Xbox One update boosts Party Chat and lets you buy Xbox 360 games

For Microsoft and Sony, the start of a new month means it’s time to share new software updates. Sony’s already had its turn, announcing that Remote Play will soon make its way to PC and Mac, and now Microsoft has confirmed it’s deploying a patch with a number of frequently requested features.

One of the most notable additions is improved access to Xbox 360 games. Microsoft has allowed Xbox One gamers to play older titles on their console for a few months now, but finding and launching them can be a pain. With the new update, older-generation games will be listed in a similar way to digital Xbox One titles, making them easier to buy and download to your console.

Party Chat has been given a nice little overhaul too. It can now be used during Twitch broadcasts and there’s now the ability to listen to conversations through your headset and speakers at the same time. The Party Chat limit has been expanded from 12 to 16 people, which is either a blessing or a curse depending on what type of games you play.

Microsoft has also listened to gamers who are frustrated with having to jump between apps to check on their achievements. They’ll now be loaded into the Xbox One guide and videos will now be playable from your Activity Feed. On top of that, Microsoft is scrapping the hard 30 second limit on Game DVR recording and adding a number of new recording lengths. Footage can now be saved in 15 second, 30 second, 45 second, 1 minute, 3 minute or 5 minute clips.

If you’re a member of Microsoft’s Xbox One Preview program, you can download the update today. Everyone else will have to wait for it roll out over the next few weeks.

Source: Major Nelson

Pictures of Huawei’s dual-camera P9 surface

It seems like just last week we were at Mobile World Congress in Spain checking out all the new phones. Oh wait, that was last week. Then why in the hell didn’t Huawei show off the P9 handset there instead of having a leaker steal its thunder? The world may never know, but VentureBeat has photographic evidence of the new handset and some of its key specs, regardless.

This flagship phone will apparently hit before June, sports a 5.2-inch chassis with twin 12-megapixel cameras (similar to Huawei’s previous Honor 6 Plus) and a Nexus 6P-ish fingerprint reader on the rear. It sounds like there might be more than one version of the device: a standard and then one with slightly higher internal specs — a custom Kirin 955 system-on-a-chip with 4GB of RAM versus a Kirin 950 with 3GB of RAM, for instance. Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow is on tap as well.

Now about all that’s left are pricing and availability, which noted leaker Evan Blass says should clear up by the second quarter of this year. Want an even closer look? Check out the source link below.

Via: Android Police

Source: VentureBeat

Scosche’s GoBat 6000 rugged battery is tough enough to meet anyone’s demands (review)

Scosche is one of the most well established mobile accessory makers today, getting its start in 1980 in beautiful Southern California. It has won countless awards for many of its

Android Pay explained: How does it work and where is it available?

You now have yet another way to pay for goods from your mobile device.

This new mobile payment solution is a little more exciting than some of the others though, because it’s coming from Google. It’s called Android Pay, and Google first unveiled it last May. Four months later it began to roll out Android Pay across the US. The launch occurred gradually, and Google said it had plans to continue expanding it as well as add more features, banks, and stores.

According to The Telegraph, Google will finally launch Android Pay in the UK sometime by the end of March 2016.

Here’s everything we know so far about Android Pay…

Android Pay: What is Android Pay?

It’s a mobile wallet that can store your credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, etc. If that sounds a lot like Google Wallet, it’s because Android Pay is the new Google Wallet (only it’s supposed to be better, more convenient, and secure).

Android Pay: How does Android Pay work?

Setup

Look for the Android Pay app on your phone. It is preloaded on several devices, but you can also simply download it from Google Play.
Add a credit or debit card within the app. If you already have a card in your Google account, you can add it to Android Pay by confirming a few details. If you’re adding a new card from any participating bank, simple snap a picture via the app.
That’s it. Simply unlock your phone and tap to use Android Pay at any contactless payment terminal.

Physical stores

When Google first unveiled Android Pay, it said you would be able to pay for goods by simply unlocking your Android phone like you normally do (which also enables Android Pay to authenticate your transaction), then placing it near a merchant’s contactless terminal, and that’s it.

You don’t even need to open an app to process a payment. It just lets you tap and go, and then you receive the confirmation/transaction details on your phone. Also, when you pay at select retailers, your loyalty points and offers will be auto-applied at checkout.

But let’s not forget Google is an advertising company that’s also in the business of making partnerships with other companies. So, you might also get special offers piped to your phone.

Apps

Google has also been working with developers to get a “Buy with Android Pay” button added to their apps, meaning you’ll be able to tap that button and swiftly checkout, rather than having to enter your credit card and shipping address each time you make a purchase.

It’s not yet clear which apps will be available with Android Pay support at launch, but Google said it’s been partnering with top payments processors (like Braintree, CyberSource, First Data, Stripe, and Vantiv) to make integration easy for developers.

According to Google’s Android Pay website, apps like Chipotle, Domino’s, Dunkin Donuts, Etsy, Groupon, GrubHub, JackThreats, Lyft, and OpenTable support Android Pay at launch.

Google

Android Pay: Which devices are compatible?

Android Pay works with all NFC-enabled Android devices running KitKat 4.4+. It currently supports any mobile carrier and tap-and-pay location across the US.

Android Pay: Does it require a fingerprint reader?

No. And that’s because many Android phone makers still need to integrate fingerprint reader into their devices. Android Pay therefore also accepts a PIN code, password, or pattern in order to authenticate a transaction.

Android Pay: Which banks are participating?

Android Pay works with your credit and debit cards from the following US financial institutions:

• • • American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa. These cards are issued by the following US banks and credit unions: American Express, Bank of America, Discover, Navy Federal Credit Union, PNC, Regions Bank, USAA, US Bank, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Capital One.

Android Pay: Which stores let you use Android Pay?

Simply put: You can use Android Pay anywhere you can use Apple Pay (or any place with a contactless terminal). Google said it works across 1 million US locations, including everywhere tap-and-pay payments are accepted, such as:

Google

Google’s Android Pay website has a list of stores – and it includes Best Buy, Game Stop, McDonald’s Petco, etc.

Android Pay: What about Google Wallet?

The New York Times said Google Wallet might be revamped as as a peer-to-peer payment app like Square.

Google hasn’t commented on that report, but if you’re an existing Google Wallet user, it said you’ll be able to access Android Pay through an update to your Wallet app.

Android Pay: Is Android Pay secure?

Theoretically, yes.

Google said it was working with leading payment networks and financial institutions in the US to deliver industry-standard security tokenisation. With tokenisation, the retailer receives a newly-generated, 16-digit virtual number instead of your actual account number. So, should there be another major credit card data breach at a retailer, you’ll at least know your card is safe.

Android Pay’s tokenisation is different from Apple Pay’s in that tokens aren’t generated in a secure chip within the phone but rather within the cloud. But if you’re ever in a place without internet, Android Pay will apparently still be able to access some tokens that are stored on your device, thus allowing you to pay for your goods and be on your merry way. Simples.

Android Pay: When will Android Pay launch?

US

Android Pay is already available in the US. You can download it from Google Play. It will also come preinstalled on new NFC-enabled Android phones from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless.

UK

According to The Telegraph, Google will finally launch Android Pay in the UK sometime by the end of March 2016.

Android Pay: Want to know more?

Check out Google’s Android Pay website for more details.

Huawei P9 leak reveals phone’s body and dual-camera system

The P9 is really starting to take shape now.

Although Huawei hasn’t yet announced its upcoming P9 flagship smartphone, a massive leak has revealed what it possibly looks like as well as what it might feature in the camera department.

VentureBeat’s Evan Blass has published photos of the phone’s body and a dual-camera system on its rear, the latter of which looks similar to the Honor 6 Plus’ similar camera setup. Reports have claimed the P9 should debut in the first half of 2016, though Huawei has remained tight-lipped on the subject. The phone will supposedly feature two 12-megapixel sensors. It might also come with Leica lenses to improve focusing.

This is not the first major leak involving the P9; recent photos showed a metal frame. Also, it is thought that this phone is just one of four variations of the line. We might see, for instance, Huawei unveil the P9 alongside a P9 lite, P9 Max, and a feature-enhanced version of the device with more RAM, increased storage, and a display size somewhere between the P9 and P9 Max.

You can expect to see more leaks this spring, including details on pricing and availability. Check out Pocket-lint’s round-up to see what else the P9 might feature or when it’ll likely appear.

VentureBeat

2015’s ‘Nobel Prize of computing’ honors encryption pioneers

Unless you’ve just finished an incredibly dedicated Rip Van Winkle cosplay session, you’re probably well aware of how hot a topic encryption is at the moment. To that end, the winners of the 2015 A.M. Turing Award have been announced. Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman, authors of 1976’s Diffie-Hellman Protocol, are the recipients of computing’s $1 million “Nobel Prize of computing.” Diffie is the former Chief Security Officer for Sun Microsystems, while Hellman is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at NorCal’s Ivy League school, Stanford.

The pair’s encryption method is in use all over the web and relies on asymmetrical encryption, using a public key to encrypt data while a private key is used for decryption. It isn’t infallible, however, and you can probably guess pretty easily which government organization was able to crack it. The Turing Award’s governing body, the Association for Computing Machinery, says that (PDF) the obfuscation method is used daily to protect “trillions of dollars” in financial transactions, among other applications.

Should you want to attend the ceremony honoring the duo, make sure you’re in San Francisco on June 11th.

Via: The Verge

Source: Association for Computing Machinery (PDF)

Reduce eye strain when watching television at night with bias lighting – CNET

Taylor Martin/CNET

When working late into the night at your computer or binging your favorite TV show on Netflix, you’ve likely experienced some form of eye strain. Your eyes get scratchy and dry, you experience blurred vision, and you might even get a slight headache.

Surprisingly, fighting eye strain and improving the quality of your nighttime movies or work sessions is actually very simple. All you need is a properly placed light source.

Learn what bias lighting is and why it works so well.

Why bias lighting works

Backlighting of a television or monitor is called bias lighting. It works by giving your eyes a more neutral reference point for colors and contrast in a dark room.

Why does it work? Your eyes work on a system of averages, says Jason Fitzpatrick of How-To Geek. Staring at a bright display in an otherwise dark environment disrupts how our eyes measure the light:

When we watch television or use a computer workstation in a completely dark or significantly darkened room, we create a less-than-ideal viewing situation wherein our eyes are staring very intently at a small window of very bright light that is floating in a sea of darkness. Despite the fact that we accurately perceive the screen to be very bright in relationship to the rest of the scene our eyes take in, our eyes attempt to adjust based on the average brightness across the entire field of view and not the average brightness of the screen (or, conversely, the dimmer off-screen area).

In other words, your eyes do not properly dilate for the amount of light they’re taking in. This forces your eyes to work harder and fatigue more quickly than they normally would. This is what leads to dry eyes, dizziness and headaches.

By placing a light behind the television, you are raising the average ambient light in the room and reducing the strain on your eyes, meaning you can watch television or work for longer without all the negative side effects.

As an added bonus, your perception of the contrast on the display will increase. This works on the same principle as the simultaneous contrast illusion. Grays and blacks appear darker when against a lighter background.

How to setup bias lighting

All you need to set up your own bias lighting is a light source placed behind your monitor or television.

The number of commercially available kits for bias lighting is only growing, and they range from about $10 to upwards of $100 online. Many kits are even USB-powered, meaning installation is as simple as plugging in the USB end of the strip into the USB port on your television and attaching the lights to the back of the television or entertainment system.

Virtually any light behind your television or monitor will improve the contrast of the picture at night. That said, the main feature you’re aiming for, as explained by Fitzpatrick, is a light source with a temperature of approximately 6,500k. This is the industry standard white reference point for manufacturers of displays and content creators. Lights of a different temperature will alter your perception of the colors on the screen.

A quick and easy DIY solution for bias lighting is to use a smart bulb or LED strip behind your TV. This gives you the ability to tweak the color and brightness to your liking.

Power on the lights the next time you want to watch a movie at night and forget about dreaded dry eyes and headaches.

Weekly Poll: Have you pre-ordered a Samsung Galaxy S7?

It’s barely been any time at all since the announcement, but folks are already clamoring to get their hands on the new Samsung Galaxy S7. (And, in fact, some already have.) It made its debut at Mobile World Congress 2016 and immediately started turning heads. This gorgeous and powerful phone is definitely going to get attention all year long, and that’s not a bad thing.

In this week’s poll, we want to know whether you’re pre-ordering the new Samsung Galaxy S7. With that in mind we’ve given you five choices:

survey solutions

Are you itching to get your hands on a Galaxy S7, or are you giving it some time first? Let us know about it in the comments below!

Samsung Galaxy S7

• Galaxy S7 and S7 edge hands-on
• Galaxy S7 and S7 edge specs
• Here are all four Galaxy S7 colors
• Details on the Galaxy S7’s camera
• The SD card is back on the GS7
• Join our Galaxy S7 forums

AT&T Sprint T-Mobile Verizon

More than 15,000 HTC Vive units reportedly sold in less than 10 minutes

How hot is the HTC Vive? According to HTC’s Shen Ye (yes, the brains behind our Futurology series) tweeted Monday that more than 15,000 units of the virtual reality system were sold in less than 10 minutes on Day 1 of preorders. That’s in the neighborhood of 25 Vives sold every second.

And if you’ve gotten to go through a Vive Demo — it blew Russell’s mind, and Phil’s, too — you understand the excitement. It’s simply the most immersive VR experience you can get.

Woah, more than 15k units in less than 10min 😮

— Shen Ye (@shen) February 29, 2016

The only bad news here? If you shelled out $799 (or more, outside the U.S.) for a Vive, you still have to wait until April for delivery.

Slack planning voice and video chat, upping threat to Hangouts, Skype

Slack plans to roll out voice and video chat this year, making the popular messaging company even more competitive with incumbents like Microsoft’s Skype and Google’s Hangouts. That’s according to their 2016 product roadmap, presented to customers at a conference today in San Fransisco.

TechCrunch reports:

[Voice chat] on desktop will come first, and then the company will focus on making it work on all its devices and apps. Video will have to wait until after that. Underwood noted that you can already make voice calls via Skype’s Slack integration. But with its own feature, she says the use case will be “If I’m DMing someone in Slack and we want to switch to have a quick voice conversation, it addresses that problem.”

Slack also plans a WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editor that would allow for rich text formatting, a more approachable search system, and more.

Voice and video are a big deal though. Right now, if you want to shift contexts to voice or video, you have to switch out of Slack and launch Microsoft’s Skype or Google’s Hangouts. That’s not only a fragmented experience but chink in Slack’s armor — Skype and Hangouts both offer text and audio and video chat already. Even Apple’s iMessage makes it easy to switch to FaceTime audio or video and back.

That so many people are willing to use Slack even without those features shows how compelling the existing text and picture messaging system is. If Slack can deliver integrated voice and video that’s just as compelling, the competitive threat to Microsoft and Google — and perhaps to other enterprise communication tools — could be enormous.

Would you switch away from Skype or Hangouts for Slack voice and video chats? Let me know in the comments!