| Blue Google Glass app delivers baseball info when you're watching live Sep 12th 2013, 04:19, by Juan Carlos Torres Because watching a baseball game live doesn’t afford you all the information you need, developer Aaron Draczynski created an app for Google Glass that would give you that authentic TV or online viewing experience even when your out there in the front lines. This Blue app delivers information right to your Glass to make sure you never miss a beat while you keep your eye on the ball. 
The rationale for the app is understandable from a sports fan perspective. Watching a game on TV or streamed online gives viewers the advantage of additional data and expert commentary that clues you in on context or events that you might have missed. One loses that perk when watching a game live, but using a tablet or smartphone app would also intrude too much into the experience and ruin the moment. Thanks to Glass, and the Blue app, that might soon be a thing of the past. Using geolocation, Blue will be able to determine that ballpark you’re in and the teams playing there. It will then be able to feed data into Glass during the game, including player stats, play descriptions, scores, umpire calls, speeds, and more. The developer is planning to add more features such as trajectory charts. Draczynski promises that the app has really been tested on Glass, at the AT&T Park to be exact, and that it doesn’t get in the way of your field of vision. The app is, at the moment, designed for baseball, but the developer is open to supporting other sports if there are free, real-time, play-by-play data available for them as well. SOURCE: Blue
VIA: Engadget |  | Kyocera takes on the US smartphone market with rugged devices Sep 12th 2013, 03:50, by Juan Carlos Torres With the dominance of Apple and Samsung in the smartphone market, it is sometimes easy to overlook other large players in the race. But electronic component maker Kyocera doesn’t mind so much as it is trying to compete in a slightly different game. 
Japanese smartphone manufacturers haven’t had it easy, both at home and abroad. Recently, NEC Corp has announced that it is completely pulling out from the smartphone business and Panasonic has decided to tone down its involvement. And while Kyocera is probably more known for devices other than smartphones, it isn’t quitting and will even be taking the battle to US soil, but won’t be taking the smartphone giants head on. Instead, Kyocera will be focusing on a particular niche market, one that is, in some ways, beyond the reach of the delicate devices put out by Apple, Samsung and the rest of the gang, but is also desirable enough to be profitable. Kyocera believes that there is a good market for affordable, dust- and water-proof phones, and they have been churning out such devices this year, starting with the Kyocera Hydro XTRM and the Hydro EDGE last May, up to the still upcoming Hydro Elite. These phones sport mid-range hardware but could mostly withstand the torture that higher, and more expensive, phones wouldn’t even dream about. Kyocera is banking on that strategy to push its name higher, which currently ranks fourth behind Apple, Samsung, and LG, owning a 5.3% share in the North American handset market. It is hoping a 9 percent increase in unit sales until March, with profits that it hopes would reach to 6.4 billion yen, roughly $64 million. SOURCE: Reuters | | ASUS PadFone Infinity ready for lift off again in ASUS teaser video Sep 12th 2013, 03:03, by Juan Carlos Torres The new, and hopefully real, PadFone Infinity is the future, and it is ready to launch. At least, that’s according to the teaser page that ASUS has set up in preparation for the device’s unveiling on Tuesday next week. 
ASUS is attempting a second shot at releasing its next-gen smartphone/tablet combo this year. The company first revealed the latest incarnation of its unique PadFone line at the Mobile World Congress in February. You can read our initial brush with the device here, but basically it’s a smartphone with a 5-inch 1080p display running on a 1.7 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. Of course, the selling point of the PadFone is the Infinity Station, a tablet “dock” that houses the phone, transforming it into a seemingly regular tablet. We recently got word a few weeks ago that ASUS is already preparing a slightly updated model, the PadFone Infinity A86. Nothing much has changed except for the color and the processor, which has been upgraded to a quad-core 2.3 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. We got a tip that the company has scheduled a press release next Tuesday, which is now confirmed on the company’s website, along with a rather amusing teaser video that you can watch below. So the countdown begins, with just 5 days left before the device lands, at least on press sites. If the PadFone’s unique blend of smartphone and tablet has caught your fancy, this might be the event to watch for, and hope it comes to market, especially in the US, soon. | |
