Comcast’s gigabit internet makes its way to Atlanta
The slow march toward blazing fast internet is upon us, and Comcast is bringing its DOCSIS 3.1 gigabit service to a few more cities. Soon the fine people of Atlanta and Nashville will be able to (likely) pay through the nose for the ultra-speedy connectivity, with it opening up to those in Chicago, Detroit and Miami in the back half of the year. It’s worth noting that good number of those are cities where the company has bandwidth cap tests in place.
The Washington Post notes that this is different from the pre-existing Gigabit Pro service the telco offers in that rather than fiber optics, this uses the cable lines that are already in place. The publication suggests that by using a pre-existing infrastructure, this could potentially mean lower per-month prices for customers. Potentially.
WaPo surmises that since the download speed will be slightly lower than the $300 a month Gigabit Pro’s, that could lead to a cheaper price for the service. Of course, it requires upgrading your modem to a device compatible with the DOCSIS 3.1 standard — something our friends at The Wirecutter recommend waiting on. In the meantime, if you’re still unhappy about our woefully lethargic domestic internet speeds, you can always make a Raspberry-Pi powered Twitter bot for that.
Via: The Washington Post
Source: Comcast
Microsoft to buy Swiftkey
Microsoft is reportedly buying the artificial intelligence-powered predictive keyboard, Swiftkey.
Sources close to the deal say that Microsoft will pay about $250 million for Swiftkey and that Swiftkey founders Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock will pocket around $30 million each.
Swiftkey is available for Android and iOS devices, but not for Windows Phone–yet.
Swiftkey initially sold for $4, but became free in 2014. Its Android keyboard supports over 100 languages and the company developed a special language for the keyboard attached to acclaimed physicist Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair.
The London-based Swiftkey has more than 150 employees in London and many are expected to join Microsoft Reseach, sources said.
Swiftkey’s artificial intelligence analyzes users’ writing styles to predict what word is likely to come next. Additionally, the app can learn slang and nicknames.
Source: Financial Times
Come comment on this article: Microsoft to buy Swiftkey
Apple Acquired Firmware Security Company LegbaCore Last November
Apple acquired firmware security company LegbaCore in November 2015, according to security researcher Trammell Hudson, who revealed the acquisition in his presentation at the 32C3 conference in December. LegbaCore’s goal, according to founder Xeno Kovah, is “to help build systems that are as secure as we know how to make.”
In November, Kovah and fellow LegbaCore founder Corey Kallenberg revealed that they had joined Apple as full-time employees. Just a couple days before that, LegbaCore’s website announced that it would “not be accepting any new customer engagements”, noting that the website would remain up “to serve as a reference for LegbaCore’s past work.”
LegbaCore had collaborated with Hudson on Thunderstrike 2, the first firmware worm to affect Mac computers. The malware is impossible to remove, resistant to both firmware and software updates. LegbaCore and Hudson had alerted Apple to Thunderstrike 2’s vulnerabilities and Apple began work on fixes, issuing one in June 2015.
On Twitter, Kovah said that Apple began discussions with LegbaCore after the consultancy’s presentation in summer 2015. It soon became clear to Kovah and Kallenberg that Apple had “some *very* interesting and highly impactful work” that the two could participate in. They were eventually convinced to wind down LegbaCore’s existing contracts and begin work at Apple.
What did Apple hire us to do? We can’t say.
Well, we can probably say something like “low level security” (I don’t know our job titles)
— Xeno Kovah (@XenoKovah) November 10, 2015
http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
While LegbaCore is a security consultancy firm that doesn’t own any specific technology, it’s likely Apple will use Kovah and Kellenberg’s talent and knowledge to help improve firmware and software security in future iterations of Apple’s various hardware and software products. LegbaCore’s work includes research on Thunderstrike 2, “dead code” for BIOS attacks and more.
(Thanks, Jost!)
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15 best free Android apps
Perhaps the biggest strength of Android is the application ecosystem. There are well over one million applications in the Google Play Store that have been downloaded billions of times. We use them for productivity, entertainment, information, functionality, and everything between. You absolutely cannot have a good time on Android unless you have some awesome apps and there are plenty that you don’t have to spend a dime to get. Here are the best free Android apps!
- Back up all of your photos and data with these reliable cloud storage apps!
- The best Android apps, ever!
1Weather
[Price: Free / $1.99]
1Weather is about as complete of a weather app as you can find. It comes with all kinds of stuff including current conditions, forecasts, radar, predictions, fun facts about meteorology, graphs, and evne a sun and moon tracker. It’s wrapped up in a very attractive tabbed design and there are even a variety of weather widgets that come along with it. It’s free to use and the $1.99 charge is simply to remove advertising. Everything else remains the same.
Get it now on Google Play!
AppLock
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
AppLock is a free Android app that comes with a lot of options. You can pay for it, get premium features, and no advertising. Or you can view advertising, get the premium features, and not pay anything. Finally, you can use it ad-free, but without premium features. The choice is yours. The app itself is a simple, but powerful app that allows you to lock your apps up tight with passwords so that snooping eyes can’t see them. This is great if you have nosy roommates, kids, or if you just want some piece of mind.
Get it now on Google Play!
CloudMagic Email
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
CloudMagic Email is arguably the most versatile email client on Android. With it, you create a CloudMagic account and then sign into all of your email addresses. If your device gets lost or stolen or you buy a new device, you just have to log into CloudMagic and all of your email will follow you. It comes with a simple, but effective design and has a variety of features such as plugins for Todoist, Evernote, OneNote, Asana, and others. It’s a powerful email client and one that you should check out.
Get it now on Google Play!
Evernote
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Evernote is a note taking application and it’s one of the best. It comes with a ton of features, including the ability to sync to the cloud for easy access on your computer or other mobile devices. You can take a variety of notes, including lists, regular notes, video notes, audio notes, and combinations of all of them. There are premium features that you can pay for, but the free version is more than enough unless you’re a seriously intense user.
Get it now on Google Play!
The Google Drive Suite
[Price: Free]
The Google Drive suite are a group of applications that are all directly integrated into Google Drive. The apps include Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Photos, and Google Keep along with the actual Google Drive app itself. These apps focus primarily on office use for documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows but also work for note taking, backing up your photos, and storing whatever file you can think of. The best part is that they’re all free unless you need more than 15GB of storage on Google Drive. Most people don’t.
Get it now on Google Play!
Google Opinion Rewards
[Price: Free]
Google Opinion Rewards is one of the most woefully underrated apps in the Google Play Store. To use this app, you simply download and install it, then open it one time. After that, the app will periodically notify you to ask you some questions. You’ll get credit for use in the Google Play Store every time you answer a survey. This is a great way to get a few bucks to buy those paid apps you’ve always wanted. Do beware that any credit earned is removed after 12 months so don’t wait forever to spend!
Get it now on Google Play!
Groupon
[Price: Free]
Groupon is one of the best and most popular coupon apps available on Android. Using this application is very simple. You browse it for coupons for goods or services you want and then you take those coupons shopping with you in order to get discounts. It doesn’t have coupons for every little thing but any penny saved is a penny earned. You can track which coupons you’ve used, take advantage of deals instantly, and a lot more. The design isn’t half bad either.
Get it now on Google Play!
Kodi
[Price: Free]
Kodi is a media center application that used to go by XBMC. It’s a popular, open-source media center that gives you complete access to your music, TV, and movie files along with your apps, pictures, and there is even support for third party plugins. It’s as full-screen app and it has a unique, simple design that’s easy to use. That said, we really recommend it for larger screen devices and probably not for smaller screen devices. The app is totally free with no in-app purchases.
Get it now on Google Play!
See also: The best free Android games
LastPass Password Manager
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
LastPass is one of the most prominent, popular, and feature-filled password managers that you can get. The application will encrypt and store your passwords for every app and website you subscribe to and keep them safe behind your master password. The app can also suggest passwords, auto-fill your details into sites and apps, take notes, securely hide photos, and a lot more. It’s a powerful application and it’s free to use on mobile. You will have to pay for it if you want to sync between mobile and your computer.
Get it now on Google Play!
MyFitnessPal
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
MyFitnessPal is one of the best health-oriented applications available on the market. It covers a wide range of healthy lifestyle needs including a calorie counting database with over 5,000,000 foods, a recipe importer so you can create your own cookbook, exercise regimes, integration with other apps and fitness hardware, and personalized recommendations based on your diet or needs. It’s a great app to have around if you want to live a more healthy life and most of its features are entirely free.
Get it now on Google Play!
Pocket
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Pocket is a powerful application for those who surf the web all the time. The way it works is that it allows you to store links, web images, and more in your metaphorical “pocket” for later viewing. This is great if you find stuff you want to remember for later and its offline capabilities allow you to store up some content for those long rides to and from work. It works cross-platform so you can save it on your PC and read it on mobile and vice versa and it’s a handy app to keep around.
Get it now on Google Play!
Stocks, Forex, Futures, and News
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
Stocks, Forex, Futures, and News is an application by Investing.com that shows you pretty much anything you need to know about the world of investing. It has real time reporting from over 40,000 financial instruments and 70 global exchanges. This includes breaking news, live charts, opinion, analysis, and coverage of emerging markets. If you’re into finance at all, you should definitely give this app a try.
Get it now on Google Play!
SwiftKey Keyboard
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
SwiftKey is one of the best keyboards available on Android and it’s entirely free to use. It comes with world class prediction that works most of the time, various customization options including keyboard height, a dedicated number row, and emoji settings. You can even check out your heat map and see how inaccurately you type. There are themes available as well, but they will cost you money. Everything else about the app is free. SwiftKey is owned by Microsoft now so we’ll see how that turns out.
Get it now on Google Play!
Waze
[Price: Free]
Almost everyone has their GPS app of choice these days but Waze is a great option as a secondary GPS app to keep around. On top of directions, you can get road alerts about accidents, find the cheapest gas on your route, and even send ETAs to your friends based on how long Waze thinks it’ll take you to get there. The entire thing is based on live feedback from other drivers in the community so most alerts and information is real time as its being reported which is kind of awesome.
Get it now on Google Play!
Zedge
[Price: Free]
Zedge is pretty much a one-stop-shop for things like wallpapers, ringtones, notification tones, and alarms. There is a very large selection of all of those things available in a variety of genres including fantasy, mainstream, funny, and pretty much whatever else you can think of. The information is crowd sourced by Zedge users and finding stuff on there can be simple. The only bad part is the advertising can get annoying but it’s easy enough to ignore.
Get it now on Google Play!
Related best app lists:
- Need more weather? Check out these awesome weather apps and weather widgets!
- If you’re in need of some schedule organization, may we recommend the best calendar apps on Android?
If we missed any of the best Android MMORPGs, tell us about them in the comments! To see our complete list of best app lists, click here.
Microsoft reportedly acquires SwiftKey
In what may be bad news for Android users who are fans of one of the world’s most popular virtual keyboards, Microsoft is acquiring SwiftKey to the tune of $250 million. It seems that Microsoft wants to use the keyboard, which has been installed on over 300 million devices, as well as SwiftKey’s artificial intelligence research to bolster their slipping foothold in both the mobile market and the burgeoning AI field.
While many people think of SwiftKey solely as a predictive keyboard, if a sometimes unsettlingly prescient one, the company also has quite a bit invested in adaptive learning and AI algorithms that allow human behavior to be accurately predicted. Stephen Hawking’s current language assistance program, after all, was designed by SwiftKey, and the company is developing tools to help other communicatively disabled people engage in the world around them via their Symbols app.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
The 150-employee company is based out of London, and its co-founders Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock both can expect to make over $30 million individually from Microsoft’s buyout. Acquisition of AI frontrunners is something of an arms race in Silicon Valley right now. Google seems to be leading the way with their far-reaching DeepMind research (a company they acquired in 2014), but apple isn’t far behind with VocalIQ, an AI software set with natural applications for Siri.
Acquiring SwiftKey accomplishes two objectives for Microsoft. Recently, the Windows creator has been buying up mobile tech left and right in an attempt to push their way back into a game that has become overwhelmingly Android/iOS dominant. Meanwhile, although they have been pursuing AI in smaller avenues, Microsoft hasn’t had any big-hitter that could attempt to rival DeepMind.
No word yet on how this will affect the SwiftKey keyboard – which is not available on Windows phones – on Android and iOS. Neither Microsoft nor SwiftKey have elected to comment on this matter as of yet. Hopefully our beloved keyboard will not meet the same fate as Sunrise, a calendar app that was gripped, stripped, and digested whole by Microsoft like a bacterium in the grip of mighty amoeba last year, only to be assimilated entirely into Outlook.
What do you think is going to happen with SwiftKey? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Zagg buys Mophie for $100 million
Zagg, a mobile accessory company that has carved out a number of niches spanning keyboards to cases, has just announced that they are buying Mophie for $100 million. For those not in the know, Mophie is known for being the company behind popular phone battery cases for the iPhone and select Android devices.
It appears the two are moving to build a third-party accessory empire together, perhaps in response to Apple recently unveiling their own Apple Smart Battery Case, which would rival Mophie’s most successful product currently on the market. Words from Randy Hales, the President and CEO of Zagg, seem to confirm this. “This strategic combination,” Hales said, “of two industry innovators with complementary product, brand and distribution platforms will enable us to deliver increased value for our customers and shareholders,”
See also: BlackBerry giving you $100 worth of accessories if you buy a Priv before February 24
No word yet on what these ace accessory makers have cooking, but with the third-party market becoming increasingly competitive, it’s no surprise that companies are banding together to put up a fight against the bigger guys. It’s always interesting to see two innovators come together, so we look forward to seeing what Zagg does with their new acquisition.
What do you think of this hundred million dollar merger? Something you’ll be following with interest, or just a yawn? Let us know in the comments below!
Keep the music going with Don’t Pause! (App Review)
It’s 5:15 PM. You’re in your car after a hard day of your boss screaming at you. You’re driving home and you have your phone connected to your stereo through bluetooth, a metal album on and you’re singing as loud as you can. To say you’re into this song would be an understatement.
And then it happens. Your mom sends you a text, your pleasant little tone plays and completely takes you out of the moment. This could have been avoided.
You could have downloaded Don’t Pause!
Don’t Pause!
Don’t Pause! is a simple app with a ton of options. It solves the problem I just laid out above. If you don’t want to be taken out of the moment when you get a text or an email, you may want to investigate it. Don’t Pause! will set your notifications to vibration, and won’t dip your music when when the notification comes in.
Your phone will vibrate in your pocket, your music will keep pumping, and you’ll go on about your business. Once you’re done listening to music, your notifications go back to normal. Easy.
Customization
There are plenty of options to customize your experience with Don’t Pause! The first option in the list is the ability to remove the notification that stays in your notification tray when Don’t Pause! is active. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t work. When I check the option to remove the notification, it never actually goes away.
Even when I stop the app from monitoring my music, the notification remains. The option is there for phones with lesser amounts of RAM so the background process isn’t killed, but it would be nice if the option to get rid of the notification actually worked.
If your phone is vibrating between songs, the “Only Silence Notifications” option may work out for you. If you decide to stop the app while you’re still playing music, you may want to check the “Default Ringer” option. This will return your ringer to its previous state even though the music is still playing. If you leave this unchecked, the phone will remain on vibrate even though you’ve stopped the process.
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Pro users will have access to a couple of features for a small fee of $1.34. Under the “Enhancements” tab we have a couple options for when you want Don’t Stop! to autostart. Here we have options for “Start on USB”, which starts the process when a USB cable is plugged in, “Start on Bluetooth” which starts the process when your phone connects to a bluetooth device, “Start on Boot” which makes sure the process starts when your phone starts up, and “Detect Headphones” which will start the process when your headphones enter the 3.5mm jack. All pretty self-explanatory, and all work as intended. You’ll also have the option to disable advertising.
Widgets
Under Widgets, we have three options. The first two options are 1×1 icons, and the third option is a 2×1 widget.
All three of them do the exact same thing, turn the service on and off. These are handy if you don’t want to keep the notifications in the tray, and want to quickly start the service. The 1×1 widgets are the exact same thing. They are the same icon, serve the same purpose and show up exactly the same on the home screen. I honestly have no idea why there are two.
The widgets are frankly ugly. They look very low resolution on my Nexus 6P’s 2560 x 1440 screen. You can see outlines at the edge of the icon where empty space should be, and the text under the widget cuts off so you only see “Don’t”. They’re poorly made, and need some work if the developer wants to be taken seriously.
Functionality
When the app is running, it functions great. I had Josh Noriega and Derrick Miyao send me a few text messages to test the app’s functionality, and I wasn’t interrupted once. The phone vibrated every time just as intended, and never stopped or faded the music I was listening to.
If you bring up the volume bar while listening to music and try to raise the ringer volume, it will default it back to vibration. You’ll have to actually stop the process to do that. I wanted to see what would happen if I forced the volume up in the settings (Settings App > Sound & Notification > Ring Volume) and it shot my phone into Do Not Disturb mode. Definitely a weird result that the dev needs to fix, but it won’t affect many users unless they do the exact steps I did (which is unlikely).
Verdict
I really like Don’t Pause! I don’t regret buying the pro version since it was pretty cheap, and opened up some options that make the app pretty powerful. The options you get with the free version are enough to get by on.
I do worry about users missing alerts. I have an Android Wear smartwatch which will still alert me to notifications when they come in when the process is running. You’re going to have to keep an eye on your phone if you don’t because you certainly won’t hear any notifications with Don’t Pause! on.
Play Store Link: Don’t Pause!
The post Keep the music going with Don’t Pause! (App Review) appeared first on AndroidGuys.
The Turing Phone will ship with Sailfish OS, not Android
The Turing Phone promises to be the sturdiest, most secure smartphone around, and now it boasts one more unique feature: Jolla’s Sailfish operating system. The Turing Phone will not use Android as promised, Turing Robotic Industries revealed in an email to “fans.” The message isn’t addressed to “owners” because the Turing Phone hasn’t hit the market yet; it was supposed to ship in December, complete with Android, but it was delayed into 2016 at the last moment.
Turing Phone pre-orders went live in September, when the device was still advertised as an Android product. The Sailfish-equipped Turing Phone is now set to ship in April, as noted by Android Police. Plus, TRI plans to host a Turing Developers Conference in Q2 2016, though the company hasn’t offered details on that event.
“Sailfish OS runs exceptionally fast on the Turing,” the company’s email reads. “You will not have to worry about performance issues with Turing’s Snapdragon 801 because Sailfish OS has been optimized to run fast on your Turing Phone. The Turing Phone will still be able to run Android Apps on the Sailfish OS without issue. An Android application store will be available for you to download your favorite apps.”
Sailfish is the Linux-based mobile OS favored by the now-defunct Jolla Tablet. Jolla is still working on Sailfish OS alongside its user community, but last time we checked it out, we discovered it wasn’t exactly on par with Android. The core apps on the Jolla Tablet were largely elegant and useful, but there was a serious lack of third-party support. Plus, Sailfish presented a few jarring glitches.
“There’s no question that Sailfish is still a young platform, with some buggy behavior to match,” our review reads. “The web browser is very quick, but it will make the occasional rendering mistake you rarely see elsewhere. …The catalog of Sailfish-native apps is pretty threadbare, and there are some very conspicuous gaps.”
The Turing Phone starts at $610 and runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801, a chipset that hit the market in 2014. Compared with its fancy liquidmorphium frame, the Turing’s guts are “pretty pedestrian,” as we noted in July.
Or, as TRI says in today’s email, “This essentially means you have one of the world’s fastest mobile device running the fastest mobile OS with the capability of running your favorite apps in a secure environment.” That’s one way to put it.
Via: Droid Life
Source: Android Police
Kindle e-reader update gives quick access to your books
Who said that dedicated e-readers were dead? Certainly not Amazon. It’s rolling out a major Kindle reader update that breathes new life into your e-paper experience. The most conspicuous improvement is a brand new home screen that highlights your most recent books, your reading list and personalized recommendations. You also have quick access to common settings like airplane mode, easier sharing (particularly for Goodreads) and an easy way to see the books that aren’t on your device.
Don’t expect to see the update right away. It’s deploying to the basic 2014 Kindle, the Paperwhite (both 2013 and 2015) and the Voyage in the days ahead, so it may take a while before you’re getting Amazon’s fresher take on digital literature. Some of these concepts aren’t completely new (Kobo has had a few of these elements for a while), but they’re welcome on what’s arguably the de facto e-reader for many bookworms.
Via: The eBook Reader
Source: Amazon
iOS Keyboard Maker SwiftKey Acquired by Microsoft for $250M
SwiftKey, the company behind the popular third-party SwiftKey Keyboard for iOS and Android devices, is being acquired by Microsoft, reports Financial Times. Microsoft is said to be purchasing SwiftKey for $250 million in a deal that will be announced imminently.
The SwiftKey keyboard has been available on Android devices since 2010, expanding to iOS in January of 2014 through the SwiftKey notes app. When Apple included support for third-party keyboards in iOS 8, SwiftKey was one of the first companies to produce a keyboard replacement app.
SwiftKey’s keyboard is notable for its word prediction tools, incorporating artificial intelligence and machine learning to make custom word predictions based on what a user has previously written. Microsoft will likely use SwiftKey’s technology to bolster its own AI-based products, including its Word Flow keyboard and virtual assistant Cortana.
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