The weekend is here, and you know what that means? It’s time to catch up on all the best tech news from the last seven days — we went hands-on with Windows 10, explored the world of vape modding, launched our own web series, and more. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
The Paris Auto Show is the biggest in the world and the event for car makers’ most madcap models and concepts. We saw Lamborghini’s 910HP Asterion hybrid, the first supercar that can get groceries on battery power. Another crazy hybrid was Citroen’s Cactus Airflow 2L, which stores braking energy as compressed air to get 115mpg. Finally, we took a look at two different connected car takes, with Honda going all-in on Android and Nokia showing off new Here Auto tech. But what about the rest of the show? Some of the wildest crossover designs we ever saw (like the Peugeot Quartz, above) were flaunted, along with plenty of interesting EV and hybrid tech — and, of course, supercars. If you haven’t already skipped over there, hit the gallery below for more.
If you thought that Redbox Instant would have trouble competing against a streaming video behemoth like Netflix, you were right. The Verizon-backed service is telling customers that Instant will shut down just before midnight on October 7th, roughly a year and a half after it got off the ground. Should you be a customer, you’ll get a notice about any relevant refunds on October 10th. The closure isn’t entirely surprising — Outerwall (Redbox’s parent company) wasn’t happy with Instant’s subscriber numbers, and a credit card fraud incident prevented it from taking new customers for three months. Still, this isn’t good news if you liked Redbox’s unique hybrid of online and kiosk-based rentals.
[Thanks, Mike]
I had the full attention of Engadget’s San Francisco office as I unpacked Epson’s latest augmented reality headset, the Moverio BT-200. The glasses make for one heavy, awkward wearable: Coke-bottle thick lenses with inlaid transparent displays hovering in front of each eye. My coworkers and I passed them from desk to desk anyway, snapping goofy images for Instagram and musing over what to do with them. The glasses aren’t Engadget’s typical review fare — it’s not a product intended for consumers, and I wonder out loud how I’m going to explain the lenses to my readers. Without missing a beat, my editor Christopher Trout looks me square in the eye and gives me an answer. “Wear them,” he says. “For a week. That’s an assignment. You’re doing it.” Hoo boy.
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Google surely has a lot of tricks in store for the Now app: one of the latest to surface, for instance, reminds American voters to register for November’s general elections. Residents in Michigan, Pennsylvania and likely other states recently received Now pop-ups about the registration deadline on October 5th. Some of those who reported seeing the card claimed they haven’t even done a search for anything election-related in recent years, so it’s possible that the app flashes the reminder based on your location. It’s unclear whether this is a national rollout or just something the company’s testing, though, since Google hasn’t officially announced it yet. We first caught a glimpse of this new feature when developer Zhuowei Zhang released his UnleashTheGoogle app in September, which shows all the cards the company’s currently testing. Since among the rather lengthy list is an API called “Election info,” we might see similar Now cards in the future.
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Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
A Rare Look at Design Genius Jony Ive: The Man Behind the Apple Watch
by Robert Sullivan,
Vogue
The man behind much of Apple’s design doesn’t often open up for interviews, butfollwoing Cupertino’s Watch reveal, much of the focus has been on the fashion-minded. That said, Jony Ive offered Vogue a bit more on the upcoming wrist-worn device and his aesthetic mindset as a whole — right down to things like the sound a watch band makes as it closes.
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We knew that the gang at Homestar Runner was coming back, and now that they’re here it’s hard not to be a little excited. In their triumphant return, Coach Z and Strongbad (pictured above) take a kind-hearted jab at ’90s rap videos and their predilection for fisheye lenses. How? With a rap clip of their own, naturally. It sounds impossible, sure, but the new clip almost feels like a warm hug from the internet.
Once upon a time, music purchased in Apple’s iTunes store was saddled with a DRM technology called “FairPlay.” It did just what you’d expect: keep unauthorized computers and devices from playing music purchased on the service. It’s gone from Apple’s music store now (but can still be found in eBooks and apps), but it’s still making waves: Apple is facing a $350 million anti-trust suit claiming the DRM was used to stifle market competition.
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To celebrate the launch of the Lumia 830 in the UK and all of the Trek-flavored nerdiness going down at Destination Star Trek in London, Microsoft has taught given its virtual assistant a crash course in the ways of Qo’nos — by which we mean Cortana can now speak a little Klingon. All you’ll have to do is ask, though the first thing the xenolinguists among you will probably notice that her and vocabulary and pronunciation are just awful. SlashGear also adds that Cortana responds when you refer to her as “Number One” — Commander Riker can’t be too pleased about that one — as well as when you tell her to beam you up or “set phasers to stun”. The smarts enabling Cortana’s new behavior haven’t started making the rounds yet outside of the UK yet, but a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to us those Starfleet commands will work in the US in the coming weeks. In the mean time, there are still other ways to get a feel for Redmond’s Trekkie credentials: remember, that Bing’s Translator can kinda-sorta tackle textual Klingon too.
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