Oculus buys eye-tracking company Eye Tribe

It isn’t surprising that Oculus has taken an interest in an eye-tracking technology. This Facebook-backed virtual reality company just purchased Eye Tribe. The Danish startup specializes in creating software developer kits that bring gaze-based controls to mobile devices and PCs. Oculus won’t talk about anything else outside of the acquisition, though. So, we have no word how much the deal cost, what will happen to Eye Tribe’s employees and the company itself after the purchase, or what Oculus plans to do with Eye Tribe’s technology.

However, it is easy to assume what we can expect to show up in the future. Eye Tribe has been working on a foveated rendering for VR, which is meant to boost VR performance by only rendering the part of the simulation the user is directly looking at. With this kind of technology, it’ll help improve immersion, help stop simulator sickness, and reduce performance bottlenecks.

Source: Engadget

Track time you spend on apps on your Mac with Usage

With the year coming to a close, it makes some of us reflective about our actions—and that includes our digital activity. If you want to improve productivity or your effectivity when it comes to your work, time-tracking apps can help. There’s a simple and free app for the Mac that tracks how much time you spend using a particular app on your computer. Called Usage, it keeps tabs on your app usage by day and shows how much you spend in each app. If you’re expecting more from it, you might be disappointed, though. It’s not the kind of app that cuts off use if it thinks (or you set it to think) that you’ve spent way too much time on a particular program. But if simple activity tracking is what you need, Usage might be worth a look.

Source: Lifehacker

Periscope gets 360-degree livestreaming

Not to be left behind by Facebook, Twitter is offering “select partners” a chance to livestream 360-degree videos on the Periscope platform. Much like how it works on Facebook, you’ll be able to see all of what the camera catches by moving the phone around or tapping and scrolling through the screen of your phone. On the desktop, you just click and drag to see what’s happening. There will be a badge that shows up on Periscope and Twitter to show if someone is livestreaming a 360-degree video. The feature is rolling out to users now so just wait for it to head your way.

If you’re a creator and interested in streaming, Periscope seems to be promoting the Insta360 Nano camera. But if you want to use other 360-degree cameras, the company said you can experiment with these using the Periscope Producer service. However, just because you’re a creator and have a 360-degree camera, it doesn’t mean you can start streaming. Periscope hasn’t given the names of the partners it’s working with at the moment. But they’ve said interested parties can join the waitlist. Periscope hasn’t specified either if this will be a creator-exclusive feature or if it’ll open it to more users.

Source: VentureBeat

Review: Apple AirPods

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

I would say that Apple has had two major innovations for 2016. The first would be TouchBar on the new MacBook Pros and the second are the Apple AirPods.

The TouchBar, I hear, was actually in development for many years with the price of OLED touch panels a huge factor in integrating it into the MacBook Pros. The AirPods, which are a culmination of various Apple technologies and the biggest answer to the, “why get rid of the headphone jack?” question remind us why Apple shouldn’t be counted out of the innovation game.

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