BlackBerry ‘Mercury’ to get official announcement in late Feb at MWC

BlackBerry will announce new phone name, specs on February 25 in Barcelona.

While we still don’t officially know the new name of BlackBerry’s forthcoming device (code name: Mercury), we will soon enough, as BlackBerry teased the announcement in a short video tweeted from the company’s official Twitter account. The new device will be formally launched on February 25 in Barcelona, the Saturday before the official start of Mobile World Congress 2017 on the 27th.

25.02.17 #MWC2017 #BlackBerryMobile pic.twitter.com/uChVjp62TJ

— BlackBerry Mobile (@BBMobile) January 24, 2017

Designed and developed by Chinese company TCL, our very own Andrew Martonik went hands-on with a pre-production version of the BlackBerry Mercury at CES this past January. It’s no secret that BlackBerry has been struggling as a brand in recent years, but there’s some genuine excitement surrounding this new phone, with its physical keyboard (sans slider) and it running on Nougat out of the box.

BlackBerry will certainly be looking to build upon the momentum it has gained from its previous Android devices; the Priv, DTEK-50 and DTEK-60.

You can now use Google Home to control Belkin and Honeywell devices

Google Home is slowly adding more partners.

At launch, you could use the voice-activated speaker to control connected devices from Philips Hue, Nest, and Samsung Smart Things. You could also control services like Google Play Music, Spotify, Pandora, and TuneIn. But that’s about it. In our review of Google Home, we praised its look, digital assistant, and price, but we noted it paled in comparison to Amazon Echo in terms of what you could control.

Now, however, Google is beginning the catch-up process. The company has announced that Google Home now supports Belkin WeMo and Honeywell connected devices, presumably allowing you to control these products with your voice via Google Assistant. Belkin’s smart products include everything from lightbulbs to power switches, while Honeywell’s range extends from thermostats to home security.

Keep in mind Google Home is only a few months old, where as Amazon Echo has been out for a couple of years, so naturally, there are way more things you can do with Amazon’s speaker. Still, Google is no small startup. It has the power and resources to be just as good in a short amount of time. Google isn’t yet specifying which products can be controlled using Assistant, but it has said you can add the devices.

To add them, use the Google Home app on your smartphone (Settings > Home Control > click “+” to add a new product).

• Google Home tips and tricks
• Google Assistant tips and tricks: Master your Android assistant

Apple to launch Find My AirPods feature with iOS 10.3

Have you seen the new Apple AirPods commercial?

The one with the guy basically dancing on buildings and whatnot throughout a city? No? Well, here it is:

Okay, so after watching that, if you’re anything like us, you probably wondered how the dude didn’t lose at least one earbud. It’s an edited marketing video, we get it, but still. If you own a pair of AirPods, inevitably, you will lose one. Apple must’ve realised the same thing at some point, because it’s releasing a new feature designed to help you find lost AirPods, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Apple plans to add AirPods support to the Find My iPhone app. This functionality will be available with the release of iOS 10.3, an iPhone and iPad software update that is suppose to roll out to the public in the coming weeks. With AirPods support in Find My iPhone, you will be able to see the current – or at least the last known – location of your AirPods case.

Pocket-lint

The location data won’t be too specific. You’ll be able to tell if you left them at home or at work, for instance. It’s not like you’ll see granular data pinpointing their location on the coffee table in your living room. If you do happen to lose your headphones themselves, Apple will blare a sound out of each earbud. As long as it has power still, you should be able to find them nearby.

Either way, we still wouldn’t recommend doing parkour with £159 headphones.

Apple’s ‘Find My iPhone’ app will help you locate lost AirPods

When Apple announced its wireless AirPods last fall, there was some anxiety over how easy it would be to lose one of the wireless earbuds. Well, the company is looking to ease that burden a bit. As part of the upcoming iOS 10.3 update, you will be able to use the Find My iPhone app to locate a lost AirPod. Just like the app helps you find a misplaced laptop, iPad or iPhone, it will soon tell you were that earbud fell out of your pocket.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the app uses the AirPods’ wireless tech to locate them. The earbuds don’t have a GPS connection, so Apple employs the iPhone’s GPS tech. The map inside the Find My iPhone app will show you the last place the AirPods were in range of an iOS device connected to your iCloud account. If you happen to lose one out of range, the software will show you a general location of where it was last connected to one one of your gadgets. However, you will have to use your phone to employ this method.

What happens when you drop an AirPod at home and you just can’t see it? The app will also let you play a sound through the earbuds to help you locate them. Here, you have the option beaming a noise through one or both of the audio accessories. Of course, this is dependent on the fact that the AirPods haven’t run out of battery yet. iOS 10.3 was released to developers today, so it shouldn’t be long before it and its earbud-locating tool are available for everyone to use. Hey, at least it might save you $69 on a replacement set.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

US law enforcement can’t ask companies to turn over foreign data

Microsoft has fought a long battle to prevent American law enforcement from demanding overseas data, but it can rest easy… at least, for now. A stalemate in a federal appeals court has upheld a July 2016 ruling that judges can’t issue warrants for data on servers located overseas. The court determined at the time that the Stored Communications Act didn’t cover searches outside the US, shooting down an attempt by investigators in a drugs case to collect email from a Microsoft server in Ireland.

As you might have predicted, some officials aren’t happy. The dissenting judges in the appeals court argued that this could hamper national security, and that there wasn’t any “substantial privacy interest” in protecting offshore data. They argue that it could even assist criminals — just store your communications in another country and you’re safe, right? To them, it’s a domestic search so long as it’s a US company with access to the servers. Staff at the Department of Justice are “considering [their] options” as they hope to challenge the decision.

They may face a stiff fight if they do, though. Microsoft insisted that the power to demand overseas data could threaten the privacy of customers. If you live outside the US, you generally assume that your data is covered under your home country’s laws — allowing foreign searches would have undermined that sovereignty, Microsoft says. It added that people would be less likely to trust cloud services if they knew American authorities could ask for that cloud data wherever the customer lives. And we’d add that Microsoft wasn’t alone in its objection, with support from the likes of Amazon, Apple, CNN, our parent company Verizon and even the Chamber of Commerce. A sustained fight could get ugly very quickly, and pit the government against the tech industry it’s trying to support.

Source: Reuters

Latest Android Wear 2.0 preview delivers better iOS support

Google has delayed the launch of Android Wear 2.0 once, but it looks like the operating system may actually be on track for its early February release. The company today released the fifth and final developer preview of the updated platform, adding iOS compatibility along with some bug fixes to the version already available. Apps that are compiled with this edition of the preview can be submitted for publication in the Google Play Store, where they will later be available for users to download onto their wearables.

In addition to standalone apps — that is, apps that can work on the watch without needing a companion phone — the new Android Wear will also have better iOS support, improved notifications and messaging interfaces, as well as auto-recognition of your activity. That means that when you start running, biking or walking, your watch can launch a relevant app once it detects what you’re doing. According to Google’s blog post today, standalone apps will work on iPhones as well.

Android Wear 2.0 is expected to launch on a pair of flagship, Nexus-like smartwatches. We’re just a few weeks away from the early February release, which should be enough time for developers to submit their apps in time for users to start downloading them the second they update to the new operating system.

Source: Google

Amazon pushes Star Trek future with new Alexa wake word

Amazon’s Alexa platform continues to be the go-to voice assistant not just for the home, but also vehicles. But it looks like the online-retailer’s helper in a cylinder was just given its greatest feature ever: The wake word “computer.” That’s right, you can now pretend you’re in the Star Trek universe.

The new wake word joins, “Amazon,” “Alexa” and “Echo” as things you can yell at the Alexa platform in order to get it to listen to you. Just don’t expect the device to help you locate dilithium crystals to get your starship to travel faster than light.

Via: thatgeekdad

Source: Amazon

Use Google Home to control WeMo and Honeywell connected devices

Since Home arrived a few months ago, Google has been regularly adding new features to the compact speaker and its virtual assistant. Today, the company announced that the connected device can now be used to control smart home gadgets from Belkin’s WeMo line and Honeywell. This adds more options for controlling lights, switches, thermostats and more with a simple “Ok Google” voice command.

Google Home already plays nice with the likes of Nest, Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings to help you control connected home devices. It also works with audio and TV gear from Vizio, LG and Sony to keep tabs on music and visuals with a hand from Chromecast. Like Amazon’s Echo with Alexa, Google’s Assistant-equipped Home can also help with news, food, weather and even your to-do list. These are all welcome additions, but Google will need to keep adding new tools on a regular basis to catch up with all of those Alexa skills.

Via: The Verge

Source: Google

The developers of ‘Alto’s Adventure’ are building a skateboarding game

Snowman, the creator of ultra-chill snowboarding game Alto’s Adventure, is keeping busy lately. In addition to the sequel Alto’s Odyssey, it is also working with studio The Game Band for Where Cards Fall and partnering with Australian studio Slingshot and Satchel to build Distant. That’s an ambitious workload for a small studio, but that isn’t stopping Snowman from announcing yet another new title in development: Skate City. The all-too-brief trailer and Instagram clips show it to be a side-scrolling skateboarding iOS/Android game with the same chill vibe as Alto’s Adventure.

As with the studio’s other current projects, Snowman is working with a partner on Skate City, the Oslo, Norway-based Agens. Ryan Cash, one of Snowman’s co-founders, says these partnerships have been essential in helping the small studio juggle multiple projects. “We don’t just want to find people and hand them money and publish their game and take a cut,” Cash says. “The approach we decided to take was we work on [outside] projects just as much as we work on any of our own stuff.”

That means Snowman and partners like Agens essentially work together on games as if they’re a single studio. “We’re not sitting there building tools in Unity, but we’re involved in every major decision: music, art direction, testing, mechanics,” says Cash. “It doesn’t feel any different from the way we worked on Alto’s Adventure.”

As for this new game, Cash says he and Snowman co-founder Jordan Rosenberg had been thinking about a skateboarding game since shortly after they started working on Alto’s Adventure. Both Cash and Rosenberg are avid skateboarders, as are the developers at Agens who came up with the Skate City concept.

Skate City will share some of the visual style Snowman games are known for, but Cash stresses that this isn’t Alto on a skateboard instead of a snowboard. “What Skate City shares most with Alto is the sense of distilling the sport down to the simplest form — but with Skate City, the game is quite a bit more complex in terms of the tricks you can do,” Cash says. “The new game is more true to skateboarding that Alto’s Adventure was to snowboarding.” It might not be quite as frenetic as the excellent side-scrolling Olli Olli games that inspired Agens, but it sounds like this game will in some ways be more complex.

A video posted by Skate City (@skatecitygame) on Jan. 24th, 2017, at 8:11am PST

In a first for Snowman, fans can expect the development of Skate City to be a bit more public than with the studio’s other games. Rather than keep things mostly secret up until launch, a new Instagram account will highlight videos straight from the game, showing off various locations and tricks. “We don’t have too much to hide this time,” Cash says. “We want to save a few surprises for launch, but in general we want people to see what the gameplay will be like.”

With four games now in progress but none released since Alto’s Adventure first launched in early 2015, it’s fair to ask whether Snowman is spreading itself too thin. But by virtue of the partners it has working on most of these games, the six-person Snowman team now has help from another 20 to 30 people — enough so that keeping four games going seems feasible. Cash assures fans that the company isn’t interested in churning out games for a quick buck either. “Even if it feels like we’re doing quantity over quality, we’re making sure that everything we’re doing is unique,” he says. “We’ve had to turn down quite a few other opportunities that came our way to keep focused.”

Indeed, Cash says fans should have something new to play soon. “I think I can say that Snowman will be releasing something this year,” he says, though he declines to specify which title it will be. It’s probably too soon for Skate City — but ever since I tried Alto’s Adventure, I’ve wondered what a similar game done with skateboards would look like. Based on Snowman’s track record, it’s one that will be worth waiting for.

Source: Snowman

Apple is bringing the iPhone’s night mode to the Mac

Ask Mac users which app they install first and they may well point you to F.lux, which adjusts the color temperature of your screen to cut back on eye strain as night sets in. Well, that recommendation may have just gone out the window for most users. Users have discovered that the latest macOS Sierra beta (10.12.4) includes a Night Shift mode that, like its iOS counterpart, can automatically shift toward a warmer tint. You can set a schedule (say, when sunset arrives) and fine-tune the colors in case they’re a little too pronounced for your liking.

It’s not certain when 10.12.4 will be available to everyone, although minor releases like this don’t spend a lot of time in development. Between this and Windows 10’s upcoming blue light reduction mode, though, you won’t have to track down third-party software just to help your eyes relax before bed. That’s not to say that other light-shifting are completely obsolete (F.lux has advanced features like a weekend sleep-in option), but they won’t be as important as they are now.

Via: The Verge, MacRumors

Source: 9to5Mac