Day: April 16, 2016

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Stream Android games to Twitch without a smartphone

Twitch committed to mobile gaming by sponsoring a Vainglory tournament and now it’ll be easier to stream Android games thanks to Bluestacks. As a reminder, Bluestacks makes an Android emulator for PC (or Mac) that lets you run most any mobile app or game on the desktop. The new app, called Bluestacks TV, works in two ways. First off, you’ll be able to watch selected Twitch streams on Bluestacks, as if you were watching a Twitch Stream on mobile. At the same time, mobile game broadcasters will be able to stream directly to Twitch via the Bluestacks emulator without using a smartphone.

The latter feat is by far the most difficult of the two, according to Bluestacks, and will be a boon to mobile game broadcasters. Normally, you need a phone or tablet, wires to connect to a PC and a webcam. "A lot of people have tried to crack mobile game streaming, but the multiple-device issue makes it really hard," says Bluestacks VP John Gargiulo. "This consolidates everything onto one PC, which is the device of choice for gamers anyway." To show off the tech, Bluestacks TV will host a mobile Hearthstone tournament on Twitch that kicks off today at 9 AM ET.

Purists might argue that streaming from a PC via emulation isn’t exactly in the spirit of mobile gaming. Nevertheless, Bluestacks reportedly has 130 million users, so the partnership exposes a lot of those folks to Twitch and vice-versa. It will also make things easier for mobile Twitch broadcasters and developers alike. "We’ve been approached to put an SDK in our games, but that’s bandwidth we don’t have," developer Mark Zhang told Bluestacks. "The fact that millions of people can stream Castle Clash to Twitch without us doing anything is massive."

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Fitbit data led doctors to shock a patient’s heart

Doctor’s made a decision to shock a man’s heart back to rhythm based on his Fitbit data, showing that such devices can do far more than just track your exercise. The 42-year old patient arrive at an ER in Camden, New Jersey with an atrial fibrillation (a fast and irregular heartbeat), meaning he needed immediate medical treatment. But which kind? Using a defibrillator could trigger a stroke in some cases, but not using one could also trigger a stroke. Luckily they noticed he was wearing a Fitbit, and its data confirmed his abnormal heart rate happened around the same time he had a seizure.

According to a research paper, "it was noted that he was wearing a wrist activity tracker (Fitbit Charge HR) which was synchronized with an application on the patient’s smartphone, recording his pulse rate as part of a fitness program. [There was] an immediate persistent increase to a range of 140 to 160 bpm at the approximate time of the patient’s seizure." That meant the arrhythmia wasn’t caused by a chronic condition, meaning it was unlikely that the patient had a blood clot that could be dislodged by a defibrillation. Based on that information, the team elected to do an electrical cardioversion, shocking the patient’s heart back to a normal rhythm.

While the case marks the first known time that a patient’s fitness tracker was used in such a direct medical procedure, such devices have already become useful to doctors. Researchers are using Apple’s ResearchKit app in conjunction with the Apple Watch to track patients’ cardiovascular health, for instance. IBM Watson researchers are also using the Apple Watch to see how sleep affects patients medical stats. Using a Fitbit in a direct medical intervention goes well beyond that, however, and one lucky user is probably glad he had it on.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Annals of Emergency Medicine

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