Xiaomi held a press conference in Beijing today at 14:00 local time. The trendy Chinese manufacturer had little to announce in terms of smartphone tech, except a new paint job for the Xiaomi Mi 4i, but the presentation still had a few interesting gadgets to show off.

First, there is the all new Mi Wi-Fi. It aims to build on the success of the original Mi router, which sold over two million units, not counting its later mini version. With the new generation, Xiaomi is upping the stakes. The unit promises faster and more-stable dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac support. It employs an “enterprise-class” PBC antenna array and a powerful Broadcom 4709C dual-core 1.4GHz processor and 512MB of flash storage. It also offers onboard storage, courtesy on Seagate or Toshiba surveillance. It can be used as a simple NAS or in tandem with Xiaomi’s proprietary tools for remote downloads, automatic backups, remote access to files and many more features, users have come to love from the current generation of Xiaomi smarty routers. Read more »

Less than a year after revealing that it is working on its own driver-less car, Chinese Internet search engine company Baidu has announced that the vehicle will be launched in the second half of the ongoing year.

The announcement was made by Baidu’s senior vice president Jin Wang at the China Cloud Computing conference. Wang also said that the company will work with a third-party car manufacturer, whose name wasn’t revealed. Read more »

The website of the US Army – http://www.army.mil/ – has been taken down after it was defaced by hackers yesterday.

A group by the name of Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) – that supports the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – took credit for the attack, saying they left several messages on the website. Read more »

Netflix is a true movie-style American success story. In its 18 year history, it has managed to overcome a lot of adversities, market fluctuations and ultimately adapt into one of the most influential media services in the US. But the company has already transcended way beyond its home market. Its services are now available in over 50 counties worldwide, with intent to grow the number to a whopping 200 in the next couple of years.

That’s quite a bar to cover and Netflix seems to be wasting no time in doing so. Starting this October, the service will also launch in Spain, Italy and Portugal. Users there will be able to enjoy the platform’s rich selection of content, including a lot of original series and even take advantage of a one-moth free trial offer. Read more »

Smart thermostat company Tado has launched a new device that it claims makes any remote-controlled air conditioner smart. Dubbed Smart AC Control, the device carries a price tag of $199, and is currently available directly from the company’s official website (click the Source 2 link below).

The device connects with any remote-controlled in-room AC via infrared, and works in conjunction with a companion app which senses your location to decide whether to turn the AC off or on. You can also use the app to easily change the AC settings. Read more »

The LG G4 is a truly impressive device and in a lot of ways, more traditional than other current flagships. An interesting YouTube video reveals that LG’s latest creation is not just good looking, but also quite tough.

The video itself follows the LG G4 as it spends over two hours submerged in water and manages to stay on in the process. This is quite an impressive feat, especially from a device that has no official IP rating. Still, the internals seem to be sealed off quite efficiently and the only real concern is shorting the battery. Read more »

Just a few days ago, information surfaced about a strange string that can crash the iOS Messages app. The bug became pretty viral, caused a lot of controversy and apparently sparked an interest in such exploits. So much so, that a similar hack has now been found for Skype.

The Microsoft-owned messenger also appears to be susceptible to malicious messages and it turns out that it requires a lot less effort than the complicated spell-like message that plagued Apple’s messenger. If you send any message containing the string “http://:” to a Skype contact their client will most-likely crash and keep on crashing after a restart. Read more »

Intel has managed to maintain supremacy on the CPU front for quite some time now. The company has built such a formidable reputation for itself, that it is truly a household name. Few people, however, tend to associate the chip maker with graphics and beastly GPU performance.

With its fifth generation Broadwell architecture, Intel pushed the envelope even further in terms of power to performance ratios. Yet, if you want a truly capable onboard graphics solution, Intel chips typically get outshined by what AMD’s APUs have to offer. The California company has been trying hard to bridge this gap in performance and its latest additions to the Broadwell lineup are a testament to this effort. Read more »

At the ongoing Computex trade show in Taipei, storage vendor SanDisk has launched what it is claiming to be the world’s smallest USB 3.0 flash drive. Dubbed Ultra Fit USB 3.0, the device has a capacity of 128GB, which can store up to 16 hours of Full HD video, the company claims.

Without its cap, the drive measures 0.75 inch in length, 0.63 inch in width, and 0.35 inch in height, which the company says makes it smaller than a dime. It provides speeds of up to 130MB/s, allowing users to move content up to 10 times faster than with standard USB 2.0 drives, SanDisk claims. Read more »

Most of you surely remember the YotaPhone – that quirky Russian handset, equipped with a second e-ink display. Well, as it turns out, the dual-screen setup might not be the most interesting thing in the smartphone after all.

Some new official information reveals that the Russian smartphone, produced by the government-sponsored Rostech corporation, comes with a backdoor, which allows tapping into the device for surveillance purposes. This was revealed by Sergey Chemezov, head of Rostech and former KGB agent. Read more »

Amazon has just launched a new discovery-style shopping experience. Stream is quite reminiscent of a Pinterest board, featuring an endless list of Amazon products. They can be filtered according to sex, which doesn’t sound very concrete and it really isn’t. But, seeing how the idea behind the service is to give eager users the ability to browse through new products, it is perfectly adequate.

The offers that make it into the service, however, aren’t picked at random – instead they are all sponsored. This is an important note to make and means that things you pick out within the interface might not always be competitively priced. Still, if you really like something, you can always dig around in the conventional search interface to see if you can get a better deal. And if you are an Amazon seller, you might want to consider promoting some items in the new service. Read more »

At Google I/O 2015, the software giant introduced its Advanced Technology and Projects team working on a handful of next generation technologies. Google has just released a video explaining one of them – Project Soli.

Google’s ATAP team is experimenting with an interaction sensor for tracking gestures using the radar technology. With a tiny sensor incorporated in any gadget or wearable, you get to interact with the controls using different hand gestures. Those gestures are basically recorded by the new interaction sensor by estimating the speed of movement, direction, or range. Read more »

Google’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) team is working on a special weaving technology with textile makers to weave touch and gesture sensitive materials along with regular ones to make special yarns. These yarns are woven into fabrics that can be used for making products ranging from a shirt to a car’s upholstery. Furthermore, small circuits to work closely with that material are to be smartly crafted inside such final product. Connected fabrics is the objective of ATAP’s Project Jacquard.

The regular cotton, silk, polyester or any other material will get woven with equally thin conductive metallic alloys for making a strong yarn meant to be used in an industrial loom settings. But the cloth is only one part of the connected clothing. Read more »

Apple has bought augmented reality company Metaio, according to a report from TechCrunch, which obtained legal documents showing transfer of shares from the latter to the former.

Metaio is a German company that was founded back in 2003 and has the likes of Ferrari and Ikea as its clients. Just to give you an idea, the company’s technology lets prospective buyers apply different colours and finishes to cars in the showroom. You can also use it to see how your home will look with new furniture (see video below). Read more »

The Google I/O keynote didn’t miss its chance to update us on the progress of Android Wear. The dedicated wearable platform has really come a long way for its relatively short life and third-party developers have played a major part in this success.

During the presentation the popularity of Android Wear was put into numbers and, it appears that Google-powered smartwatches now have a flourishing ecosystem with over 4000 dedicated apps at their disposal. Read more »