Review: BlackBerry Leap

Text and photos by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The biggest feature of the BlackBerry Leap is its long-life battery. The 2800 mAh battery is rated to last for well over a day of heavy use and is the primary reason for the phone’s solid feel, weight and size. BlackBerry boasts that the Leap can last 25 hours on a full charge.

The past eight months have been a bountiful harvest for BlackBerry in terms of smartphone models. They introduced the BlackBerry Passport, the BlackBerry Classic and now they are pushing out the all-touch BlackBerry Leap as a midrange option.

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Oculus Rift announces it is shipping Q1 of 2016 with pre orders later this year

The much anticipated and widely copied AR/VR headset Oculus Rift is slated to finally ship in Q1 of 2016 with pre-orders beginning at the end of the year. This means that competition has a window to get a jump on the Oculus Rift before it makes it out to consumers.

The Rift delivers on the dream of consumer VR with compelling content, a full ecosystem, and a fully-integrated hardware/software tech stack designed specifically for virtual reality. It’s a system designed by a team of extremely passionate gamers, developers, and engineers to reimagine what gaming can be. Intrested developers can find out more here.

Applebot is Apple's in-house web crawler for Siri and Spotlight

Apple confirmed its Applebot web crawler which is an in-house search engine crawler. Applebot is currently used to power services like Siri and Spotlight on iOS and OS X platforms but could very well evolve as a standalone search engine if Apple finds that necessary (i.e. as a default search in its Safari browser). Note that Apple did not renew an agreement with Google for search service and since Apple has been shedding Google services (Maps) for some time now, it may decide to re-enter search even for its own uses.

Apple has historically worked on search engine functionality for the web, Sherlock was a huge feature of OS 9.

PanaCast 2 is the world’s first panoramic-4K USB camera with natural human perspective

Altia Systems launched the PanaCast 2 video camera, the industry’s first Panoramic-4K Plug-and-Play USB video camera. With its 180° wide, 54° tall field of view and Panoramic-4K resolution, PanaCast 2 delivers exceptionally clear video with a human visual perspective. It helps people collaborate more effectively, improving productivity. The new product simply plugs into a computer’s USB port and works with popular web collaboration apps, like Skype and WebEx.

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