Andrew Thomas from www.digitalnexa.com to talk tech!
The Podcast Link!
Here are the show notes.
P1
new linkedin app
New linkedin in app on androind and ios
-like it and it pushes you to their premium stuff
Venture beat
-34+ showrooming is big 50% using mobile search to decide on a product in the store
18-34 showrooming and buy at another store
Dear James,
When we introduced Carousel in April 2014, we believed a standalone app would be a better way to experience photos. We’re proud to have created a photo app that many of you use and love. However, over the past year and a half, we’ve learned the vast majority of our users prefer the convenience and simplicity of interacting with their photos directly inside of Dropbox. With this in mind, we’ve had to make a difficult decision.
On March 31st, we’re shutting down Carousel as a standalone app and returning to a single Dropbox photo experience. Carousel has always been a way to view and interact with photos stored in Dropbox. All the photos in your Carousel timeline will remain safe in your Dropbox where they’ve always been. If you have photos you received through conversations or shared albums that you want to save, check out theinstructions in our Help Center.
It's with heavy hearts that we let you know Mailbox will shut down on February 26, 2016.
Mailbox ignited a shift in mobile email and many of its innovations are now ubiquitous across the industry. It’s been a great journey, and we’re proud of this impact and grateful to the community that helped make it possible.
When the Mailbox team joined Dropbox in 2013, we shared a passion for simplifying the way people work together. And solving the email problem seemed like a strong complement to the challenges Dropbox was already tackling.
But as we’ve increased our focus on collaboration, we realized there’s only so much an email app can do to fundamentally improve email. We’ve come to believe that the best way for us to improve people’s productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so much email in the first place.
We know saying goodbye to Mailbox will be hard for many. To help make the transition to a new email client easier, we’ve created guides and export tools. For more information about how we’ll be winding down Mailbox, please visit the Mailbox website.
a serialized Google VR experience
cold storage, great idea!
whats APP personal assistant
A team at the TechCrunch Disrupt London 2015 hackathon has created what they say is one of the first personal assistants for the WhatsApp messaging platform. CalledWhatsBot, the assistant uses a combination of artificial intelligence, location data from Foursquare, and mapping data from Esri in order to help you find places to meet up with friends, family or colleagues.
To use the assistant, you simply add the WhatsBot’s phone number to your WhatsApp contact list, just like adding any other contact. Afterward, the bot can be used in a group chat in order to automatically suggest a meeting spot that’s positioned in between all the different participants’ current locations.
Love this!
James Hitchcock and Moti Ferentz, along with the rest of their team, were visiting London for the TechCrunch Disrupt London hackathon, but they didn’t quite have access to the data they needed in order to find their way around using apps like Google Maps.
So, as part of the hackathon, they built SMSNav.me. Users tap a button that sends a text message with their location — captured from the GPS hardware without a data connection — and where they are trying to go. The service then returns directions that are opened up in the application. All this works because the GPS technology can run whether or not there’s an active data connection, and doesn’t require a new local SIM card or something along those lines.
“We were traveling a lot; arriving here we had the same problem,” Hitchcock said. “We didn’t have a data connection, and it was really helpful to use just GSM services to be able to get from point A to point B without any data.”
It can also work without the app, sending the “from” and “to” directions through just a text message and not opening up SMSNav.me. The user will then get the directions via a text message.
The tech of gum!
The latest innovation in medical science may come from a surprising source — chewing gum. As described in a paper published by ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, researchers from the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba and the University of Manitoba have discovered a way to make a medical sensor out of chewing gum and carbon nanotubes.
The new sensors undergo an unusual development process — a researcher chews a piece of doublemint for 30 minutes. The gum is then washed in ethanol and infused with carbon nanotubes using a folding and stretching technique. The nanotubes are flexible and conduct electricity, making it possible to use the gum as a medical sensor when connected to a conventional monitor. They can be used to detect small body movements such as the subtle movement of a patient’s chest while breathing or the passage of blood throughout the body. The sensors can even detect changes in humidity, allowing them to be used to monitor the water vapor that is released when a person breathes through the nose or mouth.
WhatsAPP emojis
WhatsApp has answered the call of the smiley by adding a ton of new emojis to its messaging app as part of its latest Android update, reports Android Headlines. Heretofore disgruntled Android users will be happy to learn that they, too, can now take part in all the cool little yellow icons their WhatsApp iOS counterparts already have access to.
The Android update (2.12.372) is available now and comes with a host of weird and wonderful emojis, among them rolling eyes, unicorns, a popped champagne bottle (for when you want to get your inner hip-hop impresario on), a taco (because a taco is for life, not just for Taco Tuesday), and a popcorn box. Also notable are the new tabs, which categorize emojis into sections that include food, sports, and activities. In fact, the abundance of emoji tabs at the
Weekend project became an app
The line resonated so well with me — particularly because I belong to the church of reason that says ideas are worthless until we get them out of our heads — that I ran over to my laptop and started working on mockups of what an app with this type of focus could look like.
Icon concepts I quickly threw together before developing Snaplight
Of course my initial instinct — of being able to quickly create a highlighting app that effortlessly produces a sharable image of a text quote — wasn’t entirely correct.
I ran into problems with device orientation and how to create a visual effect of a highlight without actually creating the highlight (for the nerds reading who are interested in technical details: I ended up creating two image views of the photo, one brightened and the other dimmed. When a user slides their finger over the dimmed view, we create a mask layer that lets the brightened view shine through).
All-in-all the project took me an hour to program and another few hours to generate screenshots for, icons, text for the App Store, and promotional material like this short video:
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-Home theater software!
Who needs Netflix? With home theater apps like Plex and Kodi, you can roll your own sweet-looking library with all the TV shows and movies you like, with none of the junk. But which software should you use? Here’s how the two biggest solutions stack up against each other.
The Contenders
Plex and Kodi (formerly named XBMC) are home theater apps that allow you to manage your library of TV shows, movies, music, and photos from one place, in a slick interface that’s easy to navigate with your remote or even your phone. Despite having very similar goals, however, they have very different ways of getting there. Here are the basics of each:
- Kodi: Formerly called Xbox Media Center (or XBMC for short), Kodi is an open source project dedicated to building powerful, customizable home theater software. With years of development behind it, there are a ton of add-ons and skins that can add new functionality beyond what’s already included.
- Plex: Plex began life as a fork of XBMC, but it’s become so distinct you’d hardly notice. This project aims to make home theater software dead simple for everyone. It allows you to sync and stream all of your media to any device no matter where you are.
Any time we talk about managing your personal media, there’s going to be an element of personal preference involved. Everyone enjoys their stuff in slightly different ways, so we can’t say what’s perfect for everyone. Even here at Lifehacker, some of us swear by Kodi, while others can’t live without Plex. Keep in mind what you prefer while we break down the key differences between them.
Facebook live streaming
A few months ago Facebook introduced live-streaming video on its platform, but the new feature was only available to celebrities such as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Serena Williams, and Luke Bryan. Starting today, Facebook will be rolling out the service to all users. Soon, the hoi polloi will be able to live-stream from the platform just like their favorite celebs.
In August, Facebook unveiled its “Live” feature but only to celebrities with a verified account, allowing those users to broadcast video of themselves while fans and followers commented. The videos were then permanently available for users to view later.
To many users, the feature seems to be Facebook’s response to popular apps like Meerkat and Periscope — currently the most-used platforms among those that let users broadcast live videos. Except that, among other differences, videos on Meerkat and Periscope are only live for 24 hours and are then deleted. While you do have the option to delete your live-streamed videos from Facebook, unlike the other platforms, they can be saved and re-watched anytime in the future.
Facebook Live videos are said to appear quickly in your feed and include push notifications that send alerts of the broadcast to those who have recently interacted with the page. According to Kurt Wagner at Re/code, another key distinction between Meerkat and Periscope on the one hand and Facebook Live on the other, is the ability to live-stream only to your friends and family, rather than the entire population. And, not only can you live-stream yourself but you can subscribe and follow live videos from your connections in addition to those publicly shared by celebs and public figures.
Facebook Live
P3
who will make the next cool phone?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/andy-rubin-android-phone-company-news/?&utm_term=DT%20Newsletter
Android co-founder Andy Rubin is rumored to be interested in building a smartphone that uses the operating system he helped create. Whether he heads up a new company to do this, or provides one with support through his own startup incubator, isn’t known, according to a report by The Information.
How has all this come about? First, some background. Rubin co-founded Android, then sold the rights to Google and subsequently joined the company itself. This lasted until 2013, when he decided to leave and the Android reigns were handed over to Sundar Pichai. Since then, one of his most prominent business ventures has been Playground, an incubator that has apparently raised at least $300 million.
Facebook thinks it knows a lot about us!
GEN Z Wants VR
Among the more poignant indications of VR’s anticipated consumer appeal is a new study conducted by online research firm Touchstone Research and leading American business intelligence firm Greenlight VR.
The companies’ first-ever comprehensive VR Consumer Report finds that today’s tech-savvy kids and teens – who have been labeled Generation Z – are most likely to embrace virtual reality when it becomes readily available, with 79% of those surveyed saying they “love/like” VR.
After Gen Z, Millennials feel the most positive toward VR, with 73% saying they “love” it.
The report, which surveyed 2,282 US kids ages 10 to 17, as well as adults 18 and up, also revealed that of those interested in virtual reality TV, movie and video content, most will seek sci-fi and action experiences.
Disney and Google are already zeroing in on these two demographics most excited by VR. Disney’s new partnership with Google and Verizon has launched a serialized Star Wars virtual reality experience for Google’s low-cost Cardboard VR platform via the official Star Wars app that connects to the opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Meanwhile, toyco Mattel is betting on nostalgia-driven parents and their young progeny to purchase its new View Master VR Viewer. Launched in October for US$29.99, the TIA Toy of the Year finalist also uses Google’s Cardboard technology and works by combining an app with an experience reel.
Although it’s too early to measure the impact of affordable, smartphone-connected VR experiences on people’s decisions to invest in more expensive HMDs (head mounted displays) like next year’s Oculus Rift and Sony PlayStation VR, the fact that the US$99 consumer edition of Samsung’s Gear VR continues to be “temporarily out of stock” and “sold out online” at Amazon and Best Buy, respectively, since its November launch bodes well for the future of the VR industry.
P4
Wearable shipping
The number of wearable devices is growing, by a lot.
The number of fitness trackers and smartwatches shipped around the world in the last quarter is about double the number shipped a year ago, according to the latest IDC Tracker report.
Leading the category are fitness trackers by Fitbit followed by the Apple Watch.
While there’s clear growth in the number of wearables, there doesn’t seem to by any cannibalization of the market, since fitness trackers and smartwatches both grew in scope.
A total of 21 million wearable devices shipped last quarter, an increase of 198% from the same quarter last year. Of those, 5 million were Fitbit devices and 4 million were Apple watches.
While the number of Fitbits and Apple watches is relatively close, the prices are not.
For example, the average price of a smartwatch is just over $400 and the average basic watch/band is $94, according to IDC.
However, smart wearables are expected to surpass the lower-priced, less functional basic wearables, as I wrote about here a few months back (Wearables & Messaging: Up Close & Personal).
In either case, wearable devices will have more smartphones to which they can send data. The number of smartphones shipped this year will total 1.4 billion units, 81% of them Android and 16% Apple, according to the IDC phone tracker index just out.
Interestingly, before Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, IBM Watson Trend identified the Apple Watch as the number one item on holiday shoppers' lists. The watch has now dropped to second place (behind Samsung TVs), which may mean that many people have already acquired them.
In the Health category, Watson Trend currently lists Fitbit as the number 3 item being discussed in the context of holiday gifts (Nike Running Shoes and Nordic Track treadmills take the top two spots).
Whether fitness tracker or smartwatch, more consumers will be walking around wearing Internet-connected technology.
And that will be a new communication network, always in motion.
An iBeacon lesson from Apple!
While the existence of iBeacon itself is not news, the new application is interesting because it gives us more detail — and a lot of diagrams — on how Apple believes marketers ought to use the iBeacon network, how it can track iPhone users with a "Universally Unique Identifier," and the information it collects about you that can be used for targeting ads at you.
In other words, we now have a lot more information on the potential scale of iBeacon as Apple's vast shopping surveillance network.
iBeacons are simply beacons that transmit low-range Bluetooth signals. They are generally small plastic boxes or containers that you can leave anywhere. Their signals extend only a few feet. If you walk past one, the Bluetooth function on your phone can detect a ping from a nearby iBeacon. That ping can be used to activate an app, message, or notification on your phone. The obvious example of this would be, if you walked past Starbucks and an iBeacon in Starbucks pings your phone, the Starbucks app on your iPhone might offer you a 10% discount on coffee if you enter the shop in the next 5 minutes.
The new patent application shows that Apple believes there is almost nowhere iBeacons can't go:
USPTOThis is Apple's diagram of a typical iBeacon setup:
USPTOThe system can detect whether you are near or far from a beacon, and send you a different message depending on the distance:
USPTOHere is how that might look to an iPhone user:
USPTOManagers can then track the results on a dashboard like this:
USPTOThe system has the potential to collect information about iPhone users, including their home addresses:
Instagram VS Facebook for buying stuff!
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