Author: pekandesigns

 ZTE’s one of those workhorse smartphone companies you don’t hear much about, aside from the occasional misguided flirtation with a bizarre form factor, a la the dual-screen Axon M. But the Chinese handset manufacturer still powers away and manages to produce some solid handsets at bargain bin prices. The company hasn’t officially announced pricing on […]

 Sometimes you travel all the way to Barcelona, only to meet up with a startup that’s been operating right around the block. Waverly Labs is a 20 person Brooklyn-based company that specializes in real-time translation through a pair of Bluetooth earbuds. The startup is on-hand at Mobile World Congress this week, showing off Pilot, its […]

 I’ve been CTO of HappyFunCorp since last year, and it has been a deeply edifying experience. Everything people told me was mostly true: I write less code; I go to more meetings, and turn up in more conference calls; I think more strategically, and less tactically; my time is spent in a more fragmented and […]

 There’s a fine line between innovation and letting people see up your nose during conference calls. This week at Mobile World Congress, Huawei pushed through that line with reckless abandon on the MateBook X Pro. It’s one decided downside of this bezel-free future we’re all hurdling toward: the camera is an afterthought. For the iPhone […]

 Tablets may not be the most exciting product category these days, but they also aren’t quite as dead as some pundits would like you to believe — and for Huawei, they are actually a growing business. Indeed, the company argues that it’s now the third largest tablet maker in the world. It’s no surprise then […]

 Apple told Reuters that the company had to comply with Chinese authorities and move iCloud data to Chinese data centers. Not everyone’s data is moving to China. This is only going to apply to residents of mainland China who chose China as their main country when they created their Apple account (not Hong Kong, Macau […]

 Bike-sharing startup GoBee Bike is giving up and shutting down in all French cities where it operates. GoBee Bike operates just like Chinese giants Ofo and Mobike. You open the app, you find a bike on the map and you unlock it by scanning a QR code. Once you’re done, you lock it again and […]

 LG today announced an updated version of the V30 smartphone and it comes with a supercharged camera powered by a third-party AI system. LG turned to EyeEm to add new features to the camera. Now, thanks to the EyeEm platform, the LG V30S ThinQ and soon the original V30 can automatically detect the subject of […]

 If coffee be the food of innovation, pour on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. And if you wish to pour me coffee, do so from the Rite Press, a clever hack on the traditional French press that adds a few features that even high-end models don’t […]

 Can programming be a craft? I was thinking about this as I was reading Matthew Crawford’s excellent book The World Beyond Your Head. Much like Crawford’s earlier work Shop Class as Soulcraft, he argues that craftsmanship is an activity that doesn’t just provide us with satisfaction, but also makes us fundamentally human by enchanting us […]