Andrew Thomas from Digitalnexa.com joins me for a talk about the tech that matters.
The links and notes.
iOS10
50 iOS features
-new notes feature
-voicemail transcription
-use camera as a magnifying glass
-handwrite text message
-raise to wake
Pixel phones coming oct 4, love the ad!
Bluetooth, and persistent headphone mics oh what is coming!
- This is big. Twitter removes limits for content!
Right on schedule, Twitter's long-anticipated announcement goes live today: photos, videos, GIFs, polls and quoted tweets will no longer count towards the 140-character limit. The company is also testing out some new changes to the way @-replies function on the service.
While the feature is still rolling out to all users today, users might notice that when replying to a tweet, the @names at the beginning of will no longer affect the number of characters remaining. Replies will also be seen by all of your followers, not just the ones who follow both accounts, which means a death of the ".@" reply convention. (But it's still unclear for now whether you'll be able to keep adding on usernames until you eventually build a never-ending Twitter canoe.)
2. Welcome the smart machine! Google wants to help you know what to read next!
It doesn't matter if you've got the biggest or best shop in the world if you can't connect people to the things that they want. It's an issue that Googleis hoping to address in its electronic bookstore with the launch of Discover, a new way to show people stuff they want to read. The service is designed to replace the human booksellers you used to find in Barnes & Noble, offering up recommendations and reviews for stuff you should read.
Discover will gain these insights both by analyzing your reading habits, but also by aggregating sources from across the web. You'll also be told which titles are being praised by NPR and which ones are about to be turned into movies. As part of Discover, Google is launching Google Play Editorial, a platform where readers will find interviews with authors, articles written by their favorite scribes and recommended reading lists from their heroes.
Discover launches today as part of the Google Play Books Android app, and will be coming to iOS in the near future.
3. What is Facebook up to? Hardware?
Facebook's old motto was move fast and break things. It just acquired a company that will help it make things fast.
Facebook has acquired Nascent Objects, a startup that streamlines product design and production.
Nascent's products are also modular, in that they are designed to be repurposed. Fast Company reported that the company believes a kit of 15 parts could build about 80 percent of the gadgets that are sold. Among its products are a water-tracking device that can be turned into a drone or a video camera.
Nascent, founded in February 2014, will join the secretive Building 8, in which Facebook is reportedly working on its most secretive projects.
"Imagine designing, building and delivering a hardware product in just weeks. Instead of months, or even years."
Baback Elmieh, CEO and founder of Nascent Objects, announced the acquisition in a post on the company's website.
4. The google personalised travel planner!
Google today is launching a new mobile application, aimed at helping you better plan your vacations and other travels. Called Google Trips, the iOS and Android app pulls in a combination of data from Google Maps and crowdsourced contributions from other travelers, in order to offer a personalized travel guide that helps you keep track of your day trips, reservations, points of interest, tourist attractions, restaurants and more.
We already knew Google was working on a travel application, thanks to a leak earlier this year when the app was being tested within Google’s Local Guides community. Local Guides help to improve Google Maps and business data by writing reviews, correcting listings, and taking photos. In return, they gain exclusive access to try out new Google products and features, such as Google Trips.
The app looks today much like it did then.
The home screen includes a search box with a prompt “where do you want to go?” for planning new trips, and other cards let you keep track of your current and upcoming vacations and plans.
5. Google destinations to the desktop!
Google’s further expansion into travel services isn’t limited to trip planning via the launch of its new Google Trips mobile app – the company has also quietly launched its “Destinations” trip planning feature in Google Search on the web. Originally designed for mobile users only, Google Destinations is focused on connecting web searchers looking for travel information with more information on their destinations, including flight and hotel prices.
This feature seemingly puts Google in more direct competition with the major travel service providers, but Google has not yet launched its own booking service for accommodations. Instead, Destinations connects web searchers with partner sites like Hotels.com or Booking.com, among others, as well as with Google Flights for comparing airline ticket prices.
At launch, the company said that Destinations is primarily aimed at the leisure traveler who’s researching vacations spots in advance of their planned trip. It’s something of the precursor to the new Google Trips app, as a web search is often the first step in planning a vacation.
On the Destinations website, Google will recommend the most popular trips based on your search query. For example, a search for “Europe vacation” may show you destination suggestions like “Paris,” “London,” “Rome,” and others. It also displays when flights are cheapest, ticket prices, hotel rates, and other activities you can do at your destination, like camping, sailing, skiing, hiking, golfing, the beach, architecture, and more.
You can explore the destinations in more detail by reading through Wikipedia-sourced informational descriptions, while also learning about the climate, watching videos, and viewing popular travel dates for tourists.
The company first brought Google Destinations to the mobile web in March of this year, saying that it had seen a 50 percent spike in travel-related questions on mobile devices last year.
Now, the service is expanding to the desktop web, too. Google declined to comment on the move, but we understand this is a global rollout of the service, which was previously only available in the U.S.
The desktop site has all the same features that were previously available only on mobile, and it now supports English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
7. Note 7 quick fix! Prevent from charging fully. WHAT???
Samsung Electronics Co. plans to issue a software update for its recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that will prevent them from overheating by limiting battery recharges to 60%.
The front page of the Seoul Shinmun, a South Korean newspaper, carried a Samsung advertisement Tuesday announcing the software update for any users of the Note 7 who may be disregarding its recall notice and continuing to use the smartphone.
“It is a measure to put consumer safety first but we apologize for causing inconvenience,” the advertisement by Samsung said. The update for South Korean users will start Sept. 20, it said.
South Korean media earlier reported the software update plan, citing Samsung.
It was not clear when the update may be issued in the U.S. Also unclear was whether it will be forced on existing Note 7 phones regardless of user consent. Yonhap News Agency reported that Samsung is in talks with mobile carriers to deliver the same update to keep battery power at 60% or below at all times.
Samsung plans to begin issuing new Note 7s with batteries it says will not be prone to overheating starting Sept. 19 in South Korea. It recalled 2.5 million of the devices just two weeks after their launch after dozens of cases in which batteries exploded or caught fire. Samsung says the problem stems from a manufacturing glitch in the batteries.
Samsung is the world's largest smartphone maker, and analysts said the recall may have a larger effect on its brand than earlier estimated. Aviation regulators and airlines have deemed the Note 7 a flight hazard and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is considering an official product recall.
8. Hissing in iPhone 7? And home button doesn’t work with gloves on?
pple iPhone 7 and 7 Plus owners have reported a strange hissing sound emanating from their new devices.
The sound, which is similar to the noise you hear when a speaker is poorly connected, could be caused by the new chip in the devices, which is designed to make the phones faster with improved battery efficiency.
American podcaster Stephen Hackett first noted the noise, discovering a sibilant sound coming from the back of the iPhone under heavy usage.
My iPhone 7 Plus makes terrible noises when under load.https://youtu.be/ogs_g9BlGQc
Hackett posted a video to YouTube with a recording of the noise, which was soon confirmed by other iPhone 7 owners.
Darrell Etherington, a former Apple PR, and now journalist, tweeted that the sound occurred on his iPhone 7 Plus during setup.
@panzer @ismh brand new, just-unboxed doing the same thing right now. did not restore, set up as new (still DL-ing email etc)
Why is the iPhone 7 hissing? Is it broken?
It is understood that the new A10 Fusion processor is the cause of the issue, as the hissing only takes place when the iPhone is processing large files or programmes and emanates from where the chip is hosted.
The A10 makes the iPhone 40 per cent more powerful than the 6s and twice as powerful as the 6. The chip also has “efficiency cores”, which are low-powered, saving battery life for less intensive tasks such as sending text messages.
Although the device does not have a fan, people have reported that the noise is similar to when a laptop fan whirs, usually from overheating.
Marco Arment, an iOS developer, said: “It’s the phone equivalent of hearing the fans spin up loudly whenever your Mac’s CPU gets used to its actual potential.”
9. Google waze helps find parking
Waze, the real-time traffic app owned by Google, is teaming up with transportation data firm INRIX to help drivers find the best parking spot close to their destination.
Waze recently introduced a “where to park” feature, which suggests parking lots closest to a destination and allows users to navigate there directly. Additionally, if a user doesn’t select a parking lot prior to arrival, Waze will give the option to select and navigate to one when approaching a final destination. Now that feature will be supercharged thanks to INRIX’s uniquely aggregated parking data.
Flavia Sasaki Siqueira, head of business development for Waze, said the company will integrate INRIX’s parking information with its own database to expand the accuracy of the app’s “where to park” feature. “Driving around looking for spots impacts arrival times and adds unneeded frustration and stress to the entire driving experience,” she said in a statement.
INRIX — which aggregates real-time road traffic information from a variety of sources and offers it to automakers, municipalities, and news outlets — provides parking information and services to leading automakers, including Audi, BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
INRIX uses a variety of data sources to suss out how much parking is available on a given block. It combines this with pricing data from cities and private parking facilities to offer complete visualiz
10. Usb computer killer 60$
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/235328-computer-killing-usb-drives-now-on-sale-for-less-than-60
It sounds like something out of a B-grade Hollywood plot — a flash drive that you plug into a computer and is capable of destroying it within seconds. Last year, hacker Dark Purple disclosed a USB flash drive designed to fry a modern system as soon as you plug it in. The drive works by discharging -220V through the USB port.
The exact details on how the drive functioned weren’t immediately released. But there’s now a Hong Kong-based company selling a USB Kill Drive 2.0 for just $50. Here’s how the company describes the product:
The USB Kill 2.0 is a testing device created to test USB ports against power surge attacks. The USB Kill 2.0 tests your device’s resistance against this attack. The USB Kill collects power from the USB power lines (5V, 1 – 3A) until it reaches ~ -240V, upon which it discharges the stored voltage into the USB data lines.
This charge / discharge cycle is very rapid and happens multiple times per second.
The process of rapid discharging will continue while the device is plugged in, or the device can no longer discharge – that is, the circuit in the host machine is broken
