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2015年1月14日星期三

Google's modular Project Ara smartphone will begin pilot testing in Puerto Rico later this year

Google is holding its second Project Ara developer's conference today in Mountain View and is in the process of giving a roadmap on how and when it might get its modular smartphones out into the market. Probably the most notable bit of news we've learned so far is that Google plans to have a market pilot ready to go in the second half of this year. Unfortunately, if you want to give it a shot, you'll need to live in Puerto Rico — the pilot will roll out in that territory in partnership with carriers OpenMobile and Claro.

When Project Ara hits Puerto Rico, users should be able to customize their devices using the Ara Marketplace and Ara Configurator apps. Google's ATAP group will also roll out some "food-truck" style stores for consumers to actually check these devices out before they try them out. Google also says that it'll have some 20 to 30 Ara modules available by launch across 10 different categories.

GO GET YOUR PROJECT ARA PHONE FROM A FOOD TRUCK

Project Ara head Paul Eremenko discussed the reasons for moving to a market pilot — the company wants to learn what its doing well, what it is doing poorly, and what's missing so that they can iterate on the hardware to meet consumer need. Particularly, they want to know consumers respond to the paradox of choice that can come with a system as complex as Project Ara. "We have to carefully curate and manage the way that choice is presented so as not to overwhelm the consumer," Eremenko said.

Of course, to launch a working pilot program, Google will need to produce Ara hardware that fully works, and Project Ara head Paul Eremenko is currently giving a roadmap of where things are going next. Right now, the company is pushing towards having a model that is more robust, can make 3G network phone calls, and is able to hotswap different modules in and out of the phone. These would be improvements on the current "Spiral 2" design and are pretty important pieces of having a working phone. Google is working on these improvements to Spiral 2 currently and hopes to be moving to the "Spiral 3" design by the second quarter of this year.

As Google works on Spiral 3, it'll be looking to bring the phone up to par with much of what is out on the market today — features like 4G LTE signals, a "day-long" battery (that might only come from swapping a battery module out during the course of that day), a camera competitive with others on the market, and the full 20 to 30 different hardware modules that Google sees as important to having the flexibility it shoots for. Google also discussed the possibility of using its platform as a place for makers of cutting edge, experimental battery tech to bring their modules to Ara. Once it completes this Spiral 3 hardware cycle, the phones should be ready for the market pilot.

As for actually managing these modules, Google will include an Ara Manager app that lets you manage the modules — for example, if you were crazy enough to load two cameras onto your phone, the Ara Manager will help you determine what to use at any given time. It'll also focus as a troubleshooting app of sorts, if your custom-rolled phone starts misbehaving. Hopefully, the app will be able to guide you to the problem module.

We should see and learn much more about the status of Project Ara (including hopefully some working prototypes) throughout the day — we'll be updating this post and adding new stories as more news from Google's Project Ara conference as the event continues.

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Snapchat Is Asking Brands for $750,000 to Advertise and Won't Budge

chat is asking brands for $750,000 a day for its new ads, according to multiple industry sources who have heard the pitch, and some say that's too expensive for the young app.

The messaging app with a heavy video focus has promoted itself to the ad world as a TV-style commercial space with millions of viewers a day. Snapchat only started running ads late last year, with its first coming from Universal Pictures for the film Ouija.

Since that launch, McDonald's, Samsung, Macy's and Electronic Arts have been early Snapchat sponsors, paying for "Snaps"—quick videos and photos—that show up in users' Recent Updates feed. There also are ad placements in the Our Stories live feed, which compiles users' videos and photos of major events like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Snapchat, a platform that reaches a coveted teenage audience, has started asking brands for $750,000-a-day commitments, sources have told Adweek on the condition they and their employers not be named.

"They [Snapchat] have minimums, and they are very firm on them," said one agency executive who has talked with Snapchat about advertising. "From a monetization perspective, they are looking for fewer, bigger, better."

Asked for comment for this story, Snapchat said it does not comment on its ad prices.

The app has been soliciting only the top brands—"category leaders"—to buy placement, and it's disclosing audience numbers to attract the dollars it wants. Its stories can draw tens of millions of viewers a day, according to advertisers who said they heard the stats from Snapchat's team. The app has topped 100 million monthly users.

"We have clients for whom Snapchat works really well," the agency exec said. "It's good for a product launch or a rebranding like McDonald's has done."

McDonald's recently pushed its "Love Is Endless" animated commercial to Snapchat. And Universal appeared to find success as the first ad partner, so much so that it also served a second ad for Dumb and Dumber To.

However, there are drawbacks to Snapchat ads, including the platform's lack of sophistication, sources said. Snapchat has limited reporting capabilities, for one; it can't even tell brands how many men versus women saw an ad, and there are no age breakouts, the executive said.

Also, brands are wary of paying top asking prices when their ads disappear, sources said. (Users can view a Snapchat post briefly, then it vanishes in a snap.) "It's very hard for marketers to get their hands around advertising that is so ephemeral," the source said.

Snapchat has been trying to address data and reporting, and to be fair it is still very early in its ad business rollout. Last week, the service released its first study done with the help of MillwardBrown that showed users enjoyed the app's first round of ads and that the ads helped boost brand awareness.

A Universal executive was quoted in the report as saying Snapchat was a key part of the marketing strategy for those movies.

Snapchat has said it offers brands the opportunity to reach teenagers. And while the ads are fleeting, users do have to press their screens to view them, which shows clear engagement.

However, the youth appeal has its drawbacks, as well, limiting the interest of alcohol brands, for instance, along with advertisers who want to reach people with higher incomes, some in the industry said.

Now, with the jump in ad prices, it's a harder sell, another source said.

"I'm a big fan of Snapchat, but they are going to market with rates that are significantly higher than what's competitive out there," a top executive at a major brand said. "It is difficult to go forward with a deal with Snapchat at the prices they are quoting."

Snapchat is asking for rates that are higher than a masthead on YouTube, where a day costs about $500,000, another source said.

Some people compared Snapchat's strategy to Apple's iAd rollout five years ago, when it sought only top brands willing to make $1 million commitments. Apple has since backed off that premium structure, and iAd's model is unrecognizable from the one Steve Jobs launched.

"I don't think Snapchat can get what it's asking," this digital agency exec said. "They're going to have to negotiate down."

Google partners with auto suppliers on self-driving car

(Reuters) - Internet search company Google Inc has begun discussions with most of the world's top automakers and has assembled a team of traditional and nontraditional suppliers to speed efforts to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020, a Google executive said on Wednesday.

"We'd be remiss not to talk to ... the biggest auto manufacturers. They've got a lot to offer," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, said in an interview.

Those manufacturers, he said, include General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp, Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG.

"For us to jump in and say that we can do this better, that's arrogant," Urmson said. Google has not determined whether it will build its own self-driving vehicles or function more as a provider of systems and software to established vehicle manufacturers.

Google's self-driving prototype cars, he said, were built in Detroit by engineering and specialty manufacturing company Roush.

GM is open to working with Google on self-driving cars, Jon Lauckner, GM's chief technology officer, said on Monday.

Urmson's expectation that the first fully autonomous vehicles will be production-ready within five years mirrors the view expressed a day earlier by another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc.

Musk, who spoke Tuesday at the Automotive News World Congress conference, said he expects the lack of clear federal regulations covering self-driving cars could delay their introduction until 2022 or 2023.

Urmson, however, said his Google colleagues "don't see any particular regulatory hurdles."

Google has been briefing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the chief U.S. auto regulator, "from early on in our program," Urmson said. "The worst thing we could do is surprise them."

Urmson said Google is developing and refining self-driving systems and components with such auto parts suppliers as Continental AG, Robert Bosch, ZF and LG Electronics. Google's prototype cars use microprocessors made by Nvidia Corp , a Silicon Valley chipmaker that also supplies Mercedes-Benz and other automakers.

Continental said it began discussions in 2012 about supplying parts for Google's self-driving car. Google asked the German supplier to provide tires, some electronics and other components, according to Samir Salman, chief executive of Continental's NAFTA region.

Google shortly will begin deploying a test fleet of fully functioning prototypes of its pod-like self-driving car, which dispenses with such familiar automotive parts as steering wheel, brakes and accelerator pedal. While each of the Google prototypes will have a "test driver" on board, the cars have no provision for human intervention in steering or braking.

Urmson suggested the no-frills look of the Google prototypes, a far cry from the opulent appearance of the self-driving F015 concept vehicle unveiled last week by Mercedes, does not necessarily reflect the final design for production.

He described the Google prototype as "a practical, near-term testing platform" that will evolve over time.

"Airliners today don't look like the Wright brothers' flyer" of 100 years ago, he said.

Urmson said self-driving cars represent a "transformative" moment in the evolution of transportation, an opportunity to extend motoring to blind, elderly and disabled persons who otherwise could not drive.

"You're really changing the relationship you have with transportation. You're changing what it means to get around."

Regarding Google's desire to partner with traditional automakers and suppliers, Urmson said Detroit is more innovative than is sometimes acknowledged. Automakers are "doing something incredibly complicated."

"You look at a car ... and people forget just how much magic there is in that thing."

(Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall and Ben Klayman in Detroit; editing by Matthew Lewis)

BlackBerry Denies Samsung Is Trying To Buy It, And Now The Stock Is Tanking Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/blackberry-samsung-acquisition-denial-2015-1#ixzz3OrBifPHA

BlackBerry denies that Samsung is trying to buy it, following an earlier report from Reuters that said Samsung was willing to pay as much as $7.5 billion for the company.

The Reuters report sent BlackBerry shares skyrocketing almost 30% at the end of trading Wednesday.

BlackBerry shares began correcting themselves following the announcement. They were down about 15% in after-hours trading.

Here's the statement from BlackBerry:

BlackBerry Limited is aware of certain press reports published today with respect to a possible offer by Samsung to purchase BlackBerry. BlackBerry has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry. BlackBerry's policy is not to comment on rumors or speculation, and accordingly it does not intend to comment further.

The statement from BlackBerry leaves very little wiggle room. It sounds like the Reuters report was completely wrong.

The Reuters report said Samsung wanted to buy BlackBerry for its patent portfolio. But the price seemed suspect. BlackBerry's patents were last valued at $2 to $3 billion. The alleged $7.5 billion figure would've been quite the premium.

NOW WATCH: This Video Of The Largest Breakage Of Ice From A Glacier Ever Filmed Is Absolutely Frightening

Facebook Unveils Facebook At Work, Lets Businesses Create Their Own Social Networks

About six months ago, we reported that Facebook was working on a new product aimed squarely at the enterprise market under the working title, “FB@Work.” Now that product is officially coming to light: today the company is launching new iOS and Android apps called “Facebook At Work,” along with a version of Facebook at Work accessible via its main website, which will let businesses create their own social networks amongst their employees that are built to look and act like Facebook itself.

(Facebook At Work is now available for download on iOS, and we’ll update with a links to the Andrid version once it’s live, though both are usable via a limited pilot to start with. Check out our follow-up story for more screenshots, details on privacy, and analysis of “How Facebook At Work Could Shrink Faceless Enterprises“)

Employers can create separate log-ins for employees to use with their Work accounts, or users can link these up with their other profiles to access everything in one place.

The product puts Facebook head-to-head with the likes of Microsoft’s Yammer, Slack, Convo, Socialcast, and a huge number of others who are trying to tackle the “enterprise social network” space. Even LinkedIn conveniently let drop last night that it too was looking atbuilding a product for coworkers to communicate and share content (but not chat, as a LinkedIn spokesperson tells me). Not all of these have been a hit: Lars Rasmussen, the engineering director at Facebook who is heading up the project, had in his past once headed up one of the failed efforts at an enterprise social network, Google Wave.

Facebook is positioning today’s debut as a bold first step. “We’re putting the app into the app stores so that we can begin testing the product,” Rasmussen said in an interview.

In fact, Facebook has already been running tests of the service with “a very small set” of external businesses around the world, Rasmussen says; this is the next step in that process. The aim initially will be companies with 100 or more employees. (In fact, the existing Facebook Groups product is already used by smaller organisations.)

Because of the early nature of the product, there are a lot of questions in the air. The company has yet to work out, for example, how it might price the app, whether it will monetise the service through ads, or how third-party apps will work. For now, Facebook Platform has been disabled on the Work product, meaning no ads or apps.

That may not always be the case (“It could be paid,” he says).

This beta state of affairs is in some ways ironic. Rasmussen says that Facebook has effectively been working on Work for the last 10 years, because it is based on what Facebook’s own employees have been using to communicate with each other, pass on news, plan meetings and share documents. That long-time use and Facebook’s familiarity to all of us are part of what makes Facebook confident that it can carve a place for itself in a market that already is very crowded.

“Facebook at Work’s strength is that we’ve spent ten years and incorporated feedback from 1 billion active users,” he says. “All of that is embedded now in the same product but adapted for different use cases.”

And it’s actually used by staff. “When Mark [Zuckerberg, the CEO] makes an announcement he just posts it on Facebook at Work,” Rasmussen says.

In fact, Facebook’s own popularity could be Facebook at Work’s biggest advantage. A lot of efforts in offices to get employees to collaborate more with each other have been stymied because employees don’t want to use the software. It’s yet another new thing to learn and doesn’t feel essential.

A lot of messaging apps (Microsoft’s Yammer being one of the notably early movers) have tried to tap into “consumerization” — or getting enterprise apps to look and feel more like consumer apps — to encourage usage. In that vein, Facebook at Work, built essentially on Facebook itself, will be arguably the closest of all to an authentic “consumer” social experience.

Here’s a run-down of some of the key points about the service, as told to me by Rasmussen:

Pricing. As noted above, no firm details on this yet but consider that most of the other apps offer tiers of pricing. By making this free, Facebook could potentially drive a lot more users to its wider network.

The fact that Rasmussen would not rule out advertising as an option down the road to me suggests that Facebook could consider tiers of its own where some businesses may pay for the product and have it ad-free, while others might take it free and get ads. Again, most enterprise apps are based on a paid model so it’s probably more likely to remain the case here too. Plus this would give Facebook another revenue stream beyond ads and app-related payments.

How it will work. Facebook wouldn’t show me a demo ahead of the launch but this is how Rasmussen describes it: “When an employer adopts Facebook at Work, they can construct it with a set of new accounts. Users can then link their work and personal accounts together so that they are logged into both at the same time.”

This would work much like Groups and public profiles do today. On mobile, you would have two mobile apps running at the same time, he adds. “Even if the employee chooses to link there is no crossover. The content stays entirely within your personal or work Facebook.”

What’s not there/integrations. You can share documents today but for now there will be no in-app editing “currently.”

Again, that leaves this open as something that will come down the line. “The set of features are identitcal to personal Facebook, but just to get it out sooner we’ve disabled the Platform so the APIs that third parties work with are not there, but we are keen to turn it back on. Hopefully in the future other enterprise tools will integrate with Facebook at Work.”

Backstory on development. Back in June I’d deduced that Facebook at Work was connected with Rasmussen’s work in London, but what I found out from sources after that report was that this was more than casual: this was his baby.

Rasmussen is not shy to bring this up himself (which I have to admit is refreshing to hear, because people do like to posture a lot in tech, don’t they).

“I can say that the challenges of making work more efficient is something that has been on my mind for a long time, and I come to it with a lot of passion and the knowledge of a failure of doing this at a different company,” he says, referring of course to Google Wave.

“I thought that maybe Facebook’s experience was what was needed. When I worked on search here it was always at the back of my mind, so later I picked back up on that idea, joined in on the conversation.”

The caveat to all this, however, is one that Facebook will have to continue to grapple with, all the more so as it continues to grow.

Canvassing opinion on a Facebook at Work product, I heard not only once people shy away from the idea, concerned with the thought of Facebook “owning” your data and the potential lack of confidentiality resulting from it.

That can be frustrating when related to pictures of you too drunk when you were in college, or frankly scary looking when you were in high school, but potentially very costly and illegal if proprietary work information is involved.

BlackBerry denies it has engaged in buyout discussions with Samsung —

Waterloo, ON – BlackBerry Limited (NASDAQ: BBRY; TSX: BB) (“BlackBerry”) is aware of certain press reports published today with respect to a possible offer by Samsung to purchase BlackBerry. BlackBerry has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry. BlackBerry’s policy is not to comment on rumors or speculation, and accordingly it does not intend to comment further.

About BlackBerryA global leader in mobile communications, BlackBerry® revolutionized the mobile industry when it was introduced in 1999. Today, BlackBerry aims to inspire the success of our millions of customers around the world by continuously pushing the boundaries of mobile experiences. Founded in 1984 and based in Waterloo, Ontario, BlackBerry operates offices in North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America. The Company trades under the ticker symbols "BB" on the Toronto Stock Exchange and "BBRY" on the NASDAQ. For more information, visit www.BlackBerry.com.

Media Contact:BlackBerry Media Relations
(519) 888-7465 x77273
mediarelations@BlackBerry.com

Investor Contact:BlackBerry Investor Relations
(519) 888-7465
investor_relations@BlackBerry.com

2014年11月27日星期四

How to Use LED Grow Lights

How to Use LED Grow Lights

LED grow lights, or Light-Emitting Diode lamps, are an increasingly popular choice for indoor plant growing principally because they can deliver more intense light output with less energy and heat production, and they have a much longer useful life than that of high pressure sodium, fluorescent, high-intensity discharge or incandescent lamps. Most grow lamps are used commercially and industrially, but some residential use occurs. LEDs are made in several colors to mimic the ranges of natural sunlight that drive maximum photosynthesis and plant performance. LED grow lights are also popular because they can be used in standard bulb fittings and do not require special ballasts or non-standard electrical fixtures. LEDs come in 2-watt to 15-watt equivalents and in a range of sizes and colors.

nstructions
1
Determine the optimal lighting requirements for your particular plant or plants to thrive if they were living outdoors. Figure out the intensity of light and for how many hours a day it is needed. Often this information is on the plant tag or little plastic pick stuck in the soil of your plant. Online garden resources can help you make the determination if your plant is unmarked. This is what you need to mimic indoors with LEDs. If your plants grow outdoors in shade they need less light indoors. If they are vegetables and grow in full sun for 14 hours per day outdoors then that is the bar you must meet in order for the plant to thrive indoors.

2
Provide a mix of red spectrum and blue spectrum LEDs. Plant photosynthesis is most responsive to these two spectrums. According to research conducted by NASA, mixing at least 80 percent red LEDs and roughly 20 percent blue LEDs is a successful ratio for growing plants indoors. You can easily switch out a few of the blue LEDs for white without harming the plant growth. This will allow you to see what's happening with your plants much more readily because white LEDs have a spectrum of green, yellow and orange, which is more easily visible to the human eye.

Adjust your LEDs to hang above your plant tops by anywhere from 5 inches to 20 inches, according to the plant's size and light intensity requirements. Your goal is to have the plant greens showered in light to their edges but not have the light spill or be wasted on surrounding areas where there are no plants. Height adjustment of lighting helps achieve this economy as plants grow, changing in both shape and size.

4
Determine if your plants require light and dark periods. If so, connect your LED lights to a timer to regulate their on and off cycles to save you time, worry and labor. If your plants prefer long daylight periods and short night periods, program the automatic timer for that length of light cycle.

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