Twit World Report: ReadWriteDavid Nield

Showing posts with label ReadWriteDavid Nield. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

How One Startup Aims To Solve The Wired VR Issue

A growing number of hardware makers are searching for the best way of bringing virtual reality (VR) to the masses: Current contraptions cover every price point and style from Google Cardboard to the Oculus Rift (consumer version due 2016). The AuraVisor, currently raising funds on Kickstarter, sits ...

Monday, November 2, 2015

Games Are Key To New Apple TV's Success, Early Data Shows

The Apple TV has only been out for a weekend, but already there's some unofficial data about the apps that are proving popular with early adopters—and games are leading the charge. The charts in question have been compiled using real data from the App Store that, for the time being, is hidden from ...

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Android Developers Can Now Choose Exactly When App Updates Go Live

Trying to guess when an Android update goes live won't be such a problem in the future: As per its support document, Google is now allowing developers to use a timed publishing approach for updates on the Play Store. In practice, that means once updates have been approved, app makers can ...

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Apple Wants Apps To Support 3D Touch—But On Its Own Terms

Blackbox developer Ryan McLeod thought he'd found the perfect use for 3D Touch on the new iPhone: A portable scale app called Gravity that tapped into the pressure-sensitive technology to weigh small items placed on a spoon. Unfortunately, Apple didn't like the idea—McLeod's app has been rejected ...

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Hardware Makers Can Now Get A Custom-Built Raspberry Pi To Order

Businesses and startups can now get their hands on customized, mass-produced versions of the Raspberry Pi, thanks to a new deal from manufacturing partner Element14. Whether for small Kickstarter projects or large industrial applications, interested parties can mod their Pi before buying ...

Monday, October 26, 2015

Why Facebook Plugged Heroku Into Parse

If you want to attract developers, then you need to make their lives as easy as possible: Coding apps is challenging enough without spending time on testing, maintenance, scaling and other tasks that go along with it. We've just seen Twitter add Fastline integration to its Fabric platform, and ...

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Fastlane Explained: Why Twitter Acquired The iOS Development Automation Tool

Judging by Twitter's Flight developers conference this week, the company has decided its best chance of growth is to encourage developers back into the fold. Part of that encouragement involves improvements to its Fabric suite of developer tools, and one of those changes come from Twitter's ...

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

YouTube Red Bundles The Best Media Google's Got Into One Subscription

After many months of speculation, YouTube has finally unveiled its premium subscription service: $9.99 a month for ad-free viewing and listening, offline caching and a raft of other features too. It's a major milestone in YouTube's growth as a platform, coming in its 10th year and underlining ...

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

NYT Jumps Into VR, Sending A Million Google Cardboards To Readers

The New York Times is giving out Google Cardboard kits to its one million subscribers. The free gifts will ship in advance of the November 7 release of its new virtual reality film, The Displaced. Produced by the New York Times Magazine and the first in a planned series of short movies ...

Monday, October 19, 2015

How The Wrong SDK Can Get You Booted From The App Store

Apple has removed more than 250 apps from its App Store for their use of a sketchy third-party advertising SDK (software development kit), which was in breach of the company's security and privacy guidelines. According to a report by Ars Technica, the kit collected a host of personally ...

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Facebook Pulls Back The Curtain On Its VR Video Push

Facebook is going big on video, including 360-degree VR-lite video—and the company has explained a little more about what's going on behind the scenes with its new support for immersive video clips.For the uninitiated, 360 video is filmed in all directions at once and lets the viewer experience the ...

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Perch Can Use Existing Devices To Make Any Home Smart

Fresh out of the Samsung Accelerator startup program is Perch, an innovative app and back-end system for monitoring homes through existing hardware. It launches in open beta today as an Android app, but more integrations and iOS support are promised soon.See also: Smart Homes: How To Keep From ...

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Google Cardboard Brings Homemade VR To The World

Bringing a taste of virtual reality to the world at large is one of the main motivations driving Google Cardboard. The company just announced a newly extended rollout of its app to 100 countries in 39 languages. The developer docs are now available in 10 different languages too."We're excited ...

Monday, October 12, 2015

Blocks, The Modular Smartwatch, Gets Ready For Its Moment Of Truth

Blocks, the wearable smartwatch you configure yourself out of expandable modules, is going live on Kickstarter tomorrow—and that should tell us something about the market's appetite for a device that offers customization as its main selling point.The Blocks device is built around a core watchface ...

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Amazon's Kinesis Firehose Aims To Prevent IoT Overload

Once our homes are kitted out with all manner of smart devices and sensors, where does the growing mass of collected data go to? Enter Kinesis Firehose, one of several services announced by Amazon at its AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week.The Firehose lets device makers stream data ...

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Google Introduces Accelerated Mobile Pages To Keep Content On The Web

Both Facebook and Apple believe they've built a better home for news content on mobile devices—self-contained apps where load times are fast and ads are discreet—but Google isn't going to lie down without a fight.The result is the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, a new open-source HTML standard ...

Why (And How) Startups Are Tying Into Amazon's DRS System

Having launched last spring, Amazon's Dash Replenishment Service (DRS) may be young, but it's growing up fast. In fact, it just took another big step recently: Last week, the company announced a new batch of DRS partners and devices, making for a move that could extend the ...

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Microsoft Finally Opens Applications For HoloLens Dev Kit

Microsoft executives have been in New York showing off a pile of new hardware devices, and among the new phones and laptops, developers finally got the HoloLens news they were waiting for: The company finally opened applications for the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition. However, ...

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Nest Weave Arrives To Connect The Smart Home (Dumb Appliances, Too!)

Google teased its smart home initiatives Weave and Brillo earlier this year at I/O, and now the tech giant's Nest division is pushing its own smart home standard out into the real world. Nest Weave, announced Thursday, is a protocol for Internet of Things gadgets that lets them communicate ...

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

1 In 5 U.S. Adults On Board With Wearables Now

Forrester released its annual report on US consumer technology use on Monday, and the findings make encouraging reading for wearable developers, manufacturers and enthusiasts. Twenty-one percent of all "online" adults in the U.S. now own a wearable device of some kind, with the younger ...