Have you ever prepared a salad and thought to yourself, “I wish a robot could do this!” Well you’re in luck, because a company called Chowbotics Inc. created a salad robot called Sally. The robot is more of a tosser than a chef, as a human must load the device with prepared ingredients. (A word of caution though: the robot apparently can’t handle avocado very well.) It’s main selling point is that the customer can specify their ingredients and even the calorie count of a salad. Plus, the jack-a-nape in front of you doesn’t get to graze on the salad bar with his grimy fingers. The salad robot costs US$30,000 right now and is aimed towards small businesses and grocery stores. Eventually Chowbotics hopes to shrink the technology down to a household-friendly size. Sally is really little more than a stepping stone towards our robot welfare state (as John Kheit says), but it’s interesting to see those steps laid out in front of us.
Hello Alexa? I'd Like a Lunar Delivery Please. 10,000 Pounds
Elon Musk isn’t the only CEO who has his eyes on reusable, commercial space vehicles. Recently, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos floated a white paper to NASA management that outlines a plan to send as much as 10,000 pounds of cargo, in a lunar lander, to the moon in a single trip. It’s called Blue Origin. The target would be near the Moon’s south pole, the Shackleton Crater, where there are sections of permanent sunlight that may also harbor ice, key to a permanent human base. It all sounds very Robert Heinlein-esque, these billionaires setting out on new commercial missions. Very cool.
Make Your Old iPhone Red with SlickWraps
Apple’s (PRODUCT)RED iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus has been received a warm welcome. Your mileage may vary, but I’ve personally had even Android zealots express an interest in the RED iPhone to me. And I love the (PRODUCT)RED charity, but not everyone can get a new iPhone at any given moment, which is why a SlickWraps promotional email grabbed my attention. That company has red wraps for iPhones for those who want a red iPhone, but can’t get a RED iPhone. To be fair, they have a wide variety of colors, but red is the color du jour, and it’s $22.95.
Google Maps Transforms Your City into Ms. Pac-Man for April Fools Day
Google is all about April Fools Day pranks, and this year they put one inside the Google Maps app. Instead of navigating your city, you can turn it into a Ms. Pac-Man game. Seriously. Just launch the Google Maps app on your iPhone and tap the Ms. Pac-Man button. The city streets turn into the game grid and you swipe to move around and avoid the ghosts. It’s 8-bit awesomeness that makes pretty much any city cooler. If you don’t already have the Google Maps app it’s a free download at Apple’s App Store.
The Alexa Assistant, OK Google, and Lots More in one Full-Featured Speaker
Say hello to the first standalone device to give you the Alexa assistant, OK Google, and plenty more. The folks at Indiegogo have more than funded the Clarity Speaker. Still, you can preorder yours until the end of April 2017. One great thing about Clarity is you get a portable Bluetooth and Wi-FI speaker with a seven-inch fully-featured touchscreen. Additionally, Clarity includes a built-in Alexa assistant and “OK Google” functionality. It’s also a fully functional Android tablet, running Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Clarity Speaker is extremely portable, weighing less than two pounds. The device is powered by a quad-core processor. Clarity includes two 5-watt speakers and a 2MP camera. Internally, you’ll have access to 16GB of memory. You can expand storage with a micro SD card. The speaker is available for preorder at US $149 until April 30, 2017. The regular retail price is $199, and the device begins shipping in June.
Spotify Goes after Apple Music's 'Carpool Karaoke' with 'Traffic Jams'
Spotify must think Apple Music has the right idea with this original video thing because it’s doing the same thing. Variety reported Wednesday that Spotify has purchased a show called Traffic Jams. Clearly borrowing from Apple Music’s Carpool Karaoke, Traffic Jams puts hip-hop producers and artists in a car and asks them to make a song in the back seat. We Apple fans may be inclined to dismiss this show because it’s a blatant ripoff. Ignore that instinct, though—that’s the way the TV industry works. Folks copy ideas, and sometimes they build on them. Instead, Spotify—which is beating Apple on users—is effectively validating Apple Music’s approach of using original video content to boost its steaming music business. That’s very interesting to me.
Silicon Valley Season 4 Trailer, where Erlich Bachman Mansplains Mansplaining
Oh Silicon Valley, how we have missed thee! Season 4 is nigh, judging by the new trailer, and it looks delightful. My favorite moment has to be Erlich Bachman mansplaining the concept of mansplaining to Monica and Laurie Bream, 😂😂😂
Fun with Mac Terminal’s ‘banner’ Command
Mac Geek Gab listener Alex points us to a fun Mac Terminal command called “banner”, and its usage is simple. Launch Terminal, type ‘banner’, hit enter, type some text, hit enter again and voilà! You get a sideways banner of your chosen text fully suitable for printing on your favorite dot matrix printer.
Here's How to get a Black Display (PRODUCT)RED iPhone 7
Apple’s brand new (PRODUCT)RED iPhone 7 sports a cool looking red body with a white display bezel—no black bezel option is available, which we think is a crying shame. To drive that point home, JerryRigEverything tore apart a red iPhone 7 and gave it a black display. It looks great and it’s a DIY project JRE details in a video. In this case, DIY assumes you have a black iPhone 7 sitting around, all the right tools, and aren’t afraid to accidentally destroy two iPhones. Still, seeing a working black bezel red iPhone is pretty awesome.
Apple Releases Swift Playgrounds 1.2 with Support for More Languages
Apple’s promised Swift Playgrounds 1.2 update is out with localized support for Simplified Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Latin American Spanish. The iPad app teaches coding skills for Apple’s Swift language so you can design you own apps for personal use or sale on the App store. It includes lessons and examples, along with templates to get you started on your own projects—and now you can learn in five more languages. Swift Playgrounds 1.2 is free and requires an iPad running iOS 10.0 or newer.
Airpod Skins Add a Splash of Colorful Protection to Apple AirPods
Check out Airpod Skins, which the company described to me as “minimal color protectors for apple AirPods.” I’m sure there are folks who would be interested in helping to protect the finish of their AirPods, but I thought they simply look great. They’re a simple wrap available in a dozen colors, with some of those colors involving a fade from top to bottom. They’re priced at A$8.25 and are available now. Each order includes two sets, too.
New Type Of Smart Mirror Launches Called Daptly Display
Daptly launched a new product for the smart home called Daptly Display. It was built for a specific consumer in mind—people frustrated with voice-only assistants and want visual cues. Enter the Daptly Display, a smart mirror that acts as a gesture-controlled interface. Amazon Alexa is built in, and the interface is for people who aren’t ready (or don’t want) a voice-only future. As well as acting like a fog-resistant mirror, you can use it as a photo frame, by uploading photos from your phone or choosing among Daptly’s 50,000 photo collection. It’s an interesting take on user interfaces, one that borrows from science fiction while harnessing existing technologies. Check out the promotional video below, and decide if you want to reserve a Display. The device will sell at US$799, but you can get US$200 off if you reserve soon.
Uber's Bad News Now Includes a Ride that Ended in a Fireball
Uber has been delivering punishing, but self-inflicted wounds for weeks now. This week, the company can add the bad PR of a ride that ended in a fireball. A literal fireball. Firstly, the Uber driver in the car shown below—and his passenger—walked away with minor injuries. Secondly, the driver of a car hit moments before—and not shown in this video—did receive more serious injuries, according to local TV station KOMONews. The video below was captured by surveillance cameras when the Uber driver came speeding through a Seattle gas station, striking a gas pump and causing a fireball. On a side note, how amazing is gas station technology that the whole place didn’t go up in flames? Uber wanted folks to know this particular driver has been removed from its app. So there’s that.
What Happens when a 55 Pound Drone Hits Your Head?
We write here a lot of about small drones. Amazon wants to deliver packages with drones. Drones have taken breathtaking aerial views of Apple Park. But what happens when one of the larger drones accidentally slams into a human being? Time for the automotive crash-test dummies to step up and tell the story! Well, the instrumentation does. Bloomberg has a great story on “Crashing Drones into Test Dummies for Safety” Watch a drone disintegrate as it strikes a crash-test dummy. It’s a battle of the bots. All for human safety, of course.
Concept Video Shows Great iOS 11 Interface Ideas
With our first glimpse of iOS 11 most likely coming up in a few weeks at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference, it’s fun to look at features we’d like to see in the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system. Jacek Zieba put together a video showing many of those features in action, and it’s pretty compelling. How about a pop-up menu from the control center’s WiFi icon showing available networks, or group FaceTime video chats? We’d love to see more useful in-app screen controls and that option to clear app data and caches easily, too. But true multi-user support? Apple isn’t going there.
Need to Preserve Night Dark Adaption with iPhone? Here's How
Paul Hayes at Sky & Telescope has written a great tip about how to use the iPhone’s accessibility features to turn the iPhone’s entire display a specific color profile. For example, if you need to shade the iPhone’s entire display permanently reddish in order to preserve night-time dark adaption, you can do that. This technique would be particularly handy for amateur astronomers. While some astronomy apps have this feature, this tip applies to the iPhone’s display across the board. The tip is beautifully described, including an explanation of accessibility shortcuts, and also invites exploration for those who have certain kinds of color blindness. Check it out.
Here's an iOS 11 Lock Screen Concept We Can Get Behind
Matt Birchler mocked up a great concept for iOS 11’s lock screen and we’re hoping Apple is taking notes. His ideas are plausible because he builds on what Apple already gave us in iOS 10 with enhancements like a current weather badge, grouped and organized notifications, “smart notifications” triggered by activity or location, and more. Matt also took the time to explain his ideas, and now we’re seriously wondering why there hasn’t ever been a weather complication on our iPhone screens. You can check out Matt’s iOS 11 lock screen concept at the Birchtree website.
LEGO Tape? Sign Me Up!
LEGO and tape are two words I hadn’t thought to put together until I saw Nimuno Loops, which is exactly that: LEGO-compatible tape, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s tape with the right size studs so you can stick LEGO bricks to it. Right now it’s an Indigogo campaign that’s gone over its funding goal by 9,320%, which is both awesome and insane. The tape is two studs wide and whatever length you want. You can bend it, cut it, and move it around thanks to its adhesive backing. Pricing starts at US$11 for two 6.5-foot rolls and you can choose from several colors. After something like five different people told me about Nimuno Loops LEGO-compatible tape, I knew I just had to share.
These MIDI Scores Also Tell a Visual Story
Check out this awesome video by Mari Lesterberg (via Laughing Squid). It’s a MIDI Drawing where she draws a story—about Mario, in this case—with MIDI notes. That makes it both a soundtrack and a story, which is intensely clever. She has many more, including a still dedication to Frank Zappa, stories about cars and trains, and childrens’ fairy tales. Ms. Lesterberg is a performing musician, which is always awesome, but these MIDI projects are just too cool.
And Now for Some Old Fashioned 'Digital' Numeral Displays
I’ve been on a big anachronism kick lately, so it really resonated when John Kheit turned me on to this video of analog numeral displays. This is the sort of thing we had to look digital before we had digital. Or something like that. As noted by Boing Boing, this technology is called “edge lit digital display,” and it’s part analog and part mechanical. In the video, you can hear the mechanical relays clicking and buzzing away as they control which digit is being displayed. The video comes from Steve Johnson, who runs a website deliciously Steve’s Antique Technology. Steve, you had me at “Antique Technology.” He’s got a lot of info on these old systems.
iOS Chrome Browser Gets Read Later, Like Safari's Reading List
Google added Read Later to its iOS Chrome browser, a feature similar to Apple’s Reading List in Safari. As the name suggests, Read Later is a section where you can save articles and websites to read later. When you’re browsing in Chrome, you can tap the three dots icon on the upper right. Tap the share icon, then Read Later. Articles are saved offline, so you can read them wherever you are. So far this feature is only on the mobile version of Chrome, but it’s possible Google will add it to the desktop version in the future. The update is available now as part of Chrome version 57 on the App Store.
Mazda Will Add Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, Retroactive for Some Models
Mazda announced Monday that it will (finally) add support for Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto technologies. Cars.com reported (via AppleInsider) that Mazda was short on specifics, but that support for both platforms will be retroactive with models that have Mazda Connect. That platform first appeared in in the 2014 Mazda3. There’s no specific timeline for the rollout, but Mazda made the announcement as part of the 2017 introduction of the Mazda CX-5 (pictured below). The company did say a “potentially minimal hardware addition” may be necessary, but it didn’t explain what that might be or how much it will cost. Cars.com also noted that once Mazda is on board, Toyota will be the last major holdout to support these mobile connectivity platforms from Apple and Google.
JP Morgan Buys CurrentC Technology for the Lawls
Then there was CurrentC and its parent company MCX. This was the company that was going to larn Apple a lesson with its so-called “Apple Pay.” Wait, you don’t remember that? That could be because CurrentC was a big phat failure predicated on what retailers wanted rather than what consumers want. Enter Wall Street giant JPMorgan. That company bought a stake in MCX in August of 2016—because it was doing so well, I suppose. And on Friday, the bank announced it had purchased what’s left of MCX’s technology, its FinTech payment technology. Again, because it’s so awesome. JP Morgan plans to add FinTech to Chase Pay, its own soon-to-be-erstwhile mobile payment platform. Or maybe I’m just cynical. Either way…😂
13-inch Retina 2016 MacBook Pro Available on Apple's Refurbished Store
If you’re looking to save some money on a 2016-model Retina MacBook Pro Apple has some available on its refurbished store. Right now 13-inch non-Touch Bar models are available, but inventory is limited. Last night you could pick up a Space Gray 2.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 model with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD for US$2,209, which is $390 off its regular $2,599 price tag. Today, the Space Gray 2.0 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 model with 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD is still available for $1,269, or $230 off its normal $1,499 price. Odds are they’ll go fast, so don’t procrastinate if you need one now.