Posts in Linked

Sony’s PlayStation Division Will Release iOS Games in 2017→

Reuters reports that Sony’s PlayStation division is working on ten mobile games, six of which will be released next year for iOS and Android. The games, which include Everybody’s Golf, will debut in Japan followed by other Asian countries. The Reuters report doesn’t indicate what plans, if any, Sony has for the games outside Asia.

According to Reuters the other games in the works for mobile release include PaRappa the Rapper and Arc The Lad. Kotaku also reports that Wild Arms is in development for mobile platforms. Kotaku’s coverage includes this preview video of Arc the Lad and Wild Arms from ForwardWorks:

Competition from mobile gaming continues to increase, so its not surprising that console vendors like Sony are following Nintendo’s lead by testing the smartphone waters.

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Connected, Episode 120: Perennial State of Worrying→

Federico is back with some new purchases in tow. Stephen published a book. Myke wants more from his Echo. Everyone has wishes for iOS 10.

On this week’s Connected, we checked in with iOS 10 three months after its launch and listed the features we’re liking best so far, as well as those that left us disappointed. You can listen here.

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Remaster, Episode 24: PSX and Pokémon→

Federico and Myke break down the announcements from PSX, and give their review of Pokémon Sun/Moon so far.

Lots of PlayStation games on Remaster this week, plus a first discussion on the new Pokémon games, where Myke and I are taking two deeply different approaches. You can listen here.

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Spotify Adds Direct Sonos Playback to iOS App→

Spotify:

We’ve teamed up with Sonos to make it easier than ever to keep the music going strong. Now Spotify Premium users can control their Sonos straight from the Spotify app using Spotify Connect. Use all the features you love about Spotify: the curation, discovery, and sharing and hear it all throughout your home in crystal clear sound. You can also access the multiroom power of the Sonos home sound system directly in the Spotify app. We’ve brought out the best of both worlds to give you the smartest and most seamless home sound system yet.

I’ve been trying this in beta for the past couple of months, and it has worked well with my Sonos PLAY:1. The feature is based on Spotify Connect, which is fast and doesn’t route all system audio to a single device. In my experience, using Spotify Connect with a Sonos speaker has been much more reliable than streaming music to AirPlay or Bluetooth speakers.

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Apple Posts iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode Tips from Professional Photographers→

The iPhone 7 Plus features a dual camera system that enables a special Portrait mode in the Camera app. Apple has collected tips for using Portrait mode from professional photographers, like this tip from photographer Pei Ketron:

”Portrait mode on the new iPhone 7 Plus creates beautifully realistic background bokeh that rivals DSLRs.” When taking photos of pets and animals she advises, “give your pup some space. Portrait mode uses the telephoto lens, so a distance of about eight feet away is recommended. Have treats ready. You’ll get the best results when your subject isn’t moving.”

Under the right conditions, Portrait mode can take some wonderful photographs as these demonstrate. The rest of the photographs and tips posted by Apple are available in the Apple Newsroom.

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New Apple Ad: Romeo & Juliet→

Apple released a new ad in its ‘practically magic’ series highlighting the video recording capabilities of the iPhone 7. The ad begins with a cinematic scene of two young actors performing Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. The camera cuts to a third person perspective to reveal that it’s not a film playing in a theater, but a school play being recorded by a dad in the audience with his iPhone 7. The ad ends with the tag line ‘your movies look like movies on iPhone 7.’

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Amazon’s New AI Tools for Developers→

Interesting announcements from Amazon at its AWS event this week: the company is rolling out a suite of artificial intelligence APIs for developers to plug their apps into. These tools are based on the AWS cloud (which a lot of your favorite apps and services already use) and they leverage the same AI and deep learning that has also powered Alexa, the software behind the Amazon Echo.

Here’s April Glaser, writing for Recode:

Drawing on the artificial intelligence that powers Amazon’s popular home assistant Alexa, the new tools will allow developers to build apps that have conversational interfaces, can turn text into speech and use computer vision that is capable of recognizing faces and objects.

Amazon’s latest push follows moves from Google and Microsoft, both of which have cloud computing platforms that already use artificial intelligence.

Google’s G Suite, for example, uses AI to power Smart Reply in Gmail, instant translation and smart scheduling functions in its calendar. Likewise, Microsoft recently announced it’s bringing artificial intelligence to its Office 365 service to add search within Word, provide productivity tracking and build maps from Excel with geographic data.

It’s increasingly starting to look like “AI as an SDK” will become a requirement for modern apps and services. Deep learning and AI aren’t limited to playing chess and recognizing cat videos anymore; developers are using this new kind of computing power for all kinds of features – see Plex, Spotify, and Todoist for two recent examples. I’ve also been hearing about iOS apps using Google’s Cloud Vision a lot more frequently over the past few months.

I think this trend will only accelerate as AI reshapes how software gets more and better work done for us. And I wonder if Apple is considering an expansion of their neural network APIs to match what others are doing – competition in this field is heating up quickly.

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Connected, Episode 119: Tiered Levels of Surprise→

This week, Stephen and Myke talk about CNN’s acquisition of Beme before answering questions about Relay FM, self employment and Casey Liss.

Myke and Stephen (for whom, by the way, I issued an official pardon) had a fun episode of Connected without me this week. You can listen here.

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Spectator, the Spectacles Video Player→

One of the coolest features of Snap’s new Spectacles sunglasses is that they take circular video. That means whichever way you turn your phone to view the captured video, there are no black bars surrounding the footage. Users have been uploading the videos to Twitter and Instagram, but the results aren’t great – the video looks like it’s been taken through the peephole in a door.

Tim Johnsen, the creator of iOS utility Opener, has come to the rescue with a solution. Johnsen’s new iOS app, Spectator, displays the video just like Snapchat does. Here’s a video Johnsen made to demonstrate:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BM1thBfgn6O/

Using Spectator is easy:

You use Spectator by copying links to Spectacles videos on Instagram or Twitter, then launching the app. It’ll prompt you to play the video you have copied shortly after launch, and keeps a list of the videos you’ve recently watched. If you’re looking for a list of videos to try out I’m curating one here. Enjoy!

I’ve tried Spectator and it works like a charm. The app has also made me want to try Spectacles more than ever before, which makes me think that this is an app Snap should have made to help spread the buzz about its new product.

Spectator is available on the App Store as a free download.

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