Apple has too many white men in its upper ranks, say shareholders who are pressuring the company to add more female and minority directors to its board.
In response, Apple has added new language to its board charter claiming that it will consider more candidates who meet this criteria — noting that, “The nominating committee is committed to actively seeking out highly qualified women and individuals from minority groups to include in the pool from which board nominees are chosen.”
According to research group Gartner, more than one billion Android-powered devices will be sold in 2014.
The consultancy claims that some version of the Android OS will be found on 1.1 billion tablets, smartphones, watches and other gadgets purchased this year — an increase of 26 percent compared with 2013.
Canon’s new PowerShot N100 is also called the Story Camera. Why? Because it reads to you as you fall asleep at night? Because it puts speech bubbles in the mouths of your portrait subjects? Nope. It’s because it has a second camera on the back that snaps a photo of the photographer as they snap a picture of, well, anything.
MeteoEarth is a pretty rad weather app for the iPad. It’s purpose isn’t really to tell you whether to take an umbrella with your to the shops, but it can do that if you like. No, what MeteoEarth is really good at is showing you beautifully-animated views of the weather as it blows and scuds across the surface of the Earth. And now you can get it for the Mac.
We wrote yesterday that CES 2014 is all about the wearables, and Razer is yet another company jumping on the bandwagon: choosing CES as the location at which to announce its new (and unexpected) class of Nabu smartbands.
While smartbands are absolutely everywhere these days, Razer hopes that the Nabu — designed to work with Bluetooth 4.0 devices — can set itself apart thanks to its open software platform and unique features. Think smartwatch meets fitness tracker.
Nikon has chosen the media shoutfest that is CES to announce the D3300 SLR, an update to the – that’s right – D3200. It comes with a new sensor, a faster processor, a different crappy kit lens and this year’s favorite new gimmick: no optical low-pass filter.
LAS VEGAS – Remembering passwords seems to have become one of great challenge in computing for simpletons like me. Solutions like 1Password and iCloud Keychain have tried to solve humans’ forgetfulness, but EyeLock revealed a new product today that not only stores all your passwords, it keeps them locked away with your own personal iris scanner.
CES is all about the groundbreaking, cutting edge technology, which is why ION chose the event to debut their, err, Cassette Adapter Bluetooth technology.
Enabling your car’s cassette player to become its own wireless Bluetooth receiver, the Cassette Adapter Bluetooth lets you stream music from your iPhone or other Bluetooth device without the need for cables or complicated installation. “Just pop it in and it automatically turns on,” reads the company’s press release.
The FAVI pico+ projector is just another little battery-powered “beamer,” a DLP projector that can be kept in a pocket and used to throw photos and video from your iPhone or iPad up onto the wall. But this one has a neat extra – the built-in Wi-Fi radio ands AirPlay support, so the only cable you’ll need is the charger to keep the thing going.
The Fujifilm X100S aka The Best Camera I Ever Owned aka The Only Leica A Photographer Can Afford is now available in black. And unlike the overpriced special edition black X100, the black X100S is neither a special edition nor more expensive – it’s just a regular alternative colorway for the camera.
LAS VEGAS — With the throng of tech bloggers covering CES, it’s not often that the heavily covered show hands us a surprise — but here’s one.
Netatmo, the French outfit best known for its fancy cloud-connected micro/personal Weather Station (and now also a device that measures your level of sun exposure), is about to add a hard-core new component: a rain gauge.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – We’ve been hearing for months that Apple may or may not launch a larger screen iPad in 2014, but this afternoon Samsung tried to get a jump on the competition with its new lineup of PRO Galaxy and Note tablets for the common working man, and in typical Samsung fashion, they’re busting out a couple of screen sizes, including a 12.2inch monster.
The original Jet Car Stunts rocked the App Store back in 2009 — blowing away our memories of fiddly pre-iPhone racers with a colorful speedster of a game that took full advantage of the device’s touch interface and accelerometer to create something truly addictive.
Four years later the game has received a sequel-sized overhaul and we’re back for another dose of fast-paced, rocket-powered action. The original’s innovations may no longer be new, but our love of a good high-octane racing game hasn’t gone anywhere in the intervening years.
So have developers True Axis delivered?
Apple will hold its earnings call for the first fiscal quarter of 2014 on Monday, January 27th. During the call, Apple executives will talk about the company’s sales during this last holiday season.
Most notably, this will be the first quarter to see how sales of Apple’s latest iPads have been, and iPhone sales should also be interesting. Apple announced a deal to sell the iPhone on China Mobile last month, but sales from that big partnership won’t be very noticeable until after preorders are over and sales officially start.
With all of the pressure Apple faced in 2013 from Wall Street, the U.S government, legal disputes with other companies, and growing competition in the smartphone market, this earnings report will show us just how well Apple managed to close out the year. Based on Apple’s own guidance to investors, it could turn out to be the company’s best quarter ever.
Source: Apple
LAS VEGAS — Square sells its own cash register replacement for the iPad, but the mobile payments company has yet to debut any iPhone-compatible accessories for its card reader. Well, until now.
Griffin has made a Merchant case that is designed specifically to work with Square’s tiny reader, and it doubles as an added layer of protection for the iPhone.
Videotapes can deteriorate over time, and your old videos will have color bleed, white specks, and other distortions. Now is the time to save your collection before it’s too late with this all-in-one VHS conversion solution.
With Honestech Video Conversion for Mac, any Mac user can easily convert old VHS, Betamax and camcorder tapes to DVDs and digital formats and save those precious memories captured on home video. This software solution is currently available for only $54.99 thanks to Cult of Mac Deals.
LAS VEGAS — Not to be confused with “Blue Steel” from Zoolander, the Pebble smartwatch brand is branching out into the more premium, classic world of timepieces with Pebble Steel.
Announced today at CES, Pebble’s new watch has the same OS current owners know, but the physical materials have been upgraded from plastic to CNC-machined stainless steel. With a new developer SDK and its own app store on the near horizon, Pebble is leading the smartwatch race. But does it have what it takes to make the smartwatch cool?
LAS VEGAS — Remember the Hammerhead? It’s a device that attaches to your bicycle, links to the GPS on your phone via Bluetooth, and guides you along a pre-chosen route by flashing a left or right light when you need to turn.
Schwinn‘s new CycleNav does one better. Like the Hammerhead, it attaches to your bike (via quick release) and flashes an LED light to alert you to an upcoming turn. But it also speaks voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation to you through a speaker, just like your iPhone does.
There you are, in an important meeting. You’ve silenced your iPhone with the button on the left-hand side of the device like a good employee. You set your iPhone on the table to show your boss you’re not afraid of the ringtone.
Suddenly, your buddy texts you. Like, four texts in a row about some foolishness that you’d love to read, but you can’t, because you’re in a meeting. But your iPhone betrays you, buzzing like a mad bee, over and over. Your face turns red, you grab the device off the resonating wood conference table and mutter, “I put it on silent…um…sorry.” And then you jam it into your pocket, your plan to impress the chief gone in an instant.
You could have avoided this embarrassing scenario fairly easily, though.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – Belkin is really hopping onto this connected-home thing with fiery fervor. They already have a formidable array of Internet-connected devices in their WeMo line — switches, plugs, motion detectors — and now they’ve added light bulbs and a DIY WeMo interface that can be adapted for use with practically anything that’s powered by electricity. Oh, they’ve also just come out with a big, shiny cloud-connected crockpot so you can cook dinner from the office.
LAS VEGAS — Home security, solar-powered gadgets and health accessories will be big technology themes of 2014, if what’s on show at CES is to be believed. At the kickoff media event here, manufacturers provided first peeks at their wares for the new year.
Here are some the best gadgets we saw:
Guzzling up websites on your iPhone is now quicker than ever thanks to 4G LTE. It also means that your monthly data allotment can disappear in a poof if you go on a YouTube binge, but at CES this morning AT&T announced it has a plan to help customers consume even more data by allowing advertisers to foot the bill on their content.
Simple Additives — Health & Fitness — $0.99 (lite version available)
Food labels can be scary places. Reading the ingredients of whatever you’ve just crammed into your gob can be confusing or even the worst decision you’ve made all day. I don’t know how to keep the stuff in your food from terrifying you, but for those perplexing moments, try Simple Additives. It’s an app that will tell you what those unpronounceable things in your snack do and also whether or not they’ve been linked to cancer or harmful side effects.
I don’t know if I’m really doing you a favor by pointing you toward this, though. Everything’s tasted like poison for like three hours now.
If you played the original Feed Me Oil a couple years ago, you probably fell in love with its surreal graphics and fun, physics-based puzzles. If you didn’t, the name is probably confusing the hell out of you. Because you really shouldn’t feed anything oil, right? That’s super gross.
Don’t get stuck on that, though, because Feed Me Oil 2 is out now, and it features the same addictive gameplay with shinier graphics and some new tools to get that oil where it needs to go.
And where it needs to go is, like, right into the mouth of a weird, animal-like hill or something. But again, don’t dwell on that because if you do, you’re missing out on a great game.
LAS VEGAS — Maybe tech journalists are prone to ADHD, and simply attracted to things that flit about. Or maybe the rest of the gadgets strewn about the room at CES Unveiled, the press-only event that customarily kicks off CES for journalists, just weren’t all that zingy this year. Or maybe Parrot‘s Lilliputian drone really is that cool.
Whatever the reason, Parrot’s new MiniDrone — a miniaturized version of their AR Drone with no camera but detachable wheels that let it roll about on the ground or “climb” a wall — drew throngs of tech bloggers and had camera crews lined up to film.