Sony secures a spot in the smart home market with its crowdfunded Qrio lock

Recently, Sony has been in the news because hackers leaked social security numbers, salary information, and unreleased films from Sony Pictures. That division is obviously just one piece of the conglomerate’s pie, but it’s a tad ironic that its latest project is all about security.

Yesterday, Sony launched a crowdfunding campaign for Qrio Smart Lock on Makuake, a sort of Kickstarter in Japan. Claiming to be the smallest smart lock available, Qrio is retrofittable and lets you open your front door (or, we suppose, your bathroom door if you really wanted) with your smartphone.

Slipping over the existing hardware on your door, you don’t even need a screwdriver to install Qrio, according to the Wall Street Journal. It uses an adhesive that apparently won’t damage the door, so it can be used in rental houses, or temporarily on a stairwell door if you’re having an exclusive rooftop party. Anyone who has the encrypted key can use their smartphone to unlock the door. (We’ll admit, we’re not quite sure how to get the smart look off the door, because the crowdfunding page is all in Japanese.)

While there are lots of other smart locks entering the market, including the recently released August, Sony is hoping to get feedback from users by launching on Makuake.

This isn’t the first time Sony has turned to crowdfunding; it did so for the FES Watch, hiding behind its offshoot brand Fashion Entertainments to “test the real value of the” e-ink product, as one representative told WSJ at the time.

This time around, Sony went ahead and put its name on the (very bottom of the) Makuake site. Even if they hadn’t, it might not have been too difficult to figure out the company was involved; Sony named its dancing robot from the early ‘00s Qrio.

Related: August Smart Lock review

The device is expected to retail for $120 (¥15,000), less than the $250 August. Though it’s only been a day, the smart lock has already exceeded its goal and has raised over $22,000 USD. That’s a lot of “Cash Money” (aka, Jessica Alba’s alter ego, a fact we learned from the Sony hack).

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Android Market on a computer - how it works

Google introduced the possibility to manage all your Android Apps via computer instead via phone. We had a look at this new feature and show you how it works!
Even though Android is already a pretty neat system from a usability perspective, some things are still achieved in a more efficient way by doing them on a "real" computer. One of those things is managing the apps that are installed on your Android powered smartphone.
A couple of days ago, Google introduced a management tool that runs in any browser, allowing basically the following functions:
Search for Android appsInstall apps to any Android phone that was used at least once in the pastRate, review apps
The most interesting feature for sure is the capability to easly manage apps across different phones. To do this, the user can manage his/her devices via an easy to use interface. In order for a device to appear, the user needs to have logged-in to the market on that particular device at least once:

The device can be renamed so it can be identified easier later on.
Now, how does tha actual installation work? Let's assume you found an app that you want to install on one of the devices listed in "My Devices" - for example the se-first.com News Alert App :-) After searching for the app, you simply hit the "Install" button, select the target device, and within seconds (as long as the target device is available via network or WiFi), the download and installation on the mobile phone starts automatically. Really cool!

Now, this is where the current version of the apps administration via Browser stops. We would like to see the following additional functionality:
Remove appsBulk-installManage (=backup and restore) app data along with the app
The latter two points would address the typical use case of switching mobile phones. Wouldn't it be cool if you could transfer all of your apps, including the data that they stored, from one phone to another?
We think that this solution has a lot of potential in the future, and we are looking forward to Google adding more features in the (hopefully near) future.
If you want to try out what you just saw for yourself, head over to the Android Market on the web!
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