Amazon is going underground
Many of you might have been surprised this last week by a sneaky new app Amazon stealthily dropped onto Android devices (I know I was). What made this particular app so surprising, however, is that you couldn’t download it from the Google Play store, but instead had to circumvent the Android platform’s official app store and download the software directly from Amazon. And with good reason, as Amazon Underground is not a good thing for Google. It is great for consumers though, at least in theory. It’s essentially Amazon’s way of helping developers make money from their apps in a manner more akin to Spotify that rewards time spent on a title. It’s got all the same features found in the regular Amazon app, only it contains an estimated $10,000 in free apps, games and in-app purchases. As an app developer, the way you make money is by being paid according to the amount of time customers spend using your Amazon Underground app, with Amazon funding the project themselves as part of its overall strategy to gain ground from rival companies. Developers will get paid $0.002 (a fifth of a cent) for every minute that a customer is using your Amazon Underground app.
Amazon Underground is essentially Amazon’s way of helping developers make money from their apps in a manner more akin to Spotify
It’s definitely an idea that makes sense for both Amazon and app developers who don’t wish to resort to adding ludicrous in-app purchases into their games as a way of building an income from them. The list of games that Amazon is offering in Underground includes: Angry Birds Slingshot Stella, Jetpack Joyride, Fruit Ninja and Goat Simulator. More serious apps include OfficeSuite Professional 8 and PhotoSuite 4. Customers will see advertising when apps are first launched, and when they are resumed, but the ads will not interrupt gameplay. For the moment, Underground is limited to the USA, UK, Germany and France, but will be widened in the future to other regions. Will it work? I’m optimistic having used it myself over the weekend. And hey, I’d never have discovered the bat-shit insane Goat Simulator otherwise!
Will Google be releasing two new phones very shortly?
If reports are to be believed, then Google looks set to announce two new Nexus smartphones at an event taking place in San Francisco on September 29. News of Google's plans comes from an unnamed source, who said that the two phones will be built by LG and Huawei, both phones running on Android Marshmallow, the highly anticipated sixth version of the operating system.
The LG Nexus is rumoured to have a 5.2-inch screen, while the Huawei Nexus, a first for the company, is said to have a 5.7-inch screen. Both devices are expected to have a fingerprint sensor on the back, much like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6. Most of this information is based on rumour and speculation, but we're sure to find out more during Google's event later this month.
Turn your body into a data stream!
Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a new wireless communication tool that effortlessly pushes magnetic signals through the human body, harnessing the body’s magnetic field to send data between wearable devices. The prototype sends signals between body parts by coiling magnetic field-generating insulated copper wires around three areas of the user’s body. It’s obviously early days, but it’s tech that could replace the Bluetooth data transfer standard because it’s not only more power efficient, but more secure. The researchers believe that magnetic field human body communication path losses were at least 10 million times lower than Bluetooth. Magnetic field human body communication (I’m sure they’ll come up with a snappier name eventually) is also more secure than Bluetooth’s over-the air-method, which is potentially open to eavesdroppers within 30 feet.
Electrical engineers at the University of California have demonstrated a new wireless communication tool that effortlessly pushes magnetic signals through the human body
Jiwoong Park, first author of the study and a PHD student at the UCSD, said: “A problem with wearable devices like smart watches is that they have short operating times because they are limited to using small batteries. With this magnetic field human body communication system, we hope to significantly reduce power consumption as well as how frequently users need to recharge their devices.” It was demonstrated that information from a personal full-body wireless communication network wouldn’t be radiated off the body nor transmitted to someone nearby. The researchers say the technique is safe as the transmitting power of the magnetic signals are many times lower than devices like MRI scanners. Sounds too good to be true right? Well, stranger things have happened.
The cute new robot from Star Wars: The Force Awakens that you can actually own!
Whilst it might be the deep world building, memorable characters and artful story-telling that cemented Star Wars as a pop culture staple, we all know it’s the toys that sold the franchise to kids of every generation. Even the prequels had decent merchandise (even if the films themselves were largely pants). As such, the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens is looking to help parents part with their hard earned cash this Christmas with the adorable BB-8 remote controlled droid.
Revealed as part of the Star Wars Force Friday worldwide toy event, the tiny, spherical droid will unquestionably be rolling its way onto the wish lists of children everywhere this December. The droid will retail for around £100 and will be one of a ton of new Star Wars Force Awakens toys that will be hitting retailers between now and when the film hits cinemas in December.
Denmark sends its first man into space with Lego
Danish European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen is set to control an Earth-based robot from the International Space Station using a new haptic remote control. Mogensen, Commander Sergei Volkov and Aidyn Aimbetov will control the arms of the Interact Centaur rover later today (September 7) from a 400 km orbit above Earth. The force-feedback-based teleoperation will let Andreas feel what the robot is feeling, allowing him to perform incredibly delicate remote-controlled tasks from thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface. There are quite literally far-reaching implications if the experiment proves successful. On the far side of the Moon, for instance, such robotic systems could install telescopes and prepare a human base for a long-term scientific outpost. Operators could also work from the comfort of Earth, or else perform similar operations on Mars while still being safely in orbit around that planet.
Andreas Mogensen is set to control an Earth-based robot from the International Space Station using a new haptic remote control
Using the rover’s arms, Mogensen will attempt to locate an operations task board, and then to remove and plug a metal pin into it. The astronaut will have to handle a two-way time delay of one second as signals from ISS to the robot must travel 90,000 km through a system of geostationary satellites. Developed by The Lab team and Delft University of Technology, the 4x4 wheeled rover sports a camera head, two force sensitive robotic arms and a slew of proximity and localisation sensors. Mogensen, the first Danish astronaut, is taking along 26 Lego toys that will be awarded to schoolchildren when the mission concludes. If it’s successful that is!
Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and struggling musician from Kidderminster in the UK.
