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Uber adds $1 “Safe Rides Fee” to UberX rides to pay for background checks and insurance

Apr17
by on April 17, 2014 at 11:31 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Uber revealed today that it is now adding a $1 “Safe Rides Fee” for UberX ridesharing trips in the US. Users have been receiving the following message in the app: According to Uber, the funds will be used for: background check process, regular motor vehicle checks, driver safety education, current and future development of safety features, and insurance. Uber cut Uberx prices in many of its cities earlier this year. While the extra $1 isn’t a huge burden on costs, the charge does feel  un-Uber, as the company has advertised “clear pricing” as one of its main strengths. Update: Added info…

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Microsoft’s Xbox One passes 5M units sold to retailers, but Titanfall boost not enough to beat Sony

Apr17
by on April 17, 2014 at 10:58 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Microsoft today announced that it has sold over 5 million Xbox One consoles to retailers around the globe, but sales of the system have still lagged behind rival Sony’s PlayStation 4. By comparison, Sony revealed on Wednesday that PS4 sales had topped 7 million in sales to consumers. March US sales estimates from NPD put the PS4 in first place for hardware sales for the third month in a row. Both Microsoft and Sony (inFamous Second Son, Titanfall) saw major exclusives released on their platforms last month. Titanfall’s combined Xbox One and PC release took the top spot in game…

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Google’s Project Tango teams up with NASA for autonomous space robots

Apr17
by on April 17, 2014 at 10:49 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Insider, Mobile, video

Google’s ATAP team and NASA are using the Project Tango smartphone with 3D motion tracking to help navigate robots in the International Space Station. The smartphone’s Myriad 1 vision processor chip is capable of making a quarter millions 3D measurements per second. It uses those measurements and creates a map of its surroundings. By attaching a Project Tango smartphone with those mapping capabilities to a SPHERES robot, the autonomous balls can navigate though the space station and perform low-level duties that would usually fall to the astronauts. While floating in the zero-gravity environment, the smartphone will construct a 3D map…

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Risk-averse Chinese mobile tech firms are suddenly going all-in on global, but why?

Apr17
by on April 17, 2014 at 9:43 pm
Posted In: Analysis and Opinion, Around the Web, Asia

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Si Shen is the founder and CEO of PapayaMobile, a global mobile company. This article originally appeared on LinkedIn and was republished with permission. As the founder and CEO of PapayaMobile, headquartered in the rapidly growing technology scene from what some call the Silicon Valley of China – also known as Zhongguancun – I’ve been living and breathing China’s tech industry, which at face value has been a rabidly risk-averse Chinese tech culture. Then, in 2013, a sudden mad dash among these Chinese companies began, each jockeying to be recognized and taken seriously as a global company. As early as 2012…

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Skitch for iOS updated to let you share those pink-arrowed pics even faster

Apr17
by on April 17, 2014 at 9:30 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Mobile, skitch

When you need to share an image with a giant pink arrow with a friend or the Internet at large, you turn to Evernote’s Skitch app. The photo-marking app features tools to quickly annotate images with text, arrows, drawings, and more. Today’s update will share those images quicker. The update brings three sharing categories that appear below an image after it has been filled with arrows and pithy remarks. Swipe left to land on the Meetings option to share the image with attendees of scheduled meetings. The center option, Share lets you publish the image to Twitter, Facebook, Mail and…

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