Google patent describes tileable displays to turn your living room into a movie theater

Why it matters to you

Google’s edge-to-edge displays could end up in your home or office before long, eliminating bezels once-and-for-all.

Google appears to be exploring the world of big, massive, wall-mounted screens according to a patent filing published today. The patent aims to improve on an earlier patent granted to the Mountain View, California company, by eliminating bezels between tiled displays.

All right, so what will that mean in practice? As it stands, there are really three methods for creating a giant wall-mounted display. One, you can just buy a giant screen, or several giant screens and panel them together. Two, you can panel together smaller, cheaper screens, but you have unsightly seams where the bezels meet. Or three, you can just use a projector.

More: Google Fiber will downsize, likely shifting focus from broadband to wireless

If you’ve ever seen a big multi-screen display, like they have at electronics stores, or at awards shows, you know that these displays look good from far away, but the closer you get the easier it is to discern the seams between each panel. This new patent application aims to alleviate that by using “bright-edge” displays that eliminate those seams entirely.

The displays, as described in the patent application, are essentially bezel-free. The display goes from edge to edge, so if you tile two or more such displays beside one another, it’s almost impossible to determine where one display ends and another begins.

More: Newly discovered Android for Work flaw could let attackers steal data

Not everyone is in the market for a gigantic wall-mounted display made of tiled display panels, but this technology could be used to eliminate bezels on smaller, desktop displays. So a multi-screen setup doesn’t have those pesky seams in the middle. Instead, it would appear to have one continuous display surface.

Unlike some patents Google files, this one might actually become a reality in the near future. According to a similar patent from 2013, Google has been working on seamless tileable displays for a long time, so this isn’t like their eye-implant patent from last year. These things might actually make it to the market before long, or be used in a product that Google’s dreaming up. For more details, you can read the full patent here.

Tinder makes a move: Dating app may add a Snapchat-like video feature

Why it matters to you

Tinder’s acquisition of collaborative video app Wheel could mean video capability will be integrated in the near future.

You may soon be able to see a video of someone before you decide if you want to swipe right. Tinder recently acquired collaborative video messaging app Wheel.

According to reports, Tinder plans to add video features to the app, but no further details have been offered. Wheel co-founder Paul Boukadakis, along with Wheel employees, will join the Tinder team. Boukadakis told Business Insider the two companies plan on “bringing people together to create.”

More: Cheap date: Tinder will reward your emoji-only story with Valentine’s Day cash

The way Wheel works is simple: Users upload videos, usually with a theme spelled out in the title and people are able to add to the story. Users add to the story by filming themselves and uploading it to the thread. There is no option for direct messaging between users like on Snapchat, but Wheel’s best features are clearly derivative of the popular social media platform.

Wheel’s story feature is similar to Snapchat’s Live Stories, which are a collection of user videos surrounding a specific theme, chosen by Snapchat. Wheel also features a discover tab similar to Snapchat. But, instead of discovering video content from media publishers, Wheel’s discover tab is a curated list of select user content.

Tinder has been working its way toward adding more collaboration to the app. Last summer, the app introduced Tinder Social, a new feature which allows groups of people to connect with other groups planning to go out. That figures to be the best place for Wheel integration. Instead of pictures and text explaining how much fun you and your group of friends plan to have that night, a short video could suffice as well.

Wheel could also help make Tinder users more secure in their online dating conquests. Last summer, online dating app Badoo allowed its users to upload videos in an effort to weed out fake profiles and people with misleading photos. Anyone who has swiped right and wished they swiped left after meeting someone who looks nothing like their Tinder profile can understand how important video is to online dating.

Wheel is available for iOS devices here.

You can stop waiting: Microsoft’s February 2017 Patch Tuesday now happens in March

Why it matters to you

You can stop hitting that update button, because Microsoft’s February 2017’s Patch Tuesday isn’t happening until next month.

Microsoft established a fairly predictable schedule over the last decade of precisely when it issues the most important Windows updates. Known as Patch Tuesday, the second day of each month is when individuals and organization IT departments can usually plan to apply security and other updates to keep their Windows machines humming.

Every now and then, something happens to interrupt that regular schedule, usually due to some show-stopper bug that would mean an update would cause more problems than it solves. February 2017 is just such an occasion, and it’s more than just a delay of days or even weeks, as Ars Technical reports.

More: Microsoft putting Patch Tuesday’ out to pasture, promises quicker security updates one day

This time around, Microsoft is essentially cancelling Patch Tuesday completely. The company first delayed the update indefinitely, and now it’s official — the next Patch Tuesday update will arrive on March 14, 2017.

The month-long delay is particularly troublesome for anyone suffering from an SMB file sharing bug that causes crashes, along with any security updates that would have helped users avoid other issues. Microsoft had planned to implement changes to patching methodology that would have applied Windows 10’s cumulative update concept to Windows 7, 8.1, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2. Those changes won’t happen until March 2017 as well.

Microsoft hasn’t provided any specific reasons for the delay, but the changes to the update process mean that all updates are delivered and tested together. And so, if one update causes issues, the company can no longer hold back just that update and deliver the rest. It’s now more of an all or nothing affair.

Ultimately, it’s better that Microsoft hold off on delivering an update rather than cause widespread issues. IT departments in particular might find the delay inconvenient, given that they typically plan around the updates to avoid user interruptions. Nevertheless, if you’re looking for Microsoft to fix that pesky SMB crashing bug, you’ll have to wait a bit longer.

Microsoft Garage’s Email Insights will help you find that missing message

Why it matters to you

If you’ve been spending way too much time searching for an email message, then the Microsoft Garage might just have a solution.

Microsoft’s Garage is the company’s software skunkworks of sorts, a group of developers who spend some of their working time developing unofficial and often experimental apps. Quite often, those apps are cross-platform and sometimes even exclusively for competitive platforms, and they’re usually aimed at solving a very particular problem.

The latest Garage app is Email Insights, and it’s for Windows 10 only. The specific problem that this Garage project is directed at overcoming is the challenge of finding email messages faster and more efficiently, and Microsoft provides an overview on its news site.

More: Microsoft Garage will expand to three new locations in 2017 and 2018

For now, Email Insights works with the Outlook desktop app and with Gmail — there’s the cross-platform support aspect. Once you install the app, you’re directed to select either Outlook or Gmail and the app configures itself accordingly. Once it finishes configuring itself and creating an index complete with autocomplete and fuzzy logic, you’re ready to go. You can create separate tabs that connect to both email services and switch between them as you need to search your messages.

The app’s purpose is best described by Suresh Pathasarathy, senior research developer on Microsoft Research India’s Applied Sciences team, who says, “The idea is to remove the cognitive load of a user while searching. A user need not remember all the exact keywords or spellings for their queries. Contextual fuzzy name search obviates the need to remember spellings of peoples’ names. For instance, ‘Chris’ gets corrected to ‘Kris’ and ‘Philip’ gets corrected to ‘Philippe,’ depending on your inbox.”

According to Parthasarathy, Email insights is a search companion for Outlook and Gmail. Its entire purpose for existing is to make it easier and faster to find messages that might be difficult and time-consuming to locate in other email clients. The app is best when it’s pinned to the Windows 10 taskbar, essentially moving the Outlook or Gmail search button from the application or browser to its own easily accessible spot.

As with most Garage projects, Email Insights is an experimental project that’s laser-focused on a specific task. Garage projects don’t always last forever, and so users should be aware that the tool could be discontinued without notice. One example of a Garage project that was unceremoniously cancelled is the Cache note-taking app, which is shutting down at the end of the month.

In the meantime, you can check out Email Insights by downloading it from the Windows Store. You might find that it helps you locate that elusive email that you thought you’d lost, but really was only buried in your tens of thousands of spam messages.

3D-printed miniature camera sees the world the way a bird of prey does

Why it matters to you

Miniature foveated imaging camera could lead to high-resolution swallowable pill cameras or better drone vision.

Do you want a camera inspired by the way that eagles and other winged predators see the world, with super-high-resolution at the center and then lower resolution around the edges? Of course you do.

Fortunately, that’s exactly what researchers at Germany’s University of Stuttgart have developed with a new miniature camera, capable of being 3D-printed onto a chip to form a multi-aperture camera.

This “foveated” imaging system (named after the fovea area of the eye, which offers the greatest sharpness of vision) can be used for tasks in which only the central section needs to be incredibly detailed. The setup itself consists of four different lenses, each with a different focal length and a field of view ranging from 20-70 degrees. It works by capturing images at low and high resolution at the same time, and then creating a foveated image when they are overlaid.

Foveated images can be useful for a variety of different reasons. Two big ones are compression and the speed of image retrieval or analysis. This could make it a useful tool for future autonomous cars, in which snap judgments need to be made based on image recognition.

More: German engineers 3D-printed a camera that’s smaller than a grain of salt

“What is new with this work is our ability to take advantage of the strengths of a new optics fabrication process,” lead author Simon Thiele told Digital Trends. “This approach allowed us an extensive variation of parameters on a very small scale, and enabled us to 3D print four different complex lens systems with different focal lengths in one step directly onto the image sensor.”

Due to this high level of miniaturization, Thiele said the work has a number of intriguing possible use-cases.

“The most exciting applications in my opinion are in the fields of endoscopy and drone vision,” he continued. “If we are able to supply swallowable pill cameras with optics similar to those of eagles or humans, we could improve the imaging inside the human body. Similarly, a small drone with eagle vision would probably outperform one with a normal camera.”

As to what’s next for the project, Thiele said that team must further improve the optics and print them onto smaller imaging sensors. “At the moment, the camera size is limited by the available lateral chip sizes,” he concluded. “To be useful for consumers, our approach would have to be ready for mass manufacturing. This is not the case at the moment, but possible in principle with enough funding.”

MSI launches two teeny-tiny Radeon RX 460 graphics cards packed with dual fans

Why it matters to you

Small desktop builders looking for a compact, low-profile graphics card that doesn’t break the bank should take a look at MSI’s new solutions.

After launching the super-small Radeon RX-460-2G-OC and the RX-460-4G-OC graphics cards in August of 2016, MSI’s game of limbo continues with the release of two more Radeon RX 400 Series cards that are even smaller than what we saw with the previous two.

The new cards are the RX-460-2GT-LP and the RX-460-4GT-LP measuring a mere 6.65 x 2.71 x 1.53 inches. As a reference, the two cards released in August measure 6.77 x 4.60 x 1.30 inches.

With that out of the way, here are the hardware specs for the two new compact cards:

RX 460 2GT LP
RX 460 4GT LP
Architecture:
Polaris 11
Polaris 11
Number of cores:
896
896
Texture Mapping Units:
48
48
Render Output Units:
16
16
Base speed:
1,090MHz
1,090MHz
Boost speed:
1,200MHz
1,200MHz
Memory amount:
2,048MB GDDR5
4,096MB GDDR5
Memory interface:
128-bit
128-bit
Memory speed:
1,750MHz
1,750MHz
Afterburner OC:
Yes
Yes
CrossFire support:
Yes
Yes
Output:
1x HDMI 2.0
1x DL-DVI-D
1x HDMI 2.0
1x DL-DVI-D
Max number of displays:
2
2
Size:
6.65 x 2.71 x 1.53 inches
6.65 x 2.71 x 1.53 inches
Power consumption:
75 watts
75 watts
Recommended power supply:
400 watts
400 watts
Cost:
$110
~$138

Despite their size, both low-profile cards sport two cooling fans instead of one large fan as seen with the previous OC units. They also have a 10MHz slower boost speed than the previous OC models, which really isn’t a major difference in performance. However, the new cards appear to be $10 more than the OC models, costing $110 for the 2GT unit and an estimated $138 for the 4GT unit.

Outside the dual fans and super-low profile, MSI’s tiny new cards rely on Military Class 4 components (MILK-STD-810G), support for a 3,840 x 2,160 desktop resolution, and support for MSI’s Afterburner tool. This is an overclocking utility that includes means to customize fan profiles, benchmark the card, and record gameplay. This indicates that although the card isn’t overclocked out of the box, customers can tweak the speeds for optimal performance. The older OC units can be overclocked as well.

More: You might know MSI for gaming, but its latest laptops are ready to work

“Only these [military-certified] components have proven durable enough to withstand the torturous circumstances of extreme gaming and overclocking for extended usage,” the company states. “With their aluminum core design, Solid CAP’s have been a staple in high-end component designs and provides lower Equivalent Series Resistance (ESR) as well as its over-10-year lifespan.”

The MSI RX-460-2GT-LP model appears to be available now for $110. Currently, the official pricing and availability for the MSI RX-460-4GT-LP model is unknown, so keep an eye out on Newegg, Amazon, and other outlets.

What to do when an app freezes on Android watches

Android Wear apps don’t always behave.

Google’s Developer Preview program makes it easy for active developers to make sure their apps work great with new software updates before users get to touch them. Unfortunately, not every app in the Google Play Store is maintained by an active developer. That means sometimes your favorite watch app might misbehave on an Android Wear 2.0 watch.

The most common frustration with old apps on the new Android Wear is an occasional freeze. The app locks up, and the whole watch UI stops for a little while in order to sort things out. Most of the time this app freeze is temporary, not more than a second or two of inactivity. If you find yourself stuck for longer, here’s how to break free and get back to enjoying your watch.

Tap that power button

Every Android Wear watch has a brown button on the bezel of the watch, and in Android Wear 2.0 it’s called the Power Button. Pressing this button in from just about any screen in the OS should immediately return you to the watch face, basically closing the app you were just in and leaving you to either try again or move on to something else.

Android Wear doesn’t have an app switcher or system activity monitor — thank goodness — so you mostly have to trust that this power button has closed the app you were in instead of returning you to a frozen activity. In our testing, the apps are almost always closed.

Set you watch on its charger

The Android Wear charging screen often works as a decent bedside clock, because it’s basically a separate watch face that only exists when the watch is being charged. This charging UI interrupts anything currently happening on the watch, which means if you’re nearby your charger and an app misbehaves you can quickly drop the watch on the charger and reset the activity.

This should only ever be necessary if the power button reset didn’t work, which is extremely rare from our testing, but if you do need this reset it will work every time.

Reboot the watch

Some apps just weren’t meant to be installed on Android Wear 2.0, but before you can uninstall those unsightly creations you need to restore your watch to working order. That may mean a full reboot of your watch, and fortunately that doesn’t usually take long.

Press and hold the power button on your watch for five continuous seconds. You’ll feel an extended vibration, the screen will go dark, and as you remove your finger from the button the display will light back up and the Android Wear boot animation will begin. Once the watch has restarted, you can go eliminate the apps that weren’t behaving and leave a review for the next person eager to give this a try.

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
• Discuss Android Wear in the forums!

Grab a HP Chromebook 14 for just $211 right now, a savings of $39

Right now you can pick up HP’s Chromebook 14 for just $211 at Amazon, a savings of $39 from its regular price. Equipped with an Intel Celeron processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 16GB SSD, you’ll be able to breeze through tasks on the 14-inch display and get things done. Chrome OS may not have as many features as Mac OS or Windows does, but if you are looking for something to create documents, browse the internet, and play around on social media, a Chromebook may be the perfect choice for you.

If you’d rather, you can grab one for the same price at Walmart right now. These prices may not last long, so be sure to get your order in before the price goes back up.

See at Amazon

For more great deals on tech, gadgets, home goods and more, be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

AT&T decides to get competitive, expands unlimited plan to everyone

AT&T is matching its competitors by opening up unlimited data to everyone.

AT&T has decided to throw up its proverbial hands after a week of intense competition in the mobile space, saying that as of February 17 its unlimited plan, which is currently only available to DirecTV customers, will be expanded to all postpaid customers.

Starting tomorrow, AT&T1 will launch a new AT&T Unlimited plan. The plan will be available to all consumer and business postpaid AT&T wireless customers.

The new AT&T Unlimited Plan will include unlimited talk, text and data on 4 lines for $180. Business customers can also take advantage of their additional corporate discount. You can also make unlimited calls from the U.S. to Canada and Mexico, and send unlimited texts to over 120 countries. Plus, customers on this plan can talk, text and use data in Canada and Mexico with no roaming charges when they add the Roam North America feature for no additional charge.

Prices remain unchanged — it’s still $100 for the first line and $40 for the others, with a $40 monthly discount on the fourth after two billing cycles. That’s considerably more than T-Mobile’s and Sprint’s options, but at $180 for four lines is right in line with Verizon, which AT&T considers its biggest competitor (though it shouldn’t given how many postpaid customers it is losing to T-Mobile).

Unfortunately, unlike T-Mobile’s most recent move, AT&T’s unlimited plan includes its data-compressing Stream Saver feature, which lowers video quality to 480p by default. And there’s no tethering, which is disappointing, especially when the other three big carriers include at least some tethering in their unlimited plans.

Are you switching to AT&T, or to this plan if you’re already a customer, now that its unlimited plan is open to everyone? Let us know in the comments!

Which unlimited plan should you buy?

‘Alto’s Adventure’ studio will launch its new game this fall

Indie game developer Snowman has built up quite a reputation based mostly on one game: Alto’s Adventure. But we now finally know when we’ll get to see the studio’s next creation. Where Cards Fall, a game the company has been teasing for a few years now, will be out this fall for Apple TV, iOS and Steam. If you haven’t seen any of the gameplay yet, Snowman has also released a new trailer today that gives a pretty extensive look at what to expect when the game arrives.

Players will see the 3D world from above and guide a group of teenagers through the world, running into puzzles that are solved by using stacks of cards to build structures and connect you to parts of the map you couldn’t otherwise reach. In some ways, it’s similar to how Monument Valley used impossible geometry to move you through the world. But the best way to grasp what’s going on is to see it in action — check out the trailer below.

Where Cards Fall will be Snowman’s first game to hit Steam, and it’s possible the game will also make its way to Android as well (Alto’s Adventure eventually hit the platform as a free-to-play game with some in-app purchases to help Snowman monetize it). And Snowman has a lot more in the works, as well. A sequel to Alto’s Adventure is in the works, along with the atmospheric Distant and an in-depth skateboarding game called Skate City.

Source: Snowman