Showing posts with label The Verge - Tech Posts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Verge - Tech Posts. Show all posts
Monday, August 1, 2016
How Samsung plans its phones
Samsung’s Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge aren’t just the company’s best-ever phones — they’re also the phones that have turned around the fortunes of its mobile division after two years of slipping profits. The S7 and S7 Edge’s strong sales were instrumental in shoring up the mobile unit, according to the second-quarter earnings released last week, and Samsung plans to keep up the momentum at the high end.
Tomorrow Samsung will announce the Galaxy Note 7, actually the sixth main entry in its popular series of gigantic, stylus-equipped phones. The Note line usually builds on the Galaxy S series, applying Samsung’s latest technologies to a larger canvas; with the S7 and S7 Edge setting an impressive precedent, expectations for this year's model...
GlaxoSmithKline and Google team up to create new bioelectronics health company
British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and Google's parent company Alphabet have announced they're creating a new company to develop bioelectronic medicines. The joint venture will be named Galvani Bioelectronics and will be headquartered in the UK, with 55 percent of equity interest owned by GSK and 45 percent owned by Alphabet's Verily Life Sciences division (formerly known as Google Life Sciences). Galvani will initially be funded with £540 million over the next seven years ($712 million), and plans to have treatments ready for regulatory approval by 2023.
You can still get Windows 10 for free with this trick
Microsoft's free upgrade offer for Windows 10 ended last week, or did it? The software giant has introduced a "free upgrade offer extension" for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users who use assistive technologies. While, technically, the free upgrade offer for the general public has ended, Microsoft has introduced a loophole with this extension that lets anyone get Windows 10 for free.
Google wants to be your hub for the Rio Olympics
Google today announced a set of new features to help people follow the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, which begin this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Users can now more easily find information on the Olympics in search, including details on event schedules, athletes, and medal counts, and can sign up for automatic alerts through the Google app for Android and iOS. They can also watch event highlights from select broadcasters in more than 60 countries on YouTube, along with mobile live streams from 15 YouTube Creators who have been chosen to cover the games. Google Street View now features highlights and landmarks across Rio as well, including both tourist destinations and Olympic venues. The company announced the features in a blog post...
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Uber is selling its China business to dominant local rival Didi Chuxing: report
Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing is taking over Uber's local business in a deal valuing the combined company at $35 billion, Bloomberg reports. Didi is also said to be investing $1 billion in Uber based on a $68 billion overall valuation. Specific terms of the deal aren't yet clear, though Didi Chuxing was recently valued at $25 billion.
"As an entrepreneur, I've learned that being successful is about listening to your head as well as following your heart," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was reported as saying in a yet-to-be-published blog post obtained by Bloomberg. "Uber and Didi Chuxing are investing billions of dollars in China and both companies have yet to turn a profit there. Getting to profitability is the only way to build a...
LG's V20 will be released in September with Android 7.0 Nougat
Last week LG alluded to a successor to its second flagship phone of 2015, the V10, and today the company revealed a little more. The new phone will be called the V20, and it's said to be the first handset to launch with Android 7.0, otherwise known as Nougat.
That's about as much as LG is saying for now about the V20, other than mentioning a planned September launch. The V10 came out in October last year and had some unusual features like a secondary screen and dual front-facing cameras; we found its strong camera, great display, and solid build quality more worthy of note.
The Verge has contacted LG for further details on the V20, but is yet to hear back.
Uber is planning on investing $500 million dollars to map the world’s roads
Uber relies heavily on Google’s extensive maps, but it appears that the ride share company is getting ready to stand on their own. According to The Financial Times, it is planning to invest half a billion dollars into creating its own worldwide maps, a crucial step towards using autonomous cars.
This will allow the company to create their own detailed maps
The Financial Times reported that the company is looking to "pour $500m into an ambitious global mapping project," which would allow the company to create their own detailed maps. According to Brian McClendon, relying entirely on existing maps has been "a good starting point," but which don’t provide the granular level of detail that the company could use, such as traffic patterns,...
Tokyo Thrift: This Sharp Zaurus is a sleek pocket computer from 1999
It’s often said that Japan was slow to smartphones, with tens of millions of flip phone users long unconvinced of the benefits of iPhone and Android. It’s less often pointed out that those flip phones were miraculous in their own way, seamlessly integrated into Japanese society with features that people in the West could only dream of. And it’s even less often mentioned that Japan has had slick, advanced pocket computers since the ‘90s.
If I’d been using an advanced flip phone and a Sharp Zaurus for a decade, I might have been less convinced by the iPhone’s charms too. Sharp was one of the preeminent makers of early PDAs, with its Zaurus range (pronounced “zow-rus” in Japanese, though still intended to connote the strength of a...
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Xbox One summer update rolling out with Cortana, background music, and more
Microsoft is rolling out a significant update to the Xbox One today. The summer update brings a number of new features, including Microsoft's Cortana digital assistant for those in the US and UK. Cortana is designed to look and feel just like the Windows 10 variant, and most of the same queries work. You'll also be able to use Cortana to set up parties through Kinect or via a headset, see what friends are playing, and control media playback. Cortana replaces the old Xbox voice commands with "Hey Cortana," but Microsoft is keeping them available if you disable Cortana.
Xbox gamers will be pleased to hear background music is finally arriving with the summer update. Pandora will be one of the first apps to support background music, and it...
Kanye West is demanding that Apple buy Tidal from Jay Z
At the end of June, word broke that Apple was looking to acquire Tidal, Jay Z’s streaming service. There hasn’t been any official confirmation about the rumored takeover, but according to Kanye West, the Apple needs to stop playing hardball and make a deal.
Apple taking over Tidal has its advantages and disadvantages: it would give Apple a leg up in the music streaming world, even as the deal appeared to be a bit of a long shot. As we noted then: a lot could go wrong before the acquisition occurs, and a new series of tweets from Kanye West suggest that it has hit some roadblocks.
This Tidal Apple beef is fucking up the music game.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) July 30, 2016
I need Tim Cook Jay Z Dez Jimmy Larry me and...
Waze’s new feature will remind you not to leave your child in your car
Navigational app Waze might help give you directions on the road, but it’s now poised to help with a real problem: children left in hot cars. The company has introduced a new feature designed to remind drivers not to forget a child.
Since 1990, an average of 29 children die a year from heatstroke in a vehicle
Waze has introduced a new feature: Child Reminder, which will appear once the vehicle reaches its destination by displaying a reminder not to forget a child in the car.
According to advocacy site KidsandCars.com, an average of 29 children passed away from heatstroke in vehicles since 1990. While municipalities, businesses and hospitals issue warnings to parents and drivers, children still perish.
The customizable notification...
The Ava wearable wants to replace thermometers for determining fertility
Most women rely on a thermometer to measure their fertility throughout the month. Their internal body temperature fluctuates with their ovulation cycle, so it drops when an egg is released and returns to normal levels after the cycle ends. The thermometer has proved a reliable method since at least the 1960s and '70s, albeit one that’s time-consuming and kind of annoying. Now, a new wearable called Ava wants to replace the decades-old technique. It claims to be the world’s first fertility wearable that helps women plan for conception, although it’s not for women who have infertility. It makes tracking a temperature reading easier, but more than anything else, it helps women plan ahead by prompting them to have sex while they’re...
The HTC Vive is about to get a price hike in the UK
HTC is raising the price of its VR headset in the UK thanks to Brexit. The company will increase the HTC Vive's price by £70 on August 1st, raising the price from £689 to £759. HTC is the third major tech company to raise prices in the UK due to the currency devaluation caused by Brexit, following up OnePlus and Dell, who hiked prices earlier this month.
The price increase doesn't apply to any other HTC products as of yet. But if you live in the UK and are interested in picking up an HTC Vive, you should probably get on that before Monday arrives.
Friday, July 29, 2016
Google Maps for iOS now supports multiple destinations
Google Maps is adding a very useful feature to iOS today: the ability to add multiple stops to a single trip. Rather than only directing you from point A to point B, Maps can now bring you from point B to point C, D, E, and so on, making it much easier to plan a trip if you intend to bounce around and make occasional pitstops.
This feature has been available on the web for a while now, and it launched on Android a month ago today. Bringing the feature to mobile makes it all around more useful, as it'll make it easier to use Maps as a GPS replacement while in the car. Google also rolled out a design update to Maps this week.
Instagram is building the anti-harassment tools Twitter won't
Instagram has been building a series of anti-harassment tools and plans to roll them out to all users in the coming weeks. According to The Washington Post, Instagram will let each user create their own banned words list, which will stop unwanted comments from being posted on their photos. Users will also be able to turn comments off on a photo-by-photo basis, so someone could disable comments entirely if they wanted to.
While harassment on Instagram hasn't been as much of a story as harassment on other social networks, like Twitter, the development of these tools is still a big deal. Online harassment is a serious issue that any network needs to deal with, period. And flexible tools like a custom banned word list can let individual...
SwiftKey bug leaked emails and other personal information
People use SwiftKey because it helps predict the words they’re trying to type, and usually, the service works pretty well. However, over the past week, some users reported that their keyboards were populating with other people’s email addresses and searched phrases. The bug relates back to SwiftKey’s cloud sync service, which has since been suspended.
The incorrect predictions spawned multiple Reddit threads. In one, an English speaker was getting someone else’s German suggestions; in another, someone received NSFW porn search suggestions.
Following user reports, SwiftKey took syncing and backups down. The company released an official statement today that doesn't detail the bug but clarifies that it "did not pose a security issue."...
This charger will levitate your smartphone
Soon to be found in a Brookstone near you, the OvRcharge is a wireless charger than can levitate your smartphone using magnets. Of course as a third-party product it's not true wireless charging — it requires a special case to charge your device — but it can levitate and rotate "most phones" using a magnet that you'll need to attach to the back of your phone.
At $177 — which is a Kickstarter early-bird price and less than it will retail for — the OvRcharge is far too expensive for what amounts to a party trick that will charge your smartphone far slower than every standard charger would (and let's not even discuss quick chargers). But if you don't mind the hassle of a slower charge and a special case, you can back OvRcharge on...
Tim Cook is hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton
Tim Cook is planning a fundraising event for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to an invitation obtained by BuzzFeed News. The fundraiser is scheduled for August 24th and will be undertaken by Cook as a private citizen, rather than as a representative of Apple.
Cook also hosted a fundraiser for Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan earlier this summer, indicating support for both parties. Thus far, he has not made any such gesture to Republican nominee Donald Trump, who called for a boycott of Apple products earlier this year.
AT&T raises U-verse internet data cap to 1TB, gigabit users get unlimited
AT&T is matching Comcast and raising the ceiling of its monthly home internet data cap to 1TB. Beginning August 21st, all U-verse customers on speed tiers up to (and including) 300Mbps will receive the higher monthly allowance. If they somehow still manage to exceed 1TB, they'll be charged $10 for each additional increment of 50GB.
Currently, customers on U-verse's lower speed tiers are limited to an allowance of 300GB / month, so this change gives those users a lot more to work with. It's also nearly twice the 600GB data cap that currently applies to people on tiers between 12Mbps and 75Mbps.
And if you're on AT&T's luxurious GigaPower 1Gbps plan, you'll no longer have to worry about any data allowances at all; all of those customers...
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
