Unlocked HTC One A9 officially won’t support Verizon’s network

If you bought an HTC One A9 hoping that the unlocked smartphone would gain support for Verizon’s network, there’s some bad news. HTC has confirmed that support is not coming after all.

According to an HTC statement sent to Droid Life:

HTC is committed to providing the best experience for all of our device owners. Following extensive testing, we are unable to support the Verizon network with the Unlocked HTC One A9. For individuals on the Verizon network that ordered the Unlocked HTC One A9 on HTC.com, we will refund his/her order and provide a 20% discount on any current HTC phone or future phones launching through Dec. 31, 2016. Individuals may contact HTC Care at 1-888-216-4736. We regret any inconvenience.

Source: Droid Life

HTC One A9

• Current OS version: Android 6.0
• Current security: Nov. 2015 (More info)
• HTC One A9 review
• HTC One A9 specs
• HTC One A9 photos
• Join our A9 forums

HTC.com

Learn the techniques to Go Pro with the Digital Photography and Photoshop Bundle

Spending an ungodly amount of money on a high-end camera may result in a sharper quality curve for amateur shooters, but it won’t make you a good photographer.

However, with an understanding of core photographic principles and techniques, you can get on your way to consistently snapping like a pro. The Pro Digital Photography & Photoshop Bundle offers those fundamentals and more, an in-depth course spanning 30 hours of content & 27 instructional units. For only a short time, you can start down the path to excellent photography for just £20.64 ($29) on Pocket-lint Deals.

Developed by pro photographers & accredited Photoshop teachers, your instruction is driven through an internationally recognized course that’s been accredited by the International Association of Online Training Standards. You’ll study light metering & ISO while building a comprehensive understanding of color temperature & white balance, pinpointing exposure and developing the skills to take great shots every time.

You’ll receive access to one-on-one online help & support, with 24/7 access to all lessons and instructional videos for life! Skip the lazy safety of your automatic settings once and for all, and take your photographic passion to the next level with this excellent training bundle. At 96 per cent off, unlocking your photographic potential has never been more affordable.

Google changes how it scrubs ‘right to be forgotten’ people

Google confirmed today that it is adjusting how it handles “right to be forgotten” requests from EU citizens. Since 2014, when EU’s Court of Justice established its “right to be forgotten” law, Google has been scrubbing information deemed “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant or excessive and in the public interest” from its European servers. That means if someone in France makes a delisting request, Google will scrub that info from Google.fr, Google.uk and the rest — but not from its global Google.com.

However, starting next week, Google will delist people from all of its domains, including Google.com. But there’s a catch. Google will employ geolocation (ie the searcher’s IP address) to determine whether or not to display information that would have been otherwise scrubbed. That is, searching for a French person’s delisted information from America will return different (and additional) results than if you searched for the French person’s information from within France itself.

This policy is ludicrously stupid because VPN but you can’t fault Google for giving the EU court exactly what it asked for. They’re obeying the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

Source: Google Policy

The next Windows 10 update is all about Cortana

Cortana has learned three languages in the latest Windows 10 update, which is available today for Insider members in the program’s Fast ring. Cortana now supports Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) and French (Canada) languages, each with its own specialized flair.

“Cortana is fond of pasteis which is a common food found in many regions across Brazil,” Microsoft’s blog post reads. “And in Mexico, we added local flavor to reflect the accent and language of the country.”

In today’s preview build, users can also set simple reminders with Cortana, including events that don’t have due dates. It’s possible to return to these reminders later to set specific parameters. In future updates, Cortana “will be able to retrieve these upon request, just like a real personal assistant would,” the Windows team promises.

Microsoft is also updating the Lock and logon screens — they’ll now have the same background (the one chosen for the Lock screen). The company is also working to streamline the transition between the Lock and logon screens.

The latest update squashes a few bugs, including a glitch where Cortana showed reminders for events that were already completed. Some PCs bluescreened after downloading certain drivers from Windows Update, but this build should take care of that problem. Additionally, all Windows Insiders will now receive Windows 10 firmware updates automatically as they become available.

Source: Windows

UEFA Champions League final will use goal-line technology

Goal-line technology is already being used in the Premier League to verify scoring, and it’s headed to two UEFA league finals, too. The upcoming Champions League and Europa League finals will both make use of the system to keep tabs on scoring. If you’ll recall, the tech was also used during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Back in January, UEFA announced that next year’s Champions League season and the 2016 Euro Cup would employ the goal-line technology. However, it looks like the European football association is looking to get a jump start on things with the two league finals in May.

If you’re unfamiliar, the system functions similar to what’s in place for tennis matches. Using a combination of cameras in the goal posts and electromagnetic antennas, the setup beams a signal to the referee’s watch the instant the entire ball crosses the goal line. After a blown call in the 2010 World Cup (among other errors), FIFA revisited the idea of using the technology before eventually giving the thumbs up ahead of the matches in 2014. Premier League began using the system during the 2013-2014 season.

Source: BBC

Google patents AR-based pop-up books

Google has filed a pair of patents with the USPTO that aim to reinvent how we interact with printed media. The first patent is for an “Interactive Book” with motion and pressure sensors embedded within its pages. The sensors would launch visual assets via augmented reality whenever the reader activates them, say, by turning a page. The user wouldn’t need actual AR glasses; instead a small device seated on the book’s spine would project the visuals onto the pages. An embedded speaker would further enhance the onpage action.

Google’s second patent is for the Interactive Book’s spiritual predecessor, the “Media Enhanced Pop-up Book.” Rather than using a micro-projector, the MEPB leverages a phone or tablet to deliver added content. Every page of this book has a secondary, digital page that “opens” vertically on the mobile device. Of course, as with all patents, there is absolutely no guarantee these will actually become real products — or even prototypes, for that matter.

Having multiple online identities is more normal than you think

A few months ago during a family reunion, my husband wanted to show visiting relatives photos of our home renovation. He brought up my Instagram feed on his laptop and started showing family members photos I took of the house. I bristled instantly. Right next to the photos of my kitchen and bathroom were selfies. Lots of selfies. Selfies showing off my makeup, selfies of what I wore, selfies of me in my new glasses. There were also photos of food, my cat and my shoes. Out of the context of an Instagram feed, I came off as narcissistic; self-centered. I was embarrassed.

Though my Instagram account is public, it isn’t meant for my family to see. I felt a little shy admitting this at the time, but I compartmentalize and curate my social media life to an exacting degree. For me, Instagram is for friends and people who know me through the internet. Facebook is for keeping in touch with family and friends, and even then I put co-workers and family members in different groups. Twitter is where I goof around and spout random thoughts on everything from politics to the weather. My audience in each case overlaps to some degree, but they’re not the same.

It’s not just that either. I also have five Twitter accounts and a couple of Instagrams. Some of them are private accounts which I share only with close friends. With some accounts, I focus on specific topics, or spoof accounts I created to make fun of something. (I created this Dupercuts account a few years ago to poke fun at Supercuts, for example.)

It might seem, at first glance, that I have multiple personality disorder. And it might seem confusing to have to juggle so many different sites. But in reality, having multiple social media accounts is pretty common.

“Actually, this was the norm for almost all of internet history,” says danah boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft Research (she prefers her name to be written in lowercase). She’s also the author of the book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, where she explores the way social media affects how teens communicate. The idea of just using Facebook as your primary online identity is actually the exception, she says, not the norm. Even back in the heydays of Usenet and IRC, having multiple identities was something a lot of people did.

“I interviewed a young person last week who was very clear about the need for multiple profiles,” boyd continued. “She used Tumblr to share all sorts of political feminist images with people who cared about that, Instagram to share photos with her classmates, Facebook to interact with everyone she’s ever met, and texting to talk with her closest friends and family.”

“Different sites, different audiences, different purposes.” she said. “Very simple.”

Mallory Johns, our social media editor, shares the same sentiments. She says that the different social accounts reflect different parts of her persona. “Instagram is where everything appears to be perfect and highly filtered, whereas my Snapchat is raw and more visceral,” she said. She even went so far as to create a separate Instagram account just to show off her addiction to french fries. “I thought my friends would get sick of all my food pics.” The same goes for her multiple Tumblr accounts: One is personal, another is a music practice journal, and yet another is for collecting advertising jargon.

“I think it’s a pretty common thing for folks my age and younger,” she said. “For my younger friends, they’ve started making duplicate and triple (private) Instagrams for all their different personas. I also think having multiple social accounts takes the pressure off having a perfect feed of social moments.”

This ties into a relatively recent phenomenon called “finstagrams” that is fairly common with a lot of young people. The idea is that your “official” instagram has tailored photos that are posed and filtered, while your “finstagram” (short for fake instagram) is an unfiltered and uncensored look at your life. They’re usually funnier, more off-the-cuff and mostly just for close friends.

Different sites, different audiences, different purposes.

In a recent informal poll among my Twitter followers, I found that 44 percent out of 80 votes admitted to having more than one Twitter account. That’s not a lot obviously, but it’s still a lot more than I anticipated. Some used those multiple accounts often, while others used mostly one while leaving the rest dormant.

Help me out on a story: Do you have more than one Twitter account?

— Nicole Lee (@nicole) March 1, 2016

In the process of finding out who used multiple accounts, I came across a Twitter user called Ron Diggity, who has at least four other accounts. One was focused on mostly alcoholic beverages while another was about food. I asked him why he had so many, and he simply said that having just one account can lead to “messaging” getting muddled. “Someone interested in one might not be interested in others. You choose your own level of involvement.”

One particular Twitter follower who wishes to be anonymous, added this bit of insight:

“I think Mark Zuckerberg’s notion of people having a single, authentic life is total and utter bullshit. People have diverse, rich lives that aren’t contained within a single idea and personae. The life I lead in front of my family members is not the life I lead when I’m with my friends, which isn’t the life I lead with the people I engage with online.”

People have diverse, rich lives that aren’t contained within a single idea and personae.

All of which to say, that this multiple online identity phenomenon is indicative of how multi-faceted human beings are. To have us all be confined to just a single account, or a single all-in-one persona is confining.

“Think of it this way: would you invite everyone you’ve ever met to your birthday party?,” boyd said. “To your office? To your wedding? Different events involve different segments of your network and involve different protocols and behaviors. The same is true online.”

Play Cupid on Tinder by sharing profiles with your friends

Tinder is slowly rolling out the option to share other people’s profiles with friends via text messaging. A small number of users will spot a “share” icon under some profiles — tapping it lets you send a temporary link to that profile via text. The links expire after 72 hours or five clicks, and the person who receives it can then swipe right on the profile as he or she sees fit.

There is, of course, an option to keep your profile un-sharable; find that in the app’s Discovery Settings.

Ostensibly, this is all so you can show your friends people they might be into, though surely it’ll be used to gossip about all of the surprising folks you see on Tinder — like Lindsey Lohan, Katy Perry or Ashton Kutcher, for example. That said, this may be a good time for people who shouldn’t be on Tinder to update their privacy settings (or delete the app for good, you right-swiping scoundrels).

Source: Tinder

Bumble now lets you find a new BFF

Bumble, the dating app from former Tinder CEO Whitney Wolfe where women make the first move, has launched a new service that will allow users to find a friend as easily as they find romance. The new BFF mode works just like the existing dating UI — save that potential love-interests are replaced with potential friends of the same sex as the user. If both parties swipe right, then they can initiate a conversation with each other. The system will differentiate conversations by color: green for your new bestie, yellow for your new hot date. Bumble has also confirmed to Engadget that “for Bumble BFF, women see women and men see men. We approach every new product feature with safety in mind and we did not want people gamifying the system.”

Source: TechCrunch

MacRumors Giveaway: Win a PowerShadow iPhone Battery Case from Spyder

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Spyder to give three MacRumors winners a chance to win a PowerShadow battery case for the iPhone 6, 6s, 6 Plus, or 6s Plus.

Described as the “world’s thinnest” battery case for Apple’s latest iPhones, the $99 PowerShadow case measures in at 14.5mm thick and includes a 2,750 mAh battery for the iPhone 6/6s version and a 3,500 mAh battery for the iPhone 6/6s Plus version.

In addition to adding extra battery life to an iPhone, the PowerShadow case is made of rubber-coated impact-resistant carbonate to protect the device from drops and it improves water resistance with a unibody design and port plugs. It also has built-in antimicrobial protection and a lip around the edge protects the iPhone’s screen when placed face down.

The PowerShadow case charges through micro-USB, but with an optional PowerShadow Dock ($49.99) the iPhone and the case can be charged at the same time without the need to remove the case from the phone.

Spyder offers the PowerShadow case for the iPhone 6/6s in Black, Titanium, Champagne, and White, while the iPhone 6/6s Plus version is available in Black and Titanium. Both cases are priced at $99, but three MacRumors readers will win a Spyder PowerShadow case at no cost.

To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize.

You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (March 4) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on March 11. The winners will be chosen randomly on March 11 and will be contacted by email. The winners have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen. The prizes will be shipped to the winners for free.

Tags: giveaway, Spyder
Discuss this article in our forums