Twitter has a new app to help celebrities chat with fans
To help celebrities, public figures and other influencers more actively engage with their audiences, Twitter has a new standalone app that offers some helpful insight. The appropriately named Engage app is divided into three main sections to break down the social info. FIrst, there’s a section that lets you know when someone verified follows or mentions you alongside tweets from the most loyal fans and accounts that are followed by several of the your followers. That’s also a an “Understand” section for the analytics numbers for showing likes, retweets, mentions, impressions and more.
For details on individual tweets, the “Posts” tab offers more specific numbers. The Engage app doesn’t feature a timeline though, as it’s meant to compliment the flagship social software with all the analytics info. Unlike other apps we’ve seen that offer these post numbers, Engage will be open to all users and not just verified accounts. It’s a similar concept to Facebook’s Mentions app which helps “public figures” stay on top of their internet image, only this time it’ll be available to anyone on Twitter. As for Engage, it’s heading to the iTunes App Store today. Sorry Android fans, this one’s iOS only.
Via: The Verge
Source: Twitter
Brain-like computers may now be realistic
Power consumption is one of the biggest reasons why you haven’t seen a brain-like computer beyond the lab: the artificial synapses you’d need tend to draw much more power than the real thing. Thankfully, realistic energy use is no longer an unattainable dream. Researchers have built nanowire synapses that consume just 1.23 femtojoules of power — for reference, a real neuron uses 10 femtojoules. They achieve that extremely low demand by using a wrap of two organic materials to release and trap ions, much like real nerve fibers.
There’s a lot of work to be done before this is practical. The scientists want to shrink their nanowires down from 200 nanometers thick to a few dozen, and they’d need new 3D printing techniques to create structures that more closely imitate real brains. Nonetheless, the concept of computers with brain-level complexity is that much more realistic — the team tells Scientific American that it could see applications in everything from smarter robots and self-driving cars through to advanced medical diagnosis.
Via: Scientific American
Source: Science Advances
‘Outlast 2’ drops you in a desert for a fresh batch of nightmares
The Outlast 2 demo made me jump and shriek in the middle of the E3 show floor, in Microsoft’s rowdy Xbox space where I was surrounded by swashbuckling pirates, roaring racing games and joyous fans. With my clammy fingers gripping an Xbox One controller, headphones hugging my ears, Outlast 2 sucked me in. Its setting, a pitch-black northern Arizona desert, was impressively immersive — not to mention accurate to the actual Supai region that inspired it. I should know; I’ve backpacked through the area (and now I may never do so again).
The Outlast 2 demo is horrifying, wonderful, gruesome and downright marvelous — in a bone-chilling kind of way.
Outlast 2 stars investigative journalists Blake and Lynn Langermann, a husband-and-wife team who set out on a mission to uncover the truth behind the murder of a pregnant woman known only as Jane Doe. The search leads them to the Arizona desert’s northern Supai region, an area nestled in the Grand Canyon and filled with towering mountains, rust-colored dirt, prickly cacti, massive waterfalls and sparse yet hearty vegetation. It’s gorgeous (when it’s not infested with murderous demons).
The demo opens with Blake and Lynn speaking over a helicopter’s communication system, but their words quickly turn to screams as the copter spins out and crashes into the desert below. Blake survives, glasses, camera and all, and he cries out for Lynn in the midnight desert landscape. From a first-person perspective, Blake begins scouring the land for Lynn, eventually running into a series of ramshackle houses and barns.
Some of the buildings are dimly lit, but other areas are completely engulfed in blackness. Just as in the original Outlast (which I adored), Blake can use his camcorder’s night vision to see in the dark, lending a majority of the game an unearthly, eerie green glow. Also mirroring the first installment, night vision quickly drains the camera, sending Blake on a constant, frantic hunt for fresh batteries. This is on top of the constant, frantic hunt for Lynn, and Blake’s desperate attempts to outrun the violent demons and townsfolk occupying the small desert town. Outlast is a brilliantly panicky franchise and from what I’ve seen, the sequel proudly continues this trend.
The tiny, scattered town is rife with religious imagery and bloodshed. Crosses hang from the doorways and under one canopy, flies swarm around a pile of blood and dismembered limbs. Dead bodies litter the village. Blake spots townsfolk as he searches the houses and shacks, though at first they simply stare at him with glowing green night-vision eyes and then fade silently into the night. After a while, though, they begin to chase Blake, intent on killing him. He screams for his wife and he hears horrified shrieks in return.
Blake runs. At one point, I direct him straight into a cactus and it actually does damage, slowing him down for a second while he recovers. His breaths huff in my ears as he becomes more panicked and bodiless whispers assault my senses, sending shivers down my spine. The townsfolk have flashlights and Blake hides from their beams in a corn field; the town is walled off in certain places, subtly nudging players in the correct direction while imparting the illusion of choice in an open world.
Eventually, Blake stumbles across a well. As he peers into it, tongue-like tentacles emerge from the black pit and suck him down. He ends up in a vent system with a deep, malicious voice ringing in his ears. The demonic voice laughs as he crawls across the thin metal, peering backward every now and then with a single button press as other voices join the tunnel of terror. The vent eventually falls and Blake emerges in a well-lit classroom covered in crosses and posters glorifying Jesus. He’s landed in a Catholic school.
As if Catholic school weren’t terrifying enough, the hallways are dark and filled with shifting, shooting shadows. As Blake walks along aisles of lockers, black silhouettes materialize and disappear right by his sides, until eventually the entire hallway is overrun with ghostly energy, lockers banging open and closed in a riotous cacophony.
Blake is familiar with this school and he makes his way into another hallway, where he begins screaming for Jessica, a young girl he once knew. She runs by, a small girl in a prim school uniform, and Blake runs into the hallway, only to see her body hanging from the ceiling. It’s sucked up by demonic hands and tentacles as Blake yells her name.
Soon after, Blake finds himself back in the high desert, running from the townsfolk once again — and from something much more sinister. As the tall, gangly men with flashlights hunt him down, their voices creeping ever closer, Blake runs directly into an otherworldly figure — a woman with a horrifying, lifeless face and a giant homemade axe-like weapon. Blake falls on his back in front of her and she brings the weapon down hard between his legs. He looks down as she rakes the axe head back, leaving behind a bloody mess where Blake’s crotch used to be. Fade to black. Outlast 2 demo complete.
Similarly, my Supai hiking career may also be complete.
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WSJ: This year’s iPhone won’t feature big changes
If you’re eagerly awaiting a load of new features for this year’s iPhone, you might be a bit disappointed come fall. The Wall Street Journal reports that the upcoming models will offer only modest changes from the current iPhone 6S and 6S Plus rather than a more robust redesign. Apple has been trotting out new designs every two years with the “S” models offering mostly internal tweaks in between. According to WSJ’s sources though, that won’t be the case this year.
WSJ reports that both the 4.7- and 5.5-inch models will return, and they’ll do so without a 3.5mm headphone jack. Rumors have gone back and forth on whether or not Apple will ditch the port entirely, and we’ve even caught a glimpse of alleged iPhone 7 parts that indicate the jack is staying. The rumblings about the company’s preference for Lightning connectivity for headphones began late last year and has been the most discussed tweak for the new models. Nixing the 3.5mm port is said to not only improve the phone’s water resistance, but also allow for a thinner handset.
Apple is planning a massive overhaul for 2017’s 10th anniversary of the iPhone, according to WSJ. Those updates are said to include an edge-to-edge OLED display while nixing the iconic home button entirely. Sources say that the Touch ID security features would be part of the display itself. Of course, that release is well over a year away, so things could change significantly between now and then.
What’s the reason for not having a major update this year? Apple’s coming off its first quarter of sales decline in the iPhone’s history, but WSJ reports that the reason for subtle changes is due to tech that’s currently in the works taking more time to finish. While the iPhone 5S featured the addition of Touch ID, last year’s 6S and 6S Plus focused largely on internals with 3D Touch and improved cameras. Both kept the same overall design as the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 the year before. Nixing the headphone jack wouldn’t be a small change though, especially if you’ve already invested in a set of wired headphones.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Apple Announces 2016 Summer Camps for Kids at Retail Stores
Apple has opened registration in the U.S. and a number of other countries (links below) for its annual Apple Summer Camp, where kids aged 8 to 12 can attend a company retail store and learn how to create interactive books and movies using Apple products and software, ranging from iBooks Author on Mac to iMovie on iPad.
Apple’s summer workshops will be hosted between 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. local time, on various dates between July 11 and August 12, in the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Parents are recommended to sign up early due to limited spaces available on a first-come, first-served basis.
This year’s free workshops are called “Stories in Motion with iMovie” and “Interactive Storytelling with iBooks.” A third workshop will be offered in the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom called “Coding Games and Programming Robots,” in which kids will learn visual block-based coding for games, apply logic skills and problem solving, learn to program their own robots, and more.
Apple notes that children attending Apple Summer Camp 2016 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian for the duration of each workshop. Once their initial registration is confirmed, parents can register another child. All campers will receive a complimentary youth-size Apple Summer Camp t-shirt.
Tags: China, Italy, Spain, Japan, The Netherlands, Sweden, Apple Camp, United Kingdom, Turkey, France, Germany, Switzerland, Apple retail
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Apple SIM Now Available in 140+ Countries in Partnership With GigSky
Apple SIM partner GigSky has announced that it has expanded availability of its pay-as-you-go cellular data plans for iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3 and 4 to over 140 countries, up from more than 90 countries and territories in June 2015.
The new additions, among others, include Afghanistan, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Argentina, Cayman Islands, Colombia, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Isle of Man, Jamaica, Pakistan, Peru, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tajikistan, Turks and Caicos, Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zambia, and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands. Apple has a full list of countries on its website.
Apple SIM is embedded in the latest cellular iPads and enables users to easily switch between different short-term data plans from select carrier partners without needing multiple SIM cards. It is particularly useful for traveling abroad, especially now that coverage reaches more than 140 countries and territories through GigSky.
Other Apple SIM partners include AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile in the United States, EE in the United Kingdom, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Three in Hong Kong, and au by KDDI in Japan. AlwaysOnline Wireless also offers pay-as-you-go LTE data plans in at least 45 countries, with the option to pay by hour, day, or megabyte.
Tags: Apple SIM, GigSky
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Twitter Extends Video Limit From 30 to 140 Seconds, Launches New Analytics App
Twitter today announced that video lengths on the social networking site will be expanded from 30 seconds to 140 seconds long, with select publishers still granted exemption from the limit with the ability to post up to 10 minute long videos. The company called video “increasingly central to the real-time conversations happening on Twitter,” and noted that video-related Tweets had increased over 50 percent since 2016 began.
Now, everyone can post videos up to 140 seconds long! We can’t wait to see the amazing videos you create and share.https://t.co/DFsuvnXkuL
— Twitter Video (@video) June 21, 2016
To help facilitate more video views from its users, Twitter will be updating its iOS and Android apps with a new “full-screen viewing experience” that pops up whenever you tap on any tweeted video on your timeline. Everyone will be able to take advantage of the new 140-second videos beginning today, but the app update is said to be “rolling out soon.”
The company is also launching a separate, all-new app focused on analytics. Called “Twitter Engage,” users will be able to better understand and decipher the performance of their tweets with “real-time data and insights.” The app, which is specifically targeted at “influential creators” but available to anyone who’s interested, lets users track tweet activity, get notifications from the most important followers, and provide a breakdown of the highest and lowest performing tweets posted to an account.
Similar lengthy video updates are also coming to the Twitter-owned Vine app, where a select handful of creators will be able to stretch the 6-second platform to a full 140-second video that the company equates to “a trailer for a bigger story.” The video-related updates appear to be inspired around the YouTube-centric VidCon, happening June 23-25 in Anaheim, California. The company encourages those interested to follow Twitter Video for up-to-the-minute news — and Tweets using the longer format — coming out of the conference.
Tag: Twitter
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Apple Seeds Third Beta of iOS 9.3.3 to Developers and Public Beta Testers
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming iOS 9.3.3 update to developers and public beta testers for testing purposes, two weeks after seeding the second beta of iOS 9.3.3 and more than a month after the release of iOS 9.3.2, a minor bug fix update. iOS 9.3.3 has been in testing since May 23.
The third iOS 9.3.3 beta can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center or over-the-air with the proper configuration profile installed.
As a minor 9.x.x update, iOS 9.3.3 features under-the-hood bug fixes and performance improvements to address issues discovered since the release of iOS 9.3.2. No outward-facing changes or obvious bug fixes were discovered in the first two betas of iOS 9.3.3.
iOS 9.3.3 beta three follows the developer launch of iOS 10, a new version of iOS that will be released to the public this fall. We’ll update this post with any changes that are found in the third iOS 9.3.3 beta.
Related Roundup: iOS 9
Tag: iOS 9.3.3
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Apple’s 2016 iPhone Update to Focus on Headphone Jack Removal, Major Changes Won’t Come Until 2017
Rumors have suggested the 2016 iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will not feature major design changes aside from the removal of the headphone jack, information that has been confirmed in a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
The iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus will continue to feature 4.7 and 5.5-inch displays, with only “subtle changes” to the exterior of the devices. Past rumors indicate the two devices will be the same general size as the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, but with relocated antenna bands that no longer span across the back of the bodies.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the removal of the headphone jack will make the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus thinner while also improving its water resistance. Just how thin is a matter of contention in rumors — schematics show little reduction in thickness but KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said the iPhone 7 could be 1mm thinner than the current iPhone 6s.
Mockup of what the iPhone 7 will look like
While 2016 will mark a minor update, 2017 will bring major changes to the iPhone in celebration of the device’s 10th anniversary. Citing sources “familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal suggests features could include an edge-to-edge OLED display with built-in Touch ID fingerprint support to allow Apple to eliminate the home button.
Apple is said to be deviating from its standard tick-tock upgrade cycle in order to introduce major new features in the 2017 iPhone, which take time to develop.
At a meeting with an Apple executive last month, one of the company’s China-based engineers asked why this year’s model lacked a major design change in keeping with Apple’s usual two-year cycle. The answer, one person at the meeting recalled, was that the new technology in the pipeline will take time to implement.
People familiar with the matter said some features that Apple hopes to integrate into iPhones, such as curved screens, weren’t ready for this year’s models.
It is not known if Apple is permanently moving away from introducing new designs on an every-other-year basis, or if the 2016-2017 shift is a temporary one.
While The Wall Street Journal’s report confirms the removal of the headphone jack in the next-generation iPhone, it makes no mention of other feature improvements that are expected, including a larger camera sensor in the iPhone 7 and a dual-camera setup in the iPhone 7 Plus.
Related Roundups: iPhone 7, iPhone 8 (2017)
Tag: wsj.com
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Apple Seeds Third OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan Beta to Developers and Public Beta Testers
Apple today seeded the third beta of an upcoming OS X 10.11.6 El Capitan update to developers and public beta testers for testing purposes, two weeks after releasing the second OS X 10.11.6 beta and more than a month after the public release of OS X 10.11.5. OS X 10.11.6 has been in testing since May 23.
The OS X 10.11.6 update can be downloaded through the Apple Developer Center or the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store.
OS X 10.11.6, like OS X 10.11.5 and the El Capitan updates that came before it, focuses mainly on performance improvements and bug fixes rather than outward-facing changes. According to Apple’s release notes, the update improves the stability, compatibility, and security of Macs.
No obvious changes or bug fixes were found in the first two betas, but we’ll update this post should anything new be discovered in the third beta. Apple has also started testing macOS Sierra, the next-generation Mac operating system set to be released this fall.
Related Roundup: OS X El Capitan
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