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Moto X Phone – Revealed by Google at Last

2013-08-03

The Moto X! Finally revealed by Google it represents a bid to revive the once mighty mobile tech giant. We here at QTOOTH remember having several Motorola phones over the years. We loved them. Durable with excellent call quality. Nothing else compared. The ultimate benchmark for quality was a Motorola phone on the Verizon network. We were huge, devoted fans. Remember those days?

And then the smart phone revolution began and Motorola was completely cut out of the loop. How they didn’t see it coming is a mystery. Apple, Samsung, HTC, Nokia, LG, even Blackberry had at least something going on. But not Motorola.

So, after much hype and anticipation, Motorola Mobile’s new owner Google finally rolled out their new offering. The general consensus? Better luck next time. Overpriced, under-performing and laden with curious choices, including NOT including the latest version of the Android operating system. This has to be one of the biggest mysteries, after all, Google makes Android and Google owns Motorola. Why wouldn’t it be sporting you latest offering? Baffling…

The biggest feature that they are touting? It’s ability to come in different colors… after being special ordered… and taking at a few days to get to you. Really? When most people want a phone they want it immediately. They want to walk into a store and by it today. And in the end, who really cares what color your phone is when you are just going to cover it with a case or some type of protector? That’s where the real style choices happen, not with the phone itself.

The phone features a 4.7-inch screen device is aimed at the iPhone and the Galaxy S phones. The Moto X features “all-day” battery life, a choice of colors and materials, and an instant-start camera, the company said today at a press event in New York. The Moto X is priced starting at $199 with a two-year contract and will only be available on all AT&T by the end of August or early September. That’s about the same time that the new Apple iPhone is set to hit the market and will probably make the Moto X completely irrelevant.

The device is the first homegrown smartphone from Motorola since Google acquired the business last year for $12.4 billion, as the Internet giant ramps up its hardware ambitions against Apple and others.

There is some claim to being made in U.S.A. and are hoping to attract fans because of this. The reality is that it will only be assembled in Texas at a former Nokia factory and that this will mostly involve the customizing of the color options. Customers can choose the colors of the front, back and accents of the Moto X on the website Motomaker.com. Motorola guarantees phone delivery in four days. One of the custom options is to have a wooden back made from a choice of ebony, teak, rosewood, or bamboo. Only that last choice is remotely sustainable. So? Not exactly hi-tech and not exactly made in America. Unlikely that they will fool anyone with this ruse.

Here are a few good details:A curved, ergonomic back and 10-megapixel camera. Similar to the Motorola Droids on Verizon Wireless, the Moto X runs on a chip system known as X8. Motorola developed twin lower-powered chips to run alongside the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro main processor.

The multichip system is designed to conserve battery life by letting the processor sleep while the lower-power chips work in the background — sensing location, speed and message notifications, as well as listening for voice commands. As an example, even if the phone is locked, the user can say, “OK Google now,” to create and send a message, or open turn-by-turn navigation through Google Maps. And with two flips of the wrist, sensors will turn on the camera and be ready to shoot in 2 seconds, said Rick Osterloh, product chief for Motorola.

As we see it here at QTOOTH maybe Google/Motorola will make more of their investment back when they introduce it to the international market. Maybe they are just trying to establish value by charging $199 with a two year contract but it should be half the price, or less, for what it offers. We’ll take an iPhone 4s or a Galaxy S3 over this anytime. Also, maybe they have plans to roll out instant upgrades to the latest Android OS. Whatever their plans are, they better move quickly to save this phone from an early death.

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Google to Provide Free WiFi to San Francisco Parks

2013-08-02

Google has made a $600,000 gift to the city of San Francisco in the form of providing free WiFi to 31 parks, playgrounds, plazas and recreation centers. Under the agreement, Google will install the system starting in November and it should be complete by April of 2014. The no-strings-attached deal is intended to empower citizens and community groups and will serve as a pilot for a future, city-wide version.

Attempts at this have been made before, most notably six years ago, but none of the players involved could agree on the terms of the contract. However it wasn’t to be, in part because of the public and officials’ fears that the companies would make undue profit. The current initiative, headed by Supervisor Mark Farrell along with with SF’s Department Of Technology and Ron Conway’s sf.citi, includes no plan for Google to make money. The terms of the contract are for the next two years. After that it will be up to the city to find funding from local businesses and tech partners for continuing support.

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This move by is not without precedent. Google has paid for limited wireless networks in neighborhoods of New York and Boston, and also set up a paid fiber-optic network in Kansas City.

San Francisco’s Mayor Lee stated, “We are behind. I call us the innovation capital of the world but we need to catch up. This is where the relationship with the private sector is so important to us” and that the program will “Bridge not only the digital divide but bring the innovative spirit to every community in San Francisco.”

Hard to believe, but a lot of the recreation centers are still on dial-up connections. This should go a long way to improving their infrastructure. This will also help residents who are at a disadvantage because they proper lack access to the internet, increasing their education, voice in civic affairs, and to gain the tools necessary to better their socioeconomic standing.

Here’s the full list of public areas gaining free Wi-Fi in San Francisco, via the SF Chronicle:

Alamo Square, Balboa Park, Bernal Heights Recreation Center, Boeddeker Park, Chinese Recreation Center, Civic Center Plaza, Corona Heights, Crocker Amazon Playground, Duboce Park, Eureka Valley Recreation Center, Gene Friend Recreation Center, Hamilton Recreation Center, Huntington Park, Joseph Lee Recreation Center, Justin Herman Plaza, Margaret S. Hayward Playground, Marina Green, Minnie and Lovie Ward Recreation Center, Mission Dolores Park, Mission Recreation Center, Palega Playground, Portsmouth Square, Richmond Recreation Center, St. Mary’s Recreation Center, St. Mary’s Square, Sue Bierman Park, Sunnyside Playground, Sunset Playground, Tenderloin Recreation Center, Upper Noe Recreation Center, Washington Square

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Ruckus Explores Tracking Your Indoor Location with Your Cell Phone

2013-07-14

Ruckus Wireless has discovered another application for its Wi-Fi technology beyond just delivering fast connections to the web. Drawing on the help of YFind, a location services startup based in Singapore, Ruckus utilizes Wi-Fi signals to triangulate a smartphone’s position indoors, an environment that GPS signals typically can’t penetrate.

Ruckus revealed on Wednesday that it purchased YFind for an undisclosed amount. Wi-Fi location is becoming a hot market now that most of the world has been mapped, marked and recreated in a wide variety of navigation and location-based services apps. The problem with using GPS in buildings is that our usual tools that we depend on to determine location — like GPS satellites and mobile network towers — aren’t strong enough or accurate enough to deliver a precise interior location.

When discussing a building’s interior, location data needs to be within a few meters, otherwise the app will display a position in the wrong room or floor. GPS signals can’t pass through most roofs or floors and cell tower triangulation just doesn’t have that level of accuracy.

But the big the big dogs like Google and Qualcomm, and even smaller niche companies like Wifarer, Walkbase, and WifiSlam (which was just purchased by Apple, are attempting to solve that problem by converting Wi-Fi networks into miniature GPS constellations. Every Wi-Fi access point has a unique identifier, and by measuring the strength and direction of a building’s access points, these companies can determine a device’s position within a few meters.

The first Wi-Fi location companies began by working independently of the Wi-Fi equipment manufacturers producing the signals — and usually independently of the businesses that owned the networks. However, the big Wi-Fi vendors are starting to get involved. The large enterprise-level wireless-LAN supplier Aruba Networks purchased Meridian earlier this year, and now Ruckus has acquired YFind.

Ruckus said it would begin offering up a suite of location services such as indoor navigation, geo-targeted advertising and “footfall analytics” to customers. Ruckus is most likely looking to use YFind as a teaser to gain more enterprise Wi-Fi customers (right now the majority of Ruckus’s business is in outdoor Wi-Fi). By layering location data on top of access, Ruckus’s indoor access points become all the more useful to the businesses that buy them.

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Polar Stride Sensor Bluetooth Smart for iPhone 5 and 4S

2013-07-13

One of the the world’s first, the Polar Stride Sensor Bluetooth Smart connects directly to iPhone 5 or 4S to deliver speed, distance and run cadence. The sensor provides all the data needed for running with the exception of heart rate and you can add a Polar H7 heart rate monitor to receive that data. A great way to realize the full potential of the Smart Stride Sensor is to pair it with the Polar H7 Bluetooth Smart Heart Rate Sensor, an armband for iPhone and a tube of heart rate monitor electrode cream.

The Polar Stride Sensor Bluetooth Smart comes with a Polar S3+ Stride Holder that threads directly into the show laces. It is worth having a couple of these if you have more than one pair of running shoes so you don’t have to re-thread the pod, simply move it from holder to holder.

The Polar Bluetooth Stride Sensor also has a user changeable battery and complete stride sensor calibration instructions are available on the Polar website.

For folks that bring an iPhone 5 or 4S with them for exercise, or have to have it for work, this is a good solution. Competitive runners will be much more apt to stick with GPS watches.

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Wearable Technology Market Will Top $6 Billion by 2016

2013-07-05

Demand for real-time data, including personal health information, is driving the market for wearable, wireless devices that will grow from 14 million items this year to as many as 171 million in 2016. In four years, the market for wearable wireless devices is expected to achieve minimum revenues of $6 billion, according to new research from IHS iSuppli subsidiary IMS Research.

Smart wearable device market to boom. A $6 billion market in 2016 is our most conservative forecast which assumes that the adoption of wearable technology will be limited by factors including lack of suitable technology, poor user compliance and lack of an overall enhanced experience from devices that are wearable as compared to non-wearable products,” said Theo Ahadome, senior analyst at IMS Research. The majority of wearable devices are concentrated around a few products mainly for healthcare and wellness applications, such as glucose and heart rate monitors.

In the future, devices for personal entertainment and military use will increase dramatically. For example, the introduction of Google’s Smart Glasses and the rumoured Apple Smart Watch” will be part of a new wave of wireless wearable devices. Sleep sensors, hand-worn terminals, and industrial and military head’s up displays — transparent screens that provide data and are attached to helmets — will provide users with actionable data, leading to even more rapid expansion in the market for wearable technology.

Most wearable, wireless devices today are used to transmit vital signs or to track user exercise performance or fitness metrics. Dominating the market are continuous glucose monitors, such as devices from Abbott and Medtronic, and activity monitors, such as those from Fitbit, Adidas miCoach and Nike Fuelband. Fitness and heart-rate monitors from Garmin, Polar and Suunto are also market leaders, Ahadome said.

The US Federal Communications Commission recently approved a Medical Body Area Network MBAN radio spectrum for use in hospitals. The MBAN spectrum first is expected to be used in hospitals, but over time, medical instrument vendors say MBAN devices could be used at home, where 80% of health care services are delivered.Unlike traditional medical telemetry systems, which require separate links for each function being monitored, wireless MBAN systems could monitor all required functions and then aggregate the results and transmit them to a remote location for evaluation. The data could be uploaded to private clouds within hospital data centers and also to public cloud providers, such as Microsoft’s HealthVault.While medical wireless devices and their data will be regulated under HIPAA the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, one problem with consumer-grade wearable devices is that the information will likely be sent over unsecured networks to public cloud service providers.For example, consumers may upload workout and sleep monitoring data into online personal health records. “You don’t necessarily want many applications in different places, but in one centralized place,” Adhadome said. “Personal fitness records will be cloud based. It becomes a free-for-all in terms of where your data goes.”

Last year, the amount of information created and replicated surpassed 1.8 zettabytes 1.8 trillion gigabytes, growing by a factor of nine in just five years, according to IDC’s Digital Universe study.While 75% of the information in the digital universe is generated by individuals, less than one-third of all stored data today has even minimal security or protection. Only about half the information that should be protected is protected at all, IDC stated.

via Techworld.com

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Motorola Rolls Out First Ad for Moto X Smartphone

2013-07-04

Motorola has set a patriotic tone for its Moto X smartphone campaign, the company’s first since being acquired by Google last summer.

“What we are doing which is very different is assembling [Moto X smartphones] here in the U.S. in our assembly plant in Fort Worth, Texas,” Brian Wallace, Motorola’s VP-global brand and product marketing, said. “What better time than July 4th to come with a message like that?”

The ad will run as a full-page spread in the July 3 editions of The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, Motorola said. It’s Motorola’s first ad for its Moto X smartphone, and the copy and timing emphasize the re-branded company’s emphasis on freedom.

Behind it was Motorola’s new creative agency of record is independent shop Droga5, which won the business without a pitch. Assisting on the creative and strategy for the campaign will be Publicis Groupe’s Digitas.

Moto X will be “the first smartphone that you can design yourself,” the copy says. It promises that users will be able to design phones as unique as their personalities.

“Smartphones are very different than other tech products a consumer owns,” Mr. Wallace said. “They’re closer to shoes or a watch. You carry it with you everywhere you go. Everyone sees what phone you’re carrying and they judge you on it. Yet it’s the one thing you carry that’s the least customizable.”

Mr. Wallace declined to comment on which Moto X aspects will be available for personalization, and the ad doesn’t show the phone, but that its part of injecting what he called a “Googley attitude” into the company’s operations and brand image. The emergence of a (literally) colorful new Motorola started when the company debuted its new logo last week.

Motorola wants to do with phones what Google did with search, Mr. Wallace said.

The smartphone’s marketing will emphasize old-fashioned American patriotism. The ad touts Moto X as the “first smartphone designed, engineered and assembled in the USA.” Some Moto X components will be created abroad, but final assembly will occur domestically, Mr. Wallace said.

The tagline for Moto X is “Designed by you. Assembled in the USA.” Mr. Wallace said that while that may change as the campaign progresses, subsequent work will be in the same vein.

via Digital – Advertising Age.

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