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Leap Motion Opens Up Beta Access To Developers In Preparation For Its July 22 Launch
Leap Motion is about a month away from shipping its 3-D gesture controller to consumers, and it wants to make sure that there are plenty of apps for users to play with once it does. With that in mind, the company is opening up access to its Airspace app store for any developers who are already testing out the device, and it will further open its developer portal to those who don’t already have access to it.
In preparation for its launch, Leap Motion had more than 65,000 people apply to be part of its developer program. It gave early access to about 10,000 developers, shipping out units and letting them sign up for its developer portal. Now those lucky 10,000 will be able to try out the first apps that will be available through its Airspace app store.
Later this week, developers will get access to Airspace and the first apps that have been developed and approved for use with the Leap Motion gesture controller. To do so, they’ll need the Airspace Home desktop launcher, which will house all the apps that users download that are compatible with the controller.
In addition to providing early access to its first generation of apps, Leap Motion is also opening up its developer portal to interested parties who weren’t part of the early access program. That will allow those who haven’t yet played with the device to at least familiarize themselves with the company’s developer tools and maybe start building apps ahead of the public launch next month.
Leap Motion has clearly been putting a lot of effort into getting developers — and apps — ready on the platform ahead of its consumer release. There are currently about 50 apps available on Airspace, and Leap Motion CEO Michael Buckwald says he expects that number to double by the time consumers get their hands on the device.
In addition to the company’s own internal developer program, Leap Motion investor Highland Capital Partners is looking to court developers for the device as well. The venture firm has established a $25 million Leap Fund, which it will use to invest in entrepreneurs and startups building interesting applications that take advantage of the 3-D motion controller.
Pre-order units of Leap Motion are expected to ship on July 22, and the device will also be available in Best Buy stores for $79 about a week after that. While he wouldn’t go into specifics about the number of units that have been pre-ordered, Buckwald said the company expects to have “hundreds of thousands” of users from around the world at launch. Indeed, initial interest has been truly global, with more than 100 countries represented in its pre-orders.
Snowden Still Seeking Asylum, Wikileaks May Publish Rest Of His Docs
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is in political limbo as he seeks asylum with any country that will help him escape from U.S. extradition. On a press call today, Wikileaks Editor Julian Assange assured journalists that he is “healthy and safe,” meaning that they still have no idea where he’ll eventually end up. “I cannot give further information as to the whereabouts or present circumstance except to say that the matter is in hand,” added Wikileaks spokeswoman, Sarah Harrison.
Yesterday, it was reported that Snowden was bound for the sunny skies of Ecuador, the very same country protecting Assange in their London Embassy. But, as the U.S. seeks to get him into custody, it’s unclear what obstacles he’s facing to secure safe passage.
Assange teased the idea that Wikileaks might publish the rest of Snowden’s documents. “Of course, Wikileaks is in the business of publishing documents suppressed by governments.” As of yet, Snowden has been pretty loyal to The Guardian, which has been judicious about disclosing the other 37 top-secret slides.
Google Launches Cloud Playground, A Browser-Based Environment For Trying Its Cloud Platform
Google’s Cloud Platform is slowly becoming ay fully featured environment for running complex web apps, but it’s not easy to just give it a quick try. To get started with Cloud Platform, after all, you have to first install the right SDK and other tools on your local machine. Today, however, Google is launching its browser-based Cloud Playground, which is meant to give developers a chance to try some sample code and see how actual production APIs will behave, or to just share some code with colleagues without them having to install your whole development environment.
Cloud Playground, Google says, is meant to be a place “for developers to experiment and play with some of the services offered by the Google Cloud Platform, such as Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud SQL.”
For now, Cloud Playground only supports Python 2.7 App Engine apps, and Google considers it to be an experimental service (so it could shut it down anytime).
To get started, you simply head for the Cloud Playground or, if you just want to see it at work, head for Google’s getting started documentation, which now features green Run/Modify buttons that allow you to run any of the sample code on these sites. The Cloud Playground itself features numerous sample apps and also gives you the option to clone other open source App Engine template projects written in Python 2.7 from GitHub.
The project itself is open source and consists of a basic browser-based code editor and mimic, a Python App Engine app that serves as the development server.
Like Google Voice But Live Outside The US? Then Try VoxSci's New iO6/Android App
Google Voice remains a pretty useful service if you want your voice mails turned into text messages. However, it’s ability to do so accurately is a little hit and miss. Indeed, there are numerous websites that contain hilarious Google Voice transcriptions, often on Tumblr blogs. Plus, Google Voice is only available in the US. VoxSci is a service which has been operating for a while in the UK, but has now launched an iPhone and Android app to do what Google Voice does, but for the rest of us outside the US.
VoxSci converts the first 50 characters of your voicemail for free, however the user can listen to the entire voicemail within the App. if the user wants the voicemail fully transcribed they will need to subscribe. To get the whole voicemail converted to text costs £5, £10 or £25 per month with payment charged to an iTunes Account on the iPhone.
VoxSci has a number of useful features including voicemail search and you can respond; by text, email or call. There are numerous other features.
Alternatives like Hullomail charge for the first 10 seconds of a voicemail to be transcribed and don’t have the ability to fully transcribe a voicemail. Also Hullomail charge to copy voicemails to emails whereas VoxSci doesn’t.
The main difference between the service and Google Voice can be summed up in one word: quality. It’s by far the most accurate voice to text service I’ve come across and is worth checking out.
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