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Pebble has unveiled a new premium version of its popular smartwatch.
The Pebble Steel uses, as you’d guess, a stainless steel chassis rather than the plastic of the original Pebble. This is finished with a Gorilla Glass screen covering the e-ink display.
The new model is also rated to 5ATM (50m) and has ‘tactile metal buttons’.
Pebble has also announced it will be launching an app store, providing a single portal for accessing the many existing Pebble apps.
Pebble was one of the earlier successes of Kickstarter, with the original e-ink smartwatch far surpassing its initial investment goal and having gone on to be a successful company.
Razer has steadily been diversifying its range of products over the last few years – moving away from its gaming peripheral beginnings – and this year it has taken another big side step announcing the Razer Nabu smartwatch at CES 2014.
The new device is apparently a hybrid of a traditional fitness tracking band, along the lines of a Nike Plus, and the latest tech fad the smartwatch.
“We are calling it a cross between a smartwatch and a fitness band. It’s a wearable device focused on helping you live smarter”, said Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan.
As such its two notification screens – one where a traditional watch face would be and one on the opposite side – can provide wellness data and smartphone notifications.
The larger outer screen is used to show alerts, which you can shake your wrist to dismiss, while the inner display can be used to show more detailed information about incoming calls or other activities.
On the fitness side of things, the Nabu tracks steps walked, distance travelled, and it will monitor your sleep too. Inside is an accelerometer, altimeter and cylindrical vibration motor.
The ability to monitor sleep gives a clue as to this being a slim, lightweight, rubberised device meant to be worn at all times.
It uses Bluetooth 4.0 LE for communication and has a suggested battery life of 7-10hrs – hardly conducive to non-stop wearing – while it is also rated as rain and splash proof.
Available to developers now, the Razer Nabu costs them just $49 (£30) but it is expected to cost more to general consumers when it hits its release date of March.
The standalone version of DayZ was released on Steam Early Access in mid-December.
The standalone version of open-world survival game DayZ is off to a remarkable start, having sold over 800,000 copies in less than three weeks — a figure that far outpaces the amount its developer hoped to sell in the game’s first three months.
In a comment on Reddit, DayZ creator Dean Hall explained what the expectations for the game were and what this outpouring of support means for the game.
“We ([publisher Bohemia Interactive] and I) had very ambitious plans for 2014 already, however this amount of sales was completely unexpected,”
he wrote.
“Honestly, 250k within a quarter was what I would have considered a success. So to move nearly 800,000 in under a month is crazy.
“We’ll be finalizing our roadmap in mid January, but it is safe to say that this kind of result will be having a very positive effect on that roadmap.”
DayZ started out as a mod for PC shooter ArmA II and quickly became incredibly popular. Hall had aspirations of turning the mod into a standalone game from the start, with that project officially being announced in mid-2012. The game has already served as the inspiration for a number of other games — some more so than others — and last month an alpha version was released on Steam as an Early Access game.
In just 12 hours, it had already seen 88,000 downloads and was attracting new player registrations at a rate of 200 per second. Now, less than three weeks later, DayZ is well on its way to one million units sold, and all without the benefit of a Steam sale — the game was routinely among the top sellers on Steam during the Steam Holiday Sale despite not being on sale.
Hall is admirably not shy about cautioning some people away from buying the game at this stage. Games in Early Access can be at many different stages of development, some more complete and playable than others. While DayZ is playable, it’s far from finished. After explaining that buying the alpha now gets you the full version once it’s released, Hall advised one prospective buyer on Reddit,
“I would recommend a very careful and critical review of whether purchasing now is such a good idea. There are many problems which can ruin your gameplay experience. These are being actively fixed – but if you delayed your purchase by a month you would pay the same price but it would be a better experience. Something to consider.”
Yesterday, Intel announced its plans to run Android and Windows on the same PC in perfect harmony. Now, it seems AMD has the exact same plan.
Verge reports that AMD is teaming up with BlueStacks to develop technology which will allow Android to run within Windows, on the same piece of silicon, in a way that seems seamless to the end user. According to Verge, you’ll be able to “launch individual Android apps from the Windows 8 Start Screen just like they were native Windows programs”, as well as being able to search for new Android apps via Microsoft’s own Windows 8 search charm, as long as you link app stores into the search system.
But there’s perhaps a trick up AMD’s sleeve that’ll make Intel jealous: it’s latest chips will include an ARM chip inside. That’s the same silicon that Android apps normally use, and it could mean that Android apps are run on their native chip design, making them way more efficient. That’s a pretty big ‘could’, but it would be cool if it works out—especially when it comes to saving battery life, because virtualization of Android on another system uses a lot of juice.
Just as with Intel’s offering, it’s not clear how popular a Windows-Android hybrid device will be. But, hey, it looks like we’re getting them regardless.
Every year, the TVs, phones and gadgets at CES seem to get bigger and bigger – but Intel’s reversing the trend with its brand new computer, the Intel Edison, which fits everything you need into a board the size and shape of an SD card. Raspberry Pi, eat your heart out.
This might look like the storage card for your compact camera, but make no mistake, this is a computer, with its own 22nm dual-core processor, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities.
It can run multiple operating systems, including Linux, and will be available for manufacturers and hobbyists this summer – price is still TBC, but we’re hoping it’s as low as the £25 Raspberry Pi computer.
Intel’s making a big push with wearable technologies this year at CES in Las Vegas – the company also showed off its own smartwatch prototype yesterday, although it is not planning to release it to the public – and it’s betting big that Edison will play a part in that.
One of its demonstrations showed the little computer working in harmony with sensor’s connected on a baby’s onesie, displaying temperature and even turning on a bottle warmer when the baby started to wake.
When you consider what hackers have turned the Raspberry Pi into, a robot, a media centre, a pet feeder and much more besides, the ideas a computer this small could be put to are dazzling.
