Hublot debuts US$5,200 Wear OS smartwatch

After discarding the Android Wear name, Google’s Wear OS platform is well and truly alive. It finds home in some of the big fashion brands like Tag Heuer, Kate Spade, and others. Joining the fray is another LVMH brand, Hublot. (LVMH also owns Tag Heuer.) The watchmaker is making a limited edition US$5,200 Wear OS smartwatch called the Big Bang Referee 2018 World Cup Russia watch, which as you suspect is helping promote this year’s World Cup. There will only be 2,018 units made and some of these will be given to the referees. It will, as Hublot details have the referees’s watches “connected to goal-line technology, an electronic video assistance system for refereeing which follows all the trajectories of the ball and determines for certain if the ball did or did not entirely cross the goal line. “

On top of this, wearers will also be alerted 15 minutes before kickoff of any match, player changes, whenever goals are made, and red/yellow cards. The watch will also get a special watch face during matches that will show things like the current score, player substitutions, number of cards/goals, and the match time. The Big Bang Referee 2018 World Cup Russia watch features a 49mm titanium body, six H-separated screws along the bezel, and Kevlar insert. The watch will go on sale starting May 1^st at Hublot shops.

Source: Android Central

Amazon becomes the world’s second most valuable company

The e-commerce giant overtakes Google as the world’s second most valuable company. Amazon has had its stock skyrocket for the past couple of years with things like the popularity of its shopping services, Alexa-powered devices, and even its offline efforts like the Go store and the acquisition of Whole Foods. Basically, as Android Authority points out, it’s due to the company being a market leader in several businesses. Amazon has overtaken Google’s parent company Alphabet with the former now valued at US$768 billion and the latter at $716 billion. Apple remains the world’s most valuable company with a market cap of $889 billion.

Facebook Messenger adds admin privileges and joinable links

Facebook Messenger is helping users gain more control over group chats with new features the social network is introducing. One is the introduction of admin privileges into group chats. An administrator of a group chat will be able to do things like approve or remove members from group chats as well as promote or demote any person in a group chat into an admin. This is particularly useful for big groups where you’d want to moderate who joins the chat. Another new feature that is coming to Facebook Messenger will make it easier to add users to group chats. There will now be custom invite links that you can send out to someone if you want them to join your chat group. Those who click on the link will be added automatically, unless admin approval is needed.

HTC Vive Focus will come to ‘global markets,’ development kits are already available

HTC just announced that it plans to bring its standalone Vive Focus to “global markets.” Now, which markets these are, they haven’t specified yet, but it will be coming “later this year.” On top of this, HTC announced they are “making Vive Focus developer kits available to registered developers in most countries through our developer portal, starting today.” What differentiates the Vive Focus from other HTC Vive virtual reality headsets and its competition is that it doesn’t need to be tethered to a PC to work. It makes use of its own custom hardware and features “Six Degrees of Freedom” (6DoF) tracking, which means you can move around similar to what you can do with the original Vive and even Oculus Rift but all of the tracking, processing, and connectivity parts are housed within the headset itself.

Source: Android Central