Monday, June 18, 2018 at 3:00AM 
By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
Apple's HomePod is one of the most mystifying products in the market today. The most recent product category from Cupertino is essentially a Siri-powered Apple Music speaker with HomeKit inclinations.
After spending time with the device, however, I discovered a choc-full of innovative features and functions aimed to delight iPhone users.
Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 5:14PM 
Samsung partners with hotel operations platform ALICE to develop a new hotel management solution centered on the Gear S3. This new solution aims to help hotel staff answer customer requests more efficiently and quickly. For example, when a guest has a request, employees from the relevant department will get silent vibration alerts on their smartwatches. The hotel employee can simply tap on the screen to acknowledge that they are taking care of the task, which also allows managers to track the request in real-time. It will benefit hotel workers (like those involved in room service, repairs, cleaning, etc.) that are always on the move and need both hands to complete their tasks.
The Viceroy Hotel Group was the one who brought the partnership about and they will first employ the solution at the Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills hotel before it comes to their other properties around the world.
Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 5:02PM 
Beyoncé has just released a new joint album with her husband Jay-Z on his own streaming service Tidal (where the pop superstar is also a shareholder) and one of the songs find her taking a dig at competitor Spotify. Beyoncé doesn’t hold back in “Nice” as she sings "Patiently waiting for my demise / 'cause my success can't be quantified / If I gave two fucks about streaming numbers / would have put Lemonade up on Spotify." Bey’s 2016 album Lemonade was released exclusively on Tidal.
Called Everything Is Love, the album features nine tracks with each credited to the couple a.k.a. The Carters and comes in at under 40 minutes. Using their clout as one of the biggest power couples in the music industry, the album is definitely seen as a way to help turn Tidal’s fortunes. The streaming service has had its fair share of controversies recently—including allegations of late royalties and inflated streaming numbers. Whether this would help retain users is a different question. It could spike trial sign-ups and one-month subscriptions, but will people keep coming back to the service? We can’t say. We don’t have access to Tidal’s exact subscriber base but it’s believed to be far smaller than Spotify’s 75 million paid users (as of March) or Apple Music’s 50 million (as of May, with this number including trials).
Source: Engadget
Print Article Permalink tagged Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Spotify, Tidal Email Article in Entertainment, Music, News Sunday, June 17, 2018 at 4:38PM 
Leica adds a bit of style to the long-zoom, compact camera market with the introduction of the new C-Lux camera. What’s essentially a reskinned Panasonic Lumix ZS200, it features a 24-360mm F3.3-6.4 15x zoom lens, a 1-inch, 20.1-megapixel sensor, 49-point autofocus, 10 frames per second continuous shooting, 4K video recording capability (up to 30fps at a max of 100Mbps) with a 15-minute time limit. The C-Lux also comes with a 3-inch touchscreen and a viewfinder with 2.33 million-dot resolution. This camera also has support for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. Getting one of these will set you back US$1,050 (around CA$1,380). What will this US$250 markup get you? Two new color options: Light Gold (as seen above) and Midnight Blue.
Source: SlashGear
