Razer upgrades the Blade Pro laptop with THX certification and more powerful CPU

If you think the name Razer Blade Pro sounds familiar, it’s because the gaming hardware manufacturer only released one in October 2016. Clearly the company immediately thought it could produce something better because it’s just announced a new version under the same name, but with upgraded internals. Although, it’s still a far cry from Project Valerie, it’s bonkers three-screen gaming laptop concept.

• New Razer Blade Pro laptop has a 4K touchscreen, mechanical keyboard

The 2017 Razer Blade Pro now comes with THX certification, the first laptop to be awarded the accolade. It means the gaming laptop has met audio and video criteria set by THX, to make it unlike any other laptop on the market.

Razer says the 17.3-inch 4K IGZO screen has been calibrated and tested for “video resolution, colour accuracy and video playback performance” to give “an unrivalled viewing experience in any instance”.

What’s more, the audio jack has been developed in such a way that it meets THX’s strict requirements for voltage output, frequency response, distortion, signal-to-noise ratio and crosstalk. Razer says the Blade Pro can now guarantee clear sound through any pair of headphones so you’ll be able to hear every little nuance of sound from whatever games you’re playing.

Razer

Under the hood is a new 7th generation Intel Core i7 processor which can run in an overclock mode thanks to Razer’s own Synapse software and it also features faster 32GB DDR4 memory compared to its predecessor. The new Blade Pro can also lay claim to being the thinnest laptop – 0.88 inches – to be fitted with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 GPU. The new GPU is able to display games in ultra-high settings with 4K resolution to take full advantage of the Blade Pro’s screen.

Also like its predecessor, the new Blade Pro features an ultra-low profile mechanical keyboard, and is powered, along with the trackpad, by Razer Chroma. As is now traditional with Razer’s laptops, the tricoloured LED technology can be customised and synced with events in whatever game you’re playing. 

• Razer Project Valerie: Crazy gaming laptop concept packs in three screens

Other specs include up to 2TB of SSD storage, an SD card reader, three USB 3.0 ports and a Thunderbolt 3 port for connecting a variety of peripherals and accessories. With all those components and the sheer size of the screen, you may expect the Blade Pro to break the scales, but Razer says it actually ways around 3.6kg, some 1kg lighter than its closest rivals.

The new 2017 Razer Blade Pro will be available in North America and select European countries, including the UK, Germany and France, from April for £3,799/$3,999.

Uber is building its own EV charging network in London

Uber’s fleet of electric vehicles in London is set to rise in the coming weeks after the company announced an expansion of its partnership with Nissan. The two companies have committed to deliver an additional 100 Nissan LEAF EVs, trebling the number of green vehicles available via its app. To power them, it’ll also build its own charging network in the capital.

In August 2016, Uber announced it had teamed up with Nissan and another car maker, China’s BYD. In the following months, the company offered “top-rated drivers” a mix of zero-emission BYD E6s and Nissan LEAFs. BYD is no longer part of the pilot, but Nissan is ready to deliver 100 LEAFs from its plant in Sunderland.

While Uber handled the logistics, the Energy Saving Trust (EST) also conducted a three-month study into the EV programme to assess whether it was beneficial for all involved. The full report will be published tomorrow but early figures show that 35,000 riders took a trip in a fully electric car, saving half a metric tonne of nitrous oxide and and 22 metric tonnes of CO2 compared to a hybrid car. However, it did also highlight a number of issues with London’s current EV infrastructure. The Energy Saving Trust found that drivers were hampered by a lack of fast-charging stations in central London (it cited just three that were publicly available) and that even if there were chargers nearby, they would be occupied.

This helps explain why Uber has committed to building a network of branded rapid chargers across central London. To begin with, Uber says they’ll only be available to drivers who use the Uber app, which doesn’t help fix public availability issues in the short term but may contribute in the future.

“We believe that new technology can help tackle the challenge of air pollution in the capital. Londoners already associate Uber with hybrid cars, but we want to go even further with more drivers switching to fully electric ones,” said Jo Bertram, Regional General Manager of Uber UK.

“Our vision is for mass adoption of fully electric cars as private hire vehicles but there are some really big challenges we need to overcome. Charging cars can be costly for drivers and there’s a serious lack of rapid charging points in central London. We hope the Mayor’s forthcoming transport strategy will lead to more chargers which private hire drivers can use.”

Google and Symantec go to war over our internet security

Google and Symantec are engaged in a war about each other’s security practices, with all of us caught in the crossfire. As TechCrunch reports, Google believes that Symantec has been improperly issuing security certificates for tens of thousands of websites. As a consequence, Chrome will no longer place the same level of trust in Symantec’s certificates.

Put simply, a security certificate is like a hall pass, letting you roam the corridors of your high school for bathroom breaks and nurse visits. Google says that it’s a diligent teacher who makes sure it only hands out paperwork to the honest and the deserving. But it thinks that Symantec has just left a stack of notes by the door, letting any student use them while it grabs a nap behind its desk.

In a post over on Google Groups, Ryan Sleevi says that the search engine has been investigating “a series of failures,” by Symantec. By downgrading Chrome’s level of trust in Symantec’s certificates, the browser will effectively force the security company to re-issue newer certificates, faster. Otherwise, you’ll not be able to visit websites with old, untrustworthy documentation without Chrome giving you plenty of warnings.

Google hopes that the move will force Symantec’s researchers to do a better job of keeping its house in order. But this fight isn’t a new one, and the two companies have a history of dust-ups, including Google calling out holes in Symantec’s antivirus products that made them more open to attack. That was in retaliation to Symantec using fake security certificates to access Google-owned domains.

Symantec’s response can be paraphrased down to gee man, don’t be a narc, dude, saying that 127 improperly issued certificates caused “no consumer harm.” In addition, it says that Google has turned a blind eye to other companies’s failed practices to target Symantec. This fight is likely to persist with passive-aggressive sniping and other arguments, at least until everyone sits down over a table and makes up.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Google, (2), Symantec

‘Yooka-Laylee’ is at the heart of a 3D platformer revival

A few years ago, the 3D platformer was in a bad place. Mario was still around, but the genre had little support elsewhere. Colorful games like Crash Bandicoot, Pyschonauts and Jak and Daxter had vanished in favor of grittier, more realistic adventures. There was the occasional surprise, like the papercraft-inspired Tearaway, but nothing close to the breadth of games found on the N64, PlayStation and PlayStation 2. The market had moved on, publishers thought, and it no longer made sense to fund ambitious, big-budget projects like Beyond Good and Evil.

That all changed in May 2015. Playtonic Games, a small British team made up of former Rare employees, pitched a new platformer called Yooka-Laylee on Kickstarter. At their previous employer, they had worked on Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Country and Viva Pinata, all creative and well-received titles. Yooka-Laylee, they promised, would be a 3D platformer “rare-vival,” bringing back the colorful words, collectibles and twin-protagonist gameplay that made the Banjo series so special.

The crowdfunding campaign was a huge success, raising over £2 million (roughly $2.6 million) and hitting all of its stretch goals, which included boss battles, local co-op and four-person multiplayer, as well as an orchestral score. Clearly, backers remembered Banjo with fondness and were willing to pay for a spiritual successor.

Since then, Insomniac has rebooted Ratchet & Clank, its weapon-centric space platformer, and Sony has announced a Crash Bandicoot ‘N-Sane’ remaster collection. Nintendo has chipped in too, unveiling Super Mario Odyssey, a successor to the likes of Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, which is due to come out on the Switch this holiday. Yooka-Laylee, it seems, is at the center of a 3D platformer revival.

“3D platforming has its own subgenres, and they all satisfy a different itch.”

“From our point of view it’s coincidental,” Gavin Price, creative lead at Playtonic says. “I would love to say we all got together and had a secret meeting, and said, ‘Let’s do this!’ One big collaboration.”

He continues, “But what’s brilliant is that 3D platforming has its own subgenres, and they all satisfy a different itch. You have the action-platforming of Ratchet, the gymnastical approach of Mario and the open-world collecting of us. I feel confident that you could buy all of these games and not feel like you’re playing the same game twice. They have this natural inventiveness and creativity that is purely unique to those titles and characters.”

Creature comforts

Playing Yooka-Laylee is an odd experience. It’s at once familiar and alienating, like you’ve traveled to your childhood town only to find the houses and streets rebuilt. You’re quickly introduced to Yooka, a green chameleon, and Laylee, a purple bat, two troublesome heroes who have stumbled upon a magical book. It’s soon ripped from their grasp, however, with the pages scattered across distant lands. Laylee sits on Yooka’s head and you control them as one, rolling along the ground in a ball or lapping up enemies with Yooka’s tongue.

For fans of Banjo-Kazooie, the premise is nothing new. The worlds you’re exploring, however, are more beautiful and interesting than anything Rare produced on the N64. As soon as the first cutscene ends, I found myself rushing toward a pirate ship and using Laylee’s wings to glide where I shouldn’t. Open-world collectathons have always inspired exploration, and the same holds true in Yooka-Laylee. I had forgotten about my objective completely — to investigate a nearby factory that’s hoovering up books — and started testing whether I could open treasure chests yet.

The mechanics are familiar, and I quickly found my rhythm bouncing up walls and double jumping over large gaps. I soon met Trowzer, a snake who has stretched his long body to fit inside a pair of cargo shorts. To an adult, the joke is obvious, and I couldn’t help but giggle as he explained the various upgrade systems. The pun-tastic humor is a trademark of Rare games, and I’m happy to see it preserved in Playtonic’s work.

Encouraging imagination

Notably, there’s no real voice acting in Yooka-Laylee. Instead, the game provides an endless supply of made-up gibberish, performed in slightly different accents to reflect the characters and their eccentric personalities. All the dialogue is explained through subtitles, however, so it’s easy to keep up with the far-fetched story. Banjo-Kazooie was the same way, and Price insists the choice was an artistic one for Yooka-Laylee rather than a way to keep development costs down.

“I’m a big fan of content that doesn’t hand-hold the player and leaves creative gaps for you to inject some of your own thinking into what’s going on and engage with the game on a deeper level,” he says. “You want to decide for yourself exactly what Yooka is like. We provide some bits and bobs of information through the way he talks, and what he says, to inform you that this is the kind of character he is. But if we were to give him a voice, we would also be closing that door for the player.”

The platformer is also quick to poke fun at modern game design. Upon entering the factory, Laylee comments that Yooka “gave himself a short tutorial on the way in.” Trowzer responds that while he’d like to help the pair, he has “an important call coming up with the World 1 boss.” These references are littered throughout the game and emphasize the simple joy of 3D platformers. Sometimes you want a deep, BAFTA-nominated storyline, like the ones found in Firewatch, Inside and Oxenfree, but other times you just want something goofy that puts a smile on your face.

That purity could be why the 3D platformer has found an audience again. “It’s nice to embrace the fact you’re a video game and play to the strengths of acknowledging you’re a video game,” Price explains. The team’s intent is to create comedy that works on different levels, similar to The Simpsons, Wallace and Gromit and the Disney-Pixar films. As a child, it’s all innocent slapstick fun, but as an adult you can appreciate the subtle nods and winks. In the opening world, for instance, you can find tins of multicolored paint around your home. “It’s something we’re a big believer in.” Price says. “I’m sure kids won’t even think about it, and say, ‘Well, multicolored paint is a thing in this world, that’s fine,’ and not see it as a joke.”

Something borrowed, something new

New 3D platformers offer more than upgraded visuals. While it’s true that Yooka’s environments are luscious, the underlying gameplay is far from a simple retread. Each world is now expandable, for example. Once you’ve collected enough ‘Pagies,’ you can unlock a new world or choose to improve an existing one. Either option will grant you new challenges, which can then be completed to repeat the process. It’s a binary choice but one that gives you greater control over how the adventure unfolds.

Yooka-Laylee also features a perk system. These unlocks affect your attributes in the game, simplifying challenges and catering to different play styles. In an early world called Tribalstack Tropics, I was struggling with a race that required me to roll around like a ball. Curling up consumes energy, and my stamina bar would always deplete before the finish line. I solved the problem by talking to Vendi, an enormous vending machine, who can lower the amount of energy required to perform the move. Playtonic says this perk system, and many other new features, were inspired by other video games outside the 3D platformer genre.

“There was a lot to maintain and keep in terms of what worked in the past,” Price says,” but we wanted to update it with new ways of engaging modern gamers’ tastes as well. I think that gives the game a unique, refreshed appeal that can satisfy the old people like myself who played this stuff years ago while hopefully attracting new audiences.”

Living the indie life

Playing Yooka-Laylee, it’s hard to believe the game is an indie project. Playtonic launched its Kickstarter with a six-man team, and during its development averaged 15 full-time employees. Now, two years later, the studio sits at 23. That’s not a small team, especially by indie standards, but it’s a fraction of the manpower that would normally be required to build a platformer of this size. As I tick off more challenges, I’m looking for the cracks, the places where the studio has decided to cut corners. Aside from the camera, which occasionally frustrates, it’s hard to find any faults.

“The middleware tools have been a big help,” Price says. “But being a smaller team, creatively led, you don’t have to worry about disrupting other cogs in the machine. You can be a lot more reactive, nimble and productive. During the day there are no meetings, and we’re in an area that’s similar to the size of this room [he looks around and gestures — we’re in a small bar] so if you need to shout and ask someone for something, you can just stand on your chair and say, ‘Hey, come and do this!’”

Price comes across mellow and carefree, but deep down he’s nervous. Yooka-Laylee is an important game for multiple reasons. For one, it’s a Kickstarter game. The crowdfunding platform is divisive: For every success like Shovel Knight, there’s a dramatic failure such as Yogventures or Mighty No. 9. Yooka-Laylee will inevitably fall into one of those camps, twisting people’s perception of the platform accordingly. For another, it’s the first game that Playtonic has released. If it’s successful, the company will have the creative freedom to tackle new types of games.

“Back in the day, we were never defined by our games in one genre only. We tried our hand at all sorts.”

“Back in the day, we were never defined by our games in one genre only,” Price explains. “We tried our hand at all sorts. As a business proposition, that’s actually really difficult to do. For a large company to say, ‘Well, we’re not going to be the racing game studio,’ or ‘We’re not going to be this genre only.’ That’s the challenge we’ve now given ourselves, because the Kickstarter funding went so well. It’s become a bigger opportunity than even we realized.”

A Playtonic empire

Playtonic has made a conscious effort to design supporting characters who could appear in their own games. Like the Mushroom Kingdom, which allows Yoshi, Wario and Princess Peach to star in their own spinoff titles, Yooka-Laylee is the starting canvas for weird and wonderful heroes (or, potentially, antiheroes) to emerge. Playtonic’s goal is to become a two-game studio, developing projects in tandem. That’s important, Price says, because he and his friends are older than the average indie game developer.

“None of us are getting any younger,” he says. “We’re becoming indie developers at the age of, well, double the age most indie developers are. I remember looking at a list of game ideas we had for various characters and saying, ‘Hang on, if we did all of these, I’m going to be 70!’”

Playtonic is working with Team17, best known for the Worms series, to publish Yooka-Laylee. Success will prove to creators and publishers alike that the 3D platformer can thrive again through new, alternative methods of funding. It could help avoid the problems of the early 2000s, when many middle-tier developers struggled and were ultimately forced to shut down.

“None of us are getting any younger.”

“I don’t want to see other creators make fantastic games which ultimately kill them and mean they can’t carry on,” Price says. “It’s been really frustrating for me, to see games that I’ve really enjoyed and thought, ‘Oh, they didn’t get the love they deserved.’ That can happen to big people as well, like Ubisoft and Beyond Good and Evil. I thought it was one of the best Zelda games I’ve ever played. To see it not perform as I thought it deserved was gutting. But there’s certainly a lot of support out there now, and ways of making content like this viable.”

The future for 3D platformers

The 3D platformer’s future isn’t certain. It’s possible that the renewed interest will quickly fade, leaving Nintendo as the sole flag bearer once more. Yooka-Laylee’s Kickstarter, however, suggests that a small but viable market exists for the genre. These games have the potential to attract two different types of audiences, after all: new, younger players who never grew up with Croc, Gex or Spyro the Dragon in their home, as well as older video game enthusiasts who remember them with (mostly) fondness.

In some ways, it feels like the video game equivalent of the Western. Movie depictions of the Wild West were popular in the 1950s and ’60s but then quickly fell out of favor. In recent years, however, they’ve made a comeback, with Slow West and The Revenant succeeding at the box office. To feel new again, 3D platformers needed a similar amount of time away from our screens. It’s why recently there’s been a surge of 2D revivals: The point-and-click adventure game has been reborn with Broken Age and countless Telltale episodic series, and ‘Metroidvania’ games, inspired by Metroid and Castlevania, have been revived through titles like Axiom Verge. For the 3D platformer, it was simply a matter of time.

“Because it hasn’t been served so much for so long, maybe that passion has naturally pent up and pent up,” Price muses. “And now it’s just burst out.”

Tinder on the desktop: Looking for love in another wrong place

Tinder has arrived to the desktop with Tinder Online, finally helping you find love (or sex) on the web without a smartphone or tablet. The dating site describes the web app as “your English professor’s worst nightmare,” letting you seek partners where your mobile phone normally can’t go, like work or a classroom. The company also sees it as a way to attract users from developing nations who lack decent wireless connectivity or “don’t have enough memory to support Tinder on their mobile phones.”

As with the web app, you’ll log into Tinder Online using Facebook, though the company says it’s “testing the ability to log in via SMS directly from your mobile phone in various markets.” If you haven’t done so already on mobile, you then set up your bio and pictures, something that should be easier using a keyboard. From there, you’ll swipe or click to find partners, depending on your device.

Tinder Head of Product Brian Norgard told Techcrunch that it wasn’t easy creating the new app, given its years of being on smartphones only. “Our DNA is mobile so there was a learning curve involved in building something for a bigger screen,” he said. “What makes Tinder great on your phone might not make it great on the desktop, and vice versa.”

With the arrival of the web app, the company made a few tweaks to its software. In an effort to promote the “dating” over the “conquest” aspect of the app, it now prompts you to “send message” when you make a match rather than “keep swiping!” That said, the desktop app is no doubt an attempt to boost its user base and overall growth more than anything else.

For now, Tinder Online doesn’t support any of the mobile app’s money-making features like Tinder Boost or Super Like. In addition, testing is limited to a just seven countries across South America, Asia and Europe: Argentina, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Brazil, Columbia and Sweden. That’s an odd mix, but if you’re in one of them, you should be able to try it out soon here. For now, it doesn’t seem to be up yet in Sweden or Brazil, according to my attempts with a VPN.

Watch this Periscope video after a short message from #brands

Video ads are nothing new on Twitter. The company has announced a number of ways for brands to get their message out through promoted tweets, pre-roll messages and even ads in Moments. Now Twitter is extending its advertising to live video. Starting today, companies who are buying ads on the social network can have short pre-roll clips play ahead of both live and replay Periscope streams.

It works similarly to pre-roll ads for other videos you scroll past in your timeline. When you get to a Periscope clip, that footage can begin with a short ad. Twitter calls the new push “a new source of brand-safe video advertising” that companies can use to promote products, services and more. It’s also a way for creators and publishers to monetize the content they’re streaming on Periscope all the time.

The pre-roll Periscope ads are available to select advertisers now, but they will “roll out more broadly” in the months to come. You might not notice them immediately, but eventually the new brand clips will likely show up ahead of live video or archived replays in your Twitter feed. Today’s news comes on the heels of the announcement that livestreamers could use Periscope with third party apps and devices last week. Facebook continues to make live video a key focus and it looks like Twitter is expanding its streaming footprint as well.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Twitter

Wi-Fi Calling and VoLTE Expand to O2 and Other Carriers on iOS 10.3

Following yesterday’s iOS 10.3 release, several carriers around the world have enabled support for native Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE on iPhone.

In addition to updating to iOS 10.3, the features require installing a carrier settings update to be enabled. Your device should prompt you to install the carrier settings update in Settings > General > Software Update.

Features may be limited to certain iPhone models, so check with your carrier. British carrier O2, for example, has only enabled support on iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus right now, with plans to add other devices soon.

The full list of carriers that have just enabled native Wi-Fi calling on iOS 10.3:

• Australia: Optus
• Austria: A1 Telekom
• Belgium: Telenet
• Greece: Cosmote
• Hong Kong: 1010
• Norway: Telia
• Poland: Orange, Play
• Switzerland: Sunrise
• United Kingdom: O2

The full list of carriers that have just enabled VoLTE on iOS 10.3:

• Denmark: 3
• Greece: Cosmote
• Peru: Movistar
• Poland: Orange
• Russia: MegaFon
• Turkey: Turk Telecom
• United Kingdom: O2

To enable Wi-Fi calling, open the Settings app, tap on General > Wi-Fi Calling, and toggle on Wi-Fi Calling on This iPhone.

To enable VoLTE, open the Settings app and tap on Mobile Data > Mobile Data Options > Enable 4G > Voice & Data.

Meanwhile, Verizon customers with an iPhone running iOS 10.3 can now make and receive Wi-Fi calls on other iCloud-connected devices, including the iPad, iPod touch, Apple Watch, and most 2012 or later Macs, even if the iPhone is turned off. The devices must be signed into the same Apple ID used on the iPhone.

Related Roundup: iOS 10
Tags: Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE
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Denon has a new stylish and affordable pair of headphones; the £79 AH-C621R

Audio expert Denon has announced the latest addition to its range of high-quality in-ear headphones. The AH-C621R are designed to be compatible with an iPhone or iPad, but that shouldn’t deter Android owners.

• Denon AH-C821 review: Big sound in a small package

The AH-C621R are fitted with custom-made 11.5mm drivers, which Denon says are tuned for a flat EQ curve, meaning they should deliver “both powerful bass and exceptional clarity”.

Your music should also arrive at your ears distortion-free thanks to Denon Acoustic Optimiser ports on the front and rear of the housings, which have been used to equalise the air pressure around the drivers themselves.

The drivers are housed within a rather eye-catching die-cast aluminium casing, and the supplied Comply TX400 foam ear tips ensure you’ll get a secure fit to prevent any sound leaking out. Denon has also fitted its own Radial Cascade Damper which promises to minimise the amount of interference generated by the cable when it rubs against your clothes.

The three-button in-line microphone is compatible with iPhones and iPads for functions including play/pause, track skip and volume changes, and it can even be used to summon Siri.

As is now common with Denon’s headphones, a companion app is available for iOS and Android, which allows you to adjust the sound settings to your personal taste, and can be used as an audio player for any files on your device. It can even be used to access TuneIn radio and its 70,000+ Internet radio stations.

• Denon AH-C160W wireless sports in-ears are built to last and sound great too

The Denon AH-C621R in-ear headphones will be available from April in white or black for £79.

Facebook adds nearly everything Snapchat does to its main app

Facebook’s quest to mimic Snapchat is undeniable at this point. In just the last few months, Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger have all integrated some form of Stories — a disappearing slideshow format that Snapchat is famous for — while Facebook Live dabbled in Snapchat-esque selfie filters. Now, after months of experiments and tests, it’s time for the main Facebook app to get in on the action too. Today, the company is officially rolling out three new Snapchat-inspired features to its core app: a brand new in-app camera that’s chockful of filters, effects and masks; Facebook’s very own Stories; and Direct, which lets you share photos and videos with specific people for a set period of time.

As soon as you launch the updated Facebook app, you’ll see the new Stories navigation bar prominently featured at the top. On the far left is a shortcut for Direct sharing, the second bubble is for Your Story (you can tap it to add to it), while the rest are Stories of your closest friends. Each Story interface is almost identical to that of Instagram’s version — you can move back and forth through the slideshow by tapping left or right, and if it’s your own Story, you’ll be able to see the number of views as well as the names of the people who saw it. Additionally, you’ll be able to leave direct replies on other people’s Stories, which then appear on top of the content. The replies only live as long as the content, however, so once the photo is gone, the comment’s gone too.

“We’ve been very text-centric in the past,” says Connor Hayes, a Facebook product manager. “But what we’ve been seeing is that the way people create content is changing, from text to photos and videos. […] We’re trying to upgrade the app to be more centered around the way people are behaving and creating the content in social apps. And that starts with the camera.”

Which explains why the new camera is much easier to access. Before, the fastest way to launch the camera in the Facebook app was to tap “Photos” and then select the camera icon. Now, that camera icon is located to the left of the search field, and is visible the moment you launch the app. Alternately, you can swipe right from the home screen, and that’ll bring up the camera function as well.

The camera interface is completely different from before too. On the left side of the screen are little navigation dots, which correspond to different filters that the app has pre-selected for you. Simply swipe up or down to scroll through them, and you’ll see the filter take effect on the main screen. These pre-selected filters are chosen based on an algorithm that susses out whether you’ll like them, and also on your location. So if you’re in London, you probably won’t see a San Francisco themed filter, for example.

But if none of those filters strike your fancy, no worries, because you can tap an option that will reveal as many as 70 other options (that number will change depending on your region). You can choose anything from selfie masks to Prisma-esque style effects to simple frames. In a brief demo, I saw filters that showed animated pizza slices flying out of my mouth, round glasses superimposed on my face and a “I Miss You” message scrawled in front of me. Other options include a mirroring effect, one that shows a lazy sloth on top of your head, a mustache, a pride rainbow, a glitter beard and even an effect that makes you look like a minion from Despicable Me.

Indeed, Facebook not only partnered with different film studios for licensed content, it also commissioned two artists — Hattie Stewart from the UK and Doug Coupland from Canada — to come up with special artistic filter effects. One of Coupland’s filters, for example, shows concentric colors radiating from your head. Open your mouth, and the circles now form in your mouth and on your forehead.

Kristen Spilman, the director for Art and Animation in charge of the camera effects, says that she hopes these filters help people express themselves. “Our new camera puts visual content at the heart of the Facebook experience,” she says. “While we want our effects to be fun to use, it’s more important that they’re thoughtful and relevant in enhancing relationships.”

What I found particularly intriguing is that Spilman’s small team of effects artists took pains to really make sure that the filters resonate with the local culture. For example, when the team tested visual text filters like “OMG” and “LOL” in Ireland, they found that they weren’t really all that popular. But what did work were more regional examples like “Gas” (which translates to “astonishing”) and “Some Craic” (which means to have a good time).

After you’ve chosen your filter, you can write text on top of it or doodle on it with your choice of brush. Then, you can save it to your camera roll and do nothing with your creation, or you can choose to share it. You can post it to Newsfeed if you want your photo to live on forever, or you can post it to Your Story if you just want it up for the next 24 hours, or you can share it directly with your friends via the new Direct feature. If you do send your photo or video directly, note that your friends will only be able to view it once and replay it once. Once it’s over, it’s gone.

“Stories has become the format for people to create photos and videos and share them with one another immersively across social apps,” says Hayes. “This is something that Snapchat’s really pioneered. Our take is that Stories has become a format for people to share and consume photos and videos across all social apps.” When asked why someone would use Facebook Stories over Instagram Stories or vice versa, Hayes says that different people use the apps differently. “It depends on how they use each app, and who their network is on each app,” he says, pointing out that oftentimes the two have different audiences.

“Over the coming months, we plan to introduce new ways for the Facebook community to create their own frames and effects that can be used on any photo or video created with the new Facebook camera,” said Facebook in a statement. “Our goal is for the camera to be a home to hundreds of dynamic and fun effects that give you new ways to connect with friends, family, and your community.”

Facebook’s new camera, Stories and Direct sharing will be rolling out to all users on both Android and iOS throughout this week.

Source: Facebook

Square’s payment service arrives in the UK

When Jack Dorsey isn’t preoccupied with his CEO role at Twitter, he’s also busy running the other company he founded, Square. It’s all about money, and is primarily known for little devices that, when paired with its mobile app, quickly get small businesses set up to take card, contactless and mobile payments. Today, the company made its first move into the UK (and Europe, in fact), launching the latest iteration of its Square Reader for £39 (plus VAT), so hopefully you needn’t go hungry next time when you walk into your local cafe with a wallet full of plastic.

Square started out in the US back in 2010 and has since expanded to Canada, Japan and Australia. Waiting seven years to launch in the UK presents something of a problem, though, in that there are numerous companies that already offer the same kind of service. PayPal, iZettle, SumUp and others have their own little card and contactless readers, which you’ve probably come across at boutiquey shops and eateries. Merchants may want to look at Square’s transaction rates to get a better understanding of the new player, but nonetheless, it’s late to the game.

While it made its name from point-of-sale devices, that’s not all Square could bring to the UK now it’s got its foot in the door. In addition to several other enterprise-facing services, it also operates Square Cash, which lets users send money to one another using just an email address. But wait, that sounds a little like Pingit or Paym, doesn’t it?

Source: Square