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Autographer wearable camera launches tomorrow priced at £400

It's been a long time coming -- close to a year, but OMG Life's clippable, er, lanyard-able life-logging camera will be available to buy tomorrow. The Autographer launches in the UK (where the company's based) and most major European countries on July 30th, priced at a rather prohibitive £400 (we're still confirming a US dollar price, but a later launch has been promised) and pitching itself as "the world's first intelligent wearable camera." We'd position it as an addition to your smartphone and/or standalone camera -- like Lytro or the incoming Memoto -- for those that have the cash.
There's a curious appeal to it, helped by an attractive design that's predominantly plastic. We spent over three days wondering around, sometimes with it on a leather lanyard (included) around our neck, sometimes clipped to our belt or shirt pocket. For better or worse, it's a truly hands-off camera: there's really no way to frame or even time your captures. The Autographer itself chooses when to take a shot using its five sensors (monitoring changes in color, temperature, magnetometer, motion and acceleration), which means there's a hefty dose of luck involved in how your photos turn out. See whether Lady Luck was shining down on us (the sun certainly wasn't) and check out our sample images below and first impressions after the break.

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Geeksphone Peak+ up for preorder at €149 with Firefox OS 1.1, 1GB RAM Mobile

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Interested in jumping on the Geeksphone Firefox OS bandwagon? Its first consumer-oriented device, the Peak+, is up for pre-order and we now know a lot more about it. It doubles up the RAM to 1GB over its Peak and Keon developer siblings, while packing the same 4.3-inch qHD display, 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon CPU, 4GB of storage (with a microSD expansion slot), 8-megapixel rear camera and 1,800 mAh battery as the original Peak. It's also boasting the latest Firefox OS flavor, version 1.1, which brings faster boot times and fewer bugs, along with 25GB of cloud storage. You can reserve one at €149 for a limited time with delivery promised by mid-September -- so, if you've been looking go above the usual smartphone OS fray, check the source.
Update: A Mozilla spokesperson has reached out with the following clarification: "Today, Geeksphone announced the pre-sale of a new device based on Boot to Gecko technology. We want to clarify that this new phone that was announced is based on Boot to Gecko technology with pre-release software, but is not a certified or supported Firefox OS device

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LG inks Sky deal for exclusive Now TV streaming access on smart TVs HD

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When LG invited us to an event in (thankfully) sunny London, we thought we'd be hearing about 4K, curved OLED and huge price tags. It wasn't about hardware at all, in fact, as LG announced it has partnered with Sky to add the Now TV movie and sport streaming service to its smart TV line-up. Starting in August, Now TV content will be exclusive to LG sets for "a minimum of 12 months." Those purchasing new home entertainment kit will get three months of free access to Now TV's movie catalogue, as well as three free 24-hour sports passes. If you're in possession of an LG smart TV from this year or last, or a 2013 era Blu-ray player or home cinema

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How would you change Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1?

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Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 promised plenty, but when we reviewed it, it didn't quite hit all of its marks. Maybe it was the high price when judged against its plastic chassis, or perhaps that our reviewer really wanted a better display than the 1,280 x 800 LCD that was provided. On

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Classic Shell 4.0 Beta brings Windows 7 menu style, drops Vista support

Classic Shell has been around ever since the final version of Windows 7 was released by Microsoft to the public, a lot longer than other applications that bring back the start menu of Windows 8. It does more than that, even though it is often reduced to its start menu module.
The developer of Classic Shell has released a first beta version of Classic Shell 4.0 that introduces several new and improved features to the program. Note that the version is currently listed as 3.9.0 beta, the final version will however be 4.0 RTM.
Probably the biggest change in Classic Shell 4.0 is the new Windows 7 menu style that you can now select next to the two classic styles the program ships with.  It looks similar to the classic theme with two columns on first glance, but uses a slightly different layout and functionality. Windows 7 users should feel right at home when they select the style.

If you install Classic Shell on Windows 8, you will notice that programs and apps are displayed in the start menu so that you can run them from it right away. They show up in the left pane right away as individual folders just like they do under Windows 7. This is different from the classic themes where they are sorted into an apps and programs folder.
Search results show up in the start menu area right away, but unlike on Windows 7, they use all of the available space. The search is tapping right into the Windows indexing service so that you can now search for files and programs from the start menu.
Jumplists too are now displayed right next to the program so that you only need to hover over it to access that functionality.

Other changes include the highlighting of new programs and apps in the start menu, options to pin programs directly from Windows Explorer, and the ability to search all Classic Shell settings to find particular ones faster.
Compatibility with Windows 8.1 has been improved, I had no issues installing the application on the system. It did replace the start button that Microsoft has added to the operating system with its own.
Improvements have also been made to some of the keyboard shortcuts which should now work properly everywhere.
The Classic IE9 module of the application has been renamed to Classic IE to highlight that it is compatible with all versions of Internet Explorer from version 9 on.
The new version of Classic Shell drops support for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, so that it is only compatible with Windows 7 and newer client versions, and Windows Server 2008 R2 and newer server versions.

Verdict

Classic Shell 4.0 beta introduces several improvements and changes to the application that make a whole lot of sense. Windows 7 users should feel right at home when they activate the new Windows 7 start menu style, and improvements that have been made to search and the way programs are displayed add to that as well.
While stable during tests, it is important to note that this is still beta software so that it is not recommended to use it in productive environments just yet.
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Lenovo's first Snapdragon 800 phone leaked as the K6 or X910 Mobile

Despite the fact that Lenovo hasn't yet embraced the Snapdragon 600 SoC, it looks like the Chinese company's finally giving Qualcomm a proper chance with the latter's more powerful Snapdragon 800. Starting yesterday, several cheeky images of an unannounced dual-SIM Android phone -- codenamed K6 or X910 -- popped up in Lenovo's official Chinese forum. The photo after the break shows AnTuTu indicating the presence of the relatively new MSM8974 chip (with Adreno 330 GPU) plus a 1,920 x 1,080 display (which looks like a 5-inch panel to us); so unless the app made a mistake, what we have here could be Lenovo's upcoming flagship device.
While not much else has been said about the phone, one of the leaksters described it as thin and light, and that it felt good in hand. But to be honest, we're not too thrilled with the design ID here, especially with that K860-inspired back. What's interesting, though, is that according to a source of ours, the "X" in X910 may be a wildcard that depends on the kind of deal Lenovo made with Qualcomm. At this point, we've been told to assume it'll eventually become the K910, which would, sadly, make this phone an uglier successor to the Intel-powered K900. Either way, chances are we won't be seeing many of these outside China, anyway

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