Archive for category: Uncategorized

Google today announced a visual and technical overhaul of its weather forecast feature in Google Now for Android. Because weather isn’t a dedicated app on Android, Google is able to integrate the new features and weather animations more deeply into the Android search function. Now you’ll get charts and information tailored for viewing on mobile and available via voice, as opposed to the standard chart you could get before, which mirrored what Google displays on the web when you ask about the weather through Google search.

“Now when you search for ‘weather’ or ask Google, ‘will it rain today?’ in the Google app on your Android phone, you’ll get a wealth of new information,” writes Google project manager Lea Stolowicz in a blog post….

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Two major district attorneys are trying to get inside your smartphone. To do so, they’re enlisting the help of assemblymen in California and New York. California Assemblyman Jim Cooper proposed a bill earlier this week that would require all smartphone makers to build back doors into their devices for law enforcement. This bill follows the exact format of one proposed by New York Assemblyman Matthew Titone in June 2015 and reintroduced a couple weeks ago. Cooper’s bill, exactly like Titone’s, says any manufacturer who isn’t able to decrypt and unlock its products when presented with a search warrant will be fined $2,500 for each device sold or leased.

Both bills still have a long way to go before becoming law. Neither is currently on…

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The Gear VR is pretty much a must-have if you own one Samsung’s top-of-the-line Galaxy Phones. It’s a wonderful, if imperfect, introduction to virtual reality that’s relatively attainable at only $100. But there’s an even better deal happening on it right now at Best Buy: it’s offering a Gear VR for free alongside most purchases of a Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, or Galaxy S6 Edge+. The offer only runs through the end of today — so if you’ve been considering upgrading, now wouldn’t be such a bad time. All of these phones are at relatively late points in their release cycles, too, so their prices have dropped. The S6, for instance, started at around $685 on AT&T, whereas it now sells for $585.

The one small catch with this…

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Last year was a big year for smartwatches: Apple launched its long-awaited Apple Watch, Samsung introduced its first watch with a round display, Pebble added three new models to its lineup, and a whole bunch of companies launched watches running on Google’s Android Wear platform. That’s not to mention the litany of wearable devices that gained “smart” features without running a full-fledged smartwatch platform.

This buzz of activity hasn’t brought smartwatches up to the level of smartphones in terms of sales or popularity, but it has moved them to the forefront of technology conversation. Even if people aren’t buying them, they’re talking about them and writing about them and asking questions about them. Ready or not, smartwatches are…

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Uber plans on launching a full food delivery service in 10 US cities in the coming weeks, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company will introduce a dedicated mobile app, UberEats, for customers in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and six other destinations that will let users order lunch and dinner from local restaurants and have the food delivered by an Uber driver. The app is estimated to launch in late March, the report says.

The initiative is a robust expansion of a stand-alone food delivery app in Toronto in which Uber partnered with more than 100 local restaurants for all-day food delivery in the Canadian city. All 10 cities already participate in Uber’s existing lunch delivery service, but UberEats will…

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The established narrative with mobile technology is that Google’s Android dominates in terms of sheer number of users and devices, but Apple’s iOS collects the lion’s share of the profits. Nothing changed about that situation in 2015, according to App Annie’s annual report, with the trends actually becoming more exaggerated. Android kept up its trajectory of prodigious growth and achieved roughly twice the app downloads of its nemesis iOS, which seems to have plateaued over the past couple of years.

App Annie explains Google’s expansion as being driven by emerging markets like India, Mexico, and Turkey, which are getting increased access to cheaper and more capable Android handsets. The Google Play Store has also shown…

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British trip-hop legends Massive Attack haven’t released much new music since 2010’s Heligoland, but they’re poised for a busy 2016. The band released an iPhone app this morning called Fantom, a “sensory music player” that actively remixes pieces of music based on the user’s heartbeat, location, local time, and movement. (If you have an Apple Watch, there’s a version for you too — it’s required to activate the main app’s pulse-based features.) The technology’s interesting on its own — and it was developed by a team including the band’s Robert del Naja — but the most exciting part of the release is the inclusion of four new Massive Attack tracks: “Dead Editors,” “Ritual Spirit,” “Voodoo in My Blood,” and “Take It There.”

You can’t hear…

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if Twitter’s Periscope brought live streaming video to anyone with a smartphone, the team behind ZCast wants to do the same for high-quality audio. ZCast, from six-person startup Zula, lets you start a live audio recording from your smartphone or computer, broadcast a link to the session through Twitter, and then invite others to join. Listeners can leave comments in real time and broadcasters can reply either via chat or live on the air. The service launches today on iOS and the web.

Unlike Periscope, which lets a single Twitter account broadcast to any number of viewers, Zula wants ZCast to be a collaborative affair much in the same way listeners can call into live radio shows. In other words, ZCast isn’t “one to many” broadcasting,…

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Tinder this week added a new feature that allows users to find STD testing sites in their area, resolving a dispute with a US sexual health advocacy group. A link to the STD testing locator is included under a new health safety section on Tinder’s website, and is accessible under the dating app’s FAQ page.

The move was welcomed by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that became embroiled in a feud with Tinder over billboards that linked the dating app to the spread of STDs like gonorrhea and chlamydia. The billboards were launched as part of an awareness campaign in New York and Los Angeles, and featured the slogan: “Tinder, Chlamydia, Grindr, Gonorrhea,” referencing the popular dating app for gay men.

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Microsoft versprach viele von seinen neuesten und leistungsstärksten Stift-basierte Features in Windows 10 Office-Anwendungen wie PowerPoint und OneNote würde den Weg zu anderen Plattformen und die Firma wird jetzt durch die Befolgung. Ab heute, Office-apps für das iPad und iPad kann Pro neue Freihand-Tools für präzisere Finger und Stylus Zeichnungen und Notationen nutzen. Das Unternehmen auch bringt seine PowerPoint-Designer und Morph-Tools, mit denen Sie Fichte und Animieren von PowerPoint-Folien, 10-Windows über iOS.

Die Funktionen sind alle das gleiche Windows Vergünstigungen Desktop- und mobile Office-Benutzer seit Ende letzten Jahres genossen haben. Es gibt jetzt eine Registerkarte “Draw” in jedem iOS Office-Anwendungen-Menüleiste, damit Sie zugreifen können, schreiben, zeichnen und schreiben…

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