Starz launches its own streaming service with offline viewing
The home of Blunt Talk, Outlander and Black Sails is copying HBO and Showtime by launching its own streaming service. Priced at $8.99 a month, Starz is letting its users watch the channel’s original series and licensed movies on-demand. The big difference between Starz and rivals like HBO and Netflix is that this service will let users download and watch titles offline. That way, you’ll be able to marathon the latest Disney movies like Age of Ultron and The Force Awakens on a long haul flight. In addition, if you already pay for Starz through your cable subscription and aren’t ready to cut the cord yet, you’ll be able to get free access to the app.
Starz may have some exciting movie titles in its roster, but it’s hard to feel as if paying for yet another streaming service is worthwhile. After all, reducing the wasted cost of having to shell out for channels you never watch was one of the key points of cord cutting. Unfortunately, with each additional service that launches, cherrypicking your favorite channels is becoming less and less economical. For instance, if you wanted to sign up with the big seven platforms (including Netflix, HBO and Starz) you’d be spending close to $70 a month. That’s not exactly a big saving when you can get an equivalent FiOS bundle for less than $80. Maybe it is our fate to always be spending for content that we’ll never, ever, ever watch.
Via: Variety
Source: Starz
Lyft Line expanding to six more cities
Today, Lyft announced that its Line shared ride feature will launch in six new cities. The service will roll out in Denver, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle and Newark starting April 11.
Line matches riders going along a similar route with the same driver. The draw to share a ride with a complete stranger is a fare that’s up to 60-percent cheaper than a regular Lyft ride. Now those cheaper — and a bit more crowded — rides will be available in more cities.
The ride-sharing company noted that on April 15, Line will be available in 15 metropolitan areas. It said it chose the new cities because they were some of its fastest growing markets. While its expanding this service, Lyft also recently announced a Carpool feature for commuters in a partnership with Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission to get even more people to share rides.
Source: Lyft
HTC starts shipping its Vive virtual reality headset
Oculus may have gotten a little head start by shipping its Rift virtual reality headset almost two weeks ago, but HTC’s VR gadget is heading to customers today. The HTC Vive is heading out to folks who pre-ordered the $799 device that arrives with two location sensors and a pair of wireless controllers. The company confirmed reports of payment processing issues a few days ago, promising to send out shipments based on position in the pre-order queue. Of course, Oculus is facing shipping delays of its own due to “unexpected component shortage.”
Even with the payment trouble, HTC met its “early April” shipping goal after beginning the pre-order process at the end of February. If you’re looking for an idea of what do expect from the Vive, here’s our full review and the story of how HTC and Valve teamed up to build the gear.
Thank you to everyone for your support. We are proud to announce the Vive is now arriving at homes around the world. pic.twitter.com/yjynYYPhBD
— HTC Vive (@htcvive) April 5, 2016
Source: HTC Vive (Twitter)
Every message in WhatsApp is completely encrypted
Surprise! WhatsApp, one of the most popular online communication services in the world, now uses end-to-end encryption on every device and for every message, whether it’s voice, text, photo, video, group or one-on-one. Open Whisper Systems, an organization that aims to advance secure communication technology, worked with WhatsApp over the past year to implement a full-coverage encryption system. Today, WhatsApp users will see notices in their conversation screens as their messages become secure.
The news comes during a tense time for encryption talk. A standoff between Apple and the FBI fizzled out just days ago when the bureau announced it didn’t need Apple’s help to crack the security features of the iPhone 5c used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple campaigned for weeks in favor of encryption; CEO Tim Cook called the FBI’s demand to unlock the secure iPhone unconstitutional. The FBI, in turn, called Apple’s rhetoric corrosive.
Now, the second-most popular messaging app in the world is covered by a similar form of end-to-end encryption.
“While we recognize the important work of law enforcement in keeping people safe, efforts to weaken encryption risk exposing people’s information to abuse from cybercriminals, hackers, and rogue states,” WhatsApp writes. We’ve reached out to the FBI for comment on today’s announcement.
Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion, largely to take advantage of its 450 million-plus userbase. Today, more than 1 billion people use WhatsApp across the globe. And now, they all use end-to-end encryption.
The WhatsApp team has been slowly rolling out security services since November 2014 at least, when it announced end-to-end encryption for text messages on Android. It’s possible that terrorists used WhatsApp and another encrypted messaging service, Telegram, to help coordinate the deadly attacks on Paris in December.
“Building secure products actually makes for a safer world, (though) many people in law enforcement may not agree with that,” WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton tells Wired. He adds that secure communications allow people to safely become whistleblowers, or talk with doctors or business partners without the fear of eavesdroppers.
Via: Wired
Source: WhatsApp
Twitter adds DM share button to iOS and Android
If you’re a fan of secretly sharing tweets with your friends via DM, today’s your lucky day. The Twitter apps for iOS and Android are being updated with a dedicated Message button for quicker sharing.
While sharing DM’s has been around for a while (and frankly not that difficult), the new button is an explicit call to action to get folks to send messages.
In fact, the company has been enhancing its direct messages for a while hoping to get users to stay within the Twitter universe for more than just checking news and retweeting cat GIFs.
Source: Twitter
PayPal nixes North Carolina ops center following anti-LGBT law
The passing of HB2, a law that denies protections for people who are gay or transgender, is proving to be very expensive for Governor Pat McCrory and the state of North Carolina. In the weeks following Governor McCrory signing the anti-LGBT bill into law, a number of companies, production studios and even the federal government have spoken out against the legislation. Some are pulling money and business ventures from the state, and one of the most recent is PayPal. The financial transaction company announced plans to build a new operations center in Charlotte just before HB2 passed. Today, the company killed those plans, withdrawing the project that would’ve brought 400 new jobs to the area.
“The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” explained president and CEO Dan Schulman. “As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.” In a blog post announcing the news, Schulman went on to explain that the company’s values include a “strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect.” He goes on to say that those values “compel us to take action to oppose discrimination.”
While pulling a major expansion project out of North Carolina in opposition to HB2 is admirable, PayPal doesn’t have a solid track record when it comes to welcoming all. For example, the company cracks down on folks associated with sexual content by denying service and freezing funds. It has also been known to freeze accounts accepting charitable donations and disaster relief.
PayPal isn’t the only company pulling new projects from North Carolina, either. Both Lionsgate and A&E Networks announced that they would no longer film movies and television shows in the state until the law is repealed. Lionsgate is moving a show from Charlotte to Canada for production, and its remake of Dirty Dancing that’s slated for the Asheville area could be in jeopardy as well. A number of tech CEOs have also signed letters in opposition to HB2, so we’ll have to wait an see if other companies pull business from the state as well.
Via: CNBC (Twitter)
Source: PayPal
Instagram’s big bet on video doesn’t stop at 60 seconds
Last week, Instagram surprised its users by increasing the 15-second limit of its videos to a whopping 60 seconds, a full four times longer than it was before. It had already extended the video viewing time for marketers, but last week was when the feature was introduced to regular users for the first time. It’s a pretty big leap, and according to Instagram, it was for one reason: people are watching a lot more video. In fact, the time users spent watching video on the photo-and-video sharing service jumped more than 40 percent in the last six months. But while extending the video limit was something of a no-brainer, the effort to make it happen was actually quite a large one.
For starters, the Instagram team wanted to improve video quality in general, even before the increase in video length. Ramp 15 seconds up to 60 and the problem quickly escalates. “One of the things we realized early on in the process is that the specs we were using for video was a one-size-fits-all kind of thing,” said Udeepta Bordoloi, a video engineer for Instagram. This is because when Instagram first launched video — back in 2013 — the networks were different, and the devices that people used were different. “They were not as up-to-date as we have today,” he said.
Also, back then, the team placed a hard cap on file sizes, which became an issue especially for Android phones. When a video appears in the feed, the Android app actually downloads the whole video file to the phone’s local storage, which then passes it to Android’s MediaPlayer. Aside from just a strain on bandwidth, it also presented a problem of varying quality levels. “We realized that not all videos are the same,” said Bordoloi. “If you have a video of someone talking in front of a whiteboard, those videos don’t need such a large file size. On the other hand if you have videos of somebody surfing or there’s a lot of movement, those typically have a larger file size.” This was complicated even further when the team introduced Hyperlapse, a tool that made it that much easier for users to upload action-fueled — and space-hogging — sped up videos.
Video Creators on Instagram from Instagram on Vimeo.
So in the move from 15 to 60 second clips, Instagram faced a few challenges. “As the video becomes larger, playback would wait even longer for the video to download,” wrote Hendri, an Instagram software engineer, in a blog post. “People on slower network connections might need to wait for a very long time before they can play.” Further, the video won’t play at all if the phone has no diskspace.
The solution, as it turns out, lies within its own parent company. Facebook has been leading the way for video encoding for awhile now and has built up a much more robust and flexible infrastructure. Since Instagram was readying itself for a massive explosion in video growth, it only made sense to combine the two. Indeed, Instagram is now migrating all of its video encoding efforts to Facebook’s own system.
With this, it’s able to build a streaming video cache so that your phone will never have to wait for a download before the video starts to play. At this very moment, all videos that are longer than 15 seconds are being encoded on Facebook’s infrastructure rather than on Instagram’s own back-end. “It’s more flexible, it can do more things, and it makes the whole process so much faster.”
It’s not just that either. The team also made a few changes to how it processed video. For one thing, they opted to go for a quality target instead of just a file size hard cap. They also figured how to decrease the file size so that the videos would load faster. “Devices became better and we supported a better video profile,” said Bordoloi. “The file size decreased by 15 to 20 percent,” he added, but quality thankfully remained the same.
The team also worked hard to improve playback on Android. “We have all the iOS devices [in our labs] to test,” said Bordoloi. “But on Android, there’s such a variation, it’s very difficult to predict. We have to keep in mind the lowest common denominator.” This, he said, is why he’s proud that Instagram works particularly well in lower end devices. From 320-pixel screens to 1440-pixel behemoths, the team has been able to provide the same quality to different sized displays, he said.
In its 60-second video announcement post, Instagram said: “This is one step of many you’ll see this year.” With all of this attention and resources heaped on just expanding 15 to 60 seconds, it’s clear that the improvements to video aren’t over just yet.
Source: Instagram
Got an HTC Vive? Now’s your chance to swim with a blue whale.
HTC’s Vive virtual reality headset has finally begun shipping to enthusiasts’ homes. But a high-end VR headset is only as good as its content. Which is why LA-based VR studio Wevr is making its Transport platform (think: Netflix for VR) available to users today. Interested VR heads can head to Steam or hit up Wevr’s own site now to download the app. The best part? Transport will debut with three key pieces of free content: the surrealistic, deep space experience Irrational Exuberance; the shifting music video perspectives of Crown by hip hop group Run The Jewels; and underwater odyssey theBlu: Whale Encounter.
Wevr’s award-winning theBlu series, which takes viewers under the sea for an intimate look at marine life, is also getting a significant update today. The studio’s making two new installments — Reef Migration and Luminous Abyss — available through Steam as a paid bundle. The Season One bundle, which Wevr says will eventually be offered on Transport, costs $9.99 and includes the original Whale Encounter that gives viewers face time with a blue whale, as well as the two new episodes.
And in order for viewers to really let the underwater VR majesty sink in, Wevr’s added two new modes to theBlu: Season One bundle so you can slow down the passage of time (and take photos) or stop it all together. If you do take the plunge with theBlu, we have a feeling you won’t be coming up for “air” anytime soon.
Producer recreates ‘The Life of Pablo’ without ever hearing it
If you didn’t know, Kanye West’s latest album was a Tidal exclusive for a pretty long time. Tidal isn’t available in Japan, and pirating music is a criminal offence with penalties as harsh as up to two years prison time for downloading and ten (yes, ten) for uploading. With no way to listen to the album, producer Toyomu decided to take matters into his own hands. He decided to make his own The Life of Pablo (TLOP).
The Kyoto-based artist headed to WhoSampled, a site which, as the name suggests, lists the samples in any song, and grabbed the lyrics off Genius. Without ever hearing the album, Toyomu then put together his take on it. Speaking to Pigeons and Planes this week, the artist said he still hadn’t heard TLOP. “I haven’t listened yet, this is no reason and meanings. It’s just a kind of feeling.”
You can listen to (and buy) the album, called Imagining “The Life of Pablo,” over at Bandcamp. Every track evokes its inspiration just through sharing sample, but as far as matching Kanye’s album goes, it’s hit and miss. “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 2,” and “30 Hours” are pretty uncanny in arrangement, while the album is an experimental but experimental affair, with plenty of robotic voices reading Kanye lyrics.
<a data-cke-saved-href=”http://toyomu.bandcamp.com/album/iii-imagining-the-life-of-pablo” href=”http://toyomu.bandcamp.com/album/iii-imagining-the-life-of-pablo”>印象III : なんとなく、パブロ (Imagining "The Life of Pablo") by TOYOMU</a>
Via: HighSnobiety, The Fader
Source: Toyomu (Bandcamp)
Apple Maps Expands Transit Data to Montreal
Apple Maps has been updated with all-new transit data in Montréal, providing users with bus and subway routing and trip planning in Canada’s second most populous city. The public transit information is supplied by the French-speaking city’s public transport agency Société de transport de Montréal (STM).
Montreal Metro subway and STM bus directions are available throughout Greater Montreal, including the main island and throughout the suburbs of Blainville, Boucherville, Brossard, Châteauguay, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Laval, Longueuil, Repentigny, Saint-Jérôme, Saint-Lambert, and Terrebonne.
Montreal is the second Canadian metro area to support Apple Maps transit after Toronto. However, as we reported last June, transit data actually extends to many cities throughout Southern Ontario, including Barrie, Mississauga, Oakville, Oshawa, Peterborough, Burlington, Hamilton, Guelph, KWC, York Region, and Niagara Region.
Other cities with Apple Maps transit directions include Baltimore, Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Sydney, and multiple Chinese metro areas. Transit mode was added to Apple Maps as one of the headline features of iOS 9 last year.
(Thanks, Olivier!)
Tags: Apple Maps, Canada, Transit, Montreal
Discuss this article in our forums
AIVAnet 