Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Polk Audio


by Bayle Emlein

Polk Audio presented their Polk Assist smart speaker
at Pepcom’s spring Digital Experience extravaganza.
Having more than 45 years of sound engineering and
design, Polk Audio maintained the lead in hi-performance
audio with the Polk Assist Smart Speaker. The voice-
controlled smart speaker features built-in Google Assistant
for music streaming and control of smart home devices.
The Polk Assist speaker is one of the first smart speakers
built on certified Android Things System-on-Modules (SoMs),
which benefits from regular feature and security updates
from Google.

With Chromecast built into Polk Assist, users can group
multiple Chromecast - enabled speakers and sound bars
for effortless multiroom playback from compatible audio
apps including Pandora™, TuneIn™, Google Play Music™,
iHeartRadio™, and Spotify.

Set-up and control are optimized. Users plug in the Polk
Assist and download the free Google Home app in the App
Store for either iOS or Google Play for Android, and the Polk
Assist smart speaker is ready to provide a premium audio
experience, hands-free. Google Search, scheduling, setting
timers, making calls, and controlling smart home devices are
equally available.

The Polk Assist smart speaker looks as good as it sounds.
Available in midnight black and cool gray, the compact speaker

fits in most spaces and complements any decor.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Lenovo Smart Dsplay

Lenovo will start shipping the first Google Assistant
smart display this weekend, marking the birth of a new
range of products that could eventually include some of
Echo Show's staunchest rivals. Similar to what Echo
Show does, Google's smart displays will give you a way
o interact with the tech giant's voice assistant in a visual
way. We first met the new devices at CES this year, where
we were impressed with their ability to instantly display
maps and send them to your phone when you ask for
directions. Certainly beats listening and trying to visualize
Them.

Here's another instance where a smart display can be
much easier to use than a smart speaker: Assistant will
also provide a step-by-step visual aid for recipes you look
up that you can follow on screen. Plus, the device can
present a visual summary of the weather, give you a way
to create and manage to-do lists and show you audio tracks
you can listen to instead of randomly playing a tune. If you're
a visual person, this new category will definitely sound more
enticing than smart speakers.

And what good is a Google display for if you can't play You-
Tube on it? You can ask Assistant to stream cooking videos,
make-up tutorials and anything else you want to watch hands-
free. If you've never subscribed to YouTube Premium in the
past, you'll get three months free with your purchase. The
display can also stream live or recorded YouTube TV shows,
YouTube Music, HBO Now, Google Play Music, Spotify and
Pandora. If you want to video call a friend on a screen bigger
than your phone, simply invoke Duo on the device -- say "Hey
Google, call [friend's name]." And in case you never had a Home
speaker to begin with, you can use the display to listen to
podcasts and audiobooks, as well.

Lenovo's Google-powered smart display will be available in
two sizes and colors, though all of them come with a 10-watt
speaker. The smaller 8-inch HD model will set you back $200,
while the 10-inch full HD one will cost you $250. If they don't
have the looks or the features that can convince you to shell
out a couple of hundred bucks, you can always wait for the
next models from Google's other partners, including JBL and
LG. Make sure to check out our review to decide for yourself.

Friday, July 27, 2018

LG Profits

South Korean tech giant LG Electronics Inc. said Thursday
its second-quarter net profit fell 36.6 percent from a year
earlier and that its mobile business remained in the red.

Net profit came to 326.5 billion won (US$291 million) in the
April-June period, compared with 514.9 billion won posted
in the same three month period in 2017, the company said
in a regulatory filing.

Operating profit came to 771 billion won in the second
quarter, up 16.1 percent from a year earlier.

Sales edged up 3.2 percent to reach 15 trillion won, LG
Added.

The second-quarter report was slightly below the market's
consensus. South Korea's 16 brokerage houses expected
LG Electronics to post an operating profit of 8.3 trillion won,
along with sales of 15 trillion won, according to Yonhap

Infomax.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

Qualcomm 5G

Qualcomm has solved a big problem for a certain
variation of 5G: getting the chips small enough to fit in
handheld devices.

On Monday, Qualcomm unveiled its new QTM052
millimeter wave and QPM56xx sub-6GHz radio frequency
antenna module families. They work alongside the
company's Snapdragon X50 5G to bring superfast network
speeds to smartphones . The modules will let phone makers
cover the gamut of 5G airwaves, including the shorter-range
but faster millimeter wave spectrum and the more reliable but
slower sub-6GHz airwaves.

The modules will show up in mobile hotspots later this year
and in smartphones in the first half of 2019. The potential peak
download speed could be up to 5Gbps for the millimeter wave
variant, though the more realistic speed you'll see in phones is
closer to 1.4Gbps, Qualcomm said. That's much faster than today's
4G, which is about 70Mbps, and even faster than the sub-6GHz's

expected speeds of 400Mbps to 500Mbps, the company noted.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

MacBook Pro Performance Probems

Apple has been catching heat over the performance
of its new MacBook Pro laptops, but the company is
hoping its new software update will help cool off outraged
power users.

After reports of heat issues leading to throttled
performance, Apple has determined that a simple software
bug was to blame, and has released what it hopes is a
quick fix. In our initial testing, the MacOS update appears
to correct the up-and-down CPU throttling, and we're
continuing to run additional tests.  

“Following extensive performance testing under numerous
workloads, we've identified that there is a missing digital
key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management
system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy
thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro," an Apple spokes-
person tells CNET. "A bug fix is included in today's MacOS
High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is
Recommended.

"We apologize to any customer who has experienced less
than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers
can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70 percent
faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to

2x faster, as shown in the performance results on our website."

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Walmart Partners

In its effort to boost the appeal of its website with lifestyle
imagery, Walmart is adding influencer content to its website.

All influencer content appears below product images and
the product information on each page, and is different
depending on the product. On Walmart.com’s product page
for Bigelow Green Tea, a visitor can find images from bloggers’
sites of cakes, muffins and cookies baked using Bigelow Tea,
followed by three recipes visitors can download or view to make
themselves. Meanwhile, on the product page for Schwarzkopf
göt2b hair color, are images of influencers posing with the hair
olor or using the company’s other hairspray product.

The integration began in June and so far has resulted in 30
executions with Mondelez, Henkel and Bigelow, have built out
their Walmart.com product pages with influencer content, with
more on the way. These influencers include Atsuna Matsui, a
beauty influencer with nearly 500,000 followers on Instagram,
Nicole Weisman, who has nearly 150,000 followers on Instagram
@curvestocontour and lifestyle blogger Abril who runs the blog
The Color Palette.

Walmart, facing pressure from Amazon, is doing everything in
its to power to stay competitive. In May it redesigned its website
to feature more lifestyle content. Having a strong influencer
strategy is another way to do so. Amazon has tried and so far has
failed, at developing its own influencer play. Agency buyers have
stated that Spark, Amazon’s social feed where influencers are
meant to post honest reviews of products bought from Amazon.com,
has not caught on with brands or influencers. One influencer Digiday
interviewed said the platform hasn’t taken off because there was no


Monday, July 23, 2018

Whim App

The last few years have seen greater changes to urban
mobility than in most of the last century, the design of
which was largely influenced by the automobile. The vast
majority of these changes, adopted to varying degrees,
comes as a result of the smartphone and its ability to be
used for low-cost transportation platforms. This powerful
computer, which we now carry in our pockets, means people
in need of transport can be connected to others with spare
capacity, to locate a dockless bike or scooter on a map, to
offer or monitor routes based on traffic conditions, to buy
bus or train tickets, and a growing list of possibilities.

Recent years have seen applications such as Uber, Cabify,
Lyft, Didi and many others increase the availability of vehicles,
creating many more mobility options, and which still represent
a tiny change compared to what will happen when technologies
such as electric and autonomous-driving vehicles are introduced.
Automotive giants such as Daimler and BMW, and soon
have signed on to this trend, flooding our cities with fleets of
vehicles ready to be driven at any time through an app.

China. The new mobility companies have entered this
segment through acquisitions that foreshadow important
mergers and deployments, in the same way that has happened
with electric scooters, which began with several startups, which
have grown into unicorns thanks to an investment frenzy, and
now continues with the emergence of these mobility monsters,
generating what some have dubbed the “scooter economy”

Mobility in cities will evolve into a service we use as needed:
transportation or mobility as a service, eliminating the idea of
owning an expensive, underutilized asset that contaminates
the air and has become the biggest problem in the vast majority
of cities around the world. But for all this to happen we need a
smoother transition; we cannot be expected to install 10 or 20
apps to manage the mobility options our cities offer, along with
public transport which also plays a fundamental role in getting
around our cities and that, thanks to successive waves of innovation,

will continue to do so in the future.

Friday, July 20, 2018

Samsung Bixby

Samsung hasn’t yet managed to shake the lackluster
reputation of its Bixby digital assistant, especially when
compared against rivals Google Assistant, Alexa, and
even Siri. But the company is apparently pressing on
with the idea of putting Bixby into a smart speaker that
will resemble the Echo, Google Home, and Apple’s
HomePod in concept.

The Wall Street Journal’s report on a foldable smartphone
from Samsung also offers some new information on the
speaker project. Samsung is expected to announce its
device within the next month. If true, the likely launch target
would be August 9th, which is Samsung’s Unpacked event
for the Galaxy Note 9. It seems the company is planning
some other surprises, based on this report. The rumored
price? $300.

Samsung has already directly confirmed that it’s developing
such a speaker. A new Galaxy Watch smartwatch could also

be unveiled at the Note event.