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Google uses this robot to test lag on Android and ChromeOS

Jun29
by on June 29, 2015 at 11:29 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

amazing
Google uses a cool little robot to touch the screens of Android and ChromeOS devices to test their lag times. It’s called TouchBot and was built by Finnish company OptoFidelity. It performs real world latency tests for touch devices so the Chrome team doesn’t have to test them manually. François Beaufort, ‘happiness evangelist’ at Google, said that the robot’s source code is open-source, and you’re even able to play with the latency tests yourself, though they’re intended for robots. Google uses similar robots to test the trackpads on Chromebooks. ➤ Chrome TouchBot [YouTube] Read Next: Google AI research features a chilling chatbot who hates…

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Offline over the weekend? Read all the tech news you missed right here

Jun29
by on June 29, 2015 at 10:50 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Weekend-Roundup_new
With the sun shining, no work to get on with and free time at your disposal, we don’t blame you for taking a bit of downtime. Weekends are a chance to relax, ignore the email pile and get on with other things. Of course, if you did spend the last two days away from the internet, then there’s a whole load of news and features you need to catch up with. Luckily for you, we’ve pulled them all together into one handy list. All you need to do is make yourself a coffee, put your phone on silent and spend a…

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Done with Cards Against Humanity? Squib is a version of Ruby for coding your own card games

Jun29
by on June 29, 2015 at 10:12 am
Posted In: Around the Web, card games, cards, Cards Against Democracy, Design & Dev, Insider, Ruby, Squib

Screenshot 2015-06-29 10.46.10
Cards Against Humanity has been a huge success, but it also has a lot of critics. If you want to build your own card game and have some knowledge of Ruby, Squib will be right up your street. The Ruby Domain Specific Language (DSL) is available on GitHub and lets you define your game deck’s stats, then compile it into a series of images ready to print. The implementation is based on the Cairo graphics rendering engine, which is used by WebKit, Gecko and Inkscape among others. Here’s a code sample from the Squib devs followed by the cards it generates: Let me know if you end up…

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Facebook’s new iOS photo uploader looks a lot like Snapchat

Jun29
by on June 29, 2015 at 9:37 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Facebook has been ‘taking inspiration’ from Snapchat for a while. It started with its own disappearing photo app, Slingshot, then released an app that mashes up stickers with your photos. Now the company’s taken it one step further and put most of the features from those standalone apps directly into its iOS app’s image uploader. Once you’ve picked an image, you can tap the magic wand to add text effects and stickers, without the need for a separate app. The app’s photo filters are now easier to access too. You simply swipe across to swap them. The new features, which are very similar to some…

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Amazon will offer loans to encourage new sellers in China and 7 European countries

Jun29
by on June 29, 2015 at 9:30 am
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Amazon_2014_4
Amazon is launching a program which will provide loans to new businesses. The idea is to help them get started and gain market share. Reuters reports that from later this year, selected sellers in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain and the UK will be eligible for the loans. The service has been in limited testing in the US and Japan for a number of years. It offers three to six month loans of $1,000 to $600,000 to help new sellers buy inventory. Amazon takes repayments directly from the seller’s earnings. Amazon’s competitors also offer similar services, including both…

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