Ubiquiti, a company known for selling networking products, has introduced FrontRow, a $399 Android-based wearable camera with a round display that enables “effortless capture” from a first-person point of view. The camera lets users toggle the livestream through Facebook Live, YouTube Live and/or Twitter Live. The two 55-gram (almost two-ounce) cameras, one on each side of the wearable device, offer a round 1.96-inch 640×572 LTPS (active matrix LCD) display. FrontRow features a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Continue reading Ubiquiti Rolls Out $399 Wearable Camera for Live Streaming

According to sources, Apple has a budget of about $1 billion to acquire and produce original content this next year, an amount that is roughly half of what Time Warner’s HBO spent on content last year and equal to what Amazon spent in 2013. Apple hopes that with its enormous global purview and marketing capabilities, it can be a serious competitor in the original content arena. With this budget, Apple could purchase or produce as many as 10 TV shows, which could be distributed on Apple Music or a video streaming service. Continue reading Apple Earmarks $1 Billion to Buy, Produce Original TV Shows

Early Netflix executive Mitch Lowe is now in charge of MoviePass, and he plans to drop its movie ticket subscription price to $9.95, which will let customers go to one showing per day at any theater in the U.S. that accepts debit cards. In return, MoviePass pays theaters the full price of each ticket, with the exception of 3D or IMAX screens. The company just sold a majority stake to Helios and Matheson Analytics, a publicly traded data firm. AMC has stated it wants to block MoviePass subscribers. Continue reading MoviePass Cuts Subscription to $10/Month, AMC Fights Back

Gartner Research reported on emerging workflows for new technologies. In the Gartner Emerging Tech Hype Cycle, the company studied 2,000 emerging technologies and identified 32 that could create competitive advantages over the next ten years. Gartner tracked these technologies’ progress and assessed their chances for entering the mainstream market. Among the technologies it identified are augmented reality, virtual reality and some forms of artificial intelligence, followed by blockchain. Continue reading Gartner Forecasts Timeline for Adoption of New Technologies

China wants to become the most dominant nation in artificial intelligence, and it’s got three advantages that might help that become a reality. In addition to strong government support, which includes a willingness to share data about its citizens, China also has an immense number of engineers to write software and 751 million Internet users who can test out the work they do. As China seeks to gain market share, President Xi Jinping seeks to strengthen intellectual property laws to give its startups an advantage. Continue reading China Set to Toughen IP Laws in Pursuit of Tech Dominance

Los Angeles-based GameMine has inked distribution partnerships with five international mobile carriers, enabling direct billing of game subscriptions through mobile plans. With the partnerships, the carriers’ subscribers will have access to GameMine’s more than 400 games, all of them unlocked, ad-free and available for iOS and Android devices. Among the involved carriers are Movistar in Spain, Orange in Egypt, and TIM, Vodafone and Wind Tre in Italy, with a combined mobile subscribership of more than 150 million people. Continue reading GameMine Inks Distribution Partnership With Mobile Carriers

In the wake of Pandora Media hiring a new chief executive, Roger Lynch, the company’s stock rose 4.7 percent on shareholder optimism that the new leader would take the struggling online music service in a better direction. Lynch, who most recently led Sling TV and was previously at Dish Network since 2009, is Pandora’s fourth chief executive in less than two years. Pandora fell from its No. 1 position in music streaming services as it faced competition from Spotify and Apple Music, both of which boast huge song catalogs. Continue reading Pandora Turns to Pay TV in Selecting New CEO Roger Lynch

Two years ago, Gnarbox, which offloaded video from the smartphone to enable 4K video editing, earned over $500,000 from almost 3,000 backers on Kickstarter. Today, the $299 Gnarbox — a small black box for portable backup and editing — contains a mini-PC with 1.9GHz quad-core processors, a dedicated GPU, 128GB storage, Wi-Fi, SD card slots and three USB ports, but no display. Instead, all the processing that takes place in Gnarbox is visible on the user’s smartphone, with editing in and out points indicated by a simple swipe. Continue reading Startup Gnarbox Enables 4K Video Editing From Smartphone

Fashion-centric publication W Magazine, in partnership with visual effects house The Mill, features augmented reality in its September 2017 Collector’s Issue. With Katy Perry on the cover, the issue appears to be an ordinary magazine, but if a user views it through a smartphone or tablet lens, he will see various augmented reality images. The viewer must first install W Magazine’s new companion app, Beyond the Page, available for iOS and Android, that activates the AR imagery in the issue. Continue reading W Magazine Tests New Features Enabled by AR Technology

Facebook has made several efforts over the years to encourage China to lift the 2009 block against its social platform and many of its apps. In May, the company approved a photo-sharing app called Colorful Balloons that doesn’t have the Facebook name attached but is similar in look, function and feel to Facebook’s Moments app. According to an unnamed source, a local Chinese company debuted the app without any hint of a Facebook affiliation. China imposes strict censorship on the Internet, including on news websites and apps. Continue reading Facebook Takes New Tack by Approving Social App in China

An increasing number of YouTube’s 1.5 billion viewers are watching its videos on the living room TV set rather than smartphones. With Internet-connected TVs, users are having an easier time streaming over-the-top content at home, where they can enjoy the content on a much bigger screen. Other over-the-top providers, from Roku to Apple TV, Facebook to Twitter, are experiencing the same kind of migration from smaller digital devices to the TV. That means more advertisers than ever are buying YouTube and its ilk. Continue reading Advertisers Follow YouTube Viewers to Living Room TV Sets

Microsoft’s new Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, its latest version, is aimed at use on high-end hardware and features the company’s Resilient File System (ReFS), a server-grade file system; NVDIMM-N support for persistent memory; SMB Direct for faster file sharing; and support for hardware with up to 4 CPUs and 6TB of memory. That compares to previous, standard versions of Windows 10, which support up to 2 CPUs and 2TB of memory. The new version also supports Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. Continue reading Microsoft’s New Version of Windows 10 Boosts Power, Speed

A new study predicts that smartphones of the future could have as many as 13 cameras capturing 360-degree, 3D video that can easily create augmented reality as well as the optical zoom and aperture effects of a digital SLR camera. Although that might sound far-fetched, there are already billions of cameras in the world today, a figure that is expected to explode in the next five years. That equals a lot of surveillance, but also new capabilities for smartphones, wearables, autonomous vehicles and a range of other smart devices. Continue reading VC Firm Predicts 45 Billion Cameras Worldwide in Five Years

Facebook has debuted Watch, a new tab for original and exclusive video content from its partners. Among those offering short episodic series are A&E, Major League Baseball and National Geographic. Facebook’s aim is to increase the amount of time users stay on the site, boosting ad sales whose revenue will be split between content creators, who keep 55 percent, with the rest going to Facebook. Episodes include “My Social Media Life” about Internet celebrity David Lopez and Business Insider’s “Great Cheese Hunt.” Continue reading Facebook Debuts Watch, a Tab for Original Exclusive Videos

YouTube has been testing a feature in select markets that allows the platform to become a kind of mobile messenger. The feature, which began testing in mid-2016, lets users avail themselves of a new tab in the mobile app to send videos to their friends and chat. After a soft rollout to users in Canada at the beginning of 2017, YouTube later launched the new feature in parts of Latin America. The global rollout  this week, but will take a few days to appear on all users’ phones. YouTube also tweaked the user interface in several ways. Continue reading YouTube Introduces In-App Video Sharing and Chat Globally