Begin your Android development career with this professional bundle for $39

Ready to make a change in your career and start creating your own Android apps? Getting started can be a difficult task, there is a lot to learn, a lot of different ways to do things, and unless you have someone to chat with it can be hard to do on your own. There are a number of different ways you can begin your new path, and this bundle is one of the best.

Get started today for just $39 Learn More

Meet the Professional Android Developer Bundle, a great way for you to learn the basics and more advanced features of building Android apps. From an introduction to Javascript to the fundamentals of the operating system itself, there are countless hours of information here for you to move through at your own pace.

• Introduction to Programming & Coding for Everyone with JavaScript – $295 Value
• Fundamentals of Operating Systems – $295 Value
• Building Android Apps That Work – $295 Value
• Java SE 8 Programming Part 2 – $295 Value
• Java SE 8 Programming Part 1 – $295 Value

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Best Screen Protectors for the LG Watch Sport

Keep your new LG Watch Sport protected with a quality screen protector.

The new LG Watch Sport is one of the first smartwatches running Android Wear 2.0, and it’s also our pick for the Best Android Wear Smartwatch you can buy right now. If you’ve ever worn a smartwatch before, you know how susceptible they can be to taking bumps against door frames or tables.

The last thing you’d want is a big ugly scratch or crack on your new smartwatch, so it’s wise to invest in some screen protectors for your wearable tech. Fortunately most come in value packs so you can really get your money’s worth while keeping your investment protected.

• Dmax Armor Tempered Glass Screen Protector [3-pack]
• Supershieldz Tempered Glass Screen Protector [3-pack]
• Skinomi TechSkin Full Body Skin
• iLLumaShield Anti-glare Screen Protector [3-pack]

Dmax Armor Tempered Glass Screen Protector [3-pack]

Tempered glass is the ideal material for a screen protector, so this 3-pack from Dmax is a great option. It features the 9H hardness that tempered glass is know for, which protects your watchface from scratches and high-impact drops and collisions. Each screen protector features hydrophobic and oleophobic coatings to resist sweat and oil residue from fingerprints and other objects.

Everything you need for a bubble-free installation is included in this package, and it also comes with a no-hassle lifetime replacement warranty, so you can buy with confidence.

See at Amazon

Supershieldz Tempered Glass Screen Protector [3-pack]

Supershieldz is a trusted name in screen protectors. These tempered glass screen protectors come in a three pack and provide you with a rugged screen protector that will take all the scuffs and scrapes life throws your way so your watch screen doesn’t. With 9H level hardness and hydrophobic and oleophobic coatings, your LG Watch Sport will be protected against pretty much everything.

These screen protectors also come with Supershieldz no-hassle lifetime replacement warranty,

See at Amazon

Skinomi TechSkin Full Body Skin

Skinomi’s screen protector offers not only protection for the screen, but also a back cover to keep the body of your watch protected as well. The back cover comes in metallic grey, so if you opted for the Dark Blue watch it might not match as nicely. The screen protector is made of plastic film — with only .1 millimeter of thickness it’ll be barely noticeable on your watch, but it also won’t provide as much protection as a tempered glass protector.

This package also comes with a lifetime warranty from Skinomi.

See at Amazon

iLLumashield Anti-glare Screen Protector [3-pack]

While iLLumiShield’s screen protectors are also made of PET film and not rugged tempered glass, it does aim to tackle a major issue that plagues wearables all too frequently — bad glare when trying to use your watch outside. This is accomplished with a matte finish that doesn’t compromise the crystal clarity of the watch screen.

You get three screen protectors in this pack, all featuring a self-adhesive backing and are resistant to bacteria, oil, and fingerprints.

See at Amazon

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!

Best HTC Vive experiences for kids

What games can kids play on HTC Vive?

The HTC Vive is a wonderful VR system that has an incredible library of games and other experiences thanks to support through Steam. A lot of VR is based around shooting or scaring the pants off of you — blame it on the gun-like Vive controllers and the immersion level — but there are plenty of great experiences that are also suitable for children.

Remember, it’s never a bad idea to follow the recommended age guidelines set by the manufacturer. In HTC’s case, they recommend 13 and up, but that isn’t set in stone as long as you remain precautionary.

Read more at VR Heads!

The death of bezels isn’t as great as you think

A lack of bezels sure makes a phone look better, but does it affect usability?

I’ve been lucky enough to use an LG G6 for the past three days, and it’s great. The phone is well-built, it’s fast and stable, the extra-tall screen is wonderful, and it’s compact. So compact, in fact, that LG claims it fit a 5.7-inch phone into the same physical space as a typical 5.2-inch device from another company.

LG claims it fit a 5.7-inch phone into the same space as a typical 5.2-inch device.

How LG did this remarkable thing was by removing as much of the excess area around the LCD panel itself — typically known as the bezel — as possible, increasing the so-called screen-to-bezel ratio. The way the company pulled this off is quite ingenious, too: instead of sticking with a typical 16:9 aspect ratio, which forces the phone to get wider as the screen gets taller, it changed it — to 2:1.

The G6’s screen is exactly twice as tall as it is wide — 18:9 — which gives LG more breathing room to distribute the phone’s necessary parts while minimizing overall space. Everything that needs to be in the phone is still there — it’s just up higher, instead of wider.

So we’re left with a relatively narrow phone that has almost no bezel above and below the screen. This has proven popular with the vocal group of people who have decried that particular reality of phones since touch screens were invented, and based on the response from the release of the Xiaomi Mi Mix late last year, and the rumored near bezel-free Samsung Galaxy S8, the G6 is in good company.

I foresee a few days of unintended screen touches and awkward readjusting.

But buyer beware. I’ve been using the phone for the last few days, and all isn’t perfect in the world of infinity. For a long time, bezels existed out of necessity, as a way to hide various components underneath. We’re moving away from those physical constraints, so if bezels are to continue to exist, they need to be there for a reason. And not having them on a device like the G6 makes it pretty clear why they exist, aesthetics aside:

• On Android, bottom bezels force your thumb to rest at a natural point above the pinky, which rests underneath the phone in a cradle. Without that extra space, the pinky is thrust out to allow the thumb additional room to move lower, which either stretches the tendon or compromises the hand’s grip on the already-slippery device.

• The lack of bottom bezels also make it difficult to grip the phone from the bottom, as I enjoy doing while reading an article or watching a video in portrait mode. Granted, this isn’t a common occurrence, and I could merely wrap my hand around the phone, but I’ve always found gripping the bottom between thumb and forefinger a comfortable and stable way to hold a phone for long periods without tiring. On a device like the G6, the virtual buttons are so close to the bottom that such a grip isn’t possible.

These are not game-ending issues, and in the few days with the phone I’ve already grown accustomed to the new form factor. But I foresee, for early adopters of the LG G6 and Galaxy S8, a few days of unintended screen touches and awkward readjusting. I also wonder whether, after years of criticism against bezels, the industry is overcorrecting by eliminating a necessary tenet of phone hardware that people don’t realize they need merely because it mars the aesthetic.

One way to mitigate this problem is by ensuring that devices with slim bezels are not too wide, so they’re relatively easy to grip and manipulate with one hand. The 5.7-inch LG G6 is just narrow enough for my thumb to reach from one end to the other without strain; the 5.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S8, which is rumored to have a similar 18:9 aspect ratio, may be slightly too wide.

The end of bezels is surely coming soon, but there may come a time when we yearn for the simpler days of having a place to grip, and a respite from the endless screens we spend all day staring at.

LG G6

• LG G6 review!
• LG G6 specs
• These LG G6 features are exclusive to some countries
• LG forums
• Latest LG G6 news

Netflix learned how to stream good video on bad connections

This morning, a gaggle of journalists and I huddled around a table full of smartphones, watching a clip from Netflix’s Stranger Things. There was plenty of grain and blockiness to be sure, but it was sufficiently — even perfectly — watchable. The kicker: That surprisingly decent video is what Netflix told us to expect on a 100 kilobit/second data connection. That’s a fraction of a fraction the LTE speeds we’re used to in the US, but all too common in other parts of the world.

Netflix considers itself a global television service, and since its international launch last year, it has seen countries new to the service lean on smartphones and tablets for their streaming video fixes. It’s no wonder that finding a way to deliver decent video quality at low speeds is so important inside the company. As it turns out, Netflix seems to have cracked the code, and in a way that feels sort of obvious.

The thing to remember is that not all movies (or TV shows, for that matter) are created equally. Long, lingering static shots obviously aren’t as complex as fight scenes, but to date, Netflix has been encoding those videos as though they were the same. That’s where Netflix senior research scientist Ioannis Katsavounidis and his team of 10 come in. They’ve cooked up a way to encode videos with Google’s VP9 codec where static scenes and visually simple videos (say, an episode of Bojack Horseman) don’t require as much data as complex scenes.

“You don’t need that many bits to get high definition from Bojack when it’s simple animation,” Netflix VP of product Todd Yellin told reporters. “We started looking at the title and how complex the visuals were and how many bits we would need for high definition and standard definition. And we were able to take Bojack and decrease way down the number of bits we would do for an HD stream or an SD stream.”

Long story short: Your Netflix mobile queue will look better and your data usage should be smaller. The whole thing sounds sounds deceptively simple, and it is. Just nailing the basics of how watching videos on Netflix works requires a lot of juggling too, but it’s mainly behind the scenes.

As your network’s bandwidth fluctuates, you’ll switch from one encode of a video to another, sometimes even without knowing it. Katsavounidis says that, on average, a movie or a television show has 10 different encodes. Generally, if you started watching something in high quality, you won’t get bumped into a lower quality stream unless your network really takes a hit.

With this clever new encoding scheme, you might not see as many of those switches between different versions of the same video, and that video should look better to boot. Here’s the real problem, though: How do you scale that to work with Netflix’s entire library?

“We’re trying to make it as automatic as possible,” Yellin said. In this case, Netflix developed a machine learning algorithm and used research from two universities that ran studies on hundreds of people to build a general understanding of what quality video looks like. Those algorithms have taken into account that model, and will be used to determine how each of the videos in Netflix’s library are encoded. If all goes well, you won’t even notice the change (except for perhaps on your phone bill). Naturally, there’s value in this sort of on-the-fly quality control on desktops and on TVs too, but that will likely launch long after Netflix for mobile gets its big upgrade.

That order of operations seems a little backward, but some extra refinement to the quality model has to happen; you wouldn’t want to watch a movie optimized for a phone in your home theater. In any case, for a company that found its success on big screens, it’s clear the path to continued growth lies in small ones.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

Nokia got better at Android phones, fast

In case you forgot, Nokia’s new 6, 5 and 3 aren’t actually the company’s first Android devices. Many years ago, it made a mistake the Nokia X. It wasn’t really aimed at western markets and (if you ever got to play with one), it wasn’t really all that good. Fortunately, this second attempt demonstrates that the company’s far more serious with Android, with a classy Scandinavian design notes and an unobtrusive (and importantly up to date) mobile operating system. All the devices clock in at under $250, too, which means Nokia’s taking aim at the mid-range smartphone heartland. The company has learned fast.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.

Aol starts to shut down third-party AIM apps

Aol has revealed that it will soon block third-party apps from accessing its aging AIM messenger service. According to reports from 9To5Mac, the internet provider has notified Adium users that the app will stop functioning on March 28th. So far, Adium is the only service to be affected, but from the look of Aol’s statement it seems as though this could just be the first casualty of ye olde AIM’s imminent shutdown.

The current iteration of AIM runs on the more modern TOC protocol, so third-party apps were the only way to access the older version. That system ran on an Aol platform called OSCAR, which also provided the backbone to Apple’s iChat service back in the day.

Hello. Effective 3/28, we will no longer support connections to the AIM network via this method. If you wish to use the free consumer AIM product, we invite you to visit http://www.aim.com for more information.

The number of people using AIM has been in a steady state of decline as folks move across to rival platforms from other companies. The company massively downsized its messenger team in 2012, only leaving enough employees to ensure that the platform could keep the lights on. Speaking to Ars Technica, a former Aol employee said that dwindling users and the high cost of running OSCAR is behind the shutdown. They added that AIM users currently number in “the single-digit millions.”

While the AIM of old still holds a lot of nostalgia for internet users of er, a certain age, this doesn’t mean that IM lovers will be left without an alternative. Despite its dwindling userbase, you can still download AOL’s latest chat app on iOS, macOS, Windows and Android. Still, for those of us who long to return to the days of the classic AIM chat rooms, it looks like you might only have 27 days to say goodbye to that FLyboY2000 account.

Source: 9to5mac

BioLite’s new off-the-grid gear doubles down on power and light

BioLite released most of its 2017 product line today, spearheaded by the new and improved CampStove 2. All the products share common design features, centered around either battery improvements, expanded lighting possibilities, or both. Along with the redesigned stove, which now includes onboard power storage, there’s a double-wide solar panel, heavy duty portable batteries and, in the spirit of keeping you charged up, a coffee press. The company has also expanded its NanoGrid lighting system by adding a collapsible and hangable diffusion light, a scaled-down version of the daisy-chainable SiteLight series and the long-awaited arrival of the BaseLantern.

While that’s a lot of gear, BioLite has focused on portability and smaller sizes to help you get the most out of your off-the-grid travels. While these are generally designed for life in the great outdoors, some of these products can probably earn a spot in your everyday routine.

The first product out of the gate this year is the new wood-powered CampStove 2, which generally looks and acts like its predecessor providing thermo-electrically generated power, albeit with improved electronics. Instead of simply providing a pass-through for charging, its able to store some of that juice with its on-board 2,600mAh battery.

There’s also a new LED dashboard that displays battery and heat levels along with a four-step adjustable fan control. As before, everything easily breaks down and fits into itself for portability. If you have a KettlePot, you can still stow the whole CampStove inside to keep things organized. Additionally, BioLite is releasing a new Coffee Press attachment for the pot, giving you the tools for both cooking and caffeinating in a portable package. (And yes, the press will also fit into the same compact bundle.)

When the sun’s out, you’ll be able to double your solar charging capability with BioLite’s new SolarPanel 10+. The design is similar to the preceding 5/5+ series, except that you get a pair of five-watt panels doubling the output. This unit has a 3,000mAh battery for improved post-sunset charging levels, along with a USB charging port and micro-USB for manual recharging. The exterior coating on this new model is made of softer, more tactile material that spans both panels across the hinge area, which allows the two sides to fold in or out. When they’re not sipping at the sun’s rays you just snap the corners together to keep them closed.

The standalone Charge Series of rugged battery packs are on the horizon, but there’s no exact release date yet. They’re encased in stainless steel with charging slots along the top and will arrive in three sizes: 10Wh, 20Wh and 40Wh. More detailed specs have yet to be provided, but the smallest is similar in size to a lighter, with the largest a bit wider than a deck of cards. They have more heft that you’d usually find in portable batteries, but they’re built for rough-n-tumble activities.

After some delays, the previously announced BaseLantern and BaseLantern XL are scheduled for an April 15th release (although you can pre-order now). Both products have the same exterior, however the standard BaseLantern has a 7,800mAh battery, while the XL model offers 12,000mAh. Both units have two USB charging ports, a micro-USB for recharging and two SiteLight ports for expanding your lighting setup. There’s a separate control for the SiteLight output, so you can dim those independently. The design is compact with a bit of heft, measuring 5 x 5 x 1.73 inches (or about the size of a sandwich) with two fold-out stainless steel legs to raise it off the ground. It’s IPX4 splash resistant, so a quick shower is fine, but I would avoid leaving this out all night in the pouring rain, just to be safe.

The most useful feature here is the introduction of a mobile app to control the lighting and set up the proximity feature. You get white or full-color LED lighting up to 500 lumens, with adjustable settings for brightness and warmth (for plain white). If solid colors don’t float your boat, pre-sets give you the option of running the light as a strobe, pulse or just chill with smooth transitions across the color spectrum. While the lights are bright and there’s a wide color gamut, they are edge lit and it’s not exactly the same output you’d get from a Philips Hue type bulb. These are multi-faceted, however, and can easily find a spot in your home environment to add a splash of color or light up a park picnic as easily as a campsite.

The BaseLanterns support Bluetooth LE, which lets you remotely power them up with the app and also set up proximity controls to shut the light down as you leave and/or back on when you return. After having this at my desk for a while, I can tell you that the proximity control works pretty well, surprising me a bit each time after switching on when I sit back down. The application also lets you view the remaining battery life for your BaseLantern, calculating the time in hours and minutes based on your current output set up, which is a special and useful treat.

With either BaseLantern, the PowerLite or any USB power source (using BioLite’s new USB to mini adapters) you can host the various hangable lighting options released today. Along with the original SiteLight pods, you can now string the SiteLight Mini and SiteLight XL to further illuminate your surroundings.

The SiteLight Mini is a holiday-like string of four LED lights with 10-feet of trailing cable, to give you some distance when setting up. When you’re packing up, they conveniently snap into each other like a centipede. The SiteLight XL is a collapsable ball-shaped diffuser with LED lights inside, which helps to spread illumination without any troubling glare. The 15 feet of cable on the XL gives you additional flexibility for placement, possibly on a tree branch above. When it’s time to break down, the XL is a twist and a press away from being a compact bundle (although it may take a few tries to perfect it). All these lights can be daisy-chained together with additional units to fill the area with light — even better if you use the USB adapter and a battery to free yourself from cabling to a centralized lamp.

The majority of the new releases are available today on BioLite’s website, including the CampStove 2 ($130), SiteLight Mini ($20), SiteLight XL ($30) and SolarPanel 10+ ($130). The BaseLantern ($100) and BaseLantern XL ($130) will ship on April 15th, and the rugged trio of Charge Series batteries ($25 to $60) should arrive in the coming months.

Facebook testing AI that helps spot suicidal users

Pointing out that suicides happen every 40 seconds and are the second leading cause of death for young people, Facebook has unveiled new tools to help prevent them. While it already has self-harm prevention features, they rely users to spot and report friends’ problematic posts. The company is now testing AI tech that can detect whether a post “is very likely to include thoughts of suicide.” It can then be checked by the company’s Community Operations teams, opening up a new way for worrying posts to be discovered.

Facebook’s AI is also helping users report friends’ problematic posts. Using pattern recognition, it will make “suicide or self injury” reporting options more prominent so that a user’s friends can find them easily. Facebook said, however, that the AI detection and reporting options, either by friends or Facebook employees, is just a “limited test” in the US for now.

Facebook has also created new Messenger tools in collaboration with the Crisis Text Line, the National Eating Disorder Association, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and other organizations. That’ll let at-risk users or concerned friends contact knowledgeable groups over chat either directly from the organization’s page or via Facebook’s suicide prevention tools. The Messenger program is also in the testing phases, but Facebook will expand it “over the next several months” so that organizations can ramp up to increased call volumes.

Finally, the social network has integrated suicide prevention tools into Facebook Live. If users see a troubling live post, they can reach out directly to the person and report it to Facebook at the same time, as shown above. It will “also provide resources to the person reporting the live video to assist them in helping their friend,” it wrote. Meanwhile, the person sharing the video will see resources that let them reach out to a friend, contact a help line or see tips.

“Some might say we should cut off the livestream, but what we’ve learned is cutting off the stream too early could remove the opportunity for that person to receive help,” Facebook Researcher Jennifer Guadagno told Techcrunch.

Source: Facebook

Target Returns iPhone SE Stock Ahead of Apple’s Rumored March Event

Target this week instructed its stores to return a number of iPhone SE models to Apple by today, March 1, according to a company memo obtained by MacRumors.

iPhone SE devices that are to be returned include six unlocked 16GB and 64GB models in Gold, Silver, Rose Gold, and Space Gray, and two Sprint models.

An anonymous employee informed us that her Target store had not received iPhone SE stock since before the iPhone 7 was announced in September 2016.

While there are many possible reasons for Target to send back iPhone SE stock, such as poor sales of select models, the move comes just days or weeks before Apple’s rumored March event, where a 128GB iPhone SE may be announced. However, no other hardware changes have been rumored.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said an iPhone SE refresh is unlikely in the first half of this year, so fans of Apple’s lower-priced smartphone shouldn’t set their hopes too high about a second-generation model yet. The original iPhone SE, which starts at $399, was introduced in March 2016.

Even without a full refresh, one possible scenario is that Apple could begin selling the iPhone SE in 32GB and 128GB capacities, doubling the storage space of the current 16GB and 64GB models, going forward.

Related Roundup: iPhone SE
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