Google adds app deep linking to goo.gl short links
Google has added a useful new trick to their goo.gl short link service; app deep linking.
Deep linking allows a URL to open up a specific page within a designated app instead of just pulling open a new browser window on your phone. Clicking a Twitter link on a website opens up that tweet in your Twitter app, and so on. Google makes indexing apps for this kind of deep linking very easy, and in a world driven by mobile applications and smartphones, it makes sense. Up until now, though, it hasn’t worked with Google’s own goo.gl URL shortening service.
Now any shortened links through goo.gl can deep link into apps so long as the developer has properly indexed their application. Google offers some pretty detailed instructions for that, though, and in many cases the apps are probably already set up for it. Plus, it works cross platform with both Android and iOS.
This new feature has been rolled out retroactively, so developers won’t need to update any short links they may have floating around the internet.
source: Google
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Pebble Time pre-order date announced as Kickstarter units start shipping
Starting now, backers of the Pebble Time campaign on Kickstarter can expect to receive tracking numbers as units are being shipped around the world. Everyone will not see their Pebble Time at the same time because units are being sent out in stages.
The first 10,000 backers are expected to see their Pebble Time units ship this week. Then, once they are out of the way, Pebble will forward tracking numbers to everyone else. The process, which is being performed with five distribution centers worldwide, is expected to be complete by mid-June.
Prospective buyers that did not get involved with Pebble’s second Kickstarter campaign can pre-order the Pebble Time on June 22. The price for the Pebble Time on that date will be $199.
Pebble compiled a list of services that device owners should take a look at:
- Transport with Uber
- ESPN
- Fitocracy (iOS-only for now)
- iHeartRadio
- TripAdvisor
- The Weather Channel
Source: Pebble
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Buying a computer and an Oculus Rift should cost “around $1500″
Brendan Iribe, CEO of Oculus, recently discussed just how much you can expect to spend on a “complete package” of a computer powerful enough to use the VR headset, and the headset itself. He estimated the price of everything at around $1500, which is definitely not something just anyone will be able to afford.
The company hasn’t announced pricing for the headset just yet, but since Oculus has already announced what they consider minimum specs to power the headset, we can try to ballpark what price point they’re trying to hit.
The recommended hardware for the Rift demands an NVIDIA GTX 970/AMD R290 GPU or greater, an Intel Core i5-4590 CPU or better, and 8+ GB of RAM.
Quickly searching around on Amazon, you can find those GPUs in the $300 – $350 range, while the CPU runs around $180 and 8 GB of RAM will cost about $60. You can estimate those parts to cost between $550 and $600, and that’s not including a computer case, motherboard, hard drive, or power supply.
Going with cheaper components, you could finish that computer build for roughly another $300 (assuming you were willing to piece things together by yourself and not buy a computer from a company) and end up hitting upwards of $800 – $900. A pre-built machine will likely add several hundred extra dollars to that price tag. A machine that hits the recommended hardware from iBuyPower lists at around $1100.
With those price ranges, we can assume the Rift will be priced anywhere from $300 to $700. Granted, that’s a pretty wide range to try to figure out, but I’d bet that Iribe is counting on most people buying their computers, not building them, so hopefully that price is a little closer to the low end.
source: re/code
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Android Pay’s arrival means a new direction for Google Wallet
As we suspected, you’ll be hearing more about the new Android Pay setup — announced a couple of months ago during Mobile World Congress — during the Google I/O event this week. According to a New York Times report, Android Pay will let retailers take payments from inside their mobile apps, use it at brick-and-mortar retail locations, and automatically update the customer’s status in store loyalty programs. Like Google, retailers are interested in using those loyalty programs to track trends among their customers, and the report goes on to claim that Apple Pay will add a similar tie-in within the next month or so. So what will become of Google Wallet? Apparently, it will be reintroduced with a focus on sending money directly between two people to go along with being preinstalled on carrier phones. The mobile payment wars are just beginning, and potential competitors like Facebook and Samsung have their own plans too — expect more details from all sides soon.
[Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Google
Source: New York Times
GoPro is working on a spherical camera rig for VR, and a drone
In case you were wondering what the next move is for GoPro as it keeps its action cameras one step ahead of cellphones and DSLRs, we have answers: virtual reality and drones. CEO Nick Woodman announced both projects tonight during an interview at the Code Conference. GoPro showed off a spherical camera rig after it acquired Kolor last month, a company that specializes in stiching together the resulting footage so it can be experience in VR. The Six-camera Spherical Array should arrive later this year, and a GoPro-branded quadcopter is planned for next year. There’s fewer details available about that, but rumors late last year pointed to a model priced between $500 and $1,000.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/pMBDA-Our4w?rel=0
Filed under: Cameras
Source: TechCrunch, Re/code
Google is adding a ‘buy’ button to its shopping ads
That rumor of Google adding a “buy” button to shopping ads? It’s true. The company’s Omid Kordestani has confirmed to Recode that this super-quick purchasing option is “imminent.” He didn’t describe how it would work in detail, but the leak described “Shop on Google” search ads that take you to a product page the moment you give in to that consumerist impulse. The real mystery may be who’s onboard with the program. Google reportedly went the extra mile to court retailers worried that they’d be cut out of the loop, but there’s no certainty that you’ll see a lot of big-name stores signing on right away.
[Image credit: Shutterstock]
Via: Ed Baig (Twitter)
Source: Recode
Target Plans to Offer Apple Pay After Chip-and-PIN Card Upgrade
Target CEO Brian Cornell spoke at Re/code‘s Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California today, where he confirmed that the company plans to offer in-store support for Apple Pay in the future. According to Cornell, while he’d love to have Apple Pay available “right now,” support will not be coming until Target upgrades its system to support integrated circuit credit cards to comply with new standards.
Integrated circuit cards (or chip-and-PIN cards) replace the magnetic stripe on a credit card or debit card with an embedded microchip. The microchip communicates with a supported point-of-sale system and transactions are authenticated through a PIN instead of a signature.
Chip-and-PIN cards are already used in many countries around the world because they’re believed to be more secure than traditional credit cards. In the United States, retailers are being encouraged to adopt point-of-sale systems that support chip-and-PIN cards by the end of 2015. As of October 2015, the four major credit card companies in the U.S. are introducing policies that will cause retailers who don’t support chip-and-PIN transactions to be responsible for any fraudulent charges made with chip-and-PIN cards.
Target is especially eager to move to a more secure transaction system following a major data breach in late 2013 that saw hackers obtaining payment information for approximately 40 million of its customers. The move is a major transition for Target, and Cornell says he doesn’t want to “distract the team” with work on other payment systems.
“Our focus is on getting chip-and-PIN in place in time for the holidays,” Cornell said at the second annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. “Down the line we want to accept all the types of payments that our guests want. But this decision was all about focus. … It is a major undertaking to convert to chip-and-PIN, and I decided that we can’t distract the team.”
Cornell says he has met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, and once the chip-and-PIN transition is completed, Target will be “open-minded” about supporting additional payment systems like Apple Pay. Target already supports Apple Pay in its iOS app.
Apple Pay Rewards Program to Debut at WWDC
Apple plans to introduce a new rewards program for Apple Pay at WWDC next month, reports The New York Times. In a piece covering upcoming mobile payment upgrades from Apple and Google, the site suggests that Apple will announce details about enhancements to Apple Pay at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Few details are known about the rewards program that Apple plans to implement, but it is said to offer “perks” to customers who make purchases using Apple Pay.
But analysts have noted that a missing piece from Apple Pay was a rewards program to keep users returning to participating merchants. People familiar with Apple Pay said that next month, Apple will announce such a program offering perks to consumers who make purchases with the service, though they declined to reveal details.
There have been rumors about a rewards program for Apple Pay since before Apple Pay launched in October of 2014. In September, a report suggested Apple was working on a pilot program that could see it partnering with multiple third-party retailers to form an Apple Pay loyalty program.
Further rumors suggested the system could tie into iAd, delivering targeted ads to consumers via iBeacons and Bluetooth LE with coupons for free or discounted products, but it is not clear if that’s how Apple’s finished rewards program will work.
Upcoming Apple Pay competitor CurrentC offers a built-in rewards program that’s able to incorporate loyalty cards and discounts for individual merchants, and CurrentC executives tout this as one of the major differentiating features of its system. With its own rewards program, Apple Pay will be better situated to compete with the reward-based features of CurrentC.
It is not known if Apple has plans to introduce additional Apple Pay features at its Worldwide Developers Conference, but it’s possible that it could share details on an expansion of the service to additional countries like Canada. Canada is expected to be one of the first countries beyond the United States to gain Apple Pay support.
How to recover data off of your microSD card: a valuable lesson in backups
If you have important or sensitive data on the microSD card of your smartphone or tablet, it’s important to make sure that data is backed up immediately. You could store it in the cloud or on another device without paying a dime.
If it’s too late for that, there are still a few things you can do to try and recover the data off of your microSD card. Keep in mind that nothing is a guarantee when a microSD card malfunctions, has physical damage or can’t be read by the computer. It’s quite possible that critical components for the microSD to work have stopped functioning.
Hardware failure
If your smartphone has just started sending you warnings that it cannot read the microSD card, restart your device. A lot of the time a simple restart of your phone will fix the problem. At least, that’s the hope in most scenarios. If it doesn’t, there are other options, but not many.
There’s a small and rare possibility that the contacts on the microSD card are dirty. While this rarely shows results, get a swab or cotton ball damp with Isopropyl alcohol. Take that swab and gently rub the contacts of the microSD card. If that doesn’t work, that’s nearly all you can do to try and fix it at home.
The worst case scenario is that the flash chip went bad on the microSD card. At that point, there’s no way you or professional help can recover the data. Let’s hope that didn’t happen.
The best case scenario is that the controller is damaged or that the controller and flash chip are intact, but something else isn’t functioning properly. There’s still nothing you can do on your own, but if you feel your data was sensitive or important enough, such as photos of your child’s first step or that close friend or family member that passed away, you can seek assistance from a professional. Unfortunately, professional data recovery services aren’t known to be gentle on your budget.
For instance, if you were to ship your shattered iPhone to DriveSavers, a professional data recovery service, it could cost you anywhere between $500 and $1400 to retrieve your data. Rates change for different types of hardware, but that gives you an approximation of what you might be looking at spending.
Luckily, the problem doesn’t always have to deal with hardware failure.
Software Recovery
Aside from hardware issues with the microSD card, sometimes you inadvertently delete data. Luckily, there is a way to recover that data rather easily with Recuva, a data recovery program you can download to your computer. You can get it for free here.
Once it’s finished downloading, grab your microSD card and throw it in a SD card adapter (like this). Then, put that SD card adapter in your computer. Next, load up Recuva. From there, the software should have a wizard to take you step-by-step in recovering your lost files. It’s quite helpful in guiding beginners through the process until they are able to learn how to do it on their own.
One of the awesome things about Recuva is that it’ll let you recover data off of your smartphone, too. It’s extremely helpful for popular devices that don’t sport external storage anymore, such as the Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 Edge.
Keep in mind that sometimes Recuva isn’t going to be able to recover every lost file. It has an indicator that will show you how probable the file recovery will be. You can usually try the recovery no matter what, but it won’t always turn out successful. If that doesn’t work, this turns into a hard lesson on backing up your files.
A lesson on backing up files
While these two options will help you get your files back, the best course of action is to never lose your important data again. Backing up your data is a simple way to combat this. It sounds like hard work at first, but there are free or cheap tools available that help you easily backup your data.
We recently put together a comprehensive guide on how to backup your data, whether that be in free cloud solutions, on other devices, and etc. This guide is especially helpful for those that don’t have the luxury of external storage or for those of you that often inadvertently delete data.
To give you a quick summary, backing up to the cloud is important because of the peace of mind it gives you. If you have important data on your smartphone or tablet, whether it be financial documents for your company or a precious photo of your child, you don’t have to worry if your device experiences a fatal crash on the concrete. You’ve already either backed up all that data in the Cloud or another device at home. So, not only can they be easily accessed by you, but when you get that new device, transferring those files over is an easy task.
Obviously it’s hard to keep constantly backing up your devices as you continuously accumulate files. There’s a phenomenal way to automate that process without you having to worry about it at all, besides the initial setup, of course.
Wrap Up
Photo credit: Ben Harrison
After these helpful steps, hopefully you’ll never have to deal with lost data again. It’s difficult to deal with, especially if you have critical files on a lost microSD card. Letting go of those precious moments of your children in their young age isn’t easy. You’ll never get those photos back. That’s why it’s good to make backing up data a habit to get into.
Since we accumulate data so rapidly, I like to create a new backup every few weeks. Depending on how much content you create, you may not need to do that. Making it a habit to create a new backup every few months would be a wise and risk-free decision, though.
Have you lost data on a microSD card before? How did you solve the problem?
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Android Auto coming to Chevy vehicles this year
Earlier today, General Motors announced their plans to incorporate both Android Auto and CarPlay into their 2016 lineup of Chevrolet cars. Announced last year, we haven’t seen much movement in the market, due to restrictions as well as development. Companies like Toyota have stated that they will not bring compatibility to any of their models due to preferring their own interface with their cars.
If you’ve been looking, surely you’ve found that there are multiple head unit options available through after-market manufacturers such as Pioneer. In regards to car manufacturers who have stated that their new models will come standard with CarPlay or Android Auto head units, it’s been slim-pickings. The 2015 Hyundai Elantra was the first to have Android Auto compatibility with Honda following up after them.
However, after today’s announcement from General Motors and Chevrolet, this just may be the kick-start that Android Auto and CarPlay need in the manufacturing marketplace. Now there will be two different options for select vehicles. Anyone looking to get a new Chevy, will have the option for either the 7-inch or 8-inch MyLink displays. As with most things nowadays, there’s always a catch. So here it is. CarPlay will be available for any cars with either the 7 or 8 inch MyLink screen, while Android Auto will only be supported with the 7 inch MyLink screen. There are plans to move support for the 8-inch model, later this year.
The Chevy Tahoe, Chevy Suburban, and Chevy Volt will be the first vehicles available with Android Auto. As for the rest of the models that will be bringing these two head-unit interfaces, here is a list of what was announced today:
- Spark
- Cruze
- Malibu
- Camaro
- Camaro Convertible
- Silverado
- Silverado HD
- Impala
- Corvette
- Corvette Convertible
As for when exactly you will be able to get your hands on one of these new cars? Chevy is expected to roll out the Chevy Cruze on June 24th, so that’s a little less than a month away before you can be driving a great car with a great head unit system already installed.
Let us know what you think about the expected rollout of CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility from GM and Chevy in the comments below. Are you excited? Were you holding off on getting a car until this came to fruition? I’m sure that number is quite miniscule, but hey, I’m sure somebody thought about it. Right?
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