J.J. Abrams calls out ‘Star Wars’ merchandise makers for lack of Rey merch

Hasbro has been on the receiving end of criticism as the company failed to include main protagonist Rey (played by Daisy Ridley) in the Star Wars edition of Monopoly, just one of the many merchandise released to promote Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The film’s director J.J. Abrams isn’t happy about this. “It seems preposterous and wrong that the main character of the movie is not well-represented in what is clearly a huge piece of the Star Wars world, in terms of merchandising,” Abrams told reporters on Saturday after a Television Critics Association panel for his new Hulu series 11.22.63.

Hasbro has released a statement earlier this week though that they plan to rectify the situation. "We love the passion fans have for Rey, and are happy to announce that we will be making a running change to include her in the Monopoly: Star Wars game later this year,” they said in the statement. Hasbro said she wasn’t included to avoid revealing a key plot line.

Source: Mashable

Lenovo and Google team up to create the first Project Tango smartphone

If you know Google’s Project Tango program, you’re in for a treat, a consumer version of the smartphone will be coming courtesy of Lenovo. Project Tango is Google’s device that comes with 3D-sensing technology. It allows for a completely different augmented reality experience than what you get from the current crop of smartphones and tablets. Project Tango makes use of computer vision and motion sensors as well as the accelerometer, gyroscope, and camera most mobile devices come with. This will allow for more immersive games and more accurate digital content overlaid on your surroundings.

Of course, something different like this would need new apps, but there are already some available on the Play Store as Google has been giving developer kits for Project Tango tablets since last year. The two companies are also launching an app incubator for those who want to create more apps for the platform. There are no details yet what the phone will look like and how much it’ll cost. But it should come out in the summer of 2016 and it’ll run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor.

Source: Mashable

CES 2016: Creative outs its smartest Bluetooth speaker

Creative has a lot of different kinds of speakers out on the market but they claim this newest one is the smartest yet. The iRoar, which won the CES Innovation Award for 2016, comes with a customizable open platform that lets users personalize the speaker as well as create apps and features to expand on it. It has software add-ons and expandable hardware platform. If developers want to create an app for it, they can do so.

In the hardware side, it comes with the company’s multi-core floating point SB-Axx1 processor, which is what Creative uses for their sound cards. It has dual two-inch drivers for high- and midrange frequencies and a 2.75-inch woofer with dual passive radiators on the side for lows. It has an amp for left and right channels and one for bass. Connectivity options are plenty on the iRoar, including a 3.5mm analog line-in, microUSB audio input, microSD card slot, USB female 1.5A port for charging, and TOSlink Optical input. It also supports NFC and codecs such as aptX, aptX low-latency, AAC, and SBC for wireless streaming. It’s already available on Creative’s site for US$369.99 (around $520). Other add-ons include the iRoar Mic (US$79.99 or roughly $110) and iRoar Rock subwoofer (US$149.99 or roughly $210).

Source: Creative + Android Community

Twitter’s stock hits an all-time low

Things aren’t looking good for Twitter. The stock price of the company hit below US$20 per share for the first time in its history. The news comes three days after CEO Jack Dorsey announced the company was exploring a 10,000-character limit instead of the existing 140-character limit. This should allow you to send out tweets of over 1,000 words with spaces between words and punctuation. For comparison, US President John F Kennedy’s inaugural speech was 1,366 words and it’ll be 1.5 times longer than America’s Declaration of Independence. Traders seem to not like the idea, even if there is no word yet if this’ll happen.

It’s going to be a tough road ahead for Dorsey and his team. Recent figures from Statista show Twitter’s user numbers have hit a plateau late last year, even if they’re trying out new ways to get new users. On the same front, Facebook and Instagram users still seem to grow strongly.

Source: The Next Web