Technology - Google News |
- Uber's Latest Retreat Leaves Brazil, India as the Key Battlegrounds
- Tip: Record your iPad's screen on your Mac with QuickTime Player
- Fitbit Versa review:
| Uber's Latest Retreat Leaves Brazil, India as the Key Battlegrounds Posted: 26 Mar 2018 05:39 AM PDT  Uber and Ola drivers in New Delhi striking for better pay and working conditions in February. The two companies are fighting over the Indian market, where Uber operates in about 30 cities while Ola is in more than 110. Photo: harish tyagi/European Pressphoto Agency Uber Technologies Inc. has pulled back from several emerging markets but it is determined to hold on in two of the world's most populous: India and Brazil. In both, Uber has its hands full. But the potential is enormous for any company that comes to dominate. On Monday, Uber said it would relinquish its Southeast Asia business to Grab Inc. in exchange for a 27.5% stake in the Singapore-based company, so it could turn its attention elsewhere. In India, home to 1.3 billion people, the San Francisco startup is battling local champion ANI Technologies Inc.'s Ola. In Brazil, home to more than 200 million people, it is squaring off against ride-hailing service 99. The battle lines are tangled. In India, both sides have a common backer in Japan's SoftBank Group Corp. , which owns about 30% of Ola</a> and has a board seat, and owns about 15% of Uber. In Brazil, 99 is partly owned by China's Didi, in which Uber has had a 20% stake since giving up its own China effort in 2016. After investing an undisclosed amount in 99 last year, Didi said in January said it would buy the Brazilian company; a person familiar with the matter said it was paying about $600 million for a majority stake.  Last year Uber relented in Russia, forming a joint venture with Yandex, parent company of its rival Yandex.Taxi, in exchange for a stake of nearly 37%. But after Monday's Grab announcement, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi rejected speculation that it might seek a similar solution in India or Brazil. "It is fair to ask whether consolidation is now the strategy of the day, given this is the third deal of its kind, from China to Russia and now Southeast Asia," he wrote in a blog post about the Grab deal Monday. "The answer is no." "This is the final minority stake" Uber's going to do "anywhere in the world," said a person familiar with the company's thinking. "In Latin America and India we're not ceding." Spokesmen for SoftBank and Ola declined to comment. In India Ola operates in more than 110 cities, compared with Uber's roughly 30. Uber has been investing heavily there in recent years, but Ola says as a local company it has a better feel for what consumers want. It is focusing on expanding options such as auto rickshaws on its platform. On its side, Uber this month named Indian cricket-team captain—and household name— Virat Kohli as its first spokesman in India. Ola also recently began operating in Australia, opening a new front against Uber. Uber dominates in Brazil, people familiar with the market say, though it has clashed with regulators who have explored increasing oversight on the industry. Uber has significant operations in cities such as São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which are among the top metropolitan areas globally in use of the ride-hailing app, according to a person familiar with the matter. Uber's sale of its operations in Southeast Asia clears one challenge for Mr. Khosrowshahi as he considers an IPO next year. The company will still have to shore up its balance sheet after losing $4.46 billion last year on sales of $7.36 billion. It also faces renewed competition at home from rival Lyft Inc., which recently raised $1. 7 billion from investors, picked up market share in some key markets and expanded into its first Canadian city. Mr. Khosrowshahi is also facing the first major crisis under his watch after an Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a woman in Arizona last week. Experts have questioned the safety of the autonomous cars, which Uber has spent billions developing. —Greg Bensinger and Mayumi Negishi contributed to this article. |
| Tip: Record your iPad's screen on your Mac with QuickTime Player Posted: 26 Mar 2018 07:29 AM PDT While iOS 11 introduced a built-in screen recorder that allows users to quickly capture video of their iPhone or iPad's display, it is worth remembering that it is also possible to make a similar recording by connecting it to a Mac. AppleInsider explains the process of screen capturing an iOS device through macOS' QuickTime Player.  Apple's addition of the screen recording function to iOS 11 made it extremely easy for people to create video guides for sharing online and with relatives, to visually walk them through app functions. The function is also useful for capturing proof of bugs in apps to provide to developers, and on the more frivolous side, recording moments of gameplay for "Let's Play" videos on YouTube. For most people, this is good enough for their needs, but there are some cases where you may want to go down a different route. For example, people making online video guides may not want to have the obvious red bar at the top of the screen when they are capturing footage. One answer to that is to record the screen on a different device, keeping the iPhone or iPad's display normal and free of visual clues that there is a video being recorded. To do this, all you need is your iOS device, a Lightning-to-USB cable, and a Mac equipped with QuickTime Player. Despite the "Player" section of the name, it is a handy tool for capturing audio from a microphone, recording the macOS desktop, and from an external video source, with the latter also including iPhones and iPads. Setting Up the RecordingFirst, connect your iOS device to the Mac using the Lightning cable. If any applications load automatically when you established the connection, close or minimize those apps now. Open QuickTime Player, which can be found in the Applications folder, through Launchpad, and a number of other ways. A dialog box to open a file will usually appear, which can be dismissed by clicking Done without selecting a file. Click File in the Menu followed by New Movie Recording, which an also be selected using the keyboard shortcut Command-Option-N.  While there is a chance it will bring up the iOS device's screen straight away, if you have a built-in iSight camera or a connected webcam, you will need to change the video source. Click the arrow next to the record button, and select iPhone or iPad under Camera. QuickTime Player will resize and change the image to mirror the iOS device's screen.  Use the same menu to configure the microphone. You can select the device again to capture audio from the iPhone or iPad, or if you want to record a live narration, select a connected microphone instead. Lastly, you can select the quality of the video. Bear in mind that higher quality settings will also require more storage for the final clip. When ready, click record.  During and ending RecordingWhile the recording is taking place, the media controls for QuickTime Player will show how long the video has run for, as well as how big the current file size is, as well as a volume control and the stop button. Note that there is going to be some lag between the action on the iPhone or iPad and the Mac's view. At this point, it is best to keep an eye on the video feed to make sure it's showing how you want it to appear, and that it is still recording. When you have finished recording all that you require, click the stop button. Quicktime will then switch to its usual Play mode, allowing you to review what was captured.  To keep the recording, click File then Save in the Menu, select where to save the video file and enter a name, then click Save. The resulting .MOV file can then be used as part of a video project, sent to friends or family, or simply uploaded to your preferred video hosting service if no editing is required. Extra CreditThe live view can be useful as a second screen when demonstrating something on the iOS device as part of a presentation. Click the green maximize button at the top-left of the QuickTime window to make it fill the screen, and leave the mouse alone to allow the media controls to fade out. This same live view can also be used for streaming iPad gameplay on Twitch. Streaming software like OBS can be set to record from a window, so setting it to capture QuickTime Player as a video source will make the iOS device's display usable with other media sources. Lastly, not all apps will work normally when connected in this way. Video services will sometimes prevent content from being viewable at all until the connection is severed, as a copy protection measure. </span> |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2018 06:00 AM PDT I wake up to a buzzing on my wrist, in gentle pulses. It's my Fitbit Versa's alarm clock. I'm able to use the silent alarm because I'm wearing my Fitbit smartwatch to bed. I'm able to wear it to bed because Fitbit's new watch lasts several days on a charge. I love that. It's a nice flashback to my days of wearing the Pebble Watch -- the upstart smartwatch pioneer that Fitbit acquired in the closing days of 2016. In fact, the Versa is literally, as a coworker said, like the Apple Watch and Pebble had a little baby. I wore the Fitbit Versa while paired to an iPhone X during a week I spent in San Francisco, running around all day at meetings, getting tons of messages and doing three workouts. It's been comfortable, low-key and useful. It gets messages from my phone -- iPhone or Android. The Versa is fully water-resistant for swimming, and it's easy to track my steps, heart rate or start a workout. It's pretty great! And so far, when using the Versa -- coming in April for $199, £199 or AU$299 -- I miss absolutely none of the features of the more expensive Fitbit Ionic.  Is the Versa the best Fitbit ever? Maybe, but its battery life so far has been less than I expected: three days, not four. Still, that longevity runs rings around the Apple Watch. And while the Versa lacks the Apple Watch's deep hook-ins to your phone -- and built-in GPS and cellular options -- it's far more affordable, too. Ultimately, I love how Fitbit has chopped away all of the Ionic's unnecessary extras, and focused on the basics. If you can embrace its limitations -- and the Apple Watch Series 1 isn't on sale -- the Versa is the best fitness-friendly casual smartwatch in its price range. I reviewed the Versa in an early state: The watch is arriving in April, and some features like a women-focused health tracking mode that keeps track of menstrual cycles, and quick replies to messages on Android phones, won't arrive until May. But so far I like the Versa more than any other Fitbit... even with its flaws.
 Left to right: Apple Watch Series 3, Fitbit Ionic, Pebble Time Steel, Fitbit Versa. The Versa feels the most compact. Josh Miller/CNETWhat's greatThe Versa feels small to me. But that compactness is a positive. It feels less bulky than the 42mm Apple Watch Series 3. But it's also wide -- wider than the Apple Watch -- and the square screen has a lot of bezel around it. Still, I like the design a lot. It's also thinner than the Apple Watch. The included rubber band feels great. Extra bands, like Horween leather and a metal mesh band, look really nice, but were a little difficult to attach. The mesh band needs manual adjustment, unlike Apple Watch's magnetic strap. The touchscreen is also much more responsive than the Ionic's. Three buttons handle shortcuts for music controls, notifications, exercise start times and alarms. Clicks and click-and-holds can be customized to do other things. You'll have options. I can get what I need pretty quickly on the Versa, as a smartwatch and as a fitness tracker, and that's what matters most. The battery life is enough that I can wear the watch to bed. I like wearing watches to bed: I can check the time, I can set alarms, I can track sleep -- all of which Fitbit does a decent job of. It keeps me aware of my terrible bedtime habits. This Fitbit is also waterproof to 50 meters, like the Ionic and the tiny Flex 2. I wore it in the shower all week, but didn't get a chance to swim with it. Fitbit's updated on-watch OS has a better design in small ways. (Ionic users are getting the same update, too.) The remote for controlling phone-connected music actually makes sense now, with controls all on one screen. A swipe-up dashboard for fitness tracking stats includes more data. Not as much as I'd like, but the best it's been on a Fitbit: I can scan weekly progress, see recent workouts and look at my resting heart rate. I compared steps and heart-rate tracking against an Apple Watch Series 3 on my other wrist, and against handgrip heart-rate readings on hotel gym elliptical machines. It offered similar readings and accuracy. |
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