Blink, that other smart home camera company that Amazon scooped up, today announced a pair of new cameras that move its business deeper into a subscription model. And they can also last for a long time — up to four years of “normal use” — on a single set of batteries if that’s what you need.

The new Blink Outdoor ($99.99) and Indoor ($79.99) cameras include a free trial to Blink’s cloud storage plan that’s good through the end of this year. But after that, you’ll have to pay $3 monthly to keep the cloud storage going; an unlimited-cameras plan is slightly more expensive at $10 per month. Blink is still giving customers the option of saving their recordings locally with the included Sync Module 2 and any USB flash drive they might have on hand.

Both cameras check off most of the features you’d want out of a basic home camera: you get 1080p video, night vision, motion detection, and two-way audio in “sleek new hardware design.”

By default, the Blink Outdoor and Indoor can keep going for up to two years of recording on a pair of AA lithium batteries. But later this year, Blink says it’ll release a battery expansion back that ups the number of AAs to four, thus doubling that total stamina to up to four years “with normal use.” Blink says it can achieve this efficiency because of its “proprietary chip technology.” You can see how this would be convenient if you want to stick a camera in a high-traffic area or a hard-to-reach spot where frequent battery swaps would prove annoying. The expansion pack costs another $30, so the added expense might not be worth it for some.

And of course, both new Blink cams are Alexa compatible.

source: theverge

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Amazon.com Inc on Thursday launched its first fitness band and app, Halo, as the e-commerce giant looks to take on Apple, Fitbit and Samsung in an increasingly crowded fitness tracker market.

The Halo band, which does not feature a display screen unlike most of its rivals, is priced at $99.99, while the app membership costs $3.99 per month, Amazon said.

The scope of growth in the fitness band market has prompted tech giants such as Apple Inc and Samsung to introduce many sophisticated features for health tracking, including electrocardiogram and blood pressure sensor.

In comparison, Amazon has featured a relatively new technology in the market called tone analysis, which reviews users’ tone during conversations. When enabled, a microphone on the band listens to detect emotions such as happiness, confusion or affection in the speaker’s tone.

It remains to be seen if consumers would embrace this feature or would it spark privacy concerns. Amazon said the technology was designed in a way that protects privacy.

The company said the water-resistant band, with a battery life of up to 7 days, also contains an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor and can measure body fat percentage.

Alphabet Inc-owned Google is also making strides into the fitness market. Google in November said it would buy Fitbit Inc for $2.1 billion, a deal that is currently under regulatory scrutiny.

The market is also crowded by cheaper offerings from China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xiaomi Corp.

source:reuters

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A new report claims that factors are increasingly pointing to Apple expanding Siri search results and Spotlight Searches even farther, with the company potentially working on a universal search engine.

Apple already has a search engine it uses for Spotlight Searches and Siri. However, if a new report is accurate, Apple may be looking to ditch the financial arrangement it has for Google to be the default on the iPhone, and launch its own full search engine.

The main tentpole to the argument made on Thursday morning by Jon Henshaw at Coywolf says that it isn't clear if Siri Suggestions are using Google at all anymore. Instead, Apple is returning search results with Spotlight Search, and is bypassing other search engines.

In AppleInsider's own brief tests on Thursday morning, some outgoing and return traffic to and from Google for Siri Suggestions in iOS 14 passed through our router. The same search terms in iOS 13 pulled nearly entirely from Google.

The report goes on to say that Apple is investing heavily on search, and pointing to job postings for search engineers. However, the number of available jobs in related fields has decreased in the last year, versus increased. This may be a factor of coronavirus limitations more than anything else, making a year-over-year comparison difficult.

An update to the "Applebot" web crawler page for web developers was made in June as well. Henshaw notes that the changes included how to verify traffic was actually coming from Applebot, and the company provided details about differences in the crawler between desktop- and mobile-centric searches. The update also made clear that the crawler renders ages similarly to Google, and a section about search rankings was amplified upon. At present, the information Apple has promulgated about the crawler is very similar, if not identical, to how Google scans pages.

Henshaw also notes that the AppleBot web crawler has been busy, with him noticing it just recently. A quick perusal of AppleInsider crawler traffic has shown no notable increase or decrease in Applebot crawler traffic since 2015, following a slow launch in the fall of 2014.

However, despite some evidence that suggests that there is not an increase in factors that suggest an imminent launch, a full Apple search engine available to all makes some sense. Henshaw says that Apple's engine would weaken Google's stranglehold on search, provide better promotion for Apple services, tighten Apple's control of the full hardware and software stack, and allow developers to promote apps in larger search results beyond just App Store searches.

A big factor against Apple developing its own full search engine include the loss of the billions of dollars per year that Google pays Apple for the privilege. Additionally, it may draw some additional antitrust attention from regulators if it does so, in a time where the investigations and testimony demands are at an all-time high.

Henshaw does note that the product may never come to market.

"At this point, everything is based on observation and conjecture. They may never release a search engine. It's also possible that iOS, iPadOS, and macOS users will be using it and not even be aware of it," writes Henshaw. "It could be so tightly integrated into the operating system and native apps that alerts and Spotlight Searches slowly steal away queries that would have otherwise been made on Google."

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Getting an Amazon package delivered from the sky is closer to becoming a reality.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it had granted Amazon approval to deliver packages by drones.

Amazon said that the approval is an “important step,” but added that it is still testing and flying the drones. It did not say when it expected drones to make deliveries to shoppers.

The online shopping giant has been working on drone delivery for years, but it has been slowed by regulatory hurdles. Back in December 2013, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said in a TV interview that drones would be flying to customer’s homes within five years.

Last year, Amazon unveiled self-piloting drones that are fully electric, can carry 5 pounds of goods and are designed to deliver items in 30 minutes by dropping them in a backyard. At the time, an Amazon executive said deliveries to shoppers would be happening “within months,” but more than 14 months have passed since then.

Seattle-based Amazon is the third drone delivery service to win flight approval, the FAA said. Delivery company UPS and a company owned by search giant Google won approval last year.

Source:AP

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Asus has taken the wraps off its new ZenBook S, a slim ultrabook that can be equipped with up to Intel’s Core i7-1065G7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of fast PCIe-based storage. Asus gave its flagship laptop a glow-up in the screen department, going from a 16:9 aspect ratio in last year’s model to a taller 3:2 aspect ratio for this year’s 3300 x 2200 touchscreen. What’s more, the bezels surrounding it are thin, and the display is Pantone-validated with 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.

The ZenBook S has plenty of other traits that might make it a worthy contender for your next laptop. It features two Thunderbolt 3 ports that can be used for fast data transfer, connecting to an external monitor, or charging its battery. Speaking of which, Asus claims the 67Wh battery within this ultrabook can last up to 14 hours. And with its fast charging capability, it can recharge up to 60 percent in 49 minutes. Notably, Asus says you can keep the laptop powered either by its included 65W adapter or by a range of USB-C adapters and power banks, whether they support Power Delivery or not.

Thunderbolt 3 ports aside, this laptop also includes a full-size HDMI port, one USB Type-A port, and a microSD slot. There isn’t a headphone jack on this machine, but Asus includes a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle in the box that has an ESS digital-to-audio (DAC) converter built-in.

Asus says the ZenBook S (model UX393) will be available only at Costco and the Microsoft Store in the next few weeks, but no price was available.

Asus is also debuting a refresh of its Flip 13 convertible laptop. At the top end, it can be outfitted with Intel’s Core i7-1065G7 processor with Iris Plus graphics, along with 16GB of RAM and up to a 512GB PCIe-based SSD. While the Flip 13 doesn’t have the 3K Pantone-verified display of the ZenBook S, it has an FHD screen with similarly thin bezels. It also has two Thunderbolt 3 ports.

The Flip 13 starts at $899.99 and is currently available for preorder through Amazon and B&H Photo. The upgraded version with the high-end processor, storage, and memory is $1,199.99 at B&H Photo and Amazon.

source:TheVerge

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