Light Start – Jawbone vs. Fitbit, Leica SL, an app for doctors, Battlefront heroes, and an NGE smartphone
Brett Venter
Jawbone wins a victory in fight against employees who took info over to FitBit
Have you ever been tempted, when leaving a job for good, to do something that would really screw your old boss over? It’s a common enough sentiment, though not one that you should act on. Ahem… anyway, former Jawbone employees jumped ship over to Fitbit and one of the employees took a collection of Jawbone’s data, data “…that laid out in detail the positioning of Jawbone’s current and future technologies.” A preliminary injunction against the now-Fitbit employees earlier this week has been awarded, meaning that the missing info has to be returned to Jawbone. The data includes “…confidential, proprietary information, technical data, trade secrets or know-how.”
Prepare your wallet for the arrival of the Leica SL
Haha. Hahaha, haha, ha… Yeah, we’re never going to own one of Leica’s SL mirrorless interchangeable lens SL cameras. We want to, but we’re not going to afford it. The body will cost $7,500 (around R100,000), the lens setup will set you back $4,950 (R66,000) but that’s what you pay for a 24MP full-frame sensor capable of shooting at 11 frames per second. Leica is claiming the world’s fastest autofocus for the camera – bold claim but if anyone can do it, it’s Leica. The body is all aluminium, the sensor is the same as that seen in the Leica Q and the image processor is the company’s own Maestro II affair. This is not for the weekend shooter, folks. And that’s kinda the way we like it.
Leia, Palpatine, and Han Solo join the Battlefront lineup
Battlefront is coming and so are a few days off work, if we’re any kind of example for the rest of the world. And EA, DICE and Sony are still revealing new playable characters coming to the game. We were always going to have Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker but just revealed are the likes of Leia Organa, a strategic support player packing some firepower, and then Han Solo, the class that everyone is going to play. Solo wields a lot of firepower but the tradeoff is: no Force abilities. And there’s a new villain character, Emperor Palpatine. The decrepit-looking sports Force Lightning, a charge attack and support buffs for Empire units. Discount him at your peril.
Somewhere is the world is the worst doctor – here’s how to avoid an appointment with him
That headline comes courtesy of George Carlin but he had a point. Statistics dictate that the world’s worst doctor is out there somewhere and someone does have an appointment with him tomorrow. But if you’re in the States, then you can avoid being that person. A service, called Animo, has analysed a whole metric butt-load of health insurance claims and they reckon that they can tell you if your chosen American doctor has the experience to treat the condition you’re looking for help with. There are still a few bugs in the system, according to The Verge, but it’s a decent enough idea – though one that could potentially turn doctors into specialists against their will.
Anime fans – You’re going to have to got to great lengths to own this Neon Genesis Evangelion smartphone
If you’re any kind of anime fan, you probably know what Neon Genesis Evangelion is. If you don’t, then you’ve survived so far without having to wrap your mind around the original ending. But the iconic series is turning 20 and to commemorate the double-decade, there’s an Eva-themed smartphone heading to market from Sharp. It doesn’t have the greatest specs list, with a 1.2GHz Snapdragon, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and a bunch of Eva-themed software installed but it will definitely make your other anime-watching friends turn green (and probably purple) with envy. It probably won’t go berserk and whack a knife into an Angel’s eye through the AT Field.
