Say hello to Amazon Stream, a Pinterest-like endless shopping experience

It appears that Amazon has been working on a new shopping experience based on pinboards. Stream tempts you with an endless list of products for men, women and the home, in an easy-to-browse format. The products shown are all sponsored, said to be updated daily and only list their prices. You do have an option to save items to your wishlist, but they stay separate from your standard Amazon wishlist. That’s really all there is to it at this point. Amazon doesn’t seem to have shared additional info via a press release, as it usually does. The company also doesn’t yet mention…

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The psychology of simple

This post originally appeared on the Crew blog. For a concept that we all understand, ‘simple’ is deceivingly difficult to pin down. We may ‘know it when we see it’, but there’s more to what makes a product or website feel simple than just gut reaction. In the words of Steve Jobs: “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” If there’s so much power in creating things that are simple why do…

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10 secrets that will make your life easier as a social media manager

This article originally appeared on the Twitter Counter blog. There’s a common misconception that managing social media on a professional level is as easy and breezy as uploading an image on Facebook with a simple caption to go with it. But, you and I both know that there’s much more to it. Managing social media effectively is about posting the right content on the right platform, establishing your brand’s authority, thinking ahead, building relations, measuring and monitoring your performance, and the list goes on and on. Basically, social media management can be a full-time job but it can become even more…

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Woman unknowingly tosses a first-gen Apple computer worth $200,000 at a recycling center

A recycling center in Silicon Valley is looking for a mystery woman who unknowingly dropped off a rare, first-generation Apple computer that fetched $200,000 at a private auction. The woman was reportedly cleaning her late husband’s garage when she came across the Apple I, Apple’s first computer that was hand-assembled by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ron Wayne in 1976. The computer came with just 4KB of memory, and originally sold for $600. Only about 200 of this model was ever made. Clean Bay Area recycling center vice president Victor Gichun said the woman dropped off several boxes of electronics,…

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Tech news in Eastern Europe: What happened in May

Tech news stories originating from Central and Eastern Europe have become more of a mad torrent than a shallow stream. This month alone, we’ve tracked funding and M&A deals worth more than $300 million, as well as dozens of new laws and software developer you’ve got to check out. Here are the highlights you may have missed from this month. If you think something is missing, or would like to draw our attention to an important story, feel free to ping the author on Twitter (@shlema) or by e-mail at shlema@gmail.com. Startups, funds, accelerators Lithuanian startup Widerfi has joined MassChallenge, the world’s…

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Apple says Watch OS 1.0.1 records heart rate irregularly on purpose. Thanks, Apple

In the latest update of Apple Watch OS 1.0.1, users are reporting that their heart rates are being recorded less frequently, thus providing a less accurate picture of heart activity. Previously thought to be a bug, Apple has now confirmed that this behavior is actually intentional. Huh? In Watch OS 1.0, the user’s heart rate is recorded every 10 minutes. Now, Apple has clarified to say that in the latest version, the Watch will still do the same, but won’t record anything if the arm is not in motion or is the arm is moving. Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,…

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Treat yourself! The top TNW Deals this week

Whether you are looking to upgrade your business skills, your computer, or your free time, the offers over at TNW Deals this week should interest you. Here’s a roundup… 70% off a VPN Unlimited Lifetime Subscription The usual reason to set up a virtual private network is for security, as it makes you practically untraceable online. But it also brings other benefits, such as access to region-locked content. VPN Unlimited lets you take full advantage of this by offering unrestricted bandwidth and an uncapped high-speed connection. This means you can stream video from around the world — you can pick from…

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What $5 per day will buy you on Facebook ads

This post originally appeared on the Buffer blog. If you want get your posts seen on Facebook, one of the most common bits of wisdom you’ll hear is this: Pay for reach with Facebook ads.  Paid advertising on Facebook seems to be one of the most immediate ways to impact the reach of your content. Though it’s not without its questions. How well does it work? What kind of engagement do you get? And what can you expect for your hard-earned money? We’ve been testing Facebook ads a bit with Buffer’s Facebook strategy, looking to see exactly what’s possible on a small budget.…

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‘Too busy': Two little words, one big lie

Jason Zook is the founder of IWearYourShirt and author of Creativity For Sale. This post originally appeared on his blog. I’ve never heard of a highly creative or successful person being too busy. Let me rephrase that: I’ve never heard of a highly creative or successful person that I respect being too busy. The most creative people of our time are doing more things in a day than most people do in a week (or even month). But you know what you rarely hear a highly creative or successful person say? “I’m too busy.” Think about the people who you hear say “I’m…

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Google’s Gmail API officially gets push notification support

At last year’s Google I/O developer conference, the company launched its official Gmail API. One year later, it’s adding a small but important feature to this API: Push notification support. The inclusion of push notification support means third party developers no longer have to poll Gmail for new messages, which helps eliminate time and extra network costs. As Google puts it, “Just subscribe to a Gmail mailbox and whenever a change occurs, the Gmail API will instantly notify your server.” Although you can still use IMAP, the official Gmail API will support all the features that come with Gmail, such…

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The J. J. Abrams guide to intelligent online business

Aaron Orendorff is a contributor at Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Business Insider, Success Magazine, CopyBlogger & MarketingProfs. You can check out how he’s “Saving the World from Bad Content” at iconiContent or on Twitter. J. J. Abrams is a geek. And I mean that in the best way possible. In fact, as one of the most successful geeks in Hollywood today, it’s a title Abrams wears proudly … When I was a kid, it was a huge insult to be a geek. Now it’s a point of pride in a weird way. Intelligence gives us the ability to craft, plan, love, and survive. Matching those…

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Watch: The Business of Cybercrime – ‘Victims of cybercrime don’t even know about it’

XPRIZE‘s competitions touch the furthest reaches of human achievement in fields like healthcare, oceanography and even space exploration. The organization is currently designing a competition in the field of cybersecurity. In the second of this three-part series produced by XPRIZE, you’ll hear from some of the giants in the Internet and cyber-security fields as they relate stories of cybercrime becoming a worldwide business and the real possibility of cyber-warfare. Watch next: The end of privacy – ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to live for’

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Google’s solar-powered drone crashed in New Mexico during test flight

Google has confirmed that a prototype of its solar-powered drone designed to bring Internet service by air crashed earlier this month in New Mexico. News of the unmanned Solara 50’s crash, now coming to light, happened on May 1 on a private test site outside of Albuquerque. It was reportedly flying at an altitude of 20,000 feet when it began to fall. No one was injured in the crash, Bloomberg reports. The Solara 50, developed by Titan Aerospace, a company Google bought last year, is Google’s second initiative to provide Internet via sky; the first is Project Loon which peruses high altitude balloons. The drones are expected to…

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15 of the best new and updated Android apps from May

It’s been a busy month for Android apps, with news from big names – Periscope from Twitter lading on the platform for the first time and notable updates to Flickr’s mobile apps. Then, of course, there’s the black-and-white photography app Lenka, and an overhauled version of QuizUp. All you need to do is peruse the list below and choose your favorites. Snap Me Up Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you like your morning alarm. Maybe you like selfies. If that is the case, there’s a good chance you’ll also like Snap Me Up, a new Android app that won’t…

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Ocushield: A screen protector that protects your eyes more than the screen

It’s easy to get consumed in our smartphones, tablets and laptops, considering everything they can do. But the side effects are often overlooked. Eye strain, retinal dysfunction and fatigue can all be caused by using electrical devices too much and at the wrong times of day. A recent study by BMJ Open analysed the sleep and device usage of 9,846 people aged between 16 and 19. It found that they only got around five hours of sleep a night, as a result of using tech before clocking off. It’s recommended that adults should get eight hours of sleep a night. Many optometry…

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19 of the best new and updated iOS apps from May

We’ve looked at a lot of new and updated iOS apps this month, with the usual healthy smattering of ones dedicated to messaging and photo organization /optimization. Some big names – like The New York Times and Flickr – also have revamped apps worth revisiting. All you need to do is peruse the list below and pick your own favorites. Kwilt Kwilt isn’t a new app – it first launched in November – but it did undergo a reasonably significant visual overhaul in May to make it easier to use. Alongside a tweaked UI, the multi-platform photo organizer also got a…

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What would an Apple smartphone have looked like in 1984?

Sometimes, when we let our imaginations run wild, incongruous visions appear. Artist Pierre Cerveau tried to imagine what an iPhone might have looked like in the era before the cell phone became ubiquitous. Turns out, in Cerveau’s minds eye, it would resemble a classic iPod with a rotary dial featuring a beige Mac Classic-style chassis and monochrome screen. Way less chunky than the cordless phones of the 1980s, Corveau imagines a comparatively slender model whose rotary dial is more reminiscent of the iPod’s click wheel than that era’s push-button phones. ➤ Pierre Cerveau  [via Cult of Mac]

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6 of the coolest experiments Google’s ATAP team showed off at I/O

Google may have released a ton of Android news yesterday, but that wasn’t all it had to show. We had the chance to try some of the awesome things the company’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team is working on, including the Projects Soli, Jacquard and Vault detailed earlier. Spoiler alert, they were all awesome. Project Jacquard One of the coolest things demoed at Google’s ATAP session this morning, Project Jacquard is a new kind of fabric created by Google that embeds conductive wire right into the textile. Google says the material can be made in virtually any color and…

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Hands-on: Google’s Project Jacquard is the intersection of clothing and connectivity

Controlling a smartphone via the sleeve on your coat isn’t something you can do — yet. If Google’s ATAP division has their way, we’ll all have the ability soon. Announced during a Google I/O session, Project Jacquard swings for the fences; Google even tapped Levi as their lone launch partner for Jacquard. The idea is that by weaving metallic threads into the fabrics we come into contact with during our day will have the ability to control a piece of tech. The thin metal fibers don’t have to be in denim, or even woven into a flat fabric. Project Jacquard’s…

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Salesforce buys smart calendar, Tempo

Tempo, the artificial intelligence-powered smart calendar, has been acquired by Salesforce. A note from Tempo’s founders says the app will be discontinued on June 30, and is no longer accepting new users. Until then, the calendar is open to existing users. The app shows you information about your meetings such as location, transportation and parking options, social media posts from participants and other related documents. It also automates connecting into conference calls. “With Tempo, we created a smart calendar, using artificial intelligence to enable the next generation of mobile productivity. We brought context to your events and automated many of your…

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I’m really hoping people aren’t trying to make Ross Ulbricht some sort of freedom hero now. He’s not, he’s a business man. #SilkRoad

I’m really hoping people aren’t trying to make Ross Ulbricht some sort of freedom hero now. He’s not, he’s a business man. #SilkRoad

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Silk Road founder is sentenced to two life terms without parole

Ross Ulbricht, convicted founder of the Silk Road online drug marketplace, was sentenced by a US federal judge to two life prison terms without parole. He also received several other sentences for convictions on lesser charges and was ordered to forfeit $184 million of the $187 million his site made before it was shut down two years ago. Ulbricht was convicted of trafficking drugs on the internet, and conspiracy for narcotics-trafficking, computer-hacking, money-laundering and running a criminal enterprise which generated some $1.2 billion in illegal bitcoin-based drug transactions. The sentence exceeds the 20-year mandatory minimum for the crimes, despite the defendant’s…

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US reportedly tried to destroy North Korea’s nuclear program with a Stuxnet-type virus

It was five years ago and it ended in failure. But the details are trickling out now about how the US tried to infect North Korea’s nuclear weapons program with a version of the Stuxnet computer virus. A Reuters report has it that the operation took place around the same time as a more successful attack on the Iranian nuclear program that demolished some 1000 uranium enriching centrifuges. A related virus targeted North Korean computers, but was thwarted by that government’s secrecy and the extreme isolation surrounding its communication networks. Whereas in North Korea you need police permission to even…

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GifLab brings super-simple GIF creation to your iPhone

With Facebook finally rolling out support for GIFs, now’s the perfect time for you to up your GIF game. Thankfully, a new app that’s ideal for creating DIY animated snaps has arrived. That app is GifLab, and it claims to be the “easiest way to create GIFs on your iOS device”. Created by Museworks, GifLab lets you snap new footage or use existing video and quickly turn it into a shareable GIF. You can also apply a range of filters, impose text and place emoji over your creations. The apps super easy user interface also lets you tweak both the speed and quality of the resulting file…

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Google’s new Cardboard experiences convinced me VR is here to stay

I have a confession: unlike my fellow tech reporters, I’ve never been totally convinced virtual reality was much more than a fad. Not that I don’t want it to succeed. I’ve lusted over the Oculus Rift, marveled at Microsoft’s HoloLens from afar, and had fun with the original Cardboard, but content has seemed too scarce, inconvenient, or uninteresting outside of solo gaming. Google’s VR push at this year’s I/O has started to convince me otherwise – the new Jump and Expeditions experiences in particular. The New Cardboard Before we get to that, there’s that new Cardboard device. The hardware isn’t…

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Hands-on with Google Photos: Brand new app is impressive, but the service is not unique

One of the more popular announcements of yesterday’s Google I/O keynote was the immediate launch of Google Photos. This online photo service, which the company severed from its Google+ social network, was rolled out as a brand new photo app for Android, iOS and the Web. It is designed to provide a place for all your photos and videos to reside, help you organize and get creative with your photos and share and save the ones that are meaningful to you. An auto backup and syncing option is also available. With Google Photos, you can back up and store an unlimited number of high-quality photos and videos, for…

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This robot detects obstacles and jumps them like a cheetah

Robots are becoming more and more sophisticated, and now can mimic the movements of animals. Researchers and developers at MIT have developed a robot that acts like a cheetah. Not only does it look somewhat like a cheetah and run like a cheetah, it can also now jump over obstacles in its path like a cheetah. This means they have successfully developed the first four-legged robot that can do this autonomously. Their robotic cheetah can currently run an average of 5 mph and jump obstacles up to 18 inches tall. The researchers have developed and use three different algorithms to allow the robot…

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Google Photos behind the app — scanning makes it special

If you’ve been using the new Google Photos app announced yesterday at Google I/O, you may be impressed with how smooth the interface is, or how easily the service indexes your photos. There’s a lot happening behind the scenes to make the magic happen; things you’re never supposed to see, but will nonetheless make you a happy Photos user. After the keynote address, Google went into more detail about what makes Photos special to a small group of media folk. While our review will give you some insight on Photos’ forward-facing performance, we now know what makes the app so uniquely…

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This smart robot learns to ‘heal’ itself after damage

The appeal of using robots resides firmly in the fact they’re far more efficient at most tasks than a human. On the other side of the coin, what keeps them from becoming more of a fixture in our modern lives is their lack of adaptability and the need for constant maintenance. When a robot breaks, it is no longer capable of doing its job and to keep it from breaking, it requires regular maintenance from a human. Efficiency gains are then minimized, which is exactly why there isn’t a robot serving your frappuccino at the local Starbucks. This could soon change. Researchers at…

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With Project Vault, Google wants to make you the password

“Passwords suck”. Google’s Regina Duggan said as much on-stage this morning at an ATAP session at Google I/O. We’ve got plenty of ways to manage passwords, but ATAP wants to turn your device use into the password with Project Vault. ATAP wants to trade “human cycles for machine cycles”. Sounds confusing, but your password is more personal than you think. You often choose one based on something you find clever or easy to type. To make the password personal again, ATAP is attempting to find a way to know you’re the one using a device, which will authenticate you even…

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Google ‘App Invites’ make recommending cool iOS and Android apps more personal

Google’s pulled the covers off App Invites, a new way for developers to encourage users to recommend their apps. The set of tools allows devs to easily incorporate SMS and email invitations, highlight recommended contacts, create personalized onboarding and measure the success of app invites with custom reports. It’s a timely development and giving users the ability to invite friends in a way that feels less sterile than a lot of the current approaches will definitely appeal to a lot of developers. App Invites doesn’t just give users a simple list of contacts to choose from. It will recommend specific…

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Google is partnering with Levi’s for its Project Jacquard smart fabric

Google today unveiled a partnership with the Levi’s fashion brand to create smart clothing that can control your devices. Called Project Jacquard, Google’s ATAP team created a conductive textile material that can be woven into any fabric. Google also unveiled Soli, a radar-based wearable that lets you control devices with just your fingers. Developing….

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Google unveils Project Soli, a radar-based wearable to control anything

Leading into Google I/O, one session caught everyone’s attention. Google ATAP — the company’s skunkworks division tasked with creating cool new things we’ll all actually use — teased their session with talk of a new wearable that would “literally” blow our socks off. Project Soli is that wearable, but it’s not the wearable you might think it is. It’s not a watch; it’s you. Google ATAP knows your hand is the best method you have for interaction with devices, but not everything is a device. Project Soli wants to make your hands and fingers the only user interface you’ll ever…

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Why I left my home and my family for a startup job in Spain

The Back Story: I’m from London. Until about 14 months ago, I’d never lived outside of the UK. I’m 27 years old now, so that’s a good two and a half decades spent audibly groaning about the same grey skies. Finding a job has never really been a huge problem, and I say that with as much humility as I can muster. But to land a gig as a copywriter at what was, at the time, one of the internet’s biggest startups about a month after graduating feels pretty cool in hindsight. But things are different now. There are more startup…

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Watch now: Eventbrite and ‘the luck equation’

“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Kevin Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite, believes that this quote by Seneca embodies the recipe for success. And because history has the habit of repeating itself, we can easily find this pattern in the past. The “luck equation’ can be found in companies like YouTube and PayPal. Success is not only about building terrific platforms and great technologies, but also about capturing the moment and the opportunity when that becomes available. For PayPal, the opportunity was eBay, but sometimes the opportunity can be beyond the business scope. When the tsunami hit in 2004, YouTube was…

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Get ready for a career as a developer, with the Interactive Coding Bootcamp

The ability to code is one of the most valuable and sought-after skills around, with professionals earning salaries upwards of $75,000. If it appeals to you as a vocation, then you should check out the Interactive Coding Bootcamp, which readies you for the world of development work, and it currently has 92 percent off over at TNW Deals. The curriculum totals more than 33 hours of video content, and it teaches HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, front-end frameworks, databases, e-commerce, Git, and more, from the ground up. The tuition includes live screen sharing sessions with your tutor,…

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Silk Road, the dark net and still being the Bill in ‘Bill & Ted’: We talk to Alex Winter

I’m on the phone with Bill from ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ and ‘Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey’. That’s the thought that kept leaping through my mind as I spoke to Alex Winter. Despite being very aware of his excellent work writing and directing documentaries – ‘Downloaded’, which told the story of Napster, and ‘The Deep Web’, which premieres on Epix on May 31 – along with features, TV shows and commercials, my childhood love of those movies was hard to ignore. But in a way, it was quite appropriate to get caught up with an assumed identity, as we were on…

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Spark is a new iOS email app for power users, with some clever ideas

New iOS email apps these days seem split between those that want to make your inbox as simple as possible (Mailbox, Inbox by Gmail) and those throw in as many power features as possible. Microsoft’s Outlook fits that second bracket, as does Spark, a new app from popular developer Readdle. If you like your email workflow and inbox features ‘just so’, it’s worth diving in and seeing how customizable everything here is. You can choose the order of menu items, what different swipe gestures do, how archiving works and more. Options to add quick links to Amazon purchases, flight information emails…

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Social ebook platform Glose comes to Android, lets you try books for free

Glose, the social platform and store for ebook lovers, has launched its Android app today. It’s also available on the Kindle Fire and Nook HD. The service now carries titles from more than 600 publishers and offers free samples — about 20 pages of each book on average — across its entire catalog. As with its iOS and Web app, you can browse Glose’s store on Android to find new books to read, add annotations and discuss them with your contacts. This works with samples too, and you’ll be able to retrieve your notes when you buy a book you’ve scribbled in.…

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10 startups that graduated from Rockstart’s Amsterdam 2015 cohort

Amsterdam’s Rockstart accelerator takes on 10 startups every year to develop their ideas into a business. This year’s startups pitched a crowd of investors, journalists and other business people on demo day inside an old warehouse in Amsterdam North and we came away impressed with the calibre of companies. Rockstart also announced that it’s expanding the accelerator program into Asia with a new startup hub in Singapore. Here’s what each of them had to offer: Undeveloped If you’ve ever tried to acquire the perfect domain name for your startup from another person, you’ll understand how difficult it is to negotiate the price and actually…

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GIFs are finally working on Facebook

Better late than never, right? Facebook appears to be finally rolling out GIF support. After a false start in 2013 when Giphy introduced a workaround that made GIFs from its service appear as videos, Facebook is now allowing GIFs from other websites to play properly. All you need to do to embed your favorite GIF is drop in a link in your status to a GIF hosted on any site, like Tumblr or Imgur, and it’ll play inline. Easy! http://ift.tt/1LNqVFY Posted by Owen Williams on Friday, May 29, 2015 You can check out some animated GIFs in action in this Facebook group. Read Next: Facebook…

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Handpick turns Instagram into the world’s largest recipe book

Instagram can be hell if you’re hungry. The photo-sharing social network is full of people sharing the delicious dishes they’ve just whipped up as well as ridiculously well posed restaurant fare. The trouble is, while there are millions of posts about food, actually searching for them and connecting images to recipes isn’t easy. Instagram’s native search just isn’t up to the job. That’s where Handpick (for Android and iOS) comes in. While the food discovery app has been around since 2013, it got really useful this week. The app’s original aim was to reduce the amount of food waste in the world by making…

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Here’s Apple’s temporary fix for that nasty iOS Messages bug

A bug was uncovered in iOS recently that crashed the Messages app when users received a message with a unique string of Unicode characters. Apple’s working on a permanent solution, and has a fix you can try in the meantime. Follow these steps to re-open Messages on your iPhone: Ask Siri to “read unread messages.” Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you’ll be able to open Messages again. In Messages, swipe left to delete the entire thread. Or tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread. ➤ If…

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Google’s Chromecast is about to get a lot better for gaming, dual-screen apps and binge-watching shows

17 million Chromecasts and 1.5 billion content streams on, Google is launching new tools that will help developers enhance video and gaming experiences on its streaming device. The new Remote Display API (beta) allows your smartphone or tablet to act as a second screen and negates the need for it to mirror what’s on your TV. That means your device can display intuitive game controls or put image editing tools in the palm of your hand. There’s also a Game Manager API that makes it easier to build multiplayer games. It lets developers synchronize game states across many players’ devices on…

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Google’s new Polymer library makes it easier to build feature-packed Web apps

More good news for developers today: Google’s Polymer library, which makes it easy to add functionality like forms, maps and calendars to Web projects, is now ready for use in production applications. The first formal release of Polymer brings major performance improvements since its developer preview. Google has updated the Polymer site with documentation for the new release and a large catalog of elements, including animations, buttons, icons and wrappers for third-party libraries that can be incorporated into Web apps with ease. You can also create your own elements to use with Polymer and use features like templating and data binding to…

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Google’s Places API arrives for iOS, lets developers add better location features to their apps

Google announced today that its Places API for iOS is now out of beta and available to all developers. The service was launched in March for Android, with a beta program for iOS developers. It allows apps to parse location coordinates and display human-readable names of places. The Places API for iOS brings all the features of its Android version, including a drop-in place picker widget, the ability to pull in place names and detailed location info, as well as autocomplete in search and the option for users to add new places. The new iOS API is installable with Cocoapods,…

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Path’s social networking app has been acquired by South Korea’s Daum Kakao

Path has sold its five-year-old social networking app today to South Korean mobile company Daum Kakao for an undisclosed sum. The deal will allow Path to grow in Asian markets, where Daum Kakao — makers of the popular Kakao Talk messaging app — have experience in building large user bases. Daum Kakao will look to improve Path’s quality of service and community experiences in Korea and other markets. Nothing changes for existing Path and Path Talk users. The company’s GIF creation app, Kong, isn’t part of the deal and will continue to operate as part of Path Inc. ➤ A New…

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Here’s why Google+ and Google Photos are now separate services

During today’s keynote at I/O, Google had a lot to say about how their new Photos service works. At a separate event after the keynote, Google made it clear Photos doesn’t belong to Plus. Part of a “renaissance in thinking of what Plus is and for”, Google Vice President of Products Bradley Horowitz was quick to quell buzz regarding why Plus and Photos are no longer joined at the hip. Horowitz went on to point out Google Plus now has a new focus. Rather than be an over-the-top service that tries to be everything to you, Plus is now positioned…

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Apple steps into the augmented reality arena with its purchase of Metaio

Apple has purchased Metaio, the augmented reality company. Apple confirmed the acquisition in a somewhat vague statement saying that, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” Supporting documents confirming the sale are derived from the Common Register Portal in Germany, which confirms a transfer of Metaio’s shares to Apple last week. The company makes a number of SDKs and toolkits that help to create augmented reality apps and has created a Holodeck-style game with an iPad. Companies like Facebook and Microsoft consider virtual reality as the wave of the future, and Metaio, a…

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NVIDIA Shield Android TV set-top box is now available to order

Just a few months after NVIDIA announced its Shield Android TV console, today the device officially goes on sale. The NVIDIA Shield boasts 4K resolution video complete with a 64-bit Tegra X1 processor. The device will be available in two configurations: $200 for the standard version or and SHIELD Pro for $300, the latter of which comes with a 500 GB hard drive and an extra game, “Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.” Either model will get you a $60 credit for the Google Play Store to buy some new content for the shiny new console. Additional accessories are not included, however, such as the stand ($30),…

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A city without people is being built in New Mexico, to test bleeding-edge tech

Have you ever wanted to play SimCity in real life? That’s exactly what a group of investors plans to do in a 15 square mile stretch of desert land in New Mexico starting later this year, Wired reports. In a futuristic world filled with driverless cars, smart electrical grids, delivery drones and other bleeding-edge tech projects, the major hurdle to real-world rollout is almost entirely tied to testing. It’s hard to approve the widespread use of futuristic tech without knowing just how it’d perform in a real world environment and with many of the same obstacles it would face on…

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