Technology - Google News

Oculus is adding a 'privacy center' to meet EU data collection rules
Amazon's new 'Alexa Blueprints' let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses
Motorola announces the Moto G6 and E5 with tall screens and big batteries

Oculus is adding a 'privacy center' to meet EU data collection rules

Posted: 19 Apr 2018 07:00 AM PDT

Oculus is complying with the EU's new data protection rules with more detailed policies and a "privacy center" where users can check the data Oculus has collected about them. The Facebook-owned virtual reality company announced the news today, but its updates will take a little longer. "My Privacy Center" will launch on May 20th, and the new terms of service will be published on April 20th, but take effect on May 20th. Oculus will also expand its terms of service to cover augmented reality — a field that Facebook has openly explored, but that Oculus hasn't so far.

Many companies are adapting to the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation launch, which requires them to set a higher standard for collecting personal information. The privacy center is a direct response to GDPR, but most of Oculus' changes are just tweaks to how it explains and organizes rules. "Our practices are not changing with respect to how we use data today. We are just including more transparency," says Oculus associate general counsel Jenny Hall. For instance, Oculus is adding its existing code of conduct to the official terms of service, "to provide increased visibilityof our commitment to create a safe VR environment for all people."

In a list of frequently asked questions, Oculus reiterated a few of its policy stances, including the claim that it doesn't share data with Facebook for third-party ad targeting. Oculus doesn't explicitly rule out such sharing in the future, and product lead Max Cohen says that "there is a time at some point in the future where ads in VR will likely make sense." (HTC already has a VR ad service for its Vive headset.) But "it's not on our near-term road map, we're not having any discussions about that, we don't know when we would start," says Cohen. "It's really just not something that we're looking to do."

Oculus has also gone into more detail about how physical movement data is collected and stored. Cohen says the company samples headset wearers' positions once a minute, aggregates and deidentifies that data, and tells developers how much play space the average user takes up. Oculus also asks for players' height but says this data is only stored locally on your computer, not on Oculus' servers. Consequently, no movement data is available for download through My Privacy Center.

Oculus says it shares "limited information" with Facebook, including information about accounts that are flagged for spam and abuse. According to Hall, that might include something like Oculus identifying a would-be hacker through their IP address or other tools, then telling Facebook what it's found.

Facebook has spent several weeks under fire for letting data mining firm Cambridge Analytica collect user information, and some of that scrutiny has fallen on Oculus. The company responded to some questions from The Verge earlier this month, but it's now making its current privacy stance a little more obvious.

As we heard before, Oculus doesn't have a strict policy declaring what it might collect in the future. But Cohen says Oculus will follow the spirit of the current policy, even if specific details change. "We have a responsibility to be very transparent about when we collect data and what we're doing with it. If we were to violate those principles, it would come at a heavy cost," he says. "We're trying to follow that principle of only collecting data that we think is necessary for a good VR experience, and I will commit to that principle not changing."

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Amazon's new 'Alexa Blueprints' let anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses

Posted: 19 Apr 2018 06:00 AM PDT

Amazon this morning is introducing "Alexa Blueprints," a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code. The idea is to allow Alexa owners to create their own voice apps, like a trivia game or bedtime stories, or teach Alexa to respond to questions with answers they design – like "Who's the best mom in the world?," for example.

You could also create a skill that includes helpful information for the babysitter, which could be triggered by the command, "Alexa, open My Sitter," Amazon suggests.

"Alexa Skill Blueprints is an entirely new way for you to teach Alexa personalized skills just for you and your family," explained Steve Rabuchin, Vice President, Amazon Alexa, in a statement about the launch. "You don't need experience building skills or coding to get started—my family created our own jokes skill in a matter of minutes, and it's been a blast to interact with Alexa in a totally new and personal way."

To build your own skill or custom Alexa response, users will visit the website blueprints.amazon.com and select a template.

At launch, there are over 20 templates across categories like Fun & Games, At Home, Storyteller, and Learning & Knowledge.

The templates are designed so you can just fill in the bits and pieces that make them personalized to your needs. You won't need to go through a series of complicated steps, and no technical knowledge is required. The templates are even pre-filled and work as is, if you just want to try them out before making your own.

After you've filled in your own content, you name it and publish with a click. This makes the skill or response available to all Alexa-enabled devices associated with your own Amazon account. But it's not available to the public or the Alexa Skills Store.

Families with Echo devices, in particular, seem to be a heavy focus for Alexa Blueprints. Kids have readily taken to Alexa, and today there are nearly 500 public Alexa skills built for kids alone. Families also often have private jokes and bedtime rituals where Alexa could come in – offering to "tell a Dad joke" or "start Anna's story," for instance. Plus, Alexa is designed as a home companion – controlling smart devices, playing music, setting timers, and offering information like news and weather, among other things.

But families aren't the only ones would could take advantage of Alexa Blueprints. College students could use the flash cards custom skill when studying, while a group of friends or roommates could design their own trivia games. And Airbnb owners could set up a skill for their houseguests.

After you've created the custom skill, it will be available in the Skills You've Made webpage on the Blueprints site. You'll also be able to enable, disable and delete your skills.

The feature could give Amazon an edge in selling its Echo speakers to consumers, as it's now the only platform offering this level of customization – Apple's HomePod is really designed for music lovers, and doesn't support third-party apps. Google Home also doesn't offer this type of customization.

All three are competing to be the voice assistant people use in their home, but Alexa so far is leading by a wide margin – it still has roughly 70 percent of the smart speaker market.

Alexa Blueprints are available today in the U.S. only.

The full list of Alexa Blueprints available at launch is below:

At Home

Custom Q&A: Customize responses to your questions
Houseguest: Make your guests feel at home with quick access to important info
Babysitter: Help your sitter find things, remember steps and get important info
Pet Sitter: Help your pet sitter care for your favorite animal

Fun & Games

Family Jokes: Create a list of your favorite jokes for when you need a laugh
Trivia: Create your own multiple choice trivia game on any topic
Inspirations: Curate a list of your favorite inspirational quotes
Family Trivia: Play together and brush up on family history
Bachelorette Party: Play to find out how well the bride's friends know her
Birthday Trivia: Play to see who knows the birthday girl or boy best
Burns: Roast your friends and family with lighthearted burns
Compliments: Flatter your favorites with a list of custom compliments
Double Trouble: Find out which couple knows each other best with this customizable game
First Letter: Play a game of categories starting with a certain letter

Storyteller

Adventure: Write an adventure story where your child is the hero
Fairy Tale: Customize an interactive prince and princess-themed tale
Sci-Fi: Create an interactive story with a far-out theme
Fable: Create a short narrative with a moral of the story

Learning & Knowledge

Flash Cards: Study, test yourself, and master any subject by voice
Facts: Keep a list of facts on your favorite topic, all in one place
Quiz: Challenge yourself and others with a customizable quiz

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Motorola announces the Moto G6 and E5 with tall screens and big batteries

Posted: 19 Apr 2018 07:00 AM PDT

Motorola is introducing its newest range of Moto G and Moto E smartphones today, which will sell in the $100 to $300 range. While these aren't high-end phones, they're all important ones for Motorola: the Moto G remains Motorola's best seller, and the company says it's the top seller worldwide in its price class; the Moto E, which sells for slightly less, apparently isn't far behind it.

In the Moto G line, Motorola is introducing the Moto G6 and G6 Play. (There will also be a G6 Plus, but it isn't launching in the US, so we didn't get a chance to see it.) The G6 and the G6 Play are similar looking phones, with curved edges on the back and 18:9 displays with thin bezels on the front. They feel nice, though the standard G6 gets closest to a flagship-level build, with a really nice Gorilla Glass back (at least until it picks up your fingerprints), instead of the polymer glass on the Play.

The standard G6 comes with somewhat better specs: it has a 5.7-inch display that's somewhere over 1080p, a Snapdragon 450 processor, and options for 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage or 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Plus, it's the only Motorola phone announced today to include USB-C. Like last year, it includes a fingerprint sensor on the front that can detect gestures and completely replace the Android control keys, freeing up even more screen space. It has a really pronounced effect on the 18:9 screen and looks great.

The G6 also includes dual rear cameras, which allow it to offer a portrait mode. I tried it out briefly, and while I wouldn't say the results looked amazing(they have the same obviously fake blur and missed edges as other portrait mode photos), the pictures came out better than I expected for something far from a flagship phone. Motorola's also including a bunch of other new camera features here, including an "active photo" mode that takes videos with each picture and built-in face filters.

The G6 Play has a 5.7-inch display as well, but it has a noticeable drop in resolution to somewhere just over 720p. It doesn't look bad, but in comparison, you can tell it isn't quite as sharp as on the standard G6. The Play only has a single 12-megapixel rear camera and a max configuration of 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage; its default model comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Its one major highlight, like most of Motorola's Play series phones, is that it has a really large battery: 4,000mAh, in this case, which should last well over a day. The Galaxy S9 has a 3,000mAh battery, for comparison.

Then there are the new Moto E models, the E5 Play and E5 Plus. (There's also a regular E5 model that won't launch in the US.) Normally, the E line isn't as nice as the G line, but that's not entirely the case when it comes to the E5 Plus. The E5 Plus has a 6-inch screen with a resolution somewhere over 720p, a Snapdragon 435 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of storage. It only has a single 12-megapixel rear camera, and it has polymer glass on the back. Overall, it feels a bit rounder and bit less sturdy than the G6, but you still might want it for one big reason: it has a 5,000mAh battery, which is just huge.

The Moto E Play, on the other hand, isn't much to marvel at. It looks a lot like older Moto E and G phones, with a plastic body and a 16:9 display. It actually feels really nice — Motorola's made a lot of phones in this shape, and it's really good at making them — but it's clearly not meant to wow anyone. The real weak point is the 5.2-inch display, which is listed as "HD" but looks pixelated and washed out compared to any of the other phones Motorola announced today. It also has a surprisingly small battery for a Play phone: only 2,800mAh, though it is removable.

Motorola plans to launch all of these phones sometime this spring, likely in May or June. The G6 will sell for $249 and the G6 Play will sell for $199 in their base configurations. We don't have pricing yet for the E5 Play and Plus because that'll be up to phone carriers. They'll likely start in the $100 range, but it's possible that the E5 Plus will get into Moto G territory. Even if that's the case, Motorola is hoping that carrier subsidies will make these phones even cheaper.

The Moto G phones are launching globally, except for the G6 Plus. The G6 Plus actually comes out sooner than everything else, launching in Brazil today and Mexico next week. It's supposed to come to parts of Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America in the future, selling for around €299 (about $370 USD). The Plus model will be somewhat larger and higher-end, with a 5.9-inch display.

The Moto E5 Play will launch globally, but the E5 Plus is only going to be available in the US. There's also a standard E5 with a 5.7-inch screen and an 18:9 aspect ratio that'll sell for €149 (about $185 USD) launching in the regions listed above.

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