Hasta La Gadget!

Smartphone maker HTC is going through a tough time – and having something of an identity crisis that’s playing out as a rebranding exercise. That’s why it’s spent millions hiring Robert Downey Jr to spice things up with its Here’s To Change campaign. It’s also, apparently, got a few other attention-grabbing tricks up its sleeve. Such as the gizmo pictured above.

Part vapourware, part steampunk fantasy, pure marketing madness.

No it’s not a leftover prop from the latest Tim Burton flick. The Gramohorn II – for that is its ludicrous name – is HTC UK’s contribution to the struggling mobile maker’s internal cultural revolution.

What actually is it? It’s audio kit for the outré HTC One user: a passive speaker smartphone dock designed to grab the tiny timbres issuing from the phone’s front-facing speakers and flick them through its twin horns like a Pamplona bull dispatching a pair of overweight tourists.

Or actually that’s its secondary function, after the primary one of grabbing consumers’ eyeballs and rattling them in their sockets.

If it’s eyes on its logo HTC needs – actually it’s dollars in its coffers but the former tends to lead to the latter – then this mystical hardware unicorn is surely going to deliver. Not so much HTC as WTF?! But in the smartphone popularity contest where Samsung is the ruling Gladiator then anything is better than being invisible. So it’s out with ‘quietly brilliant’ and in with ‘WTF’ blared through a pair of oversized ear trumpets. Bravo HTC, bravo.

Say what you like about the Gramohorn II but one thing is for sure: it’s not quietly brilliant.

It’s not quiet, period.

HTC hasn’t come up with this chunk of craziness on its own. It engaged a young UK designer called Justin Wolter to do that for it – maker of the Gramohorn II’s uni-trumpeted predecessor (which was, er, for iPhones). Wolter came up with the dual-trumpet remix of his earlier design, sketched it out and then with a little judicious use of 3D printing, the Gramohorn II was born.

These days crazy is that easy.

Print on demand means there’s never going to be a warehouse full of unloved Gramohorn IIs. These bad boys are individually made to order. And at £999/$1,600 each (for a plaster-based resin Gramohorn II) – or a frankly insane £4,999/$8,000 for the milled steel version – buyers are being deliberately discouraged from actually getting their hands on the Gramohorn. In all likelihood because it’s going to murder your music by trampling tinnily all over it. Audiophiles avert your ears.

Even hipsters would balk at a price tag with that many bells on it.

Here’s what HTC has to say about its curious lovechild:

To kick-start our Here’s To Creativity campaign Justin has taken the concept of the HTC One’s front facing BoomSound™ stereo speakers and pushed it to the extreme. His design is the physical embodiment of BoomSound incorporated within a unique, dramatic and stylish sculpture.

And here’s what Wolter had to say, when asked whether anyone is actually going to use this as a speaker as, well, a speaker:

The design aims to function as both a functional consumer product as well contemporary art. As such, it hopes to capture and element of curiosity as well as prompt further thought / discussion. Based on key acoustic principles, the design does what it says, in successfully amplifying sound waves using resonance. The Bauhaus-ian mantra of ‘form follows function’ was always in mind during design development.

It also sounds as if the Gramohorn II will be the first in a series of designer eyeball-grabbers coming out of HTC’s UK office.

“HTC UK’s ‘Here’s To Creativity’ campaign is supporting young designers, writers and artists helping them to bring their ideas to life. More exciting creative projects to change the smartphone experience are happening soon,” noted Peter Frolund, General Manager UK, in a sadly understated statement. He should really have said: ‘YEAH! WOOT! LET’S DO THIS!’

This sort of grassroots craziness may not turn HTC’s tanker around but in a mainstream smartphone space that’s become slabbish and staid it sure is fun to see something a little nuts going on.

Here’s To Crazy indeed.

Kickstarter success and Australian hardware startup LIFX is finally shipping its Wi-Fi connected smart lightbulbs this Friday. That’s a little later than originally promised in its Kickstarter campaign. LIFX had promised to deliver by March, so they’re officially quite late to the party, but they’ve also managed to secure some major retail partners for a consumer launch late this year and early next.

LIFX bulbs will go on sale at Best Buy online January 19, 2014 in the U.S., and some global retail partners including John Lews in the UK, DickSmith in Australia, Digitech in the EU, MediaMarket in Scandinavia and Virgin Megastores in the Gulf Region, are launching it even earlier in December of this year. That’s all above and beyond the existing $10 million in pre-sales LIFX has done via Kickstarter and its own site, and the $4.6 million it has raised from private investors.

Co-founder and Director Andrew Birt says that they acknowledge that they’re behind schedule, but that the smart bulb race “hasn’t been won yet,” referring to the head start legacy lighting industry giant Philips has with its Hue series. Philips introduced two new types of Hue bulbs and starter kits earlier this week, effectively tripling its product lineup in a single blow. LIFX will offer screw, bayonet and downlight models from the get-go, however, and unlike the Philips Hue, they don’t require a base to connect to Wi-Fi to talk to each other and to your iOS or Android device.

The LIFX team has been working hard to fix production issues and start sending devices out to pre-order customers, Birt says, but they’ve also been working in the background on other efforts while that’s been going on.

Modular things are having a moment, even if Motorola’s plans for a modular smartphone look more pipe dream than practical reality. With modular robotics it’s a different story. Progress towards more sophisticated bot-making kits is being made steadily, block by block.

Just last month MIT created self-assembling modular bots, for instance. Today Modular Robotics, the Boulder, Colorado-based maker of the Cubelets robotics building blocks designed for kids and kidults, has kicked off a Kickstarter campaign for the next generation of its product, which it’s calling MOSS.

The main change with MOSS vs Cubelets is an evolved design for the blocks involving ball magnet connectors. What’s so great about ball magnets? They allow for joints between blocks to be more dynamic – to swing or hinge, for instance – and thus for the blocks to be configured into a greater variety of more kinetically dynamic bots.

The company has also increased the range of the modules on offer – to allow for a greater variety of bots to be built. 

The MOSS blocks will use colour-coded connecting faces to help signpost how they need to be connected up for the blocks’ various functions to work.

Modules on offer include the likes of battery modules to power stuff; spin and wheel modules to add motion/movement; Bluetooth modules for data connectivity so you can pair the bot with a smartphone or computer and remote control it; and sensor modules for detecting light or movement. Snap the modules together in functional configurations and off you go.

Modular Robotics is seeking $100,000 from Kickstarter backers keen to be first to get their hands on MOSS and start building. The estimated shipping date for the construction kits is February next year.

It’s offering various kits to Kickstarter backers – starting at $59 for a simple starter kit that lets you build a light-sensing robot; or $99 for a kit to make a distance-sensing bot and build simple robots that can drive; up to $379 for an advanced kit that lets you build a Bluetooth-controlled car and more – or $949 for a “mega bundle” of two basic kits and two advanced builder kits so you have lots of pieces to play with.

The USPTO has published an Apple patent application today (via AppleInsider) that could offer a glimpse at how any potential iWatch may work, in terms of gathering data from the web. The patent describes a method for sharing a network connection over Bluetooth 4.0, the low energy specification used in modern iOS devices that can provide intelligent, intermittent context-based pairing.

Apple’s invention would not create a persistent hotspot in the same way that sharing via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi from your iPhone does currently; instead, it would check in periodically, seek out updates from iCloud, grab push notifications, messages, news, weather and other data and then shut down again, returning to a power conserving state.

The low-power aspect is the key ingredient in this mix. Smartwatches that currently exist, including the Galaxy Gear, handle data connections via Bluetooth, too, but Apple’s patent seems designed to introduce as much power savings as is possible, while also taking any management of connection out of the user’s hands, so they don’t need to worry about when it is and isn’t active. It’s worth noting that Apple also acquired low-energy chipmaker Passif back in August, which provides it with more expertise regarding Bluetooth LE communications.

Apple mentions devices that don’t themselves contain any kind of network radio in the patent, which infers, without directly calling out, wearables such as the rumored iWatch we’ve been hearing so much about. Other analyst reports and industry information suggest that an iWatch could also come with its own Wi-Fi or cellular radios on board, however, so this Bluetooth LE hotspot feature is likely just one of many possibilities Apple has worked on in its testing facilities.

Of course, an iWatch is still mostly just a myth at this point, with no solid signs we’ll see one hit production any time soon. But this patent indicates that Apple is at least working on the thorniest problems associated with wearables. Battery life is a primary concern – so far, even the best-in-class smartwatches offer only a theoretical maximum of 7 days without the need for a charge, which is good but not great. The point at which wearable tech becomes generally palatable is the point at which it becomes nearly invisible to a user. Adding one more things people have to remember to plug in nightly isn’t going to set the category aflame.

Pebble’s creators didn’t just make a functional smartwatch when they designed their device, they packed it with a lot of potential for the future, too. Much of that potential has lain dormant while Pebble focused on ramping up production and building an enthusiastic community of dedicated independent developers, but today, the startup is activating some more of its smartwatch’s superpowers, and laying the groundwork of the next generation of Pebble apps.

iOS 7 Notification Updates

For users, the immediate benefit of this announcement is that the latest firmware adds full integration with iOS 7, and no hassle notifications via third party apps, configurable via Notification Center settings. Any apps that you’ve enabled Banner notifications for in iOS 7 on your iPhone (any model with Bluetooth 4.0), will now show notifications on your Pebble, too. In practice, I had to reconnect the second Pebble that shows up in your devices menu under Bluetooth in Settings (which is the BLE connection) once to get this to work consistently.

The notifications work very reliably, though in the version I tested there were some issues with some primary apps like Mail sending duplicate notices. Pebble says it’s aware of both issues and working on a bug fix currently, however. And despite some growing pains, the changes are tremendous for iOS users. On Android, of course, Pebble has always been able to support third-party notifications, but on iOS, at best you needed to implement workarounds, and really there was no generally satisfying option. Now, I’m getting Skype, Hangouts, Twitter and many more notifications direct to the watch without any fiddly changes to existing settings.

Bluetooth Smart (or Bluetooth 4.0, or LE or what have you) was always built-in to Pebble, so whether you’ve got a Kickstarter edition, one from Best Buy or one ordered direct, you’ll have that ready to go. I spoke with Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky, who explained that they developed a way to use Bluetooth 3.0 to connect to devices for more appropriate tasks for that tech, like updating firmware and controlling the iOS music player, and Bluetooth LE for thing like notifications and other lightweight tasks. The combination should help the Pebble continue to enjoy long battery life, all the while improving general functionality.

Pebble SDK 2.0

The update for iOS users is just one of Pebble’s big announcements today; the other is aimed at developers, as the startup introduces version 2.0 of its SDK for building Pebble apps. So far, even with the limited tools provided for making crude apps and watchfaces, developers have created 2,200 apps on MyPebbleFaces.com, and uploaded over 80,000 watchfaces on the community-built watchface-generator.de. There are already over 50 companion apps designed to be used with Pebble on iTunes and Google Play, and over 10,000 individuals Pebble classifies as developers for its platform.

Version 1.0 of the SDK was little more than a testbed, however, and 2.0 opens up many new possibilities, according to Migicovsky. That’s because it unlocks various Pebble components that make building apps native to the watch much easier, including access to its onboard accelerometer, data storage, and logging of activity which it can automatically report back to an app once the watch reconnects to a device.

These features mean that Pebble can act as a fitness tracker for any app that wants to use its data – and unlike APIs from Nike, Jawbone and others, the data isn’t pre-formatted, so devs get access to raw activity information that they can parse using whatever algorithm they choose – including some that may be more accurate that those currently employed by competitors. All of a sudden, Pebble isn’t just a smartwatch, it’s a flexible smartphone accessory that any developer can make their own. Plus, there’s a new JavaScript API that means developers can build software that works regardless of what platform (Android or iOS) a Pebble owner is on, instead of having to recode for each.

“Our attitude is that we as a company are not necessarily going to be the ones writing the hero apps all the time for Pebble,” Migicovsky explained. “But it’s our job to make sure that for a third-party developer, they can get started as easy as possible, building apps that could potentially be equivalent to other pieces of hardware. Maybe the next person that comes up with a fitness tracking algorithm at Stanford, MIT, Harvard or wherever, instead of having to go start their own hardware company, can just walk down to Best Buy, grab a Pebble and get started.”

Big Name App Partners

Since its launch, Pebble has had interest from big companies who want to integrate their products or services with the platform, but Migicovsky says they were waiting for the right moment to start bring those on board. The new SDK means that they’ve been able to work with some early partners to build products that complement some top-tier apps, including Foursquare and Yelp. The Yelp Pebble app will offer up listings for nearby locations to check out, and the Foursquare one actually allows you to check in direct from the smartwatch itself, which should help Foursquare drive more active engagement for its service among Pebble users.

Other partners include iControl, which is building remote control of Xfinity home monitoring and automation services for the watch, and GoPro, which is making it possible to completely control its Wi-Fi-enabled GoPro action cameras from your wrist via Pebble. These initial partners aren’t launching their apps immediately, but they’ll be available sometime over the next few weeks. More info on SDK news can be found via Pebble’s announcement livetsream, going on right now.

Now that Pebble has fulfilled the backlog of early demand it faced, and shipped over 190,000 Pebble watches to backers and buyers, and released a mature software development framework, I asked Migicovsky what’s the next phase for the company, suggesting new hardware product might be on the horizon. Predictably, he wouldn’t speak to future product plans, but instead pointed to the chance the company has now to build a true software ecosystem, and make those apps easy to access for users. When asked whether he was working with third-party portal like MyPebbleFaces to make that happen, he said that they were indeed speaking to them directly, but that there’s nothing more to announce at this time in that regard. With a community built-in, however, bringing MyPebbleFaces in-house to form the foundation of a software marketplace makes a lot of sense.

Taking The Next Step

Pebble is also now back in stock on the website, and for a limited time, is being offered in all colors with free worldwide courier shipping. This should make it so that anyone can get one in around four or five days, Migicovsky says. Catching up with demand is good for consumers, but it also means Pebble is facing a new challenge: After satisfying initial appetite, it now needs to bring consumers back to the table for the rest of the meal, and the announcements today are designed to help do just that.