’s also added in-app purchases to the new Asha platform, offering developers a new way to monetise Asha apps, along with its Nokia Advertising Exchange and carrier billing network.

“A good percentage of existing apps can be ported to the new platform,” said Nokia’s spokeswoman. “We already have many developers working on this. Going forward and with the new Nokia Asha Software Development Kit, developers can write an app once, and it will be compatible with future devices also built on the new Asha platform, with no need to re-write code.”

Apps that are already available for the new Nokia Asha platform include CNN, eBuddy, ESPN, Facebook, Foursquare, Line, LinkedIn, Nimbuzz, Pictelligent, The Weather Channel, Twitter, WeChat, World of Red Bull and games from Electronic Arts, Gameloft, Indiagames, Namco Bandai and Reliance Games. Nokia said its HERE location software will also be available as a download, starting in Q3 this year — and will “initially include basic mapping services”.

Messaging giant WhatsApp is noticeably absent from the list but Nokia’s spokeswoman suggested that may change in future, noting: “WhatsApp and other key partners continue to explore new Asha.”

In select markets, certain carriers are also offering data-free access to apps including the Facebook app and mobile website on the 501 for a limited time, offering another hook for the target cost-conscious consumers.

The 501 comes preloaded with Nokia’s cloud-based data compressing Xpress browser. Nokia has also created a new web app, called Nokia Xpress Now, which ”recommends content based on location, preferences and trending topics”. It said this will be available via the Browser homepage or as a download from the Nokia Store.

“Nokia has surpassed expectations of what’s achievable in the sub-100 USD phone category with a new Asha handset that is unlike any other, with design cues from Lumia and a mix of features, services and affordability that is valued by price-conscious buyers,” said Neil Mawston, executive director, Global Wireless Practice, Strategy Analytics, in a supporting statement.

Commenting on the launch via Twitter, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi added: “Asha 501 shows what you can achieve when you design bottom up rather than strip down features to hit the right price point.

“Asha 501 Dual SIM with hot swap very important to users but what is most striking on this device is the user interface.”

The full device specifications for the Asha 501 are as follows:

• Dimensions:  99.2 x 58 x 12.1 mm; 98 grams

• Camera: 3.2 MP

• Single SIM standby time: up to 48 days

• Dual SIM standby time: up to 26 days

• Talk time: up to 17 hours

• Additional memory of 4GB (card included in box), expandable up to 32GB

• Forty free EA Games worth €75 downloadable from Nokia Store

• Available colours: Bright Red, Bright Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black

• Suggested pricing is 99 USD before taxes and subsidies.