The Philips Hue system provides lighting that you can control with your smartphone, and automate with location gating and time-based alarms. But for all its fancy magic, I still find myself using physical lightswitches to turn my Hue system on and off, in larger part because often it takes more steps to unlock my iPhone, find the Hue app, open it and select the “All off” or… Read More
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Hilton Hotels is taking a page out of the airline playbook, giving users more control over the experience through their smartphone. The hotel chain has recently introduced a way for users to choose their room on their smartphone, and promises to roll out smartphone-powered door keys to the majority of their hotels by 2016. Using the new Hilton HHonors app (yes, that name needs work) or the… Read More
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Modbook has been making tablets out of Mac portables for years, combining the Apple computers with Wacom digitizers to let digital artists have all-in-one graphics-creating powerhouses that run full OS X software and come with ample pressure sensitivity. Now, the company’s latest effort incorporates the Retina MacBook Pro, and it’s turning to Kickstarter to fund this effort that… Read More
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The young electronics company Xiaomi is exploding in China and seems posed to take over the world. In the four short years since its founding, Xiaomi has become the electronics brand to watch in the most populous nation on earth. Xiaomi is the now the real deal — thanks in part to its unabashed appropriation of design cues from companies like Apple. Read More
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Square is set to bring its payment card reader for mobile devices in line with modern tech used most places in the world outside of the U.S. – today it revealed its upcoming EMV and chip-compatible dongle, which will be available soon for pre-order with an estimated ship date of sometime in 2015.
The new reader looks very similar to the existing one, but it’s designed to read… Read More
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Three former Zynga developers have raised $2.5 million to build out their new gaming studio, JuiceBox Games, on the back of the release of their first gaming title HonorBound. With 3 million downloads and counting, JuiceBox’s first game is already generating revenue for the company. The game is ranked 94 on the list of top-grossing apps with a daily revenue estimate of $14,726 and… Read More
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Nintendo’s quarterly results are out (via WSJ), and the company saw disappointing sales of both its hardware platforms, with the Wii U managing to triple sales but still only achieving 510,000 units shipped overall, and the Nintendo 3DS dropping below a million units moved with a 41 percent decline in sales year-over-year. The release of Mario Kart 8 still managed to buoy the… Read More
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Fresh on the heels of the announcement and partial release of Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has a new dose of code for users of its smartphone platform: Update 1.
Akin to Update 1 for Windows 8.1, Update 1 for Windows Phone 8.1 contains a welcome mix of quality of life and feature upgrades. I haven’t had any hands-on time with the code, so consider this post a preliminary look at what… Read More
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It’s that time again: 500 Startups just put on demo day for its ninth batch of companies at Microsoft’s conference building in sunny Mountain View, Calif. The seed stage investor and startup incubator showed off 29 products and services that range from making it easier to get a home loan to a marketplace for 3D printed knick-knacks. Read More
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Poptip, a startup that helps companies conduct social media surveys and analyze online conversations, just announced its team will be joining Palantir starting on August 1.