Dave Zatz New e-commerce site Jet.com is attempting to attract customers with a generous 20% off coupon code – and I took the bait. I assume there are many good deals to be had, but one in particular caught my eye. I’ve been looking to retire an awful 22″ Vizio television in favor of something a bit more … Read more
The already well-priced Amazon Basics HDMI cables see a discount today. They’re rated for the 1.4 spec – supporting 4k and ARC. And should be fine with everything else as well. The cables come in various lengths, ranging from 3′ to 25′ and I was motivated to pick up four more in a 3′ pair and a 6.5′ pair.
By way of The Donohue Report and Multichannel News, we seemingly learn that Slingbox will once again incorporate a tuner. While most folks hang a Slingbox off a DVR to meet their remote or mobile video needs, three prior models included tuners to placeshift unencrypted cable or over-the-air broadcasts. And it provided a real clean way to roll your own cloud … Read more
August is out with several announcements today as they now publicly transition from a singularly focused smart lock company into a home automation player. We’ve got service relationships, a smart keypad, a doorbell camera, and, of course, more smartlock. The existing August lock drops in price to $199 with a significantly updated model joining the fray at $229.
We’re big fans of Kevo here. And while the smartlock remains mostly an island unto itself, it gains powerful new communication capabilities. To minimize power consumption, most networked gadgetry sticks to low energy Bluetooth, Z-Wave, or Zigbee in lieu of WiFi. That’s been proven to work well … when you’re in the vicinity. But to keep tabs on your door and even control it remotely requires something to bridge those networks. Enter Kevo Plus.
I first touched on the Kevo bridge way back at CES 2014 as the missing link. But my enthusiasm waned at CES 2015 given what sounded something like a recurring fee for remote access. Fortunately, as it turns out, “Kevo Plus” launches today at $70 – with both hardware and ongoing service included in that single fee. The bridge itself is a small affair that plugs directly into your router and communicates with Kevo over Bluetooth. In conjunction with today’s app update, Kevo Plus allows you to see if you forgot the lock the door … when you’re away from home… and do something about it.
As promised (to me, personally;), the TiVo Fire TV app has arrived today … in “beta” form and without live television. Having only played with it about five minutes, my initial observation is that this was clearly designed for or tested against something other than a television given little thought to overscan. Without adjusting my Fire TV’s settings, elements in the lower left, upper left, and upper right were clipped on my television. Indeed, from Amazon’s design guidelines:
The amount of space a TV uses as overscan varies across manufacturers. That real estate is not available to your app. Although the Amazon Fire TV platform provides a way for the user to adjust for television overscan in the settings, for the safest possible behavior we recommend that you avoid placing any of your app’s UI elements within the outer 5% of any edge on the screen. The focused item and on-screen text, especially, should be fully within the inner 90% (the safe zone) of your user interface.