| Oculus Rift headset coming to mobile for Android only Oct 31st 2013, 02:46, by Juan Carlos Torres Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe had a surprise in store for the gaming world as well as the Android community at his GamesBeat 2013 keynote last Tuesday. The company is planning to launch a mobile version of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset at the same time as the original PC version. And it will be exclusive to Android devices only. 
Oculus Rift captured interest and headlines, not to mention money, when it launched a Kickstarter campaign last year. Asking for only $250,000, the campaign was able to bag $2.5 million, becoming one of the first success stories of the nascent crowdfunding scene. Since then, the virtual reality headset has routinely made appearances in gaming and technology news and has recently added game development luminary John Carmack of id and Doom fame to its team. The company has previously been teasing support for smartphones, but apparently it has even bigger ambitions for mobile. The fact that a dedicated mobile version of the Oculus Rift will be produced and released for mobile gaming is probably not much of a shock. The real surprise, is that, unlike what you’d probably expect when it comes to games and gaming peripherals, the Oculus Rift will be supporting Android only. As the headset will be offloading its activities to the smartphone’s hardware resources, Oculus VR probably needs a platform that will easily let it do so without much fuss. Apparently, that is no easy task on iOS, causing support for the Apple mobile platform to be problematic and delayed indefinitely. The mobile version of the Oculus Rift is said to be much lighter than the PC variant, which is a reasonable requirement for something that’s meant to be very portable. It will be interesting to see what Oculus VR has planned to make a virtual reality headset practical and usable in a mobile gaming scenario. SOURCE: Venture Beat |  | Nike+ FuelBand Android snub blamed on lack of Bluetooth LE support Oct 31st 2013, 02:07, by Juan Carlos Torres Nike has once more received some amount of flak from Android supporters when it earlier announced the next version of its fitness bracelet, the Nike+ FuelBand SE. While it has already come out that it will not be working on an Android app for the wearable device, the company is now making known exactly why. 
Fitness bracelets, though many, have had quite a bad track record of supporting the Android platform. One would presume that a giant such as Nike would have both the resources and the incentive to cover as much ground as possible in terms of mobile devices. Indeed, the company does put out some Android apps. Unfortunately, not so for its popular FuelBand accessory. Earlier this year, it posted on Twitter that the company is not working on an Android app for the device. When the new Nike+ FuelBand SE was unveiled two weeks ago without Android support, Android users and supporters were unsurprisingly dismayed. It seems, however, that Nike might have valid technical reasons for ignoring Android, at least for the time being. Nike vice-president of Digital Sports Stefan Olander says that the lack of consistent and mature Bluetooth LE (Low-Energy) support on Android has prevented the company from committing to the platform. The FuelBand SE, in particular, uses Bluetooth LE to connect to a smartphone, in this case, an iPhone, in order to minimize battery usage. Bluetooth LE support on Android is still somewhat new, having been added only in Android 4.3 a few months ago. Support is rumored to have been improved in the upcoming Android 4.4 release, which is still a no-show. Unfortunately, it seems that Nike also has some other reason for sticking with its iOS guns. It says that it is still waiting for someone, like an Android smartphone manufacturer, to mesh with Nike’s goals and vision, which is probably a vague way of saying that they want a company like Samsung, LG, or HTC to exclusively cater to Nike’s needs. And so it remains unknown whether an improved Bluetooth LE support in the next Android version will be enough to satisfy Nike’s requirements or if Android users will be left with no choice but opt for other, and sometimes better, alternatives. VIA: Pocket-lint | | Amazon patents 3D object recognition service, possibly for Amazon smartphone Oct 31st 2013, 01:32, by Juan Carlos Torres While Amazon may still be in denial about any plans to put out its own brand of Android-powered smartphones, its actions seem to say otherwise. The online retailer giant has recently been seen making a patent application for an object recognition service that could very well be implemented for a future Amazon smartphone. 
It could just be a case of wishful thinking, but numerous rumors have already sprung up about Amazon working on a smartphone equivalent of its popular Kindle tablets, which the company is dismissing as something that could happen but it still outside of its radars. But this new patent application, ambiguously called “User guided object identification”, might be proof that an Amazon smartphone is actually within reach. Object identification isn’t entirely new. Google even came out with its own Google Goggles app, not to be confused with the Google Glass eyewear, that identifies a brand or item based on a photo taken of the object’s logo or text. Amazon’s patent, however, goes further than that. Whereas current implementation rely on a somewhat flat or easily recognizable pattern, such as a book cover or product label, Amazon’s version is theoretically able to identify the whole 3D object itself. Users will be able to snap photos of a real-world 3D object which the service will be able to correctly identify and bring up a search result, which will most likely be an Amazon store entry. This opens up the service to a wide range of objects such as shoes, bags, tools, and more. The system isn’t perfect yet and sometimes requires users to match a product to a provided outline or manually enter a product category, but it’s an interesting step in that direction. 
Of course, this 3D object recognition service could very well just be available for Amazon’s current tablets and book readers. However, the patent does mention a smartphone and, given Amazon’s propensity for rolling out its services primarily or initially on its own devices, this could very well be a hint that such a device is on the way. VIA: SlashGear | |
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