Apple working on Echo-like device: report

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple is planning to make Siri smarter by linking it to the vast menu of iOS apps and eventually will deploy the digital assistant on a standalone device similar to Amazon's best-selling Echo.

The news, reported Tuesday by tech media siteThe Information, answers an oft-asked question about why the iPhone-maker seems to be sitting on the sidelines as a growing number of companies from Google to Siri-offshoot Viv make big announcements about the coming age of voice-activated machine learning.

Apple declined to comment on the report.

Citing unnamed sources, the article said Apple was preparing to release a software developer kit, or SDK, that would allow app-makers to allow their products to integrate with Siri. Apple's annual Worldwide Develop Conference is scheduled for June 13 in San Francisco.

Apple, which hasn't had a brand new product since the release of Apple Watch a year ago March, is said to be working on an a device with a speaker and microphone that would compete with Amazon Echo as well as Google's recently announced Google Home.

Apple, which hasn't had a brand new product since the release of Apple Watch a year ago March, is said to be working on an a device with a speaker and microphone that would compete with Amazon Echo as well as Google's recently announced Google Home.

The plan for Apple's version of Echo and Home has been in the works since before Amazon rolled out its Alexa-powered Echo, according to The Information report.

The excitement over being able to have increasingly natural conversations with computers is tempered by concerns over both the security of such personal-habit information as well as questions about what companies such as Google and Amazon will do with this consumer data.

Echo, which has been a surprise hit for Amazon, is a $180 cylinder that can respond to a range of voice queries, from weather updates to order products from the online retailer.

Google Home was unveiled at Google I/O, the search company's annual developers conference last week. A promotional video showed a squat, conical device that could tackle questions from parents and children alike. Home is due to be released this fall.

Gadgets powered by artificial intelligence and cloud computing is considered to be the next frontier in technology.

In a recent letter to shareholders, Google CEO Sundar Pichai predicted that "the concept of 'the device' will fade away." And at Microsoft's Build developer conference in March, CEO Satya Nadella called "bots the new apps" in sketching out a world where voice interaction with machines would leap to the fore.

“People-to-people conversations, people-to-digital assistants, people-to-bots and even digital assistants-to-bots," Nadella said. "That’s the world you’re going to get to see in the years to come."

A few weeks ago, a new company called Viv gave the world a sneak peak of its cloud-based AI platform at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. Viv will “breathe life into the inanimate objects of our life through conversation," said CEO Dag Kittlaus, who was part of the team that created Siri and sold it to Apple in 2010.

Apple essentially introduced the general populace to the concept of voice-controlled computers when it brought Siri to the iPhone 4S in 2011. But since that auspicious debut, it has not offered big leaps in Siri's comprehension skills while rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft evolved the abilities of their digital assistants, Alex and Google assistant and Cortana.

More tellingly, Apple has been conspicuously absent amid a barrage of tech company announcements in the future-tech arenas of virtual and augmented reality, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.

Although the Cupertino i-giant has repeatedly been rumored to be working on each of these categories, the possibility that it could make Siri and AI device news at WWDC is the first indication that it doesn't plan to be left behind. In truth, following Amazon and Google into the home voice-assistant market would continue a pattern established years ago. Apple was late to the MP3 game, but revolutionized it with iPod. Ditto smartphones and the game changing iPhone, tablets and the popular iPad, and smartwatches and Watch.

"There have been many periods where there have been two to three years of no wow factor, and then all of a sudden something comes out and it just reboots things," says Tim Bajarin, veteran Apple analyst with Creative Strategies. "You just have to look at Apple from the longer term perspective."

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Letv One X600 Android 5.0 Lollipop 4G Phablet 5.5 inch FHD Screen MTK helio X10 64bit 2.0GHz Octa Core 32GB ROM 3GB RAM 13.0MP Camera GPS Bluetooth 
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Display: 5.5 inch IPS FHD Screen
CPU: MTK helio X10 64bit Octa Core 2.0GHz
GPU: Imagination PowerVR G6200
System: Android 5.0
RAM + ROM: 3GB RAM + 32GB ROM 
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Bluetooth: 4.0
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SIM Card: Dual SIM dual standby, MICRO SIM
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CPU and Storage：MTK6755 Helio P10 Max 2.0GHz 64-bit Octa Core, 4GB RAM+32GB ROM, high efficiency of data processing.
Operation System: Latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow, safe and stable, support numerous smart APPs.
Camera：Back professional 13MP camera; 5MP selfies front camera.
Network: 4G FDD-LTE 2100/1800/2600/800MHz, 3G WCDMA, 2G GSM, nearly full global coverage.
Fingerprint Unlock: Support Fingerprint ID Unlock, 360 degree angle 0.1s-0.3s fast  speed recognition.
Battery: 4000mAh high capacity, PUMP EXPRESS Fast Charge.
Others: Support G-sensor, P-sensor, L-sensor, Multiple Applications, Book, Radio Tuner, Messaging, Wallpapers, Calendar, Calculator, Clock, etc.

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Basic Information
Model	UMI Super
Color	Gray, Golden, Silver(Optional)
Material	Plastic, Metal
Earphone Port	3.5mm
System
OS	Android 6.0
CPU	MTK6755 Octa Core, 2.0GHz 64bit
GPU	Mali-T860 700MHz
ROM	32GB, Support micro TF card up to 128GB extended(The system will take up some ROM)
RAM	4GB
Screen
Display Size	5.5"
Material	Glass
Display Technique	LTPS 368PPI
Resolution	1920 * 1080 Pixels
Camera
Front Camera Pixels	5MP
Back Camera	13MP
Video	1080P video recording
Network
Type	GSM / WCDMA / FDD-LTE
Band	2G: GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900MHz (Band 5/8/3/2) 3G: WCDMA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100MHz(Band5/8/2/1) 4G: FDD-LTE 2100 / 1800 / 2600 / 800MHz (Band1/3/7/20)
SIM Card Quantity	Dual SIM cards, Dual standby
SIM Card Type	1 * micro SIM + 1 * nano SIM or 1 * micro SIM + 1 * TF card
WiFi	802.11a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz
Bluetooth Version	4.1
Battery
Capacity	4000mAh 4.35V (Non-removable battery) Talk Time and Standby time will depend on the actual using situation.
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Multilanguage	English, French, Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, etc.
GPS	Support
Sensor	G-sensor, Glonass, P-sensor, L-sensor, Accelerometer, Compass, Fingerprint
Image	PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP
Video	3GP, MPEG-4,etc
Audio	MP3, WAV, AMR, AWB
Other Features	Ebook, Radio Tuner, Messaging, Wallpapers, Calendar, Calculator, Clock, etc.
Other Information
Product Size	Approx. 15.1 * 7.5 * 0.85cm / 5.9 * 2.9 * 0.33in
Product Weight	Approx. 185g / 6.47oz
Package Size	Approx. 18.0 * 18.0 * 3.0cm / 7.0 * 7.0 * 1.17in
Package Weight	Approx. 523g / 18.3oz

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Item color may show slight aberration due to different shooting light and monitor display.

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Overwatch seeks e-sports domination

World-of-Warcraft-maker Blizzard has released its first original gaming franchise in nearly two decades.

Overwatch - a first-person shooter - also marks the first time the studio has launched a title worldwide on PC and consoles simultaneously.

WoW is the second bestselling PC game of all time, but its subscriber numbers have halved since their peak in 2010.

Blizzard predicts strong sales of Overwatch and hopes it will attract large audiences as an e-sport.

The game is a departure from the developer's previous hits, in which players usually viewed the world from a god-like, third-person perspective.

Instead, players look directly down the barrel of their weapon as they roam a colourful world battling other gamers.

"Blizzard has a huge following on a global basis and is one of the best renowned publishers," said Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games at the IHS Technology consultancy.

"But it has no pedigree in first-person shooters (FPS), so people will be excited to see what potential the game holds."

The game is also Blizzard's first new "intellectual property" in 18 years, since the studio has focused on spin-offs and expansions for existing franchises such as WoW, Diablo and Starcraft.

Subscribers to WoW have dropped from a high of 12 million in 2010 to 5.5 million in 2015, and the company has since stopped reporting the figures.

Thomas Tippl, chief operating officer at Activision Blizzard, said Overwatch would be "Blizzard's biggest launch since Diablo 3 in 2012" and hoped it would "resonate well in e-sports".

"E-sports is not only a driver of audience expansion, but also importantly drives growth in terms of time spent with our franchises," he said during an earnings call on 5 May.

If it captures the attention of e-sports competitors, it could have a very profitable future.

"Professional gaming competitions were watched online by roughly 200 million people in the past year, whilst over $200m (£138m) has been awarded in e-sports tournaments to date," said Dr Mark Johnson, a games researcher at the University of York.

"In recent years, Counterstrike has been the only highly successful FPS game with substantial longevity for professional gaming, so a game like Overwatch certainly has the potential to grab a huge new slice of this market.

"However, many FPS games have unsuccessfully tried to carve out a long-term sustainable place in e-sports, so it remains to be seen whether or not Overwatch has the right formula to knock Counterstrike off the pedestal."

Overwatch has already piqued the interest of many gamers, with almost 10 million players taking part in an early road test of the game.

Officially the trial period was to "test servers" and iron out any problems, but the studio's chief financial officer Dennis Durkin has acknowledged: "We're doing a tonne to expose players to the richness of this world."

"We learned a lot from the open test," Michael Chu, senior game designer at Blizzard, told the BBC. "We value the input of the community and we have been changing things here and there, addressing player concerns."

One of those concerns was about the portrayal of female characters. Some players complained that an over-the-shoulder victory pose for Tracer drew particular attention to her buttocks, while others questioned magazines featuring female characters littering the floor of an in-game toilet.

"There was a victory pose that we felt like we could make better and more exemplified the character. So we changed that," said Mr Chu.

The magazines were removed too, and the company says it has worked hard to create a diverse cast of characters.

"One thing we hope you'll notice in the game is that we have this big roster of heroes. We have some solider-like characters who have a military style, but we also have characters like Mercy, she's a guardian angel who moves around the battlefield healing.

"We wanted to get players working together as a team to achieve victory."

Despite speculation that Overwatch might be free to download, with revenue generated from in-game purchases, Blizzard said it had always intended to sell the game as an upfront purchase.

"It was always going to be a boxed product," said Mr Chu. "We feel like that is a really good way to go because so much of the gameplay comes from switching between heroes during combat, so having all the characters available rather than locked away was really important."

Unlike World of Warcraft, there will be no subscription fee to play Overwatch online. However, there will be in-game purchases in the form of Loot Boxes that can be used to customise characters.

Blizzard says that these can also be earned for free and it has promised "new maps and characters" will be added to the game at no cost.

Microsoft accused of Windows 10 upgrade 'nasty trick'

Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10.

Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box.

And this has caused confusion as typically clicking a red cross closes a pop-up notification

The upgrade could still be cancelled, when the scheduled time for it to begin appeared, Microsoft said

The change occurred because the update is now labelled "recommended" and many people have their PCs configured to accept recommended updates for security reasons.

This means dismissing the box does not dismiss the update.

Brad Chacos, senior editor at the PC World website, described it as a "nasty trick".

"Deploying these dirty tricks only frustrates long-time Windows users who have very valid reasons to stick with operating systems they already know and love," he wrote.

Microsoft said: "With the free Windows 10 upgrade offer ending on 29 July, we want to help people upgrade to the best version of Windows.

"As we shared in October, Windows 10 will be offered as a 'recommended' update for Windows 7 and 8.1 customers whose Windows Update settings are configured to accept 'recommended' updates.

"Customers can choose to accept or decline the Windows 10 upgrade."

Google's Paris HQ raided in tax probe

French finance officials have raided the Paris offices of US internet giant Google as part of a tax fraud investigation.

Reports say about 100 tax officials entered Google's offices in central Paris early in the morning.

Police sources confirmed the raid. Google said: "We comply with French law and are co-operating fully with the authorities to answer their questions."

Google is accused of owing €1.6bn ($1.8bn; £1.3bn) in unpaid taxes.

UK deal struck

The tax arrangements of international companies have come under close scrutiny recently.

Several have been accused of using legal methods to minimise their tax bills.

In Google's case, its tax structure allows it to pay tax in the Republic of Ireland, even when sales appear to relate to the UK.

In January, it struck a deal with UK tax authorities to pay an extra £130m in tax for the period from 2005, but that deal was heavily criticised.

The UK Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the £130m settlement "seems disproportionately small", compared with the size of its UK business.

'Country-by-country'

Europe's competition authorities have been examining whether some deals struck by big companies with national tax authorities amount to illegal state aid.

In April, the EU unveiled plans to force large companies to disclose more about their tax affairs.

They will have to declare publicly how much tax they pay in each EU country as well as any activities carried out in specific tax havens.

The rules on "country-by-country reporting" would affect multinational firms with more than €750m in sales.

Pebble laying off 40 employees

Smartwatch maker Pebble will lay off 40 employees this week, the company confirmed Tuesday.

During an interview with Tech Insider, Pebble CEOEric Migicovsky cited a conservative fundraising environment in Silicon Valley for the cuts, which amount to about 25% of Pebble's workforce.

Migicovsky says Pebble has raised $26 million in the last eight months. "We got this money, but money is pretty tight these days," he tells Tech Insider, referencing the lack of funds from Silicon Valley.

Although Pebble was among the first to hit the smartwatch market with its line of Pebble devices, the company has faced serious competition from companies including Fitbit and Apple with its Apple Watch. Earlier this week, Apple dropped the price of Apple Watch to $299. Last year, Pebble confirmed it topped 1 million in smartwatch sales.

Migicovsky says Pebble will focus more on fitness and health features for its Pebble devices.

Pebble unveils pair of new smartwatches

Smartwatch company Pebble unveiled its latest line of wearable devices Tuesday, including its first non-smartwatch created to break the connection with the smartphone.

The company announced the Pebble 2, a sleeker take on the original Pebble watch released four years ago, and the Pebble Time 2, which combines a color display and steel frame. Like its previous devices, Pebble will launch both watches on Kickstarter on Tuesday before releasing them later this year.

Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky says the company streamlined its priorities for its next smartwatches based on its customers' preferences.

"By far, the top two things that people do is check their notifications and track their fitness and health," says Migicovsky in an interview with USA TODAY.

Along with smaller frames, both watches include built-in heart rate monitors. Battery life on Pebble 2 lasts up to a week, while Pebble Time 2 can stretch as far as 10 days. Pebble 2 will start at $99 through Kickstarter, while Pebble Time 2 starts at $169. Both watches will launch this fall.

Meanwhile, the company is dipping into non-watch wearables with Pebble Core. The square-shaped device supports 3G, GPS and Bluetooth connections, and allows users to stream music or make emergency calls without their phones.

Most smartwatches on the market require users to tether the device via Bluetooth to a smartphone to receive notifications or perform other tasks. Migicovsky says Pebble initially considered adding these features directly to the watch, but opted to create the Core instead.

"The problem is it keeps making the watch bigger and bigger, and more expensive," says Migicovsky. Core will launch on Kickstarter before hitting retail in January.

Since Pebble was first introduced in 2012, the smartwatch market has exploded with a variety of big-name rivals including Apple with its Apple Watch, along with Google and Samsung.

Earlier this year, Pebble confirmed it was laying off 40 employees as funding from Silicon Valley began to dry up. However, Migicovsky sees a place for Pebble with a growing list of pricier alternatives.

"We’re focused on being the Swatch of the smartwatch world," he says. "It’s more colorful. It’s a bit more affordable (and) more fun."

Facebook CEO to replace four neighboring homes

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to maintain the face of his neighborhood.

The social network's cofounder is planning to replace four houses that surround his Palo Alto home with four smaller units, according to plans first reported by The San Jose Mercury News.

Zuckerberg bought the homes several years ago when he learned that a developer planned to build a large house adjacent to his and market it as being next door to the Facebook exec

.Instead, Zuckerberg wants to build new smaller homes that, according to a letter distributed to neighbors "will reduce overall square footage relative to the existing homes and aim to ensure the new structures and surrounding gardens blend seamlessly with the neighborhood."

The News quoted the letter, dated May 16, in which property managers detailed Zuckerberg's application filed with city planners. A request to the city's planning department, filed May 17, asks to replace two single-story houses and two two-story houses and replace them with three single-story houses and one two-story house.

"The four homes will be built concurrently to minimize the duration of construction and enable staging that best protects the existing trees on site," the project documents filed with the city say. "The team is working closely with a local arborist to minimize impact from construction on the existing trees. Our goal is to ensure the homes and surrounding gardens blend seamlessly with the neighborhood and feel as if they have always been there."

Many initial press reports had Zuckerberg razing the homes, but the project is being handled to minimize disruption in the neighborhood, said Miles Radcliffe-Trenner of communications firm Sard Verbinnen & Co., in San Francisco, speaking on behalf of the project. The project is beginning now because the last of the original owners left more than a year ago. Zuckerberg is not yet commenting on what to do with the homes when they are rebuilt, he said.

Zuckerberg began buying the homes in 2012 after developer Mircea Voskerician told Zuckerberg that he planned to build a 9,600-square-foot house behind his with a view into Zuckerberg's master bedroom. But the developer sold the rights to the home instead to Zuckerberg. He eventually filed suit against the Facebook exec saying that part of the sale involved Zuckerberg introducing him to influential people in Silicon Valley. The case was settled in March, the News reported, without Voskerician getting any money from Zuckerberg.

Overall, nearly $44 million were paid for homes. The prices ranged from $4.8 millionpaid in December 2012 for the 3,240 square-foot three bedroom home on 1457 Hamilton Ave. to $14.5 million paid in October 2013 for the four-bedroom, 2,650 square-foot home on 1451 Hamilton Ave., according to Zillow.com. The homes were purchased through San Francisco financial firm Iconiq Capital, the News reported citing public records and reports from the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

In comparison, Zuckerberg's home was purchased for $7 million in 2011, according to Zillow.com.

Norm Beamer, president of the Crescent Park Neighborhood Association told theNews the group had not taken a stance on the building application, which requires a public hearing. Neighbors are "curious, but also concerned" about the plans, he said.

"Is he just developing it or is he creating some sort of compound which will have a constant turnover of visitors and employees?" Beamer said to the News. "It's a question of whether it's a normal residential development or some unusual use that might create traffic and security issues and so forth."

Snapchat said to raise $200M for $20B valuation

LOS ANGELES — Snapchat, the wildly popular messaging app, is raising another round of financing. The $200 million infusion now values the company at $20 billion, according to a report from TechCrunch.

Just three years ago, Facebook offered to buy Snapchat for $4 billion, and CEO Evan Spiegel was widely criticized for not taking the deal.

In a commencement speech at the University of Southern California last year, Spiegel said he made the right choice. “If you sell, you will know that it wasn't the right dream anyway," he said. "If you don't sell, you are probably onto … the beginning of something meaningful.”

Snapchat, the most successful tech start-up in the L.A. area, is based in trendy Venice Beach. It began as a way for students to send photos and texts that could disappear within 10 seconds. It's since evolved into a popular way for young folks to make and watch videos. Snapchat says some 100 million videos are viewed daily on the service.

To date, Snapchat has raised more than $1.3 billion in financing, from Fidelity Investments, Alibaba, Lightspeed, Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, among others.

Snapchat had no comment.

It is now among the most valuable of the 161 unicorns, start-ups worth more than $1 billion.

But that number is in jeopardy, as more funding rounds like the one with Foursquare lower the market valuations of some private companies, said Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Snapchat's big round of financing is also a rarity of late. The number of mega-deals of at least $100 million — 38 in the fourth quarter of 2015 — was roughly half the 72 in the previous quarter, according to the KPMG International & CB Insights 2015 Venture Pulse Report. Mega-rounds in the last three months of 2015 raised $11.4 billion — down 44% from Q3 2015 — the lowest level recorded since the first three months of 2013.

Twitter to let you say more in 140 characters

witter may make it easier to tweet, allowing the use of photos and links without counting against 140 character limit. Jefferson Graham reports from San Francisco, with Natalie DiBlasio and Elizabeth Weise. Video by Jefferson Graham

SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter, famous for its 140-character constraint, is about to become less concise and more expressive.

Photos, videos, GIFs, polls — the space-munching culprits that for years have foreshortened tweets, forcing users to squeeze their thoughts into even fewer words — will no longer count against the 140-character limit (although links will continue to do so). Twitter's reasoning: People will add more photos and videos to posts if they no longer soak up 24 characters.

Also coming soon is a new form of expression: the ability to "retweet" and "quote tweet" yourself to share a new comment or thought or draw attention to a pithy observation or humorous aside that got overlooked by your followers.

"We're not giving up on the idea of Twitter being in the moment. That concept of brevity, speed and live conversation – being able to think of something and put it out to the world instantly – that's what's most important," said Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. "We're always going to look for opportunities to make Tweets a lot more expressive, and enable people to say what they want to say."

The changes that will roll out in coming months are part of the San Francisco company's intensifying campaign to combat slowing user growth and user fatigue.

Twitter needs to be simpler and more intuitive for newcomers and more creative and engaging for veterans of the service, said Twitter's chief marketing officer Leslie Berland.

Twitter is a global cultural and political phenomenon with more than 300 million users, among them pop stars, Hollywood glitterati and world leaders. But it's dwarfed by other services — it's one-fifth the size of Facebook and smaller even than Facebook-owned photo-sharing service Instagram. Growth has stagnated for months, alarming investors and driving down the stock price.

"What we want to do is make the Twitter experience for those who use Twitter every single day more dynamic, faster, more interesting, more expressive. And for the people who are new to the platform, we want it to be intuitive. We want to welcome them in and for them to know exactly what to do and how it works," Berland told USA TODAY.

The big knock on Twitter: Its complicated jargon and cultural mores intimidate the uninitiated.

Even a discussion of Twitter's latest changes isn't easy to understand for someone who doesn't regularly use the service.

For example, @ names, the handles that people use on Twitter, will no longer count toward the 140-character limit in replies, Twitter says. But mention a person's handle in a tweet and it does. Soon you won't have to place a period in front of someone's handle when you start a tweet with that handle if you want all your followers to see it. But replies to that tweet will still only be seen by people who follow both accounts unless, of course, you retweet that reply. Confused yet?

For longtime users, the changes could not come soon enough.

A flood of joy and relief greeted the news leaked to Bloomberg earlier this month that some elements of tweets would no longer count toward the 140-character limit.

Twitter's iconic 140-character limit is an artifact of the pre-smartphone age. Twitter was conceived for cell phones, hence the short format, the approximate length of a text message. Over the past decade, Twitter has evolved to include different forms of media. The company recently considered, then rejected, the idea of raising the limit to as many as 10,000 characters. The ultra concise nature of Twitter distinguishes the service from rivals.

Twitter said it's announcing the changes before they take effect to give software developers time to make updates to products built using its platform.

Still, some users expressed frustration at how long it has taken Twitter to make basic fixes.

"The fact that Twitter doesn’t already work this way is maddening," tweeted Alex Heath, chief millennial correspondent for Tech Insider.

Among the most frequently requested features — including by power user Kim Kardashian — is the ability to edit a tweet after it has been published.

Berland would not say when or even if Twitter users would someday be allowed to edit their tweets.

"We are looking at a number of different enhancements in the future, and we'll share any changes at that point," she said.