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Swivl iPhone dock a step towards learning in the future

Swivl robotic tripod

The thought of watching a 2-hour university lecture shot on an iPhone is enough to induce sick-sickness in most of us. What if instead of shaky handheld video, the lecture was shot on a stable, robotic tripod?

Swivl is this exactly. Touted by its creators as your ‘personal cameraman’, the iPhone-ready mount tracks a target sensor which, if worn by an educator, could deliver the shake-free university videos that could act as a stepping stone towards a future of school where attendance isn’t mandatory.

The target sensor also doubles as a wireless microphone for Swivl, which is compatible with iOS devices. The mount is design to be used primarily with iPhones, and Swivl has created an app for iOS that allows for remote capture and audio recording.

That said, the mount can also hold a similarly-sized Android device, plus it has a standard tripod mount and can support the weight of a compact camera.

Flippin’ school

Those in this industry are calling this ‘flipped education’; a new learning paradigm where the core teaching materials can be pre-recorded and studied at a student’s own pace. This also frees up class time to focus on practical, experience-based learning.

This vision is supported by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Grishin who is investing US$500,000 in Swivl in an effort to make it classroom-ready. This money comes out of Grishin Robotics, an investment company with the lofty goal of “supporting personal robotics around the world”. You can almost here an army of them marching towards us now.

Of course, if all this talk of university lecture halls is giving you a case of the “who cares”, there are a number of other awesome uses for a Swivl robo-cameraman. You could clip the sensor to a toddler and record them as they crawl about your living room, for example.

Swivl is selling units now for US$199 plus shipping for international customers. It runs on AA batteries, but you can also fork out a bit extra for a travel adapter.

Posted in Mobile Phones |
 

Durable Phones the Next Big Thing?

In 2013, smartphones are all about the features. HTC has Boomsound, Blinkfeed and the Zoe camera, while Samsung has a plethora of S-branded apps, including a health monitor and universal TV remote. Meanwhile, we’ve seen mostly incremental changes in hardware, with slightly faster processors, bumps in RAM and larger screens.

You definitely get the feeling that the big-name phone makers are treading water waiting for tech advancements. A few years ago there were big tech problems to solve. Smartphone user interfaces were jerky, slow and boring to look at, so they created more powerful hardware and larger capacity batteries to power it all. Even mobile broadband is going through a massive change in the form of 4G LTE networks which are typically faster than fixed line broadband speeds.

As consumer demands are met our priorities change. In the past it was hardware, this year it’s features.

What’s next?

We think it’s durability. Once features and UI have been dealt with durability is the next logical problem to tackle. Obviously hardware, features, UIs, cameras and all that other jazz will never stop evolving with new technology and market demands, but like we said earlier they can take a back seat for a while.

The Coming Age of Durability

You don’t have to search hard to find demonstrations dedicated to the ease at which a GS4 will shatter on contact with the pavement. It’s no surprise then that rumours about ‘indestructible screens’ are resurfacing.

These rumours about bendable, shatter-proof displays that are ‘coming soon’ have been around for a long time, and have been slowly gaining momentum every year as LG and Samsung show off how far their respective research has come. Of course, tech rumours are notoriously unreliable and usually reflect nothing more than wishful thinking; but not so with bendy screens.

Last month, according to BGR and The Wall Street Journal, Yoon Bu-hyun, VP of LG Mobile, confirmed that the company would be launching a phone with a flexible OLED display before the end of 2013. Just a couple of days ago LG went further, announcing its plans to show off a 5-inch bendable and ‘unbreakable’ OLED display at the Society for Information Display (SID) trade show.

Admittedly, expecting a device with a shatter-proof display sometime this year still feels a bit on the hopeful side. But if LG’s demo is up to scratch then there’s no reason we won’t see the next generation of high-enders start to sport this kind of thing.

Flexible OLED Challenges

OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology relies on light-emitting organic materials. These materials can be adhered to a transparent surface, after which they can function as a regular display. Of course the overall concept is a bit more complex, but this is the basic principle.

Among the many benefits of OLED technology is that it is flexible. Thus an OLED display is really only limited by what kind of transparent surface it’s been adhered to and not by the light and image-generating tech doing all the work.

Image Credit: The Verge

The biggest issue facing flexible OLED tech right now is the adherence process itself. Currently the main method being employed by Samsung, LG and other OLED TV manufacturers requires a lot of heat. So much heat that any flexible plastics that could be used as a display melt or warp as a result, leaving glass and more rigid, brittle polymers as the only alternative.

In the past few years LG and Samsung have been having success with new methods to adhere the OLED tech to bendy panels, but the process is often time consuming, making it both expensive and untenable from a mass-production viewpoint.

As more research is poured in to OLED new methods are discovered and old ones become more refined. If LG has truly discovered a fast and affordable method of OLED-to-flexible material application then that would be a huge step towards providing consumer-level bendy screens.

Free the Designers!

Not only would a shatter-proof screen mean great impact resistance, said durability would allow for devices with minuscule bezels. Or no bezels.

Bezels aren’t just there due to hardware restrictions; they also serve as a protective buffer that can absorb much of the shock from an impact before passing it on to the more fragile display. Removing the protective component frees up designers significantly.

As far as the engineering restrictions of bezels go (specifically, it’s difficult to make a screen without them), a bendable screen would be able to bend its bezels around the edge, freeing up the entire front of the device for the usable part of the screen.

There you have it: an edge-to-edge display that is immune to shattering and that presents few engineering problems for the designer. At least in a perfect world. Not being engineers ourselves there’s bound to be obstacles that we haven’t or couldn’t consider, but at the very least it’s possible, if not plausible.

One more piece of great news for the designers lies in the thinness of OLED displays. Traditional displays always require a light source to be situated behind the image-creating panel. For example, a little-known fact is that an LED display is just an LCD display that is lit by light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of by CCFL or another kind of light source.

OLED displays create their own light, totally eliminating the need for this secondary source. As such they can be much thinner than any other display on the market; quite literally almost paper-thin, while still providing great images and even better contrast than an LED alternative. A tonne of development already goes in to making smartphones as thin as possible. This benefit alone would be enough to get designers on board.

As a bi-product of producing their own light, OLED displays also boast unparalleled viewing angles and astounding energy efficiency. In short, OLED tech is a shoe-in to be the next big thing, once manufacturers can make it a bit more affordable.

Sony Almost Had It

Sony has already taken a step in the direction of durability, albeit with limited success. The Sony Xperia Z and Xperia ZR are two such examples: two high-end smartphones built around water resistance, rather than screen durability.

More than resistant, the Xperia ZR can record HD video underwater — a first for smartphones; albeit one with a niche appeal. What’s far more likely to grab the attention of the masses is ‘if you drop this phone in the toilet it won’t break’ or ‘fall in a pool with this in your pocket and everything will be fine’.

A water resistant phone addresses a real and common issue that people face with smartphones, and yet, the Xperia Z is experiencing far less popularity than the One and Galaxy S4. Why is that?

There are a multitude of reasons you can point to. Sony’s 1080p display, while impressive, doesn’t stand up to the quality of the screens in the One and GS4. Similarly, it has a 13-megapixel camera, but it lacks the bells and whistles of the competition, like HTC’s Zoe camera features, or Samsung’s Action Shots. At the end of the day, it could come down to who has more money to spend on billboard space and TV adverts.

Overall Sony was thinking in the right direction, but not at the right time. Once the new software features; 1080p screens and better cameras are out of the way; it’ll be time to focus on enhancing durability. But in the meantime what’s the point in grabbing a high-end durable device if it’s not really ‘high end’ in terms of user experience?

When Can We Have One?

It all depends on how cheaply and how well LG, Samsung and the other screen makers can manufacture this new breed of display. They’ve been on their way for a long time now, showing improvements with every passing year.

In fact, they’ve been ‘on their way’ for so long that without this LG announcement we would have figured consumer-level application two or three years off at least. Even with the announcement things are less than certain; manufacturers are renowned for grandiose deadlines that run months, sometimes years overdue.

If the technology is viable we expect to see it pick up momentum next year in 2014, with a prototype or two at the end of this calendar year. As we’ve pointed out, market trends follow the demands of customers. Demands are often based on problems that need fixing, rather than new cool stuff that people want to play with. Screen durability has needed attention for a long time, but plausible solutions are only just now surfacing. We can see no reason for manufacturers to back away from this opportunity.

At this point in the game no one can deny that smartphone breakages are an issue; we just haven’t really had a viable solution yet. Sturdy phones always end up being a bit too chunky. The lack of inherent style relegates them to the realm of mid-to-low end devices. But a shatter-proof screen coupled with Sony’s approach to water-resistance that could feature on a flagship device would definitely turn a head or two for the first, second or even third company that can get theirs out on shelves. Especially if said screen is the thinnest, lightest and most energy-efficient on the market.

Image Source: The Verge

Posted in Mobile Phones, Tablets | Tagged , ,
 

Samsung and EC Working on 5G

4G’s boring, bring on the 5G. At least, that’s what Samsung seems to think, after it reported successful tests of up to a whopping 1Gbps down on what it’s labelling as the next 5G mobile broadband technology.

To be clear, this isn’t the ‘5G WiFi’ that we’re seeing crop up. ‘5G WiFi’ is actually just a new form of home WiFi that is more accurately called 802.11ac, as we mentioned in our 5G WiFi Explained post. This 5G test by Samsung was the real-deal, which Samsung hopes to provide to customers by 2020.

Interestingly enough, the European Commission also has plans to develop and provide 5G broadband by 2020, having already announced €50 in research to be put towards 5G within that time. The move makes sense, as Europe is hardly at what one could call the forefront of 4G LTE adoption. The EC hopes to even the score by  focusing on putting Europe ahead with the next phase of tech, rather than solely playing a game of catch-up with 4G.

By 2020 worldwide mobile traffic alone will reach a 33 times increase compared to 2010 figures. In this time Internet access will become dominated by wireless devices such as smartphones, tablets, machines and sensors, requiring more efficient and ubiquitous technology to carry the data traffic.

Every sector of the economy is going digital. Every EU business and citizen needs to know they can enjoy easy-to-use, reliable and fast Internet on the move. This new wave of research projects promises to bring cutting-edge ultra-high-speed mobile broadband technology to the daily lives of Europeans.

-via The European Commission

No 5G standard has arisen yet, with research teams around the world all trying to figure out what direction will provide the best mix or reliability, speed, range, building penetration and cost.

Samsung’s own 1Gbps test required 64 antennas to be successful, a minor problem that Samsung doesn’t feel shows problematic signs for its 2020 target.

Despite these impressive speeds there’s no reason to get excited just yet; there is no telling how fast any future 5G standard may be. 1Gbps could end up being one of those unrealistically-fast lab tests that are often thrown around and have nothing to do with actual usage statistics. Then again, 1Gbps may very well be slower than eventual real-world 5G speeds. There’s just no way of knowing at this point.

What we are sure of is that, once 5G starts getting more press and as we approach 2020, we’re sure to start seeing people vocally wondering why we don’t just switch everything over to 5G. If it’s so fast and it doesn’t need wires, why not use it for everything?

The answer is: a lot of reasons. Speed isn’t everything for a broadband network. A national infrastructure requires a lot more reliability than a wireless alternative can afford. Perhaps one day wireless will completely replace landline broadband technologies. But that day is probably further off than many of us would like to believe.

5G is definitely an exciting prospect, but we’ll be waiting a while longer before we can finally ditch that cord and go totally cable-free.

Sources: European Commision and Samsung Tomorrow

Posted in Broadband, Mobile Phones, Tablets | Tagged , ,
 

Optus Network Event, May 2013

Optus held a network event today in which it announced its recent 3GPlus accomplishments and outlined plans for 4G expansion in the near future. The overall focus of the last few months’ worth of data was to do with 3GPlus coverage and consolidation across most of Australia, with particular attention paid towards increasing indoor coverage.

The 4G LTE info was a bit more interesting. It pertained to a new TD-LTE network that has just today launched in Canberra. TD-LTE is different to the more commonly-used FD-LTE currently employed by both Telstra and Optus, as well as foreign providers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless in the US. FD-LTE is the 4G LTE that Australians have come to know and love over the last year or so.

The ‘TD’ stands for ‘Time Division’ and is a different kind of LTE to the more common ‘Frequency Division’ LTE. Both standards are based on the same LTE technology, but operate in a different way.

A good analogy could be that where Frequency Division (FD) operates over two separate channels, one for uploading and one for downloading, Time Division (TD) uses just one for both. As a result the ratio between how much bandwidth is allocated to upload and how much to download can be more drastically controlled in TD, as any part of the overall signal that isn’t being used for one direction of transfer (usually upload is the under-utilised action) can then be utilised by the other (in most cases providing faster download speeds). In FD this is not really possible, as any under-utlised portion of the upload channel cannot then be given over to boosting download bandwidth.

Optus’ TD-LTE network has been tentatively estimated to provide a ratio of 3:1 in this respect, with download receiving triple the preference of upload.

Optus 3GPlus Expansion

Over the last couple of years Optus has focus on improving its 3G Network, as well as breaking ground on new 4G technologies.

It makes sense that 4G developments would get more media coverage, being the new and exciting tech in town. But despite the impressive abilities of 4G, as well as the potential future uses that offers, 3G is still very much the backbone of Aussie mobile carriers. Optus openly admits this, referring to 3G as ‘the workhorse’ of the Optus network.

While 4G offers much faster speeds, it’ll be a while yet until it can be pushed out to a lot of Australians, so it makes sense that Optus would continue 3G improvements until 4G can viably take over as the new ‘workhorse’ for the greater part of Optus’ national customers.

As such Optus has been not only expanding the range and indoor strength of its 3G, but has also been upgrading to what it calls “3GPlus”. 3GPlus is essentially a dual-channel (DC) 3G network based on HSPA+ technology. It can offer speeds up to twice as fast as traditional 3G HSPA+ and doesn’t require the user to own a 4G-capable device. That being said, dual-channel systems like 3GPlus don’t work on every 3G device; like 4G they require handsets and modems that possess the correct hardware.

Unlike 4G, dual-channel support has become common in even low-end devices. Many of Optus’ customers who live outside 4G areas, or do not yet have a 4G-enabled phone, should receive the benefits of this DC 3G rollout.

Some specific areas that Optus has begun focusing on are tourist destinations and areas in which festivals and public events are regularly held. Many of these locations see sudden spikes in usage during the holiday season, or during regularly recurring events. Optus has been seeking to boost 3G reception in these areas in recognition of users’ desire to upload and view photos, connect over social media and use websearch while at events.

We like the thinking behind this and, while it’s a fairly simple concept that one would already expect to be understood by all carriers, both national and foreign, it’s still nice to be reassured that the technology providers that are the backbone of modern culture understand what their services are being used for, when, why and by whom.

Optus already covers 98% of Australians on 3G, with 92% receiving indoor coverage. Over the next 24 months plans are in place to expand indoor 3GPlus to cover 95% of the Australian population, with a further 1000 sites targeted for activation.

4G TD-LTE and FD-LTE Expansion

Optus intends to cover 70% of Australia’s metro population with 4G LTE, using a mix of both TD-LTE and FD-LTE, by mid-2014. This is an impressive goal, considering that when the iPhone made its US debut back in 2007 Optus covered just 60% of the Aussie population (overall; not just metro) with 3G technologies. Not only that, but said 3G technologies would now be considered outdated, even by users who are still restricted to 3G, and have for the most part been replaced or upgraded.

In just two years between ’07 and ’09 that number jumped to a whopping 96% of all Australians. While the 4G expansion can’t be expected to take this exact route, as different technologies present challenges for wide-spread implementation, this definitely leaves us with a hopeful view of what Australian broadband coverage could look like 4 or 5 years from now. But we digress.

For now, Optus will be starting with 12 TD-LTE base stations in Canberra, with a further 20 to be installed over the next ‘few’ months. Further clarification indicated this time frame to be between the third and fourth quarters of this calendar year.

2300MHz TD-LTE sites launched today in Canberra

TD-LTE Device Compatibility

Currently the biggest hurdle that Optus will face with this new TD-LTE rollout is device compatibility. Unfortunately for both Optus and its users alike, FD-ready handsets won’t simply be able to switch over to and work on a TD network. As such Optus should expect a small amount of fragmentation during the initial stages of this new dual-band approach to 4G networking.

The issue will hopefully be short lived. Already countries like Japan have handsets that are both FD and TD enabled. Optus is already in talks with Japanese telco Softbank to provide TD-enabled smartphones within the next year. In the meantime, however, Optus customers may experience a little confusion between the two different kinds of 4G LTE being pushed out by their provider.

In June Optus will begin its TD device rollout with a dongle and WiFi hotspot modem. These devices will function on both the TD-LTE 2300MHz network being rolled out in Canberra, as well as on Optus’ current 1800MHz FD-LTE networks in other areas of Australia.

Dual-band TD-LTE and FD-LTE Coverage

Eventually Optus hopes to have a dual-band 4G network held up by both TD and FD LTE coverage that works on bi-capable devices. Such a network should be able to handle a heavy capacity of bandwidth, especially when distributed over multiple MHz frequencies.

Optus recently acquired a decent chunk of the 700MHz and 2500MHz spectrum bands. While the 2500MHz end is of such a high frequency that it will likely only be used as overflow to better handle congestion, the 700MHz frequency is low enough that it should provide a great basis for 4G LTE coverage.

Low-band frequencies travel further and penetrate solid matter, like buildings, with greater effectiveness. They are better in every way at providing clear and efficient communication networks. As such they are in greater demand, leading to enforced restrictions of how much of each frequency individual telcos are allowed to licence.

These 2500MHz and 700MHz bands, available to Optus (and the other carriers who successfully bid for a piece of them) in 2015, coupled with the already-active 1800MHz and 2300MHz Optus frequencies, provide Optus with what it’s calling “an unrivalled capacity stack”.

What this means is that, while Telstra may be in front of Optus in terms of area coverage, Optus has the capability to handle a greater number of simultaneous users within its 4G-enabled areas. Greater capacity support means faster speeds in heavy-use areas and should help maintain a connection in what might otherwise be a totally blocked area due to traffic congestion, such as what a user might experience at a live music festival.

Optus’ Future

Optus representatives were hesitant to comment on much of what Optus expects in terms of customer draw or what suppliers will be involved with the TD expansion.

In terms of further LTE expansion both TD-LTE and FD-LTE will continue to be increased across Australia. FD-LTE will keep spreading out on the 1800MHz band while Canberra (at first) will see more 2300MHz TD-LTE in the near future. Some sites will start seeing dual-band (both TD and FD) support in the foreseeable future as well, so that Optus can begin experimenting with providing a more stable backbone that utilises both technologies. Obviously this kind of operation requires customers who have both kinds of devices, or devices that support both TD and FD, in order to generate useful information. As such we don’t expect to see any dual band area data until after June/July at the earliest.

The question of voice over LTE was also raised, which is something that is being toyed around with in other countries at the moment. Andrew Smith, Vice President of Mobile Radio Engineering, responded that this is in the cards, but currently there are no real plans. LTE over voice is not an incidental obstacle and requires a certain level of signal strength, coverage and accuracy to provide quality communication. Currently Optus is preferring to focus on building a stable 4G infrastructure so that it can move in to the more technical side of 4G services in the future.

Translation: Voice over LTE isn’t coming any time soon, which isn’t really a big deal anyway.

Ultimately Optus looks to be in a fairly strong position as far as Australia’s 4G future is concerned. Obviously Telstra is still the biggest player here, with its much-larger coverage and shifting focus to faster LTE Advanced (LTE-A) technologies.

Optus has taken a different path – choosing to buckle down and build a dual-band 4G LTE solution that has the potential to provide its users with a more stable backbone, but at the expense of area coverage in the short-term.

What we’re most keen to see is how well Optus will handle this initial TD/FD LTE device fragmentation. It could end up being a big issue or it may come and go without making any real impact in the public domain. It really depends on the kind of device support that Optus can get within the next 12-24 months.

We would be more curious to see any noticeable difference in speed between TD and FD LTE users, but by Optus’ own admission today TD may offer faster max speeds, but mobile device users probably won’t even notice any difference between TD and FD. Few users with mobile broadband connections ever utilise more than around 15Mbps in terms of bandwidth. The difference between 50Mbps and 60Mbps isn’t going to make much of a noticeable impact. Like we said, Optus’ current goal appears to be more keyed towards providing a solid infrastructure from which it can build a reliable and heavy-load 4G network, rather than short-term gains in 4G speeds.

Compare Optus mobile phone plans and prices

Posted in Broadband, Mobile Phones, Tablets | Tagged , , , ,
 

The Dark Side Of Life Insurance

A decade ago, public outrage ensued when it was revealed US retail juggernaut Wal-Mart had been secretly purchasing life insurance policies for its low-level employees, such as janitors and shelf fillers. Especially unfortunate for the company: the practice of buying ‘dead peasant policies’ was and still is illegal in a majority of US states. Wal-Mart routinely took out policies without its employees’ knowledge, and collected tens of thousands of dollars when a member of entry-level staff died – none of which was shared with the deceased’s relatives. When the scheme was exposed in the mid-1990s, the corporation was heavily criticised for profiting from the deaths of its employees, and taking advantage of tax loopholes to deduct the premiums paid on the policies.

Political philosophy professor Michael Sandel used the example of dodgy insurance dealings – in particular, the Wal-Mart case – to illustrate how human activity, and human life, is now priced and commoditised in what he calls a ‘market society’. Sandel describes the idea that companies have a financial interest in the mortality of their employees as ‘moral tawdriness’, and in the example of Wal-Mart’s secret policies, this tawdriness becomes even more apparent. But if companies aren’t killing off their staff – and in the case of life settlements (which we’ll look at below), third-party investors don’t even know the identity of the people whose deaths they’re betting on – are these practices really that tawdry, or more an acceptable financial investment?

Most people can agree that the life and health insurance industries are, in theory, ethically fine. Leaving aside problems with companies refusing to pay up, and similar consumer affairs horror stories, the idea of taking out insurance isn’t something that many Australians would have a problem with morally – most would consider it a wise investment in the future of their dependents, and your insurance company has nothing to gain from you falling ill or passing away.

However, when third parties get involved in other people’s insurance decisions, not everybody is feeling as okay with the practice. Gambling on the lives of strangers is, generally, seen as a moral taboo; traditionally, insurance has been restricted to those who already had an insurable interest in a person, e.g. family. The controversial (and, arguably, pretty scummy) actions of companies such as Wal-Mart – that chose to invest in the early deaths of employees – raise questions about the ethics of trading on the mortality of others.

Contrary to the ‘dead peasant’ policy, ‘key man policies’ are routinely used to protect businesses where a crucial member of staff such as a director, partner or unique contributor would be difficult to replace easily, and could cost the company significant financial loss in the event of their death. In Australia, these policies are legal but not usually tax deductible, and exist only to offset the temporary financial costs (e.g. hiring and training a replacement) and losses (decreased profit until the employee is replaced) that would arise from the death of a key staff member.

In Wal-Mart’s case, cleaners and cashiers, while providing a valuable service, are not especially difficult or costly to hire and train, so the company argued that the tax benefits gained from insuring their lives would be used for ‘benevolent’ purposes, such as medical benefits for employees. Unsurprisingly, the US government was not convinced, ending the tax deduction Wal-Mart had been exploiting and pursuing the retail chain for back taxes.

Although Wal-Mart has stopped its practice of taking out policies on employees, investing in the lives of strangers continues to be a legitimate and legal way to make money. A new form of investing developed from the ‘viaticals’ market in the early 1990s, in which investors bought out insurance policies held by AIDS sufferers. The policy holder would receive a lump sum to pay for their care during the illness; when the patient died, the policy paid out, leaving the invested party with a nice return. Sadly for investors, medical advances meant afflicted policyholders began outlasting their life expectancies, and the market was no longer a viable way to make money.

Since then, this practice has been replaced by life settlements – the sale of an existing life insurance policy to a third party for more than its cash value, but less than the death benefit. In other words, people who no longer need their life insurance, or can no longer afford premiums, can either cancel their policy and receive no benefit, or sell their policy to an interested third party, who will pay them a percentage of the sum insured (usually around 15%).

It’s a market that earns $120 billion annually in the US, and has become popular with investors because the outcome isn’t linked to the performance of investment markets – it’s considered a long-term investment with a ‘high probability’ of reaping an attractive return. However, the risk is that the person insured lives for too long, so premiums paid by an investor are more than the insured amount. Basically: it’s an investment that relies on a stranger dying as soon as possible in order to see favourable returns.

In Australia, the practice is still relatively new, with most Australian managed funds involved in life settlement investing in US policies. However, it’s still possible to sell your life insurance to a settlement company here, although there are strict criteria in place. Australians wishing to cash in their policy must:

  • Own a policy issued by an Australian life insurer
  • Have held that policy for a minimum of two years
  • Be eligible for benefits of between $50,000 and $5 million
  • Be aged 65 years or older
  • Have health impairments which are likely to reduce their life expectancy to 12 years or less

Australians interested in selling on their unwanted policies can do so through a financial planner, broker or attorney.

While there are obvious benefits for policyholders looking to unload no-longer-needed insurance – policy holders receive more cash back than if they had surrendered their policy back to the insurance company – it’s not always such a great deal for investors, especially considering some US firms have been investigated for providing greatly underestimated life expectancies for their clients. The fact that it’s a form of investing which profits from someone’s demise is enough to put off many potential clients, who are probably creeped out at the idea of death as a smart way to diversify your portfolio.

Ultimately, it’s up to individuals to determine where their moral compass lies. Considering that there are already plenty of publicly traded companies raking in profits from activities directly detrimental to the health, wealth and safety of communities and individuals, perhaps this form of gambling on human life really isn’t that offensive after all. But there seems to be something especially unsavoury about a product that relies solely on the death of another human being in order for buyers to get a return, and it remains to be seen whether this unusual ‘investment opportunity’ will ever really take off in Australia.

Photo credit: Dave Hunt / Flickr

Posted in Life Insurance |
 

Google Launches Play Games

Among the tonne of stuff that Google dropped on developers and the tech community during the I/O 2013 event is its new and widely-expected cross-platform, unified Play Games service. Play Games will feature on Android, iOS and Chrome, providing a single and unified user experience across not just multiple devices but multiple ecosystems.

The Play Games services include:

  • Cloud Saving
  • Achievements
  • Leaderboards
  • Multiplayer

By far the biggest (and our favourite) of these four is cloud saving. From now on, any game that has been linked to the Play Games service can upload saved games, characters and game-states to the cloud, finally providing users with a single gaming experience no matter what device they’re playing on.

This means that users can be playing a game on their Android smartphone or iPhone, save it, and switch to a tablet or vice-versa whenever they want without having to start again or juggle various accounts. So long as the Play Games service on each device is linked to the same Google account, this is all as easy as opening the game and hitting Load or Continue.

This kind of cloud storage has already been employed by services like Xbox Live and Steam and it’s high time that it came to mobile devices. After all, mobile gaming now accounts for a massive chunk of video game activity globally, with the number and consistency of casual gamers increasing every day as smartphones continue to proliferate and the quality of mobile gaming and network coverage improves.

Another great facet of this is that users can delete a game, or buy a new device, only to re-download it and continue on where they previously left off. Anyone who’s ever deleted an old game to spare a bit of storage space, only to want to return to it months down the track will see the value in this.

So what is required on the user-end to enjoy this new service? Android 2.2 Froyo or above. That’s it. Play Games will be rolled out to every Android device with 2.2 or higher. That’s pretty close to every single active Android handset and definitely every Android tablet in use right now.

The cherry on top that we keep coming back to is that this isn’t and Android and Chrome-specific service; it’s also available for iOS users and on Chrome. Cross-ecosystem compatibility has been dying out in recent years, with Google, Apple and Microsoft all trying to make their own specific devices work better within their contained ecosystems in order to encourage brand loyalty. It’s great to see Google bridging the gap, even in this small way, with a service that’s bound to make a lot of people happy, even if they don’t realise who’s behind it.

Achievements and Leaderboards should be pretty self-explanatory. The achievements system allows players to earn points based on in-game tasks and challenges and Leaderboards allow friendly competition between friends, or can show the user their global public ranking for the game. Leaderboards are shown through Google+ in a much more aesthetically-oriented manner than one would generally associate with the concept. Still, it’s based on Google+ which currently only has 130 million active monthly users, as opposed to Facebook which has closer to one billion.

Multiplayer could definitely be a lot of fun if Google does it well. The problem with Multiplayer games is that they require a stable and a fast connection. With 4G LTE proliferating the ‘fast’ part isn’t a problem. Still, stability will be key.

Allowing users to compete against one another casually on their phones via a central Google hub has great potential. Rather than a poorly-coded and under-supported 3rd party server system, Google has a vested interest in making this work. Goodness knows Google has the server space and bandwidth necessary. We’re confident that multiplayer will at least be usable, despite an embarrassing failure to actually demonstrate the feature during the IO presentation.

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Google ‘All Access’ Takes on Spotify

One of the bigger announcements at Google I/O 2013 was Google’s new All Access service. All Access is a subscription-based streaming service being launched initially in the US for $9.99 per month and eventually elsewhere for what will hopefully prove to be comparable prices.

The closest pre-existing comparison that one can draw to All Access, and indeed that is being drawn constantly around the web, is with Spotify. In fact, Spotify may be in a bit of trouble here. All Access seems to offer most of the services that Spotify does, except with a few improvements here and there.

Admittedly there seem to be a few areas where Spotify holds its ground such as collaborative playlists and the fact that it exists on a desktop as a stand-alone program/app rather than as a browser-based player. All Access also relies on Google+ for its social media side, where Spotify links with the overwhelmingly more-popular Facebook.

Still, without having even used All Access it already looks to be a great first-generation music subscription service.

Aesthetics and UI

The All Access UI actually looks great. The default scheme appears to be a white background with an orange theme, backed up by some very contemporary-google-esque borderless rectangular and square images.

Clear, sharp angles, dominant images and large text all make for a stylish look that some have compared to Windows Phone 8. Whether or not Google took leads from the once-called Metro UI here isn’t important. What is important is that it works. Too often Android apps end up looking very utilitarian, focusing on function rather than form, when there’s no reason not to focus on both. With more useful apps that actually distinguish themselves with aesthetic style Android could start appealing to an even greater audience than it already does.

There’s no hint here that All Access will start any kind of design revolution like this within Android. But it’s at least a refreshingly pretty little app that looks easy to navigate.

Explore

Explore is sort of the Start menu and general hub of All Access. Explore is split up in to 4 tabs that can be swiped between horizontally:

Recommended is a feed of suggested artists, playlists and custom radio stations all targeted specifically at you, based on the kind of music and artists you’ve been listening to.

It’s similar in many respects to the What’s New screen in Spotify, except that it also appears on the smartphone app and includes not just new albums, but suggested playlists, songs and even auto-generates personalised radio stations.

Featured is also suggested content like Recommended, but doesn’t look like it boast as much personalisation. Currently popular or trending songs, albums and artists are displayed here. It’s kind of like the Recommended section, except content is filtered by popularity.

New Releases, as one might expect, is a section dedicated to new music. Once again this is personalised and will favour showing the user new releases by their favourite artists, or from genres that they frequently listen to.

Genres is pretty self explanatory. This tab is a list of over-arching genres that scrolls vertically. Once within a genre, the user can flick between the Subgenres, Featured and New Releases tab. As one might expect Featured and New Releases in this instance are just a genre-specific version of the higher-tier basic displays.

Radio Without Rules

Anyone familiar with Spotify, Rdio, Pandora or even Sony Music Unlimited (SMU) will know what kind of radio stations we’re talking about. For those who don’t, modern streaming services often offer the ability to pick an artist, genre, album or song and hit a ‘Start Radio’ button, or something similarly titled. The service then generates a personalised ‘radio station’ on the spot, based on the original track, album, artist or genre that was picked. It’s a great way to find new music that suits your tastes, or even to just get away from your everyday tunes for a taste of something different.

Usually users have the option to skip tracks, vote tracks up or down, add tracks to playlists and even skip backwards to played tracks. Where All Access differs is that it gives much greater control than any of the competition in handling these radio stations.

Not only can users skip tracks, add tracks to playlists, favourite, dislike and share tracks from All Access radio, they can peak ahead to see what’s coming up and manually adjust the radio. Swiping to the left and holding shows a peak of the next track. But even better, a vertically-scrolling list can be opened from where users can swipe to delete tracks and even tap and hold to rearrange them, so a favourite song spotted down the road can be set as the next track without restarting the whole station. Google calls this “Radio Without Rules”. We call it a great feature that we expect to see picked up by the competition very quickly.

Listen Now

As mentioned in the demo, sometimes you just want to play your music. Listen Now is a screen kind of like Recommended, except it’s generated entirely from your own content. Your most recently listened to tracks, artists, playlists and albums are all there. There are also some pre-generated radio stations based on what you’ve just been listening to.

In case anyone was wondering, it is possible to pair your pre-existing music library with All Access. One small foreseeable problem is that this ‘library’ was only mentioned in terms of the Google Music locker. Locker, for the countless folk who have never used or heard of it, was what Google offered before All Access. It’s essentially a cloud-based storage locker where users can store up to 20 000 songs. So that’s a handy feature for people who’ve already used locker, but it’ll be interesting to see if a good-old hard drive full of MP3s can also get some All Access love, or if things need to be a bit more official.

All Access Cost and Availability

Surprisingly, Google didn’t mention a free version of All Access. Most folk were counting on a tiered system like Spotify’s, where users get limited access with ads for free, or more premium services for a paid monthly subscription.

All Access looks to be a paid-only affair. The good news is it’s only $10 per month with the first month being free, which is on par or cheaper than most of the competition. The bad is that, while it’s already launched in the US, it’s probably going to take some time to make it overseas.

Users who sign up before the end of June this year will also receive the service for a reduced price of $8 per month moving forwards, which is a clever incentive to snatch up those umming and ahing potential customers quickly, as well as getting users from other services to sign up early, just to see if they prefer All Access to whatever they’re currently using.

So far All Access looks like it will definitely provide a lot of competition for both Spotify and Microsoft’s Xbox Music. We don’t particularly think Spotify is in too much trouble just yet, as All Access doesn’t seem to have a free option, might be restrictive in what music you can bring to it yourself and is synced with Google+, rather than Facebook.

More likely it’s Xbox Music that could take the bigger hit, although All Access could take a while to make it to the Windows Phone market, which would at least secure that user base for Microsoft.

At the very least All Access looks like a pretty good music subscription service and should provide some good competition with the current big names.

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Nokia Lumia 925 Unveiled

After the modest global success of the Nokia Lumia 920 last year, Nokia is soon to follow-up with the release of the next in line: the Lumia 925. Rather than a totally new device, the 925 is being called more of a ‘new take on the Lumia 920’, while also taking the 920′s place as the new Nokia flagship.

Nokia has addressed the criticisms of its bulky Lumia 920 physical design. The Lumia 925 is lighter and thinner, weighing in at just 139g and with a much smaller profile of 8.5mm, compared to the 185g and 10.7mm of the Lumia 920. This is the kind of difference that doesn’t sound like much on paper but believe us, when you hold two smartphones in your hand with these kind of opposing specs you can immediately tell which smartphone you’d prefer in your pocket and in your life.

Unfortunately the problem of the height-and-width-to-screen ratio doesn’t seem to have been fixed. The Lumia 920 was roughly the same size as its contemporaries like the Galaxy S III, except with a noticeably smaller screen. This meant unfortunately thick bezels that detracted from the overall great look of the 920. The Lumia 925 boasts almost identical measurements in height and width, leading us to believe that this will continue to be an issue. Still, the weight and thickness of the 920 were definitely more immediate problems, so at the very least Nokia is tackling physical design flaws in order of importance.

Continuing on the theme of physical design, the Lumia 925 has moved away from the polycarbonate casing that has come to represent the Lumia line. Instead, Nokia has instead gone for an aluminium frame this time around, with the polycarbonate still making an appearance on the rear of the device. It’s an interesting approach to aesthetic design that is already being congratulated as being one of the more stunning that anyone has seen in the last 12 months. Unfortunately the only colours that we’ve been shown so far are white, grey and black with Nokia not showing off, nor hinting at, any of those vibrant colours that we’ve come to really know and love.

Instead Nokia seems to be going with colourful protective cases. Granted, covering a colourful phone with a case means that no one sees the vibrant liveliness underneath anyway, but it’s nice to have manufacturers going with something other than white, grey, black and occasionally metallic silver.

Despite the lack of eye-catching colours, the Lumia 925 still looks great in terms of pure aesthetics and is noticeably less-bulky than its awkwardly large predecessor.

Unfortunately, the Windows Phone OS is holding Nokia back a bit in terms of hard specs. The 4.5 inch AMOLED display on the 925 still boasts a 768×1280 resolution. The dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 CPU is still ‘good enough’ on the WP8 OS, as is the 1GB of RAM, but it’s not Good Enough in terms of competitive edge and marketing. WP is a more closed ecosystem than Android, so less specs are required to do the same job. However, when Android is in its second generation of quad-core power-phones and you’re still fronting dual-cores, it’s not going to go very far towards luring in new users.

Of course the 925 has 4G LTE support, wireless charging, 16GB of storage on-board storage and 7GB of Skydrive. The 2000mAh batter should do pretty well and of course Nokia’s abundance of cool accessories will all support it.

The PureView 8.7MP camera has reportedly seen some improvements over the 920’s. The Lumia 920 definitely had one of the better cameras on the market when it was released, especially in terms of low-light shots. But it still had trouble with fast autofocus, light bleeding and random blurring. As such the 920 still couldn’t quite compete with the iPhone 5, but at least it was up there, leaving Nokia in a position to keep up or even move ahead of the pack. It’s good to see that camera-centric focus continuing through.

This means that the PureView on the Lumia 925 could very well be an even better camera than we’ve yet seen from Nokia, which would be saying something.

There are also some new camera modes, such as Smart Camera. Smart Camera captures ten images at once, allowing the images to be edited retroactively with Action Shot, Motion Focus and Best SShot. Hipstamatic’s new Oggle app will also be available on all Lumia devices, including the 925, allowing users to share through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr.

The Lumia 925 definitely sounds like the best Windows Phone we’ve seen yet, but other than its visual appeal and camera improvements (with the camera improvements yet to be judged), there doesn’t seem to be much over the Lumia 920. The 925 should be enough to keep WP moving along as a viable option for smartphone shoppers, but it’s probably going to need something a bit more ground-breaking if it’s going to compete with the HTC One, GS4 and the fast-approaching iPhone 5S in the global market.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Leaked

Pictures of an alleged Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini have surfaced on the web, along with purported specs. As far as rumours go, this is certainly one of the more believable new hardware stories we’ve seen leading up to Google I/O. The pics turned up on Chinese service Weibo courtesy of user PunkPanda.

So far the specs are a 4.3 inch display, dual-core 1.6GHz CPU and an 8MP camera. No word yet on pricing, availability, RAM or display resolution.

If we were to guess we’d suggest that 1GB of RAM, a medium-to-high-end price-point (say around $500 for the phone outright) and a 720p display. Although if Samsung is going for a more budget approach a qHD (540×960) resolution and lower price-tag could easily fit the bill.

The reason we think this device’s existence is plausible is simple: Samsung is no stranger to pushing out ‘mini’ versions of devices. The GS4 is already sure to do great sales in the high end of the market, despite there being some great competition from the HTC One. Now that those sales are basically locked in, there’s no reason for Samsung to now turn its attention to the more mid-range customers. Granted, the Galaxy SIII is still in a prime position to snatch up those who are after a cheaper handset, but a newer model with that “S4” moniker is going to sound a lot better in a marketing campaign than last year’s offerings.

If it does end up being a real device from Samsung, we don’t expect it to make too many waves. Mid-range handsets seldom make headlines (unless they’re a Nexus), so the GS4 Mini, if it exists, will likely be little more than a solid Android device with a great cost-to-quality ratio.

Sources: Weibo via Ausdroid

 

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Sony Xperia ZR Announced

Sony Xperia ZR underwater (700px)

The Sony Xperia ZR is the newest addition to the Sony Xperia Z line. Despite the Xperia Z being one of the most impressive devices that we’ve seen from Sony, it’s been struggling to contend with the HTC One and Galaxy S4 in reviews and in public appeal. The Xperia ZR has the potential to bring some of the same features to the mobile market, but avoid competition with the One and the S4 by possibly being targeting a slightly more affordable area of the pricing spectrum.

The original Xperia Z boasted both impressive specs and water resistance. It was the first time that a company’s flagship had been focused on durability, rather than hardware and features. The Xperia Z is still a powerful device with 1080p display and other modern accoutrements, but as far as software features go it’s lacking compared to its two main rivals: the One and the GS4.

The Xperia ZR is even more water resistant than the original Xperia Z, meaning that it can still attract folks who are after a modern smartphone with enhanced durability. Where it could do better than its older sibling is that, with slightly reduced specs, Sony is in a position to add a more tempting price-tag to sweeten the deal. This way the Xperia ZR would be directly competing with less feature-intensive smartphones than the HTC One and GS4, while still offering Sony’s new water-resistant experience on a solid smartphone.

The main problem here, however, is that the ZR really does feature ‘slightly’ reduced specs. As in barely. The CPU is a powerful quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4, paired up with an Adreno 320 graphics processing unit (GPU). 2GB of RAM should keep the Android 4.1 OS running smoothly, but storage is just 8GB. Luckily there’s a MicroSD slot that supports up to 32GB of expandable memory, although at an added cost.

Sony Xperia ZR-r

The display is a 4.55 inch (also referred to as a 3.6) 720p of the TFT variety, offering 323 pixels per inch (ppi). Oddly, the camera is a 13MP shooter. We say oddly because we were expecting a toned-down 8MP shooter in order to keep costs low, but this makes a bit more sense after one sees Sony’s targeted ad campaign at the bottom of the article.

The Xperia ZR also supports 4G LTE, but of unspecified bandwidths. Hopefully it’s enough of the major ones to cover most or all LTE regions. There’s no mention of battery size or life expectancy, but the 10.4mm profile likely indicates a decent battery.

So the Xperia ZR seems like it’s basically just a slightly smaller Xperia Z, except with less storage, a smaller screen and a lower resolution. But it does have one key feature. Not only is the ZR designed to be durable against water damage, it can actually take pictures and record HD videos while under water. It’s much closer to being ‘water proof’, in terms of every-day usage such as in swimming pools or accidental droppage, than its ‘water resistant’ sibling; the Xperia Z.

It seems a little odd that Sony would release two such similar phones; the Xperia Z with slightly better specs and the Xperia ZR that take’s the Z’s main attraction, water resistance, and does it better. Obviously Sony wanted to get the Z out of the door before the HTC One and GS4 made their debuts. But a high-quality smartphone that actually functions, rather than merely survives survives under water would definitely be enough to catch the attention of the public. This is especially so if said device had the entire marketing weight of Sony behind it and was not instead sharing the limelight with the Xperia Z.

Even with its water-centric operations we feel that the ZR is going to need a lower price point in order to compete with the One and the GS4. If it had the same great specs as the original Z then Sony may be in with a chance in direct competition, but with the path that’s been taken it’s likely far too much of a niche market to make too many waves.

At the very least it’s great to see manufacturers working on new ways to enhance the smartphone experience. Be it hardware-based with the new ‘ultrapixel’ camera, build quality and stereo speakers of the HTC One; feature-software-based with all the new features from the GS4; or durability-based as with Sony’s new Z and ZR approach, we’re just happy to see something other than a specs-war for once.

We do hope that the Xperia Z and ZR end up at least doing well enough to keep Sony in the game. Lately Samsung has been dominating the Android competition, with only HTC looking like it can even almost keep up. We’d hate to see competition in the marketplace lessen and, while Sony’s approach is very niche, it might be enough to keep the ball rolling for now.

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