Best transit apps for Canadians

Canada’s a big place, but getting around its biggest cities shouldn’t be a big task.

There are dozens of great transit apps out there, often built for a single city’s unique bus or metro system. But the best apps are the ones that undertake the difficult task of consolidating data from dozens — hundreds — of cities, arraying accurate arrival and departure times, directions, service messages and more in intuitive ways.

Transit App

My favourite of the four apps being profiled, Transit App is the only app in our list developed in Canada. By default, the app opens to the closest transit stops, be it bus, metro, or streetcar, with a gesture-based interface that feels built for touch.

Transit App isn’t overly complicated, which is its greatest asset. A universal search bar offers the ability to enter a destination address, for which the shortest and/or most direct route is outlined in a list. The app’s ebullient colour scheme differentiates it from the rest of the market, and the developer recently added some killer new features, including:

• Departure reminders, with alarm
• Stop announcements
• Service disruption announcements
• Bike / car share integration

Transit App supports most Canadian cities with open data support, including Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal and many others. For the full list, check out Transit’s Regions page.

Download: Transit App (free)

Moovit

Moovit isn’t as well known to Canadians as some of the other choices, but the San Francisco-based company has done an amazing job building one of the best transit apps around.

Like Transit App, Moovit’s strength is its simplicity. The Android app opens to a map overview above a list of nearby stations and stops showing, if available, the latest live departure times. Similarly, a universal search bar makes it easy to get directions to a particular destination. But Moovit differentiates itself from the pack with Live Ride, a notification-friendly real-time tracking feature that keeps you informed about potential changes or improvements to your trip while it’s happening. If, for some reason, a subway stoppage is detected on your way to the station, Moovit will redirect you immediately.

The service recently added a few excellent features, including:

• a Notification Center
• Service Alerts and Line Maps
• Cross-platform account synchronization

Moovit also boasts one of the largest collection of Canadian cities — 50 in total, including smaller cities that are not supported by other apps. For the full list, check out Moovit’s Cities page.

Download: Moovit (free)

Citymapper

An ambitious and often-complicated app, Citymapper tries to be all things to all transit-goers. From offline map support to a custom commute feature, Citymapper is a beautiful example of how data can work to make your life better. It is also an example of how to overwhelm your users. When I’m planning a trip in a foreign city, I almost always use Citymapper, since its data sets are unparalleled. But when I’m trying to get from A to B in my home city, I tend to use Transit App or Moovit. But Citymapper does have one major advantage: it knows where I should stand on the subway platform to emerge near the closest exit at my destination; and it knows, with more accuracy than any other service, how long my total trip will take.

Citymapper has added a number of new features recently, including:

• SmartCommute
• Offline maps mode
• Custom “Meet me somewhere” links to share with friends
• Total trip pricing, with Uber integration

Citymapper boasts support for only three Canadian cities — Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto — because it does not just pull numbers from the city’s open data sets, but builds its own. Each city is curated and approached with care.

Download: Citymapper (free)

Google Maps

The most well-known app in the list is also the least transit-focused. While Google Maps has access to enormous amounts of data from dozens of Canadian cities, its transit prowess is integrated into the rest of its features, which includes directions for driving, biking and walking.

Nonetheless, Google Maps has highly accurate transit data, made better by a recent redesign that makes it far easier to isolate transit directions. But Google Maps makes it considerably more difficult than the three above choices in finding departure times for nearby transit stops; instead, it wants you to enter a destination first which, for many people, is overkill. Still, the app is a great choice for those who spend a lot of time in multiple types of transportation, including transit.

Google Maps supports most large Canadian cities, and many smaller ones, too. For a full list, check out Google’s Transit Maps page.

Download: Google Maps (free)

Other local options

While we’ve only focused on apps that offer transit directions for multiple cities in Canada, there are numerous local options available to Android users, some developed by the transit authorities themselves.

In Toronto, for instance, a popular choice is RocketMan, which offers a great overview of Toronto’s Transit Commission.

In Montreal, the city’s official transit authority, STM, has developed its own app, but it is reportedly buggy, and has skimmed a lot of its design from Transit App.

In Vancouver, TransitDB Vancouver offers a comprehensive overview of the city’s TransLink system.

Did we miss one of your favourite transit apps? Let us know your favourites in the comments below!

Best tempered glass screen protectors for the HTC 10 (so far)

Scratches, and pits, and chips, oh my! Get a screen protector!

Tempered glass is about four times stronger than regular (annealed) glass, making it an ideal choice for screen protectors. Rather than shattering into jagged and potentially harmful shards, it breaks into small, relatively harmless bits. So, if you have a tempered glass screen protector on your HTC 10 and, for whatever reason, it breaks, the bits won’t scratch up your screen.

It can be difficult to figure out which screen protector is the right one for your HTC 10, which is why we’ve rounded up some of the best available.

• HotCool
• Safodo
• Mr. Shield
• Supershieldz
• Omoton

HotCool

HotCool’s tempered glass screen protector is tough to withstand big time abrasion without getting scratched, scuffed, or pitted, while maintaining all of the HTC 10’s screen sensitivity. It cuts down the glare on your screen, giving the impression of sharper images and clearer text, since light isn’t messing with your view.

There is a rounded design so that it doesn’t block the front camera and other important sensors on the front of your phone, so keep in mind that all of the glass on your screen isn’t covered, though those spots are minimal and shouldn’t really affect the overall protection.

See at Amazon

Safodo

Safodo’s protector is right up there with HotCool’s and offers a lifetime replacement warranty, so that if your protector starts to peel off your HTC 10 (as it inevitably will), they’ll replace it for free.

These ones come in a two-pack and are incredibly clear, which means you’ll sometimes look at screen and wonder if you actually put one on or not. That means that there isn’t much of an anti-glare factor involved, so if you like the look of your HTC 10 the way it is, then you’ll like this screen protector.

The cutouts for the light sensor, front camera, and home button are all precise, so the only issue will be putting it on correctly the first time!

See at Amazon

Mr. Shield

Mr. Shield, that’s his name. That name again is Mr. Shield. Offering a lifetime replacement warranty and two to a pack, Mr. Shield throws ultra-thin into the mix as well. These tempered glass screen protectors are 0.3 millimeters thick, which means you’ll have optimum sensitivity and high definition at all times.

Again, the cutouts are all accurate and the rounded edges means you won’t slice your thumbs on the edges where your protector ends.

See at Amazon

Supershieldz

With so many phones now having curved screens, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a screen protector that doesn’t suffer from the “halo effect” where it starts to peel up all around the edges of your phone.

Supershieldz, like other screen protector manufacturers, makes their protector a little smaller than the actual screen size, so that you’re not getting that ugly lifting at the edge — your protector actually stays on your phone (apparently a key factor in screen protection–who knew?!).

Just like the other tempered glass screen protectors in our roundup, Supershieldz maintains and slightly enhances the high definition of your HTC 10’s screen, while also maintaining all of the touch sensitivity.

See at Amazon

Omoton

Omoton claims to have the thinnest tempered glass screen protector in the world, at 0.26 millimeters thick. That’s a whole 0.04 of a millimeter thinner than the rest!

All that means is that Omoton offers a crystal clear protector that won’t hinder any of your HTC 10’s sensitivity and won’t affect the resolution of your screen in the slightest. It also claims to be fingerprint-resistant and uses an adhesive that promises not to leave any bubbles during installation.

See at Amazon

Keep in mind

Most tempered glass screen protector manufacturers will claim that their products are rated “9H” on the pencil hardness scale, which is a way of measuring the durability of a particular coating. “9H” refers to how hard the pencil lead (graphite) is. Something that is rated 9H means that the hardest pencil lead out there won’t leave a permanent mark. That doesn’t say much about the material’s resistance to dents or pits.

Tl;dr? Don’t pay any attention to this 9H rating; it’s virtually meaningless.

HTC 10

• HTC 10 review
• HTC 10 specs
• These are the HTC 10 colors
• Our first photo and video samples
• Meet the Ice View case
• Join our HTC 10 forums

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Verizon

Samsung Gear Fit 2 and Gear IconX earbuds pictured in official shots

Following a recent leak that showed off both devices in the flesh, Samsung itself has leaked official images of the upcoming Gear Fit 2 fitness wearable and IconX wireless earbuds ahead of their announcement. Appearing on the company’s S Health Website (via MobileBulgaria), the two accessories are displayed as compatible accessories alongside the following official images.

Unfortunately, the leak doesn’t provide any details in terms of specs. However, a previous leak touted that the Gear Fit 2 may sport a 1.84-inch Super AMOLED display and dedicated GPS. The same report mentioned the Gear IconX earbuds could carry 4GB of internal storage and act as both a fitness tracker in addition to playing music.

It’s unclear when we may get a proper announcement from Samsung, but hopefully it’s not too far off. Are you interested in either accessory? Let us know in the comments below!

Android apps on Chromebooks: Google’s shortcut to a full desktop ecosystem

Android apps on Chrome OS are so more than just an interesting sideshow.

It’s looking more and more likely that Android apps will be officially coming to Chrome OS through the Google Play Store, after a brief sighting of an option checkbox and splash page on at least one device. And it’s been a long time coming — almost two years in fact, since Google first demonstrated Android apps on a Chromebook at Google I/O 2014. Since then, we’ve seen the ARC Welder tool released to help developers port and test their apps on Chrome OS, along with a basic version of Google Play Services for the platform.

So it’s no huge surprise to see signs that Google is about to open up the Play Store, and “over a million apps” to Chromebooks around the world. Indeed, the technical underpinnings of Android are designed to help it run on anything with enough computing power, whether it uses ARM-based hardware (like most smartphones), Intel’s x86 (like most Chromebooks) or MIPS (used in some cheaper mobile devices). This isn’t anything like running Android apps in a clunky emulator on your PC. And Google’s important services are already baked in.

As AC editor Jerry Hildenbrand points out:

Right now, the Android Runtime for Chrome includes a rudimentary version of Play Services that allows Cloud Messaging, Google sign-in, a contacts provider and OAUTH2 support, as long as the developer does a few extra steps to set things up through the Google Developer console. For full access to the Google Play Store, this restriction would have to be lifted. This would mean a full version of Play Services either built into Chrome, or a bigger and better ARC module. Either of these two things could happen, but it would take Google building it and distributing it for it to actually work.

In any case, the technical side of things isn’t what makes Android apps on Chrome OS so important. As an ecosystem play, however, it could be huge.

As an ecosystem play, this could be huge.

Chrome OS started as Google’s big bet on the open web as the platform of the future. To a certain extent, that’s the world we live in today: just about every major service — whether it’s productivity, entertainment or social — has a web component. In the mid-to-late 2000s, having a computer that turned into a pumpkin without an Internet connection seemed weird and frightening. Today, that’s basically every computer.

But we also live in a world where Android and the iPhone happened, and where native apps aren’t going away anytime soon, even on the desktop. The web hasn’t taken over completely as the Google of 2008 might have hoped; it’s a big and important platform, but not the only one.

The web is an important platform. But it’s not the only platform.

Sure, Google has a large library of offline apps on its Chrome store, but these all still run within the Chrome framework. They’re not first-class citizens on the platform the same way native apps on Windows, OS X or Android are.

Luckily for the Google of 2016, Chrome OS isn’t its only platform. It also has Android, running on over a billion diverse mobile devices, and with a runtime which is (relatively) easily adaptable to run on its ARM and x86-powered, Linux-based Chromebooks.

Google isn’t doing this in a small way. The boast of “over a million apps” suggests this isn’t going to be limited to just a few big name app developers, nor are there going to be significant extra steps involved for devs.

That being the case, it’s nothing less than a shortcut to a full-blown desktop app ecosytem for Chromebooks. And Google could open the floodgates as early as Google I/O 2016 in less than two weeks time.

However, running an Android app on Chrome OS in a fixed window is one thing. That’s the bottom-tier, lowest-common-denominator experience. For Android apps to grow beyond just a phone app on a bigger screen — and let’s face it, that’s still what many Android tablet apps are — they’ll need to be resizable and responsive.

The nuts and bolts of improved multitasking on Android could enable a higher quality Android app experience in Chrome.

Fortunately, Android has been moving in this direction since the introduction of UI “fragments” back in version 3.0 Honeycomb. And with multi window support coming to mobile devices in Android N we’re seeing phone and tablet apps changing shape on the fly. It’s easy to see how the nuts and bolts of improved multitasking support on Android proper could enable a higher quality Android app experience in Chrome OS.

For Android app developers, there’s enough incentive to take Chrome OS support seriously. Last summer these laptops started outselling Windows notebooks, according to numbers from NPD. That’s a massive, new, untapped audience for apps. And if developers do sit up and take notice, there could be an interesting side benefit for Android tablets.

If devs start adapting their apps for the larger 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio displays of Chromebooks, and they do it properly, the side effect is you also have a pretty compelling Android tablet app. The entire Google ecosystem is strengthened as a result.

The great unanswered question is whether Chrome OS and Android will ever merge — or, as The Wall Street Journal reported late last year, whether the former will be folded into the latter, and we’ll just have Android laptops. (A claim more-or-less denied by Google, which has said it’s “very committed to Chrome OS.”)

You might also argue that having Android apps on Chrome OS already sufficiently reinforces Android as a platform, being present across phones, tablets, watches and now the desktop.

It doesn’t really matter what you call Android’s impending desktop presence.

But if Chromebooks did go full Android, the resulting experience probably wouldn’t look or act much like the Android we know on phones and tablets today. You don’t need a laptop with soft keys or split-screen functionality that works like it does on a tablet. You also don’t want to be waiting around for updates. The user-facing stuff, then, would probably look a lot like the Chromebooks we’re using today.

In a way, it doesn’t matter what you call Android’s impending desktop presence — the end result is the same. Chromebooks (or Androidbooks, if you prefer) will continue to do web stuff just as they always have done. (Google is, after all, at most home on the web.) Meanwhile the enormous new library of Android apps will bring diversity, plugging important productivity gaps for specialist apps like photo and video editors — while expanding Chromebooks’ potential as entertainment laptops. In a world where Chromebooks are already cannibalizing sales of Windows computers, that could be serious cause for concern at Microsoft.

However things unfold, it’s going to be a fascinating year for both Android and Chrome.

Get the Samsung Galaxy J3 2016 from Verizon for $110 without a contract

Verizon Wireless is now selling the 2016 edition of the Samsung Galaxy J3 for $109.99 if customers sign up for one of the carrier’s pre-paid plans.

The Samsung Galaxy J3 comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow pre-installed. It includes a 5-inch HD Super AMOLED display, an unnamed quad core 1.2GHz processor, 1.5GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. It also has a 5 megapixel rear camera, a 2MP front-facing camera and a 2600 mAh battery.

See at Verizon

Virtual reality helps paranoia patients face their fears

Virtual reality has vast potential for therapy, since it can put folks in stressful situations without any fear of harm. Researcher at Oxford University have demonstrated how effective it can be for treating severe paranoia in patients. The team selected 30 subjects receiving treatment for “persecutory delusions,” a serious form of the disease. They were then outfitted with a $24,000 NVis SX111 head-mounted display built for military and other types of training, and placed into typically stressful social locations like elevators and subway trains.

Researchers told one half of the patients to use their regular coping mechanisms by avoiding eye contact and any social interactions. The other half were told to drop their defenses by approaching (creepy-looking) avatars and even holding staring contests with them. At the end of the half-hour sessions, 50 percent of the latter group were cured of severe paranoia , and were much less distressed in real world situations, too. Even the first group improved, with 20 percent of participants showing lower levels of paranoia.

“Paranoia all too often leads to isolation, unhappiness, and profound distress. But the exceptionally positive immediate results for the patients in this study show a new route forward in treatment,” says Oxford Professor Daniel Freeman.”In just a thirty minute session, those who used the right psychological techniques showed major reductions in paranoia.” The team needs to test it to see if the benefits will stay over the long term, but it’s another promising use for VR as therapy.

Via: Wired

Source: Oxford University