Though Spotify never shared official numbers, it’s likely that Car Thing underperformed or was just not worth continued investment in today’s tighter economic market.
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Google is launching its upgraded Find My Device network in the U.S. and Canada, the company announced on Monday. The network will be coming to Android users around the globe soon. Find My Device’s crowdsourced network of more than a billion Android devices can help users find their misplaced Android devices and everyday items. The Find My Device network, which is similar to Apple’s Find My network, works with devices running Android 9+.
With the Find My Device network, users will be able to locate their Android phones and tablets — even when they’re offline — by ringing them or viewing their location on a map. Google’s previous Find My Device service required lost phones to have an internet connection in order to be located. The upgraded network will also allow Pixel 8 and 8 Pro users to find their devices even if they’re powered off or if the battery is dead.
Image Credits: Google
Starting in May, Android users will be able to locate everyday items like their keys or wallet; Google is integrating Bluetooth tracker tags from Chipolo and Pebblebee in the Find My Device app. These tags will be built specifically for the Find My Device network and will be “compatible with unknown tracker alerts across Android and iOS to help protect users from unwanted tracking,” Google says. Users can expect to see compatible tags from Motorola, Jio and Eufy later this year. Monday’s announcement comes as Apple and Google said last year that they would work together to lead an industry-wide initiative to alert users in the case of unwanted tracking from Bluetooth devices.
The new Find My Device network also integrates with Nest smart home gadgets and shows a lost device’s proximity to home Nest devices.
“Find My Device is secure by default and private by design,” Google’s VP of Engineering, Erik Kay, wrote in a blog post. “Multi-layered protections built into the Find My Device network help keep you safe and your personal information private, while keeping you in control of the devices connected to the Find My Device network. This includes end-to-end encryption of location data as well as aggregated device location reporting, a first-of-its-kind safety feature that provides additional protection against unwanted tracking back to a home or private location.”
Google says the Find My Device network will soon work with headphones from JBL, Sony and others.
When you sign up to a new social network, you have zero friends, zero followers, zero likes. But as you start posting content, you might get more and more likes and comments. That could lead to new followers. And that dopamine boost will encourage you to post even more. A new app called Palmsy is trying to act as social media methadone by letting you post anything and getting likes on them.
But the catch is that no one can see the posts.
You can publish as many posts as you like. The app even lets you add photos to your posts. But you’re sending those posts into the void. Developer Pat Nakajima said on Threads that no post leaves your device and all likes are fake.
Image Credits: Palmsy
The free app — which works on both iPhone and iPad — essentially reads your contact list to assign pretend likes to posts. While the app is reading your contact details, because all posts are local, contact information is not sent to a server.
“It can be fun to see Likes coming in from folks you haven’t thought about in years. It can also be useful in maybe deleting some contacts you might not need anymore,” Nakajima writes in the FAQ section of the app.
Palmsy shows you the contact who “liked” your post. Image Credits: Palmsy
Beyond looking at contacts, you can treat the app as a personal diary or even a place to get bad puns out of your system — nobody is going to judge you. It’s up to you.
The developer recently updated the app with some advanced options that let you limit the number of likes on a particular post and for how long you want those likes to come in: a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours or a few days.
There have been multiple time-limiting apps that try to help when it comes to reducing social media addiction. Some developers have also released very basic apps to post dumb posts without consequences.
In 2017, developer Dan Kurtz released Binky, which generated a fake feed for you to interact with. In 2018, former Google Reader product manager Jason Shellen relaunched Brizzly as a website, which lets you put anything in a text box and hit send. The posts go nowhere and you can’t even see them once you hit send.
Hardware maker Rabbit has tapped a partnership with ElevenLabs to power voice commands on its devices. Rabbit is set to ship the first set of r1 devices next month after getting a ton of attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the start of the year.
The Rabbit r1 will ship with ElevenLabs’ tech, which will enable voice commands from the users and how the pocket AI device talks back to them. At launch, the feature will be available only in English with one voice option. ElevenLabs said that while r1 was poised for voice interaction from the start, the company’s low latency models will make interactions more human-like.
“We’re working with rabbit to bring the future of human-device interaction closer. Our collaboration is about making the r1 a truly dynamic co-pilot, ” ElevenLabs’ CEO Mati Staniszewski said in a prepared statement.
In January, Rabbit said that it will use Perplexity AI’s solutions to answer users’ questions on the device.
Earlier this week, Rabbit said that its first batch of $199 r1s will leave the factory by March 31, and will reach users within a few weeks. The company said users will be able to interact with chatbots, get answers from Perplexity, use bi-directional translation, order rides and foods, and play music through the device right out of the box.
The company’s CEO Jesse Lyu said earlier this month at a StrictlyVC event that rabbit is close to having 100,000 device orders.
Earlier this year, ElevenLabs raised $80 million in Series B from investors like Andreessen Horowitz, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and entrepreneur Daniel Gross to get to the unicorn status. The company has been focusing on providing voice cloning services for creating audiobooks and dubbing movies and TV shows, ads and video game characters. Most recently, India’s audio platform PocketFM, which raised $103 million from Lightspeed, said that it is using ElevenLabs’ services to let creators convert their writings into audio series.
But ElevenLabs has faced its fair share of criticism, with users trying to fool a bank’s authentication system, 4chan users mimicking celebrities and journalists documenting that it is easy to set up voice clones to generate problematic content. The startup has rolled out a tool to detect speech created by its platform and is also working on a tool to detect synthesized audio and distribute it to third parties.
Aside from a brief on-again-off-again thing with Nokia, Withings has been quietly establishing itself as a home health powerhouse in recent years. The French company might not have the big-name pull of an Apple or Samsung, but it has been making some expertly crafted devices designed to make vital readings accessible outside the doctor’s office.
While the name suggests an ’80s toy manufacturer, BeamO looks to be one of the company’s more compelling healthcare offerings. It’s not a fitness watch or a sleep tracking pad, but rather a new category for Withings. The “multiscope,” as the company has deemed it, is designed to give patients easy access to vitals during teleconference health calls.
From that perspective, the product makes a lot of sense. According to the U.S. government, telehealth visits (understandably) skyrocketed 15x during the pandemic. While that number has no doubt regressed somewhat as the world has reopened, the relative ease and timeline versus an in-office visit for non-emergencies can’t really be debated.
Image Credits: Withings
“Smaller than a smartphone” per Withings’ description, the system offers four key health metrics. It’s kind of a supercharged digital thermometer that also serves as an electrocardiogram, oximeter and stethoscope, giving your healthcare provider more insight into what’s going on with you in real time.
“Post-pandemic telemedicine is commonplace,” notes CEO Eric Carrell. “While convenient and cost-effective, remote visits lacked the ability for health professionals to carry out the routine checks they perform in person. BeamO will make this possible remotely with a device that combines the functionality of four different pieces of medical equipment.”
The system is capable of reading SpO2, heart rate and ECG (“medical grade” says Withings) at once, displaying pertinent info on its display. Headphones can be connected to the system using a USB-C to audio jack adapter. That audio can also be sent to the healthcare provider via an app.
The system is still awaiting FDA clearance for things like AFib detection. Withings anticipates it will arrive on shelves this July for $250.
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