Honda Goes Big on Hydrogen; TikTok Mutes More Songs; Meta’s 1st True AR Glasses Out This Year; Battery & Attached Phone

Posted: February 27, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Honda has announced a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle for the US. It’s basically a 2025 CR-V, but with a crazy additional name…try saying Honda CR-V e:FCEV 3 times quickly. Theverge.com reports that the fuel cell electric vehicle will have an EPA range of 270 miles, including 29 miles of all-electric driving. The fuel cell is co-developed with General Motors, and built by the two companies’ Fuel Cell System Manufacturing venture in Michigan. No price as yet, but it will be available for lease in California later this year. It has 174 horses, and can be recharged on a normal wall outlet or a Level 2 charger. Honda had formerly sold the Clarity hydrogen car until 2017. 

TikTok continues to battle with Universal Music Group over royalties. Recently, UMG pulled some recordings it owns or distributes from TikTok including tracks from the likes of superstars Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd. The standoff is now impacting songs published by UMG, with millions more tracks expected to be muted on TikTok by the end of this week. According to Engadget.com, the tussle is over split copyrights. UMG has now removed some 3 million songs. Besides that, UMG’s deal with TikTok over its publishing catalog expires later this week…that could mean some 4 million songs will disappear from the platform. 

Meta is aiming to unveil its first “true” augmented reality glasses this fall at the company’s Connect event for third-party developers. ZDnet.com reports that the glasses aren’t related to the Ray Ban/Meta glasses from 2019. They are coming out of Meta’s Reality Labs, which is the division that oversees all of the social media giant’s augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence projects. CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo on Threads earlier this month, and from that it appears that they have built several prototypes. The upcoming glasses are expected to include spatial computing like Apple’s Vision Pro. If they can bring them out at a lot lower price point than Apple’s, Meta may really open up a wide market for AR glasses. 

If you are always worrying about running your smartphone battery down, this may be just the deal for you. It’s the Energizer Hard Case P28K. Arstechnica.com notes that it is nearly a battery pack with attached phone. The handset has a 28,000 mAh battery, so you won’t run out of juice soon, but it thicker than 3 iPhones! The handset is made by Avenir Telecom. Honestly, it is described as being just a budget phone, so if you are anywhere near a power user, it won’t be for you. On the other hand, it can go 5 days on a charge. If you want one, it drops in October for $273.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.

Huawei Passes Apple to be the Avis of Smartphones; Facebook-100% Renewable Energy by 2020; Oculus Studies VR in Classrooms; Toyota Invests in Uber; Trump- Google is RIGGED

Posted: August 28, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has slipped past Apple to grab the #2 spot in smartphone sales. TechCrunch.com reports that a Gartner figure puts Huawei ahead in sales for the 2nd quarter. Huawei came in at 13.3%, up from 9.8% in the prior year, while Apple got 11.9%, off slightly from the 12.1% they had in 2017’s Q2. Samsung still stands tall as #1, at 19.3% this year, and 22.6% in 2017.

Facebook has announced they will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 75% and be running on 100% renewable energy by the end of 2020. According to theverge.com, Facebook has signed contracts for more than 3 gigawatts of new solar and wind energy since 2013. Those projects are all on the same grids as Facebook data centers in Oregon, Virginia, New Mexico, and Sweden. Samsung has also pledged to be on 100% renewable by 2020 in the US, Europe, and China. Apple and Google have also purchased enough renewable energy to offset their global energy consumption since April.

Oculus is getting ready to study how virtual reality can be used in education. Cnet.com says they have kicked off a pilot program called Oculus Education, which will distribute Oculus Go and Rift headsets to schools, libraries, and museums in Taiwan, Japan, and Seattle. The first phase will center around training teachers and other instructors in the use of VR and gathering feedback, and how VR can fill unique needs in those institutions. In conjunction with the headset program, Oculus is releasing 3 new VR experiences centered around history, science, and culture. They are all available at the Oculus store.

Toyota is pumping $500 million into Uber as part of a self-driving car partnership. Businessinsider.com reports that Toyota had previously invested in Uber a couple years ago as part of an auto leasing deal. Uber is reportedly selling self-driving tech to Toyota, while Toyota is promising to collaborate with Uber in moving self-driving tech forward. We may be seeing a Toyota self-driving Prius Hybrid sooner, not later.

Donald Trump fired off another angry Tweet from the White House…this time accusing Google of rigging search results against conservatives. According to gizmodo.com, the Chief Executive Tweeted “Google search results for ‘Trump News’ shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?” He is claiming that ’96% of the results on ‘Trump News’ are from National Left-Wing Media, very dangerous.’ He went on to rail that it was a very serious situation and it will be addressed. It might help if he adjusted his view of ‘Fake News.’

More Galaxy S8 Leaks; Netflix Will Have 20 Originals in 2017; Toys Pulled From Stores for Spying; Google Hits 100% Renewable Energy in 2017

Posted: December 6, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SamMobile often has accurate tips about upcoming Samsung products, and according to the latest, they say the Galaxy S8 will lose both the headphone jack and physical home button. 9to5google.com reports it will have a USB-C port like the Note 7, and won’t jump to 4K screen resolution. There should be an optical fingerprint sensor in the display, too.

Netflix will debut 20 original unscripted shows in 2017. Arstechnica.com says they will be competition and reality shows. One will be ‘Ultimate Beastmaster,’ 10 episodes that will follow athletes over obstacle courses, with the winner in the finale being dubbed ‘The Ultimate Beast!’

Some high tech toys are being pulled from some store shelves, and a consumer council in Norway is demanding that the Federal Trade Commission and the European counterpart to it clear all of them from shelves. According to thenextweb.com, ‘My Friend Cayla’ and i-Que from Genesis Toys let kids communicate with the toys via a smartphone app. The company claims all communication is between the app and product, but apparently it really gets sent to the company’s Nuance server. Nuance underpins Siri for Apple and Dragon Naturally speaking. The data can apparently be used for marketing and shared with third parties. Not cool for toys that tout a ‘safe internet’ for kids.

Google has announced that it will power its entire worldwide operations with 100% renewable energy in 2017. According to techcrunch.com, they will be able to claim to be world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, and will be twice as large in that respect as Amazon. Some of the power comes from energy credits, but Google says it plans to further diversify into renewables…particularly to get away from as much reliance on wind power.