Amazon Prime Day 2016: UK deals you need to know about
It’s July 12th. For many, it’s just another Tuesday, but for Amazon, it’s another chance to sell millions of customers gadgets, homeware and lots of other stuff they don’t need. Yes, it’s “Prime Day,” a marketing gimmick where Amazon discounts thousands of products for Prime subscribers. To keep on top of things, you’d normally have to track shopping websites or keep an eye on social media, but we want to help. We’ve listed a number of all-day deals that we think are worth keeping an eye on, but act quick, other deals on the site will only be available for a couple of hours at the most.
- Fire Tablet – £35 (normally £50): We’ve put Amazon’s diminutive tablet through its paces and even at £50 we’d consider taking the plunge. You’ll save £15 if you decide to buy today.
- Fire TV Stick – £20 (normally £35): Amazon’s high-definition streaming stick supports Prime Video, Netflix and a whole host of other apps. If you need a streamer for your spare TV, you can’t go wrong with this.
- Amazon Fire TV 4K – £55 (normally £80): If you’ve already got a 4K TV and are looking for Ultra HD content to watch, the 4K Fire TV can help. It also supports voice search and play games with its smart remote.
- Kindle Paperwhite – £80 (normally £110): With its improved high-resolution 300ppi display, the Paperwhite is the Rolls Royce of Kindles. With a bigger discount than Black Friday, now might be the time to pick one up.
- Lenovo N22 11.6-Inch Chromebook – £100 (normally £160): It’s not an Amazon sale without a cheap laptop, and this year it’s a Chromebook that is getting the discount treatment. The Lenovo N22 comes with an HD display, Intel Celeron N3060 processor, 2 GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage.
- Surface Pro 4 Bundle – £750 (normally £944): Microsoft’s 2-in-1 is also seeing some decent discounts today. The Pro 4 bundles with a 2.2 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD and a range of coloured Type keyboards have been reduced by almost £200 today.
- Xbox One 500GB Bundle: Amazon has a number of Xbox One deals on today. First is the standard Kinect bundle for £210, then there’s the Kinect Bundle plus Overwatch for £230. However, if you want Guitar Hero, that’ll cost you £235. Finally, there’s the Kinect Bundle, Forza 6 and a extra controller deal for £246.
- PlayStation 4 500GB Bundle: There aren’t as many deals for the PS4, but Amazon is putting on an Uncharted 4 bundle that costs £240 and will save you quite a bit of cash. If you want Uncharted 4 on its own, that too is discounted and will set you back £32 for today only.
- Microsoft Band 2 – £129 (normally £200): Microsoft’s fitness tracker is enjoying another big sale.
- Nvidia Shield 16GB – £100 / 500GB – £170: Both boxes are £50 off today (and still come with a free controller).
- 12 Months of Xbox Live plus £10 credit – £31.49 (normally £40): To get the most out of your Xbox One, you’ll need a subscription to Xbox Live. This deal will see you right for a full year and give you some extra cash to spend on games or DLC.
- SanDisk SDSSDHII-480G-G25 Ultra II SSD – £77 (normally £95): If you’re looking for a way to speed up your PC (or even Mac), Sandisk’s Ultra II SSDs will definitely help things zip along.
- Beoplay H2 On-Ear Headphones – £79 (normally £150): Bang & Olufsen’s on-ear headphones are almost half off today and are available in green or silver.
- Anker PowerCore+ 26800 portable charger – £35 (normally £50): Anker markets the PowerCore+ 26800 as the world’s highest capacity portable charger with Quick Charge 2.0 technology. It’ll juice your iPhone 6 over 10 times and a MacBook over three.
Source: Amazon Prime Day
Warner Bros. paid YouTubers for positive game reviews
Warner Bros. has settled an FTC complaint accusing the company of paying YouTubers “hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars” to make positive review videos for Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. FTC filed the complaint back in 2014, after the studio ran an online marketing campaign for the game. According to the the commission, Warner Bros. required (PDF) the online influencers they hired to make a video that “promote[s] positive sentiment about” Shadow of Mordor. That video should “not show bugs or glitches that may exist” and should “not communicate negative sentiment” about Warner Bros. These influencers also had to promote their videos on Facebook and Twitter. The commission didn’t release a list of the YouTubers the studio paid, but it did name PewDiePie as one of them.
Since those influencers received payment for videos praising the game, their creations are classified as sponsored content. That wouldn’t have been a problem if they diclosed it, but the FTC says the company didn’t require them to do so within the video itself. Warner Bros. only instructed them to place disclosures in their videos’ description boxed, and most of the time, you can only see the entirety of what’s written in there by clicking “Show More.”
In PewDiePie’s case, you’ll see a line that says “This video was sponsored by Warner Brother” when you view the video’s whole description. Some of the reviewers didn’t even say that their videos were sponsored, only that they received a free copy of the game. In all, the paid reviews raked in 5.5 million views, 3.7 million of which came from PewDiePie, who has over 46 million subscribers. It’s worth noting that Shadow of Mordor was well-received and won eight out of the nine DICE awards it was nominated for. Warner Bros. probably didn’t even need to pay people to get good reviews.
If you’re wondering what kind of penalty the company got, well, let’s just say it got off real easy. The commission only wants the studio to make sure the influencers it hires clearly and conspicuously disclose that they received payment from Warner Bros in the future. It also has to review those videos for compliance and withhold payment if they don’t contain the proper disclosure stating their status as sponsored content.
Via: Mashable, Ars Technica
Source: FTC
iPhone 7 Plus Follow-up Images Reignite Smart Connector Rumors
Following yesterday’s circulation of iPhone 7 case images, NWH this morning posted another series of shots from the same “reliable” source, this time including what looks like the larger iPhone 7 Plus handset with dual-lens camera.
The additional iPhone 7 pictures offer a few more angles of a possibly fully assembled 4.7-inch device, without revealing anything particularly new, so we’ve reproduced them here merely for completion.
Readers will note that the power/standby button, volume controls and mute switch can be made out on the sides of the case, while the metallic Apple logo appears to have been fitted, but the images still leave us none the wiser as to whether this device has a headphone jack or not.
The iPhone 7 Plus images on the other hand at least rekindle another salient talking point: the three holes on the bottom of the case’s back side indicating a possible Smart Connector. Such a connector is designed to provide power and a data connection to accessories like keyboards, at least on the iPad Pro, but it’s not entirely clear what its purpose would be on a 5.5-inch handset.
The possibility of a Smart Connector being exclusive to the iPhone 7 Plus has been the subject of a number of rumors, including both as a potential inclusion on the device and an idea already scrapped by Apple. Third-party cases have also fueled conflicting rumors on the existence of such a connector.
Another image offers a view of the front of what looks like an almost fully-assembled 5.5-inch handset, which appears to show a traditional physical clickable home button, rather than the rumored flush touch-sensitive one, a feature likely reserved for the tenth-anniversary OLED iPhone expected in 2017. Again, the angle of the shot makes it hard to know for sure whether the headphone jack is gone or not. Elsewhere, eagle-eyed readers will have also noted the odd lack of a mute switch on the side of device, usually found next to the volume buttons.
Both devices are expected to be officially unveiled by Apple in the fall. In addition to the aforementioned features, the smartphones are expected to have faster Apple A10 processors, 32GB of base storage, improved waterproofing, and faster LTE and Wi-Fi.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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Apple Donates $1Million to Help China’s Flood Relief Efforts
Apple has donated $1 million to organized efforts in China working to battle the country’s worst flooding in years (via USA Today).
The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), a non-governmental body, said on Monday that it has received 7 million yuan ($1 million) from Apple, the first U.S. company to donate to the CFPA in this year’s flood. The group said on its website that it will work closely with Apple to make sure the money is best applied.
“Our thoughts are with all those devastated by the flooding along the Yangtze River,” Apple’s CEO Tim Cook wrote on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.
According to China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, torrential rains have affected 31 million people in over 500 towns across the region. Due to the impact of the floods, which have continued since late June, approximately 1 million people remain in need of emergency assistance.
This isn’t the first time Apple has donated to relief efforts in China. In 2014, Apple donated $1.6 million to help relief efforts responding to a major earthquake in the country’s Yunnan Province that killed over 600 people and caused widespread damage. Apple made a similar but larger donation in support of relief efforts following another earthquake in China in 2013.
The company has committed to charity support on a number of other occasions, including facilitating donations from iTunes Store users following the 2015 refugee and migration crisis across the Mediterranean Sea and Europe, as well as after large wildfires in Alberta, Canada earlier this year, Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
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How to claim a Gym in Pokémon Go
How do I get a Gym in Pokémon Go?
Once you hit level 5 in Pokémon Go, it’s time to hit up a gym, join a team, and start conquering the rest of the gyms in your city.
How you claim a gym will depend on whether or not it’s already occupied. If it is, you’ll have to fight!
Here’s how to claim Pokémon Gyms in Pokémon Go!
- How to claim an unoccupied Gym in Pokémon Go for android
- How to claim an occupied Gym in Pokémon Go for Android
How to claim an unoccupied Gym in Pokémon Go for android
You have to hit level 5 before you can even think about joining/taking over a gym, so go and catch a bunch of Pokémon first.
Find a Gym on your map. They may be gray, which means they’re unoccupied, but that’s not likely at this point. At this point, most gyms will either be blue (Team Mystic), red (Team Valor), or yellow (Team Instinct).
Tap the Gym and choose your team (Valor, Mystic, or Instinct).
Tap the Add Pokémon button at the bottom of your screen. It looks like a Pokéball with a little plus sign next to it.
Tap the Pokémon you’d like to use to defend the Gym.
When other people on your team want to help bolster your Gym, they can drop their Pokémon on it as well. They can then battle your Pokémon to raise the Prestige of your gym. The higher the Prestige, the more Pokémon you can have defending your Gym, making it more difficult to overtake.
Remember that your Pokémon won’t be returned to your collection until it’s knocked off the Gym.
How to claim an occupied Gym in Pokémon Go for Android
If you happen upon a Gym and it’s not the same color as your team, you’ll have to battle to knock the other team’s Pokémon off.
Tap the enemy Gym to enter.
Tap the battle button on the bottom right of your screen. It looks like two Pokéballs.
Tap the Pokémon you want to use to battle.
Tap Go.
Now you’ll have to battle by tapping to attack and swiping to dodge. The trick is to keep battling to lower the Gym’s Prestige. The lower the Prestige, the fewer the Pokémon that team will be allowed to have defending their Gym.
Pokémon Go
- Requirements to play Pokémon Go
- The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
- How to play without killing your battery
- Be careful where you download from
- Join our Pokémon Go forums!
ASUS’ ZenFone 3 Deluxe is the first phone to run Snapdragon 821
At its Taiwan and Hong Kong launch event, ASUS announced that the 5.7-inch ZenFone 3 Deluxe will be the first phone to be powered by the Snapdragon 821 SoC, which offers a quad-core Kryo CPU cluster clocked at 2.4GHz.
As noted by Engadget, the high-end variant of the ZenFone 3 Deluxe will offer the Snapdragon 821, along with 6GB of RAM as well as 256GB of UFS 2.0 flash storage (and a microSD slot!), with retail pricing in the vicinity of $780. The standard versions will be powered by the Snapdragon 820, offering 6GB of RAM and 64GB storage for the equivalent of $560, and 4GB of RAM and 32GB storage for what amounts to $500.
Other specs include a 5.7-inch Full HD Super AMOLED display, 23MP camera (Sony IMX 318) with f/2.0 6-element Largan lens and 0.03 second TriTech autofocus, 4-axis OIS and dual-tone LED flash, 8MP 85-degree wide-angle shooter up front, Wi-Fi ac MIMO, LTE Category 13, NFC, and a 3000mAh battery.
With the ZenFone 3 series set to make its debut later this month in India, we will be able to take a look at the performance benefits offered by the faster CPU, and see how it compares in terms of energy efficiency to the Snapdragon 820.
ASUS ZenFone 3 series preview
Twitter ups its GIF size limit to 15MB for the web
Finally, you won’t ever have to tweet unsatisfying GIFs that end too soon. The social network has upped its GIF size limit to 15MB, three times larger than its old 5MB limit. Twitter quietly updated its FAQ with the change — a welcome one for those who’d rather watch moving images than videos, we’re sure — where it also dropped the bad news: You’re still stuck with posting files 5MB and below if you tweet on mobile. You can only post monster files if you access Twitter.com on the web. It’s still a start, though, and there might come a time when you can tweet video-length GIFs even from your phone or through Tweetdeck.
ALERT: Twitter now supports gifs up to 15MB! pic.twitter.com/PfyAiYRg5K
— Jessica L. Conditt (@JessConditt) July 11, 2016
Source: Twitter
Temporary nanotech ‘tattoos’ can track your facial expressions
Wired, electronic temporary tattoos may have started off as fun novelties, but a new type of stick-on, nanotech “tattoo” has already found some practical medical applications. According to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from Tel Aviv University have developed a thin, non-invasive carbon electrode that can be placed on the skin to measure muscle and nerve activity and could soon be used to help restore damaged tissue.
According to the American Friends of Tel Aviv University, the electrode’s developer Professor Yael Hanein created the device as an alternative to electromyography — an “uncomfortable and unpleasant medical procedure” that requires electrodes stuck directly into muscle tissue or unseemly surface electrodes and sticky gel. “Our tattoo permits patients to carry on with their daily routines, while the electrode monitors their muscle and nerve activity,” Prof. Hanein explained. “The idea is: stick it on and forget about it.”
Beyond rehabilitation, Hanein believes the device could be used to study emotional responses by tracking a user’s facial expressions through the electrical signals in their facial muscles. While other researchers study emotions through facial recognition software or even low-tech solutions like subjective questionnaires, Prof. Hanein’s thinks his team has come up with a much more convenient solution. “The ability to identify and map people’s emotions has many potential uses,” Prof. Hanein said. “Advertisers, pollsters, media professionals, and others — all want to test people’s reactions to various products and situations.”
While the prospect of an advertiser tracking your cheek’s every twitch might be a little overwhelming, Prof. Henein also sees his device being put to use to monitor driver alertness, to improve muscle control in stroke victims or even to use it as an interface for amputees to control artificial limbs.
ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe gets first dibs on Snapdragon 821 chip
We knew it wouldn’t be long before ASUS rolls out its latest smartphones after the Computex unveiling, but it turns out the company has saved a little surprise for us. At the Taiwan and Hong Kong launch event today, ASUS revealed that its flagship 5.7-inch ZenFone 3 Deluxe has been given a chipset upgrade — from Snapdragon 820 to the speedier Snapdragon 821 announced yesterday. And yes, it’s officially the world’s first device to feature this 2.4GHz processor, while still benefiting from the same old Cat 13 LTE radio, a slightly faster Adreno 530 GPU, dual-SIM support (Micro SIM plus Nano SIM) and Quick Charge 3.0.
The metallic ZenFone 3 Deluxe comes in three flavors, with its top model offering pretty much all the best possible specs to date: 6GB of DDR4 RAM plus 256GB of UFS 2.0 internal storage (expandable by up to 128GB via microSD using the second SIM slot). But this will cost you NT$24,990 or about US$780. The remaining two variants are still based on the 2.15GHz Snapdragon 820, and you get either 4GB RAM with 32GB storage (NT$15,990 or about US$500) or 6GB RAM with 64GB storage (NT$17,990 or about US$560). It’s worth mentioning that these are certified for Google’s Daydream VR platform.
The rest of the features are identical, including their 1080p Super AMOLED touchscreen (with glove mode), Gorilla Glass 4, a 3,000 mAh battery, NFC, 23-megapixel f/2.0 main camera (with OIS, laser AF and dual-tone flash). 8-megapixel f/2.0 front camera and fingerprint reader on the back. The series will become available in Taiwan and Hong Kong as early as August, though we’re also told to expect the Snapdragon 821 variant to arrive later.
Also announced today is the ZenPad 3S 10 (Z500M). This is a mid-range 9.7-inch tablet featuring a 2,048 x 1,536 LCD, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage (with microSD expansion), an 8-megapixel main camera, a 5-megapixel front imager and Android 6.0. It runs on a hexa-core MediaTek chip (MT8176; dual 2.1GHz Cortex-A72 and quad 1.7GHz Cortex-A53) so it should be more than enough for general usage, plus it has a fingerprint reader, 802.11ac WiFi, DTS Headphone:X audio, a 5,900 mAh battery, USB Type-C port and Quick Charge 3.0 (but charger sold separately). The tablet will be available in Taiwan for NT$10,990 or about US$340 in August.
iPhone Photography Awards Showcase Best Photos of 2016
Photos from the ninth annual iPhone Photography Awards have been posted on the IPPA website, offering a look at some of the best photos captured on an iPhone in the past year. As in previous years, the photos depict a range of subjects, from people to landscapes to animals.
This year’s grand prize winner was “Man and the Eagle” by Siyuan Niu. The photo depicts a 70-year-old man sharing a moment with his beloved eagle. The photo was shot on an iPhone 5s with a filter from VSCO [Direct Link] and post processing in Snapseed [Direct Link], Niu told Time.
The second winner was Patryk Kuleta’s “Modern Cathedrals,” which depicts an abstract version of cathedral architecture in Poland. The photo was taken using long-exposure camera apps like AvgCamPro and AvgNiteCam, with post processing in Snapseed and VSCO.
The third winner was “She Bends with the Wind” from Robin Robertis, which depicts a woman in red swaying in the wind during a sunset. The photo was taken on an iPhone 6 and edited with Snapseed and Photoshop Express [Direct Link].
Apple’s iPhone 6, iPhone 5s and iPhone 6s continue to be the most popular cameras on Flickr. Apple continues to make upgrading the iPhone camera a priority, and renderings indicate the iPhone 7 could see a larger camera cutout, perhaps to accommodate a larger sensor. The iPhone 7 Plus may also include an exclusive dual-lens camera system.
Photos from all the winners of the 2016 iPhone Photography Awards can be found on the competitions’ website. The site is also accepting entries for the 2017 competition.
Tags: iPhone Photography Awards, IPPA
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