CLCKR Smartphone Stand

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We’ve been testing the CLCKR phone stand and it is really really good! It has made using our phone even easier, why? Well for us we’re people who love to consume content on the go, as well as at home. The CLCKR grip helps with this. As it provides a firmer and safer use of our smartphone. Not only that it looks really good too and doesn’t add any unnecessary bulk to the device.

It can be used on any device thanks to the 3M adhesive. While if you decide for whatever reason (we don’t know why you would!) want to take it off, it won’t leave any residue behind!

With CLCKR you can use it to;

  • Position your phone in portrait or landscape mode to video call with friends or family
  • Hold your phone comfortably and take brilliant selfies
  • Utilise the secure grip to make calls or use your phone on-the-go
  • Stand your phone up and use it as a second screen while working
  • Binge-watch your favourite films or TV shows hands-free 
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NHS Rainbow CLCKR

Now, there’s a Rainbow version!

The Rainbow version of the Universal CLCKR has been designed to show care and gratitude to our care workers and NHS workers. The rainbow is now a recognised symbol of support for those fulfilling care and key roles during the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore the rainbow symbol also has traditional associations with hope and peace. The Rainbow version is limited edition and is the perfect way to show support.

“Like everyone else, we’ve been moved by the important work carried out by frontline workers during this time to keep us safe. The show of support for them at our doorsteps, on our balconies and out of windows has been a highlight of our weeks in lockdown. At CLCKR, we wanted to do our bit to help and we look forward to contributing all UK profits from online sales of the Rainbow CLCKR to the COVID-19 fundraising appeal by NHS Charities Together.”  Phil Mulholland, Chief Marketing Officer & Managing Director, CLCKR

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The Rainbow CLCKR stand and grip is available to pre-order now, priced at £12.99, with all UK profits going to the NHS Charities Together COVID-19 Urgent Appeal.

Case Version

Want to use the CLCKR without attaching it to your phone? Don’t Fret as there’s a case version of the CLCKR! Simply attach the case to your phone and you’re away! No need to stick or attach anything to the back of your phone!

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Purchase the CLCKR case by clicking here!

Purchase the original CLCKR by clicking here!

To purchase the Rainbow Version of CLCKR please click here! 

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Folding iPhone Exciting Concept!

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Folding iPhone. The one rumour that just won’t go away. Noe the team over at #iOS beta news have created a rather cool concept. The Folding iPhone looks like a cross between a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip or the rebooted Motorola Razr.

In the video above we see the iPhone Flip, a handset that when folded out in phone form, has really thin bezels. The notch is gone and has replaced by a centre mounted pin-hole camera. The back has the usual tipped iPhone camera array.

The video also shows a backplate-mounted secodary screen.Which can display content, notifcations and messages when the phone is in clamshell mode.

The rumours of a folding iPhone and the hundreds of concepts as a result. Have come from a patent from Apple depicting a folding iPhone. Now you know as well as I do that not all patents get made. So who knows maybe Apple are planning a folding iPhone, maybe they’re not, they may just be testing the water. But whatever happens, we know that Apple tend to wait until the tech has been perfected before adding it into their smartphones.

(T3)

So I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Until then we can enjoy the plenty of concepts that are on the web today.

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Sky Pollution is no more??

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Big Zuu: What’s in his Home Studio?

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Big Zuu as well as a chef and a presenter is mainly a rapper! He does a lot of work from home, even more so now there’s a lockdown! So on our latest podcast with him, we decided to delve into his home studio to find out exactly what he’s rocking at home!

Big Zuu’s Mic of Choice: Rode NT2A

The NT2A is an amazing microphone! Of course it is as it’s made from the legendary RODE! The NT2-A continues the legacy from the original NT2 and now has a professional 1″ capsule studio mic and three position pick up patterns. Furthermore it has a high pass filter too! The switches are conveniently located on the body of the mic too! While the frequency and transient response of this transducer has been voiced to complement today’s modern recording techniques! However you can still get silky smooth and crystal clear recordings from it! This mic is so good as it provides flexibility and superlative audio characteristics making it hugely versatile.!

Purchase here!

Big Zuu’s Soundcard: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen

The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is now into it’s 3rd Generation and is better than ever. Especially since it’s used by musicians, producers and hobbyists all over the world! Mainly because it’s very very reliable piece of kit! It has 2 of the best performing Scarlett mic pre-amps. Which comes with ‘Air’ which helps to mic up guitars or record vocals. There’s also 2 high headroom instrument inputs for guitars and basses. It has high performance converters (24bit/192kHz) built in. Which will record, mix and play back in studio quality! Making it super clear and detailed.

Focusrite have something called an Easy Start tool which will help you set up and record within minutes too, so no excuses allowed!

(Focusrite)

Purchase here!

Big Zuu’s Speakers: KRK Rokit 5’s

The KRK Rokit RP5 G4 has a tweeter and a subwoofer which are made from Kevlar, which not only gives you really high studio level quality audio. Therefore ensuring the same sonic integrity on every frequency but also reduces listening fatigue for the user. The sound on these speakers are incredible, which is why it’s no surprise that these speakers are the go-to brand for studio monitors. Anything you throw at these speakers they will output and produce quality sound with ease. These speakers have been scientifically re-engineered from the ground up to work with modern artists of all genres and environments. (Amazon)

 

Purchase here!

Belkin USB C – to USB A Converter

If you work from home and you’re a music producer, rapper you’re going to need to connect a lot of devices to your laptop. The newest Macbook Pro’s don’t have a lot of USB ports so, to fix that Belkin have released this amazing USB hub. It’s USB C to USB 3.0 and has 4 available slots. It allows up to 5gbps file transfer speeds. So, you’ll be able to work super quick! It’s powered too so your devices and programmes will be unlikely to crash! You can also charge your devices on it too! (Amazon)

Purchase here!

Big Zuu’s choice of music software: Logic X

Logic Pro X is an incredible piece of software. It is often the go-to piece of software for professional and home studio’s all over the world. As it can handle really demanding projects. Both for film and for music!

It is a highly sophisticated tool for professional songwriting, editing and mixing. The interface is easy to use and designed to get the best creative results quickly. It includes a HUGE collection of instruments, effects, loops, a whole toolkit to create amazing music.

Purchase here!

Listen to the guys chatting about this with Big Zuu by clicking here! 

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Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra New Phone Who Dis EP3

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Facebook Blender

Facebook Blender – POWERFUL CHAT BOT

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Facebook have launched a brand new chatbot. It’s called Facebook Blender and it is insanely powerful and very very humanlike. It’s able to demonstrate empathy, knowledge and personality.

Facebook Blender was trained by using available public domain conversations. The conversations that were analysed? 1.5billion different human exchanges. HUGE! In a surprising stat, 49% of people prefer to interact with the chatbot compared with another human!

However, artificial intelligence experts state that using a platform such as Reddit does come with drawbacks. As Facebook Blender would sometimes respond using foul and offensive language, while at other times it would make up facts.

Though researches hope that further models of Blender would address this. A Facebook spokesperson told the BBC:

“We believe that releasing models is essential to enable full, reliable insights into their capabilities,” a Facebook spokesperson said.

Artificial Intelligence expert Dave Coplin, chief executive of consultancy The Envisioners, said that Blender was a “step in the right direction,”

“The first is just how complex it is to replicate all of the nuances of a human attribute, like the ability to hold a conversation, a skill that most three-year-olds can master,”

“The second is around the relationship with the data used to train the model and the results generated by the model.

“As great a platform as Reddit is, training algorithms based on the conversations you find there is going to get you a lot of chaff amongst the wheat.”

Facebook also compared Blender’s performance with the latest version of Meena, Google’s version of a chatbot. It showed 2 sets of conversations, one made with Blender the other Meena. These conversations included different conversations such as movies or veganism. Facebook said that 67% of respondents thought Blender sounded more humanlike than Meena.

“We achieved this milestone through a new chatbot recipe that includes improved decoding techniques, novel blending of skills, and a model with 9.4 billion parameters, which is 3.6x more than the largest existing system.

“This is the first chatbot to blend a diverse set of conversational skills together in one system.”

“Building a truly intelligent dialogue agent that can chat like a human remains one of the largest open challenges in AI today.”

Facebook Blender Example Conversations

Facebook Blender

 

Facebook Blender

 

(BBC)

Get involved with Facebook Blender here and here!

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Netflix vs Disney

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Netflix’s share price rose just a tad last week to make the 22year old company more valuable than Disney. While Disney has been around for almost a century. At it’s peak, Netflix’s market cap was close to touching $200BN! (data from Koyfin). Netflix Vs Disney is on!

However, those share prices have reversed slightly to see Disney retake it’s crown. Though, considering towards the end of 2019, Disney was worth almost 2x as much as Netflix. So it’s very surprising to see a shift in fortunes in a short space of time.

You could argue that it’s the coronavirus being the reason for this. Netflix recently announced that it had gained a massive 16M new subscribers over the last quarter. While Disney have had to close it’s parks and furlough thousands of workers. Even have had to push back film releases. Disney+ however seems to be doing well, even though it represents a tiny portion of Disney’s revenue’s and profits.

Netflix may come back on top, but that could all come down to how long lockdown is. Though, other platforms such as Quibi may want to take a piece of the pie….

Quibi

Launching a brand new streaming platform whilst everyone is at home during a global pandemic may be a good thing. However, for Quibi, a content provider designed for people on the go, who want a 10 minute episode whilst on the commute, it may be different.

Quibi is short for “Quick Bites” and they raised $2BN from investors before even having a single user. Therefore making it one of the msot funded startups pre-launch of all time. They’re trying to break the mold and be different, original and unique. The ability to watch your phone in landscape or portrait certainly highlights that as the content will dynamically adjust depending on how you watch.

Global Stats

Based on data from JustWatch, for 66 countries Netflix is the market leader in 61 of them. While Prime Video has the lead in Germany, Austria and India. Furthermore BluTV is leading in Turkey and iQiyi in China. (Note Netflix is unavailable in China)

 

Netflix vs Disney – Quibi Enters the fold

Quibi debuted at number 4 in the app store. But has since plummeted to outside the top 100.

Their socials aren’t great either 190K on Instagram is great, but there’s an account about an egg that has 6.7M and charts get 196K. So considering the funding, you’d expect more followers.

However, there is some good news. The apps ratings are great! More than half of the 2500 ratings are 5 stars and there’s little 1 star ratings.

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UFO’s: The Pentagon Declassifies 3 videos

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So well kinda knew it didn’t we? That UFO’s *could* exist. Well, the Pentagon have officially released 3 short videos showing ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ that had previously been released by a private company.

While they haven’t been confirmed to be alien’s they are unidentified. So we’ll leave it up to you to make your mind on what they *could* be. The videos show unidentified flying objects rapidly moving while being recorded by infrared cameras. The pilots talking in the videos seem to be shocked and surprised at what they are seeing!

UFO’s Believablity

The Navy had acknowledged the veracity of the videos last year, September. While they’re releasing them now:
“in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos,”
“After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems,”
“and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough.

Guidelines

There are formal guidelines for pilots working in the Navy, on how to report possible UFO’s.  The Navy videos were first released between Dec 2017 and March 2018. Via To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences. To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences is the company which was co-founded by Tom DeLonge, the former Blink 182 band member. The company studies information about .
In 2017, one of the pilots who saw the unidentified aerial phenomena in 2004, told CNN:
“As I got close to it … it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds,”
“This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way.”
Retired US Navy pilot David Fravor.

UFO’s Previous Studies

The Pentagon has previously studied recordings of UFO’s as part of a classified program, launched at the behest of former Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. It launched in 2007 and ended in 2012, as there were higher priority areas that needed the funding. However, Luiz Elizondo, the former head of the classified program told CNN in 2017 that he personally believes that there’s enough evidence to prove that we are not alone.
“These aircraft — we’ll call them aircraft — are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of,”
Elizondo resigned from the Defence Department in 2017, in protest over the secrecy of the program and the internal opposition to funding it.

Dig Deeper

Senator Harry Reid Tweeted on Monday that he was glad that the Pentagon released the videos, however
 “it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications.”
Some members of Congress are still interested. With some senators receiving a classified briefing from Navy officials on UFO’s last summer.
“If pilots at Oceana or elsewhere are reporting flight hazards that interfere with training or put them at risk, then Senator Warner wants answers. It doesn’t matter if it’s weather balloons, little green men, or something else entirely — we can’t ask our pilots to put their lives at risk unnecessarily,”
Rachel Cohen, spokeswoman for Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, told CNN at the time.
(CNN)

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Mixcloud Live: Legal Live Streaming For DJ’s

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Live Streaming in the DJ world has had a lot of interest over the past few years. While nothing has come close to the demand we’ve seen for live today, during a pandemic. A new reality has set in and there’s been plenty of cancelled events. Therefore creators and institutions are facing an extremely challenging financial future. Mixcloud LIVE is here to help that.

Mixcloud LIVE

So, as a result, Mixcloud have launched Mixcloud LIVE for all of their PRO Creators. Mixcloud LIVE is a first music focused, integrated solution to allow audio creators to live stream video and archive the audio (coming soon). Futhermore they’re able to generate income via SELECT. While this is done via a legal and licensed platform ensuring that underlying artists and songwriters who get played will get paid.

All via a legal and licensed platform ensuring the underlying artists and songwriters who get played, get paid.

Some Bugs

Mixcloud have been working hard to bring a brand new way for creators to express themselves over the last few weeks. All within the best way possible. They’ve built and released Mixcloud LOVE earlier than they’d normally do, so expect some bugs and UI flaws when using it. However, don’t worry as they will iron them out as quickly a possible.

Mixcloud LIVE has been designed to bring an interactive, fun, human experience to both creators and listeners, at a time when the world is socially distant we can feel closer than ever with music.

Start here: mixcloud.com/live/new

For help setting up, check out this article on how to go live on Mixcloud

(Mixcloud)

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To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate

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At a time where vaccinations are a hot topic right now and on everyone’s lips. Coronavirus vaccine is a way off, but it brings us to think about vaccination’s in general and how important they are to everyone’s livelihood.

To most of us getting a vaccination is just a natural way of life and a way of protecting ourselves against the many different diseases out there. However, in America, vaccination’s are a controversial topic, with many parent’s opting to not have their children vaccinated.

So when an outbreak of measles infected a small town in America, one parent who decided against getting their child a vaccination. Was worried about their child getting sick and asked her community how best to protect her child from measles. Well….you can guess the response.

Take a look at the gallery below for the full response on how people reacted to her not getting a vaccine for her child:

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