Author: Clinton

Runtastic and Google Play Music have teamed up to provide you curated playlists to listen to within the app.  Now when you are within the Runstatic app and chose the music tab, you can chose different playlists to help keep you motivated during that exercise routine.

Keep pace with Today’s Running Hits featuring songs that are all over 130 beats per minute, embark on a Sweaty EDM Workout, or kick it up a notch with someHigh-Energy Hard Rock; the choice is yours. This new app feature is available in more than 60 countries around the world where Google Play Music is available.

This new feature means that you won’t have to leave Runtastic to start playing your music which saves time but also prevents accidental stops or pauses of your exercise tracking.

Portable Bluetooth speakers are widely available in a wide range of prices.  With some you are buying the brand while others you are buying the audio performance but the two are not mutually exclusive.  iClever has been around for a few years now and have been making accessories for Android and iOS devices ranging from charging options to said Bluetooth speakers.  Their latest speaker option, the BTS04, is arguably one of the better values out there for this type of accessory.  The problem with many of these types of devices is that you end up with poor bass quality or poor treble quality.  Neither is the case in this affordably priced speaker and to top that, it looks nice and is even splash resistant.  That means you should have no worries about taking it out by the pool on a summer day.

Recently the team over at iClever sent me the BTS04 to review and I have to say I’m not disappointed.  While I do find the button combination of short presses and long presses a little confusing, overall I can’t fault the performance, size and sound quality from the speaker.  Here is my review.

For the past few months, the Moto Z has been exclusively tied to Verizon here in the United States.  While the CDMA version is still tied to the, you can now pick up the GSM version of the phone from Motorola directly or on Amazon.  Starting at $699 for the phone with 64GB of storage, the phone is available in Luna Grey and you can use Moto Mods with this phone to turn it into a variety of other useful things (like a projector for example).  The phone has a 5.5” AMOLED Quad HD that renders at 2560 x 1440.  That gives you an impressive 535 ppi which makes view for long periods of time easy on the eyes.

This week Google introduced a lot of new hardware to us.  In one two hour window we saw the likes of two new phones, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL, a new Wi-Fi solution, Google Wi-Fi, and a connected home device, Google Home.  With Google Home and the new Pixel phones, we also saw the scope of what Google plans with Google Assistant.  Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence driven tool designed to give you information, both general and personal, just a voice command away.

The question facing us, as humans, is how do we adapt in what is clearly a shift to an Artificial Intelligence world?  Google by their own admission have 70 billion data points in their knowledge graph.  That is anything from a point on a map to a restaurant that is tied into OpenTable to when you are traveling to London next.  It is a vast amount of information.  Equally, if there is one truth to artificial intelligence it is that it always wants (needs) more information.  The more information the better because it gets smarter, more personal and more accurate.

With so many companies driving AI, not just Google, the question isn’t a matter of if it will happen.  It is a question of how fast it will progress.  I dare say it will be neck-breaking fast.  What we see in Google Home and Google Assistant today will be far richer and more knowledgeable in just 12 months from now.  By 2018, AI will be so intertwined with our world that we will no longer think about it being there.

Perhaps the more accurate question then is if you trust Google’s AI?  I say yes.  If there is one company that truly understands the power of information and personal data, it is Google and while they will surely use that data for profit, they equally understand that any leak of that data would be catastrophic for the company.  They are the best equipped not only to provide the best AI experience but protect us and our data from those who want to dismiss it.

For those Verizon customers who are looking to pick up the one of the new Google Pixel phones, be aware that the bootloader will be locked to the carrier.  To this point, Google has kept their Nexus devices with an unlocked bootloader.  For those who aren’t familiar with what a bootloader is exactly, it is the first thing that runs when you power up an Android phone.  It is the boot sequence of the device and the loading of the Operating System.  Carriers generally like these locked because the do not want someone loading a custom ROM on the device to bypass their software or other settings.

Motorola has posted on their company blog a full list of devices that they plan to upgrade to Android Nougat.  The list is reasonably comprehensive although there are some notable devices missing, and should give those of you who have Motorola devices some hope for your phones.  The post states that the Moto Z and the 4th generation Moto G will be the first devices to see the update and that will happen in Q4 of this year.  As for the rest of the list, there isn’t a specific timeframe given.