Apple Rumored to Be Pursuing Massive Office Expansion in Seattle Area
Apple might be looking to further expand its presence in Seattle, Washington following its acquisition of Seattle-based machine learning and artificial intelligence startup Turi. The news comes from reports of a “large California company” looking to purchase a big piece of office space in the city, with most believing that it’s Apple (via GeekWire).
Last week, Apple paid $200 million to acquire Turi, which bills itself as a “machine learning platform for developers and data scientists,” helping them build apps using the capabilities of artificial intelligence. Although the company’s acquisition of Turi helps justify the rumor of Apple’s expansion in Seattle, nothing has yet been solidified and, according to GeekWire, the Seattle rumors “pre-date Apple’s acquisition of Turi.”
Specifically, the “large California company” is looking at properties in downtown Bellevue, particularly in the Schnitzer West’s 16-story Centre 425 building. Schnitzer West is under construction, with an opening expected towards the end of 2016, so if Apple makes a move it could begin increasing its Seattle presence by the end of the year.
At this point, we’ve been unable to confirm exactly where Apple may be headed in the Seattle area, but multiple sources say the footprint could be huge, several hundred thousand square feet. The rumors we’ve heard also pre-date Apple’s acquisition of Turi.
If a deal in downtown Bellevue were to go through it would be a big shot in the arm for an area that was looking at some sizable office vacancy over the next few years. In addition to the office buildings set to open soon, Expedia is leaving downtown Bellevue for Seattle in 2019. But the Valve and Salesforce deals, combined with a possible Apple move, would show that there are plenty of companies ready to step up to fill the void.
Last summer, Apple leased 30,000 square feet of office space in the Two Union Square skyscraper in downtown Seattle, which housed 120 to 200 employees, based on standard corporate leasing ratios. The work spaces now being looked at are over ten times as big, with the Bellevue location housing 354,000 square feet of office space, with the potential for approximately 1,400 to 2,300 employees. Apple originally expanded into Seattle in 2014 with a small team of more than 30 workers stationed in the city.
Tags: Seattle, Apple real estate
Discuss this article in our forums
Apple’s Chairman and Top Lawyer Cash in Combined $10M in Stock Bonuses
Apple chairman Arthur D. Levinson and general counsel Bruce Sewell recently sold approximately $7.6 million and $2.5 million worth of company shares respectively, according to SEC documents filed electronically this week.
Levinson sold 70,000 shares of common stock on August 9 for an average price of $108.68, while Sewell disposed of 23,305 shares for an average price of $107.49 on August 5. The combined return was slightly over $10 million.
Levinson, CEO of biotech company Calico, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, has served as chairman of Apple’s board of directors since November 2011. The former Genentech executive has served on the board since 2000, with CEO Tim Cook praising his “enormous contributions to Apple” and “incredibly valuable” insight and leadership.
Sewell has served as Apple’s general counsel, or chief lawyer in layman’s terms, since September 2009. He oversees all company-related legal matters, including corporate governance, intellectual property, litigation and securities compliance, global security, and privacy, including a recent high-profile court battle with the FBI related to the intersection of national security and smartphone encryption.
Apple’s senior executives and directors are commonly awarded generous stock bonuses based on performance and tenure. Last August, Cook and services chief Eddy Cue received 560,000 and 350,000 restricted stock units respectively, worth a combined $93.8 million at the time. Later in the year, Apple’s recently promoted hardware chief Johny Srouji was awarded nearly $10 million in restricted stock units.
Tags: AAPL, SEC
Discuss this article in our forums
Apple TV Universal Search Now Supports ‘Stan’ in Australia
Apple has recently added Australian streaming service Stan to the universal search function on the fourth-generation Apple TV, marking the first third-party service outside of the U.S. beyond Netflix to be supported.
For those unfamiliar with universal search, it’s a feature that allows users to conduct Siri voice searches or text-based searches to find TV and movie content across a wide range of channels. At launch, universal search only supported a few channels, but Apple has been rapidly expanding the feature to encompass additional channels.
Universal search is available for a wide number of apps in the United States, but the feature is limited to iTunes and Netflix in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. In Australia, universal search on the fourth-generation Apple TV supports movies and TV shows in iTunes, Netflix, and Stan.
Related Roundups: Apple TV, tvOS 10
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Neutral)
Discuss this article in our forums
Sonos Review: The Play:5 is the Perfect Centerpiece for a Whole House Audio System
Sonos is a well-regarded brand known for creating some of the best multi-room home speaker setups, and in late 2015, the company debuted its latest product, a second-generation Play:5. The original Play:5 (once called the S5) came out in 2009, so the new Play:5 marks a long overdue update that brings a new design and better sound.
As someone new to the Sonos ecosystem, the Play:5 (paired with a set of Play:1 speakers) is the first Sonos speaker I’ve tested in my home. After a month breaking it in, I finally understand why Sonos is such a popular brand and is regarded as the best system for iPhone-compatible whole house audio.
Priced at $499, the new Play:5 isn’t cheap, but that price point includes a hassle-free user experience and impressive audio. As covered in the review below, there are some downsides to buying into the Sonos line, but its ease of use, sound, and multi-speaker pairing capabilities make it largely a win for those ready to shell out the cash for a quality sound system.
Design
The second-generation Sonos Play:5 has a more modern look than the original Play:5, bringing it in line with the Sonos Play:1 and the Sonos Play:3. It’s less boxy, wider, and has been designed in a way that lets it be positioned either horizontally or vertically. There’s no integrated stand.
It’s available with either a black or white outer shell, both of which come with a black mesh front panel that hides the interior components. Design wise, the Play:5 is unobtrusive enough to blend well into any room or decor style, but it might be more difficult decorating around the white version, which stands out more.
Visually, the Play:5 is most similar to the Play:3, only quite a bit larger. I have a decent-sized two bedroom apartment with a large living room and I felt like the Sonos Play:5 was too much speaker for the room, just based on its size alone. It measures in at just over 14 inches wide, eight inches tall and six inches wide and it weighs just about 14 pounds.
This is a hefty speaker that you’re going to want to station in one spot and not move around a lot. It’s not easy to carry and there’s no handle or anything for transporting it. There’s also no battery, so it always needs a power source.
At the top of the Play:5, there are capacitive LED-lit buttons that respond to different gestures to perform functions like upping the volume, pausing a song, and switching to the next song, so there’s no need to have access to a device for making quick music alterations.
The back of the Play:5 houses a port for the cable that powers it, a 3.5mm jack, an optional Ethernet port that can be used if you have a house without strong Wi-Fi, and a button for syncing the speaker to the Sonos app.
Sonos Setup and App
Sonos’ line of speakers connect to your devices through your home Wi-Fi network rather than via Bluetooth, and for that reason, you have to use the Sonos apps to listen to music rather than playing music directly from your device. There are apps for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS.
Being restricted to the Sonos apps for music playback is something of a negative because you’re locked into the Sonos ecosystem and can’t use a music app of your choosing. It also makes it more difficult for guests to connect to your home music system because connecting over Bluetooth is not an option (but there is an audio line-in).
Sonos for iOS
On the plus side, the Sonos apps and the Wi-Fi connection are convenient. Setup was beyond simple – about five minutes passed from the time I unboxed the Play:5 to the time I had it up and running — and I never had to reconnect or deal with connection issues.
The Play:5 is always ready to play music as long as it’s powered on and there’s decent Wi-Fi available, plus it can do things like play different songs from the same music service in different rooms (or the same song in multiple rooms) if you have more than one speaker. Ease of use was one of the things I loved most about the Play:5 — it just worked and did what I wanted it to do.
Sonos for Mac
Since this is a Wi-Fi system, it’s also expandable. You can start with one speaker and then add on additional speakers in other rooms for a whole home audio system that’s all connected.
I tried the Sonos apps for Mac and iOS, but I primarily used my iPhone for music playback. All of the Sonos apps support playback from more than 40 streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music or from music stored directly on a device. A wide range of file formats can be played.
The Sonos apps aren’t the most straightforward and there were some annoyances I ran into, like being unable to shuffle directly from my Apple Music playlists without adding them to a Sonos playlist and not being able to pause music for an incoming phone call, but for the most part, using the Sonos app to manage my music (from Apple Music) was fine.
If I could choose, I’d probably opt to use Apple Music, but the Sonos app wasn’t a deal breaker. It might even be a preferable control method if you subscribe to multiple music services.
Sound
Sound wise, the Sonos Play:5 is fantastic. I live in an apartment so I don’t have a lot of experience with professional audio equipment or speakers of this size (I mostly use headphones) and listening to music on the Play:5 was a revelation – with some songs, there was a level of detail and crispness I’ve never heard before. Vocals are always at the forefront and the bass is deep and rich.
The Play:5 is a speaker that costs $499, so I expect nothing less than amazing sound, and it lived up to my expectations. Behind the grille, there are six drivers (three tweeters and three mid-woofers) with dedicated amplifiers, and let me tell you, this speaker puts out some serious sound. It’s a speaker you can feel. It’s more than loud enough to fill a large room, and even at top volume levels playing songs with a lot of bass, there was never any distortion.
I never had issues with the connection, which I do sometimes run into with Bluetooth speakers, and there were never any points where the sound dropped out or was interrupted. The Play:5 and the Sonos app always offered smooth playback.
The Play:5 comes with a built-in Trueplay dynamic tuning system that’s designed to calibrate the speakers based on their position in the room to account for room shape and objects within the room. I expected this to be little more than a gimmick, but the adjustments that were made with Trueplay seemed to slightly improve the sound of the Play:5, which I had positioned on a desk.
In addition to dynamic tuning, there are settings for adjusting bass, treble, and balance to your taste, which you may need to do after tuning with Trueplay to reach the ideal sound.
Bottom Line
The Sonos Play:5 is too much speaker for my apartment, but if you have a house or a larger space and want to start making purchases towards a whole-home audio system, Sonos is the way to go and the Play:5 is the best sounding speaker the company offers.
At $499, the Play:5 is a serious investment (and you can even argue that it’s overpriced), but it’s incredibly easy to use, sounds amazing, and supports almost every audio service in existence. On the downside, you’re locked into the Sonos app and the Sonos ecosystem once you make a purchase, but the tradeoff seems worth it to those looking for the best multi-room audio experience.
After using the Sonos Play:5 and the Sonos system for a few weeks, I’m hooked. A WiFi audio system that doesn’t allow the flexibility of a Bluetooth connection isn’t going to be for everyone, but I was a fan of the simplicity and the sound quality. This is one review product that I am sorry to send back.
As a side note, I didn’t own the original Play:5 and so I can’t compare this new version to the original version. I highly recommend anyone who is considering a purchase read through multiple reviews to get a clear picture from both those who are new to the Sonos system and those who have used it for years.
Pros:
- Excellent sound
- Connects over WiFi
- Almost all music services available in Sonos app
- Can group multiple speakers together
- Can play different songs on different speakers via same device
- Easy to set up and control
- Expandable system for whole home audio
- Can use horizontally or vertically
Cons:
- Needs Wi-Fi
- Locked into Sonos ecosystem
- Have to use Sonos app
- No Bluetooth
- Expensive
How to Buy
The Sonos Play:5 can be purchased from the Sonos website for $499 with a 45-day return policy. It is also available from Amazon.com at the same price point.
Note: Sonos provided MacRumors with a Sonos Play:5 and a Sonos Play:1 for testing purposes, which were returned to Sonos at the conclusion of the review. No other compensation was received.
Tag: Sonos
Discuss this article in our forums
Best action games for Android
Get your blood pumping with these action-packed games for Android
The action game genre is such broad category, so we had to make sure that this list covered as many bases as possible. Whether you like first- or third-person shooters, fighting games, hack n’ slash, or old school top-down shooters, you should find your new favorite game here.
Expect this list to be updated as new games are released, or hidden gems are discovered. And if you think we’ve made an egregious error by not including your favourite game, let us know in the comments!
- Modern Combat 5: Blackout
- Injustice: Gods Among Us
- Grand Theft Auto
- JoyJoy
- Pixel Gun 3D
- Sky Force Reloaded
- Star Knight
- Alto’s Adventure
- Nonstop Knight
- Clash Royale
Modern Combat 5: Blackout
Modern Combat is the premier first-person shooter franchise for mobile gaming and for good reason. The latest entry, Modern Combat 5: Blackout, features some of the finest graphics you’ll find for any game on Android.
There’s a six-chapter single-player campaign to play through, with a decent amount of gameplay variety — from urban shootouts, to gunship segments, to underwater sneaking. If you’re more interested in multiplayer, Modern Combat has got you covered there as well. There’s five multiplayer modes to choose from: Free For All, VIP, Squad Battle, Capture the Flag, Zone Control and Team Battle.
What’s the difference between Squad Battle and Team Battle? Squads are a new feature in Modern Combat, and they operate the same way as clans do in other FPS games, so Squad Battles are ranked matches between you and your squadmates and other Modern Combat squads. Team Battles is just another name for the team deathmatches you’re already quite familiar with.
If touchscreen controls for mobile FPS give you fits, you’ll be happy to know that Modern Combat features Bluetooth controller support. For the best FPS experience on Android, look no further than Modern Combat 5: Blackout.
Download: Modern Combat 5: Blackout (Free, IAPs)
Injustice: Gods Among Us
Fans of DC Comics are sure to get a kick out of Injustice: Gods Among Us. It’s a free-to-play fighting game that features all your favorite heroes and villains from the DC Comics universe.
It’s a port of the console game for PS4 and Xbox, so if you come into this game having played those versions and expect the exact same experience you’re going to be disappointed. For the rest of us just looking for a fun fighting game with familiar characters, Injustice delivers. You build out a team of three fighters and use the mobile-friendly control scheme to tap and swipe your way to victory. The graphics are superb and while there’s much less freedom than in traditional fighting games, it’s still an action-packed experience.
Plus, the latest update has added updated characters from the latest Suicide Squad movie, so if you’re a fan of that movie you now have an extra reason to get this game. Just make sure you’ve got plenty of space on your phone, because the install file is huge.
Download: Injustice: Gods Among Us (Free, IAPs)
Grand Theft Auto
If you’re a console or PC fan of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, then why not extend your fandom to Android?
Rockstar Games has five great GTA titles for you to choose from and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. Play through Liberty City Stories, San Andreas, Vice City, GTA III, and Chinatown Wars and get your shoot-’em-up, blow-’em-up, car-stealing fix on mobile!
Chinatown is your classic top-down GTA, while the other three are the third-person-shooters we’ve all come to love. On that note, these games are NOT for kids. The Mature rating in the Google Play Store isn’t lying.
So, if you want full Grand Theft Auto games right on your phone, hit up the Google Play Store and go to town. Just remember that, since these are the full games you now and love, they will occupy a ton of space on your device.
Download: Grand Theft Auto ($6.99 – $9.99)
JoyJoy
There’s something so simple and fun about a well-made old school shooter. When Geometry Wars went from an Xbox mini-game to a stand-alone cult classic hit in 2003, it gave new life to the genre. Ever since, then there’s been a slew of knock-offs and imitators attempting to replicate the same frantic action. But JoyJoy emerges as perhaps the best we’ve found for Android.
JoyJoy does a great job of bringing that crazy action to your mobile phone, with simple controls, multiple upgradeable weapons, and the best difficulty settings I’ve ever seen in a game. It starts at Relaxed mode, which is perfect for beginners or when you want to sit back and mow down waves of enemies. From there, it ramps up significantly, with expert-level modes like Lightning, which makes the enemies faster yet weaker, or Armoured, which makes the enemies very tough but less numerous.
With its frantic gameplay, deep weapon upgrading system, and challenging difficulty scaling, JoyJoy is an absolute must-play.
Download: JoyJoy ($0.99)
Pixel Gun 3D
First-person shooters are tricky to adapt to mobile platforms, and fraught with compromises. If the graphics look good, the controls are crap. If it controls like a dream, the gameplay is short and boring.
Pixel Gun 3D is one of those rare games that will hook you in with its stylized visuals, frantic gameplay and decent controls. It’s got a moderately challenging single player campaign that will help you learn the ropes of playing the game, but the real game takes place in the multiplayer arena. Pixel Gun 3D offers deep customization for your avatar, and a plethora of weapons to choose from. You start out with team death match and must level up to unlock other multiplayer modes, but it is so worth it.
Perhaps the coolest multiplayer map is the ‘Deadly Games’, which you unlock at level four — a Hunger Games inspired mode where everyone starts unarmed in the middle of the map with one weapon straight ahead of them. Once you collect your weapon, it’s fight or flight based on what you get. Super intense!
The developers have added in-app currency systems for buying new weapons and upgrades which might make things tough when you’re just starting out. If you don’t get disheartened by that, Pixel Gun 3D is one of the best gaming experiences on Android.
Download: Pixel Gun 3D (Free, IAPs)
Sky Force Reloaded
Sky Force Reloaded is, simply, one of the finest games on Android. Featuring frantic gameplay, dazzling graphics, and a deep upgrade system it will have you coming back and playing for hours on end.
The story picks up after the events of Sky Force 2014 with General Mantis’ daughter picking up the cause of her fallen father. Most stages feature an epic boss battle with her in a massive warship, but first you have to shoot and navigate your way through intense waves of laser-blasting tanks, turrets, and helicopters. New missions are unlocked by collecting medals, which are earned by saving all the humans, destroying all enemies, and staying untouched through a mission.
Once you’ve collected all four medals, you unlock a harder difficulty — first Hard, then Insane, and finally Nightmare mode — with a new set of medals to collect. This leads to some grinding to collect stars and medals before you can unlock the next mission, but it hardly feels like a chore given how challenging and fun this game is to play.
Download: Sky Force Reloaded (Free, IAPs)
Star Knight
Star Knight made our list for best games of 2016, so of course it’s one of the best action games as well. It’s a challenging action platformer with plenty of things to unlock and upgrade as you make your way through its multiple worlds.
And it’s got very nice good learning curve, too. While you’re able to upgrade your weapons and unlock powerful skills to help you on your way, the enemies get tougher and tougher as you progress. In terms of difficulty, it sometimes feels like a 2D side-scrolling version of Dark Souls. There are some parts where one false step means instant death, and each world ends with a seriously tough boss battle.
But instead of being frustrating and discouraging, it only spurs you to play smarter on your next go. With good controls, beautiful imagery, hours of gameplay, and a low entry price, Star Knight is a game you shouldn’t sleep on.
Download: Star Knight ($0.99, IAPs)
Alto’s Adventure
Beautiful visuals, intuitive controls, and endless playability.
Alto’s Adventure is a game you should have been playing yesterday. You play as Alto, a snowboarding llama farmer who must race down the mountain to collect runaways. This endless side scroller features smooth gameplay and simple controls: tap to jump, tap and hold to do a backflip. Landing tricks — backflips and grinds across buildings and bunting lines — gives you a speed boost to help blast past obstacles. Collect coins and spend them on upgrading power ups that will assist you on your next adventure. But as soon as you get the hang of things, you’ll blow past an elder — a shadowy figure on a horse that will try and chase you down (think the Snow Monster from Ski Free… except you can actually outrun the elder).
Alto’s Adventure includes objectives, which are challenging but fun and greatly enhance the replayability. Overall, it’s a fairly relaxing gaming experience, with tight physics and a great sense of speed.
Download: Alto’s Adventure (Free, IAPs)
Nonstop Knight
Some games claim to provide “nonstop action”, but perhaps no game delivers better than Nonstop Knight. It’s a streamlined action RPG wherein you play a brave little knight who lives to fight.
It would be unfair to directly compare Nonstop Knight to a game like Diablo, but it certainly feels like a casual, stripped-down version of the iconic RPG series. As you progress through the levels, you collect coins, gems and tokens which are all used to upgrade your item inventory, skills, and stats.
But instead of having to explore the dungeons yourself, your knight races around seeking the next wave of enemies (even when you aren’t playing the game). You help him on his mission by strategically tap your skill icons during battles to destroy your enemies faster and get more coins. While overly simplistic at first, as you start unlocking different upgrades and progressing, it quickly becomes addictive to see how far you can go.
Once you seem to have hit a wall at a boss that’s simply too strong, you can choose to Ascend, which resets your knight and all the weapons and armor you’ve collected, but also allows you to perform permanent upgrades to your knights base stats. The question then becomes, Is it time to ascend, or can you will your way passed this boss with the right combo of special attacks?
Download: Nonstop Knight (Free, IAPs)
Clash Royale
From the makers of Clash of Clans comes Clash Royale. Battle human opponents in real time via frantic card-based battles where you must take out the enemy’s Crown Towers while defending your own.
As you’d expect, this game really relies on the social aspect of joining a clan, which helps you to upgrade both your King Level and your cards so you can dominate your opponents in the arena.
Clash Royale falls into the category of mobile games with time-delayed unlocking of chests and an emphasis on in-app purchases. Fortunately, there’s no time restrictions for battling.
While spending exorbitant amounts of money on gems and chests is likely the only way to rise to the top of the global rankings (somebody worked it out that it would take something like seven years of constant playing to unlock and fully upgrade every card in the game), the gameplay is so well-designed and balanced that you can have hours of fun playing this in the lower level arenas just playing against similarly-skilled opponents.
Download: Clash Royale (Free, IAPs)
What did we miss?
What’s your favorite action game for Android? Let us know in the comments!
Samsung teases new Gear S3 smartwatch in IFA event invite
Samsung is set to unveil its latest smartwatch at IFA, the Gear S3.
Samsung has made it pretty obvious what it is going to announce during its IFA conference on September 1st in Berlin: a new Gear S smartwatch.
After announcing the Galaxy Note 7 earlier this month, the company is turning its attention to refreshing its wearables line — among other things — for the notable German trade show, which happens at the beginning of September each year. That the company would do such a thing should come as no surprise: it revealed the Gear S2 during IFA last year, which turned out to be one of our favorite announcements at the show.
In his review, Android Martonik said that the Gear S2 did a lot right, and was Samsung’s best smartwatch to date:
With the Gear S2 it finally has a lot of things right — the watch looks nice, has a good screen, is built well and is now a proper size for most wrists. The Tizen-based operating system doesn’t have as many restrictions as before and now works properly with non-Samsung phones, which is huge. Unfortunately the software still feels a little rough around the edges, and tries to do far too much considering the screen size it has to work with.
Hopefully Samsung can fix some of those lingering issues with the software this year, and get some more developer partners on board. It’s also unclear whether the company will, as it did last year, reveal two separate versions of the watch.
We’ll be at IFA covering all the announcements as well, so stay tuned for more!
Find your phone: the ultimate guide to Android Device Manager
Android Device Manager is a great utility that lets you track your phone remotely.
Chances are you’ve heard of Android Device Manager. The service lets you remotely track, lock, and erase the data on a lost or stolen phone. It’s one of those services that you wish you’d never have to use, but you should set it up just in case. It never hurts to be prepared.
Here’s what you need to know about Android Device Manager, and how you can set it up on your phone.
- Will my phone work with Android Device Manager?
- How to install Android Device Manager
- How to sign in to Android Device Manager
- How to confirm your phone is discoverable with Android Device Manager
- How to locate over the internet
- How to ring your phone with Android Device Manager
- How to lock your phone with Android Device Manager
- How to erase your lost phone’s data remotely
Will my phone work with Android Device Manager?
Before we show you how to get started installing and setting up this amazing utility, it’s important to know whether your phone will work with it. Android Device Manager is made by Google, so it is compatible with a wide number of Android devices. It is built for phones running Android 2.3 Gingerbread or later, which, according to the latest numbers, comprises roughly 99.9% of devices running the Google Play Store. In other words, your phone should work with Android Device Manager.
How to install Android Device Manager
This is the easy bit. Just head to the Play Store and search for Android Device Manager to download the app. We’ll break it down for you:
Open Play Store from your home screen or app drawer.
Search for Android Device Manager.
Tap the three dots next to the first search result and select Install.
How to sign in to Android Device Manager
After installation, you’ll need to sign in to Android Device Manager from your Google account. If you’re signed into more than one account on your phone, you get a drop-down menu from which you can select the account you want to associate with the phone.
Open Device Manager from your home screen or app drawer.
Tap the Accept button to sign in to your Google account.
Select your Google account and enter your password.
Tap on the big blue Sign in button.
How to confirm your phone is discoverable with Android Device Manager
Once you’re signed in to Android Device Manager, you’ll see a map with your current location as well as the make and model of your phone, and three options — Ring, Lock, and Erase. If you’ve signed into more than one phone, you can select a particular device by tapping the drop-down list at the bottom of the screen.
Open Device Manager from your home screen or app drawer.
Select your phone from the drop-down list.
Check if your phone is discoverable.
If you’re not able to find your phone or if it says that the device is unavailable, it is likely that the location services are disabled. Android Device Manager relies on GPS to track your phone, so now would be a good time to enable location services.
Open Settings from your home screen or app drawer.
Tap Location.
Toggle Enable location services.
How to locate your phone over the internet
If you’ve lost your phone, you can remotely locate it through the Android Device Manager website. You’ll need to sign in to the Google account that was used to set up Android Device Manager. It takes a few seconds, but the service should be able to track your phone. Alternatively, you can also do a Google search for “find my phone” to locate your handset.
Head to the Android Device Manager website.
Sign in to your Google account.
Check if your device is visible.
How to ring your phone with Android Device Manager
The best part about Android Device Manager is that it is easily accessible. If you need to locate your phone, just head to the website or log in to the service from another phone. Once you sign in to Android Device Manager and locate your device, you have three options. The first is Ring, which rings your phone continuously at full volume for five minutes even if you turned the ringer off. Once you find your phone, you can hit the power button to stop the ringing.
Locate your phone on Android Device Manager.
Tap Ring.
Tap Ring on the pop-up window.
Question furniture choices after phone gets lodged in the couch for the hundredth time.
How to lock your phone with Android Device Manager
There’s also a Lock option that lets you set a new password to unlock the phone. You can also display a message over the lock screen and add a button to call back your number so that anyone that comes across your phone can easily get in touch with you.
Locate your phone on Android Device Manager.
Tap Lock.
Set a password.
Enter a message and phone number to display on the lock screen.
How to erase your lost phone’s data remotely
If you’re certain that you’re not going to see your phone again, there is the nuclear option of erasing the data remotely. Selecting the Erase option deletes all the data on your phone. The service also deletes data from a connected SD card, but there is a chance that it may not be able to, based on the manufacturer and Android platform version. Even if your phone is switched off when you send the Erase command, the factory reset process will be initiated as soon as it goes online.
Locate your phone on Android Device Manager.
Tap Erase.
Confirm deletion of data by clicking Erase on the pop-up window.
Are you prepared if your phone goes missing?
How has your experience been with Android Device Manager? Have you successfully used it to recover a lost phone? Let us know in the comments.
Virgin Media TiVo customers get major platform update and new features
Virgin Media has unveiled a new set-top box over the last couple of days, the Virgin Media V6 box powered by TiVo. We’re still awaiting details on what it has to offer but, in the meantime, users of existing boxes are to get new features from today too.
An update is rolling out to all Virgin Media TiVo boxes from today and continuing over the next two weeks. It refreshes the user experience somewhat and adds several key new features and refinements to make the current box better.
The aim of the UI update is to help customers reach the content they want in fewer clicks. It is also more visual, with more images throughout.
One of the major new features is Series Link+. When you Series Link+ a programme in future, the box will not only series link the series but automatically hunt for additional episodes across catch-up and on demand services, including Netflix, and highlight them in the same folder as the specific recordings.
- All-new 4K Virgin Media V6 TiVo box revealed, coming soon to rival Sky Q
Smart Search now looks for shows after just selecting one letter. It can now be found in on demand and catch-up menus at the top of the screen.
You can now continue to watch programmes from where you left off in on demand content as well as recordings. You can also bookmark ant programme on TV, on demand or on Netflix. They will then get their own dedicated folder in My Shows, so you can find them again easily.
You may well have the update already, but if not it is planned to reach everyone in the next 14 days.
ICYMI: Studying the 1700’s clouds for pollution clues
Today on In Case You Missed It: Scientists at CERN constructed a large chamber to replicate the cloud environment before the world’s Industrial Revolution got its start after 1750. The thought had been that there were far fewer clouds on Earth then, but already results are pointing to a different reality that could help guide present day modeling of global climate change.
If you want to take a peek at the continent colonizing study showing we were taught lies in history class, that’s here. The toaster of your five-year-old’s dreams? That’s here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
AIVAnet 