Amazon purchases Blink to expand its connected home lineup

Amazon’s latest acquisition shows us how the company is taking the expansion of its connected home line very seriously. They just bought Blink, the company behind the wire-free home monitoring system. Blink offers both an indoor and outdoor home security camera models as well as a video doorbell. According to Blink, nothing will change for the company and its customers now and they will continue to operate as usual and support clients as needed.

Source: Engadget

Apple hires three Amazon Studios execs

Planet of the Apps is Apple's first venture into making an original TV show

While Apple lost one of its chip designers to Google, they’ve gained three new executives from Amazon Studios. One of them is Tara Sorensen, who has led Amazon’s children programming. She will be taking on a similar role at Apple. She will be reporting to Apple’s chief content officers Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg. She’s joined by Amazon’s international development executive Carina Walker and business affairs chief Tara Pietri. Walker will also serve as an international creative executive for Apple where she will report to fellow Amazon alum Morgan Wandell, while Pietri will leads Apple’s legal affairs division. The move shows us how heavily Apple is pushing its original programming agenda.

Source: Variety

Google snaps up key Apple chip designer

While we don’t know what Google has up its sleeve, its latest hire gives us an idea of what we could possibly expect from the tech company. Google just hired John Bruno, the founder and head of Apple’s silicon competitive analysis group, which is basically the team that helped give the iPhone and iPad processors and edge over competition. It isn’t clear yet what he’ll do for Google but his job title, as seen on LinkedIn is listed as “System Architect.” Bruno began his career at ATI and later became chief engineer at AMD, while there he led the design of Fusion processors.

Google has been taking in new talent, including veterans from Qualcomm, which makes it look like they’re looking to create more custom processors. The only chip that is currently made in-house is the Pixel 2’s Pixel Visual Core imaging chip. We can only speculate if Google is looking to create a full-fledged processor for its phones or build more specialized chips to make their products stand out more. We’re sure we’ll find out soon enough what the company is up to.

Source: Engadget

Niantic’s ‘Pokémon GO’ gets exclusive experience on iPhone and iPad with new AR+ Mode

Niantic Inc. and The Pokémon Company are taking full advantage of Apple’s augmented reality capabilities courtesy of the ARKit framework with a new feature they’re introducing into Pokémon GO. A new AR+ Mode is coming to iOS 11 devices that include the iPhone 6s and newer, iPad 5^th generation, and all iPad Pro models. If you activate AR+ feature in encounter mode, this puts the individual Pokémon you encounter more accurately positioned within your surroundings. With the help of ARKit’s 3D AR scaling, its size will also be more accurately based with perspective and size changing depending on whether you move closer or further away from the creature.

Speaking of moving closer, those who do get closer have a chance to get special capture bonus but you also must know that the Pokémon will be aware of your proximity so it might flee if you come too close too quickly. But some of the benefits of being in AR+ Mode include being awarded things like Expert Handler bonus, which gives you more XP and Stardust.