n7player – a music player than even more demanding listeners will love (review)

Ever since I can remember I’ve been a fan of music. Actually I like to say I’m a being made of music, because music has always followed me around throughout my existence. I have a varied taste and go throw periods when I like to listen to post-rock a lot, followed by weeks when my playlist is dominated by deep-house or techno.

That’s why I’ve always had a music player app installed on my phone. And since there is a myriad of options available in the Google Play Store, I tried a number of them. Which brings us to the app I’m going to review today. It’s simply called n7player and it’s an intuitive, easy to use music playing app I really enjoyed using lately.

Setup

Just download the app for free from the Google Play Store. Once installed on your device, n7player will automatically scan your phone and populate the app interface with the albums/tracks it finds. It can recognize mp3, mp4, m4a, ogg, wav, 3gp, mid, xmf, ogg, mkv, flac and acc and will display the tracks by artists, albums, tracks or genres. I prefer to view them by Albums especially since the app also shows the accompanying Album Art.

Impressions

The app is quite easy to use and plentiful in customization options. However, some features are locked and you’ll have to pay if you want to take advantage of them – for example, changing the skins of your music player.

To get started, find the track you want to listen to and just tap Play.  If the tunes don’t come out sounding the way you’d like, the good news (especially for more demanding users) is that you have an (10 band) equalizer option at your disposal. Among other things like letting you boost the Bass or Treble via separate controls, allows you to create your customized pre-amp, channel balance, audio normalization and surround effects. The app also brings features like repeat once, repeat all, shuffle plus easily accessible current queue of tracks.

As I mentioned above, your tracks show up categorized as artists, albums, tracks or genres. You can easily filter what you see, meaning you can hide certain albums you don’t want to see at the moment or limit your music library to a few specified folders.

There’s also a tag cloud layout, which enables you to see all the tracks listed under a particular genre by virtue of a single tap. A built-in tag editor is also available, so you can organize your library in no time. Tagging a song is supe easy. Just tap on the album, then the respective song and find the “Edit tag” option in the menu that pops up. From the same menu you can add the tune to a certain playlist or add to queue or view the lyrics.

Have a headset you’d rather listen to music with? N7player will respond to the headset’s controls allowing you listeners to skip to the next song or go back to the previous one.

When it comes to visual customization the app lets you do a few things. With n7player you can select a notification theme or preferred widgets and change your lockscreen. Still you should keep in mind that most of the free customization options are simple toggles and you won’t be able to do things like change fonts or layouts. For a different skin, you’ll need to pay a small fee ($3.49).

It’s also worth mention that if you connect your n7player to ToasterCast you will be allowed to stream music on external devices via Chromecast/AirPlay/DLNA.

Conclusions

For me, the n7player worked like a charm. I loved the modern, clean user interface, but more (free) visual customization options would be very welcomed. As for features, I was quite satisfied with what the app offered especially the equalizer option.

HTC celebrates Vive’s one-year anniversary, offers one-day $100 discount

Why it matters to you

If you’re in the market for a HTC Vive, purchasing the headset on the first anniversary of its release could save you $100.

HTC has announced plans to celebrate the retail release of the Vive headset, which launched on April 5, 2016. On Wednesday, April 5, the company will offer a $100 discount to anyone purchasing a new Vive, bringing its cost down to $700 from its standard price point of $800.

In addition to the one-day price cut, HTC is also planning to offer up a free game to celebrate the hardware’s first anniversary. All owners will be able to download a free copy of Arcade Saga, an action game created by HTC’s internal development team 2Bears Studios.

More: HTC’s Vive Group Edition bundle comes with 10 headsets, but no controllers

Arcade Saga uses the headset to put a new spin on three real-world sports; pinball, table tennis, and archery. The game features a massive 84-level campaign mode that’s peppered with challenging room-scale boss fights, as well as head-to-head online multiplayer for gamers with a more competitive streak.

Vive owners will be able to download Arcade Saga for free on April 5 via the brand new Viveport platform. Set to launch on April 5, Viveport will give subscribers unlimited access to five games from a selection of more than fifty titles for a monthly fee of just $7.

HTC certainly seems to be eager to use the one-year anniversary of the Vive’s release to attract some new customers, and to direct existing owners to its new subscription service. Now that the company’s headset has established a beachhead in the consumer market, it makes sense that HTC would combine efforts to promote the hardware with attempts to publicize compatible software.

The early part of 2017 has seen HTC’s biggest rival in terms of virtual reality hardware, Oculus, distracted by ongoing legal action. Now would be an optimal time for HTC to try seize control of the VR market, and promotional efforts like this celebration of the Vive’s one-year anniversary certainly seem to be a step in that direction.

Harvard chemists design a ‘bionic leaf’ that can make its own fertilizer

Why it matters to you

Homemade fertilizers like this one may help small farmers in developing regions find food security.

A team of chemists at Harvard University want to combat hunger by developing bionic leaves, which can make fertilizers from natural resources like bacteria, water, air, and sunlight. Led by Daniel Nocera, the team will present their work at this week at the National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The global population is growing by about 83 million people each year, according to a 2015 report by the United Nations. Although the growth rate continues to slow, experts estimate some 9.7 billion people will walk the Earth by 2050, many of whom will live in poverty and without food security.

Nocera Lab / harvard University

“When you have a large centralized process and a massive infrastructure, you can easily make and deliver fertilizer,” Nocera said in a press release. “But if I said that now you’ve got to do it in a village in India onsite with dirty water — forget it. Poorer countries in the emerging world don’t always have the resources to do this. We should be thinking of a distributed system because that’s where it’s really needed.”

Nocera’s plan is to design artificial plants that can use available resources to increase crop yield. Six years ago, while working at MIT, Nocera built an artificial leaf that mimics photosynthesis and has the capacity to power an entire house. Last June, he announced the “bionic leaf 2.0,” which can create energy more efficiently than natural growing plants.

More: Bionic Leaf project creates natural fish food out of thin air — sort of

“The fuels were just the first step,” Nocera said. “Getting to that point showed that you can have a renewable chemical synthesis platform. Now we are demonstrating the generality of it by having another type of bacteria take nitrogen out of the atmosphere to make fertilizer.”

Nocera’s new system works by using a bacteria to make bioplastics from hydrogen and carbon dioxide, which it then stores as fuel. Once the bacteria is placed in soil, it pulls nitrogen from the air to create crop-fertilizing ammonia.

As demonstrated through five crop cycles, vegetables grown with the bionic leaf’s fertilizer weigh 150 percent more than control crops. Nocera and his team now hope to refine their system to allow small farmers in developing regions to create their own fertilizer.

Google tweaks the Pixel C tablet to be a little more like its Pixel phones

Why it matters to you

Google hasn’t forgotten about the Pixel C. A recent update brings its features in line with the company’s Pixel phones.

The Pixel C, Google’s answer to Microsoft’s Surface and Apple’s iPad, never really caught on — a year and a half after the tablet’s launch, sales are stagnant. But fortunately for buyers who took the plunge, Google hasn’t forgotten about it. Last week, the search giant began rolling out an update, Android 7.1.2, that brings the tablet’s features in line with Google’s Pixel-branded smartphones.

The multitasking menu has been tweaked slightly. Now, it’s more like the Pixel’s interface — when you switch apps, you get an animated grid-based system that shows the apps running in the background. Unfortunately, it’s limited to the eight most-used apps — unlike on the Pixel, scrolling through additional apps doesn’t appear to be possible.

More: Google reaches for the stars with rumored do-it-all laptop running new “Andromeda”

That’s not all that’s changed. Android 7.1.2 introduces new navigation menus close in styling to the Pixel and Pixel XL — they’re now all white, and the home button is a solid circle. The settings menu has adopted the blue color scheme of Google’s phones. And the Pixel Launcher, Google’s proprietary home screen app, now comes pre-installed with an app drawer and weather widget optimized for the tablet’s screen size.

Android 7.1.2 will roll out broadly in the coming weeks.

This could lay the groundwork for a broader transformation. Rumor has it that Google is developing a new operating system, Andromeda, that will merge its Chrome OS platform with Android. A few of the rumored features include notification syncing between Android devices enhanced with machine learning — reportedly, notifications will only display on a device that’s actually in use.

As recently as September 2016, two manufacturers were said to be working on Andromeda devices. Google is rumored to be planning to unveil the operating system this year, potentially alongside new devices.

One of those devices could be a follow-up to the Pixel C, according to Android Police. It’s the result of a collaboration between the Pixel, Android, and Chrome OS teams, and is reportedly thinner than Apple’s MacBook Air at 10mm and 12.3 inches. A backlit keyboard’s said to house a “glass trackpad” that has force detection similar to the MacBook, and an Intel Core M3 or i5 processor reportedly powers that tablet’s operating system.

Other rumored specs include 32 or 128GB of internal storage, 8 or 16GB of RAM, two USB Type-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a range of sensors, stylus support, stereo speakers, quad microphones, and a battery that lasts 10 hours.

The device will be aimed at the enterprise market, as rumor has it. Its starting price is $800 (within striking distance of Microsoft’s $900 Surface Pro 4), and it is expected to launch sometime between April and July 2017.

Google tweaks the Pixel C tablet to be a little more like its Pixel phones

Why it matters to you

Google hasn’t forgotten about the Pixel C. A recent update brings its features in line with the company’s Pixel phones.

The Pixel C, Google’s answer to Microsoft’s Surface and Apple’s iPad, never really caught on — a year and a half after the tablet’s launch, sales are stagnant. But fortunately for buyers who took the plunge, Google hasn’t forgotten about it. Last week, the search giant began rolling out an update, Android 7.1.2, that brings the tablet’s features in line with Google’s Pixel-branded smartphones.

The multitasking menu has been tweaked slightly. Now, it’s more like the Pixel’s interface — when you switch apps, you get an animated grid-based system that shows the apps running in the background. Unfortunately, it’s limited to the eight most-used apps — unlike on the Pixel, scrolling through additional apps doesn’t appear to be possible.

More: Google reaches for the stars with rumored do-it-all laptop running new “Andromeda”

That’s not all that’s changed. Android 7.1.2 introduces new navigation menus close in styling to the Pixel and Pixel XL — they’re now all white, and the home button is a solid circle. The settings menu has adopted the blue color scheme of Google’s phones. And the Pixel Launcher, Google’s proprietary home screen app, now comes pre-installed with an app drawer and weather widget optimized for the tablet’s screen size.

Android 7.1.2 will roll out broadly in the coming weeks.

This could lay the groundwork for a broader transformation. Rumor has it that Google is developing a new operating system, Andromeda, that will merge its Chrome OS platform with Android. A few of the rumored features include notification syncing between Android devices enhanced with machine learning — reportedly, notifications will only display on a device that’s actually in use.

As recently as September 2016, two manufacturers were said to be working on Andromeda devices. Google is rumored to be planning to unveil the operating system this year, potentially alongside new devices.

One of those devices could be a follow-up to the Pixel C, according to Android Police. It’s the result of a collaboration between the Pixel, Android, and Chrome OS teams, and is reportedly thinner than Apple’s MacBook Air at 10mm and 12.3 inches. A backlit keyboard’s said to house a “glass trackpad” that has force detection similar to the MacBook, and an Intel Core M3 or i5 processor reportedly powers that tablet’s operating system.

Other rumored specs include 32 or 128GB of internal storage, 8 or 16GB of RAM, two USB Type-C ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a range of sensors, stylus support, stereo speakers, quad microphones, and a battery that lasts 10 hours.

The device will be aimed at the enterprise market, as rumor has it. Its starting price is $800 (within striking distance of Microsoft’s $900 Surface Pro 4), and it is expected to launch sometime between April and July 2017.

Amazon Cash lets you trade your paper bills for online credit

Why it matters to you

Ever want to buy something on Amazon with physical bills? Amazon Cash makes that possible.

If you’ve ever wished you could pay for goods and services on Amazon in cash, good news: Now you can. On Monday, the internet retailer launched Amazon Cash, a new service that allows customers to add hard-earned dollars to their account at participating brick-and-mortar retailers.

If you stop in a CVS Pharmacy, Speedway, Sheetz, Kum & Co, G&W Fresh Market, Family Fare Supermarket, VG’s Grocery, or the one of the other more than 10,000 participating retailers, you’ll be able to take advantage by heading to a register. Once you’ve pulled up Amazon Cash by navigating to Amazon.com/cash or searching for “amazon cash” (without quotes) in the Amazon mobile app, you’ll get a reusable bar code that can be added to the Wallet app on iOS or as a home screen shortcut on Android. Hand the cashier the bar code and the amount of cash you want to deposit (between $15 and $500 in a single transaction), and you’re good to go.

More: Amazon retail stores could use augmented reality to sell furniture, appliances

Money added via Amazon Cash is available as soon as you checkout at the register — you’ll be alerted with an email, text, and push notification. There aren’t any fees, and the funds can be used anywhere on Amazon’s site. You can check your balance by heading to the Manage Gift Card section of the Amazon mobile app.

Previously, adding cash to an Amazon balance wasn’t easy. You’d have to buy an Amazon Gift Card in a designated amount or add cash to a prepaid balance card.

More: Amazon’s futuristic grab-and-go store has reportedly hit a snag

Amazon’s after a demographic that’s wary of forking debit and credit card information over online. As many as 85 percent of all transactions globally (and 40 percent in the United States) are carried out in cash, particularly transactions involving small amounts of money. And according to researchers at IDC, so-called “cash customers” account for 27 percent of consumers.

The retailer’s not the first to target the market. In April 2016, PayPal added the ability to deposit cash at CVS, Rite Aid, and 7-Eleven locations via the mobile app for Android and iOS. Unlike Amazon, though, PayPal charged a $4 deposit fee for the privilege.

Fans get Bixby up and running on Galaxy S7, though not without some problems

Why it matters to you

Samsung’s new personal assistant may never make it to older devices in an official capacity, so this may be the best chance users have at trying out Bixby without buying a new phone.

Still enjoying your Samsung Galaxy S7 but wish you could get in on the Bixby craze? Enthusiasts over at XDA Developers might have you covered, as they have Samsung’s new personal assistant partially up and running on last year’s flagship.

To make it happen, you will need to install the APK files for the Galaxy S8’s launcher, then Bixby. After activating both in the settings and a quick reboot, you should have both ready to go. Although many respondents on the forum appear to be using S7 devices, theoretically any Samsung phone running Nougat should be able to also run Bixby.

More: Boring Bixby isn’t a reason to buy the Galaxy S8, but it is a reason to use Google Assistant

However, it must be said that there are a couple of caveats. First, you are in effect overwriting stock applications on your device with software that was never intended for it, and that carries some risk — so definitely think twice before giving this a shot. Second, your mileage may vary. While many users have reported successful installs, a decent amount also have not. Without the S8’s dedicated Bixby button, it appears all you get from installing the APK is the Google Now-like Bixby screen with cards.

While Hello Bixby appears to be operational for some, Bixby Assistant doesn’t seem to be working for anyone. It could be that installing the application files alone aren’t enough to get the full Bixby experience on older Samsung phones and that rooting and modifying the phone’s operating system may be necessary. If that is the case, the community will no doubt be hard at work until it has discovered a better method.

The possibility of Bixby running on existing Samsung devices is an enticing one, considering there is no indication the company plans to enable the assistant through future updates. The S8 was obviously designed from the outset with it in mind, and although Samsung would likely rather use Bixby as a selling point to encourage prospective buyers to drop hundreds on brand new hardware, it is also true that the Bixby experience as the company has envisioned it relies heavily on that little button on the side of the S8.

Samsung may not be comfortable with porting the assistant to older products that lack the dedicated key. Then again, Bixby just doesn’t seem ready for prime time yet — so perhaps we are not missing out on much.

Security expert: Samsung’s Tizen OS is riddled with vulnerabilities

Why it matters to you

Tizen isn’t the most secure operating system on the block — and that’s bad news for Samsung.

Tizen, Samsung’s open-source operating system, is riddled with vulnerabilities. That’s according to Motherboard, which spoke with an Israel-based Tizen security expert.

Samsung’s Tizen contains as many as 40 unknown bugs, or zero-days, that could allow a cyber criminal to hack devices without needing to physically access them. “It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen,” Amihai Neiderman, a Kaspersky Labs researcher, told Motherboard. “Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it.”

More: South Korea’s antitrust watchdog concerned Google meddled with Samsung’s Tizen

One security flaw involving TizenStore, Tizen’s app store, could let a hacker pack malicious code with a software update. TizenStore takes measures to ensure that only verified software is installed on Tizen devices, but those measures can be overridden. “You can update a Tizen system with any malicious code you want,” said Neiderman.

Another flaw exploits buffer overrun, a condition that occurs when the space to which data is being written is too small for the data. Tizen’s protections against it are insufficient, Neiderman said.

And Tizen failed to use encryption for secure connections when transmitting certain data. “They made a lot of wrong assumptions about where they needed encryption,” Neiderman told Motherboard.

More: Samsung launches a new contest to attract developers to its nascent Tizen platform

The problem stems in part from unwieldy code. Neiderman told Motherboard that much of the Tizen code base is old and borrows from previous Samsung projects, including Bada, a discontinued mobile phone operating system. “You can see that they took all this code and tried to push it into Tizen,” he said.

That’s bad news. Samsung, in a long-running effort to reduce its reliance on Google’s Android operating system, is shipping a growing number of devices with Tizen.

“Tizen is going to be Samsung’s next biggest thing. We might see the new Galaxies running Tizen, it could happen that soon. But right now Tizen is not safe enough for that.”

More: Samsung hopes to entice developers to build apps for Tizen TVs with update

Tizen powers more than 30 million of the company’s smart TVs, tens of millions of Samsung Gear smartwatches, and prototypical smart washing machines and refrigerators. And it’s in smartphones as well. Samsung has Tizen running on phones in countries like Russia, India, and Bangladesh, and plans to have 10 million Tizen phones in the market this year.

Samsung told Motherboard that it’s working with Niederman to address the bugs. “We are fully committed to cooperating with Mr. Neiderman to mitigate any potential vulnerabilities. Through our SmarTV Bug Bounty program, Samsung is committed to working with security experts around the world to mitigate any security risks.”

Security expert: Samsung’s Tizen OS is riddled with vulnerabilities

Why it matters to you

Tizen isn’t the most secure operating system on the block — and that’s bad news for Samsung.

Tizen, Samsung’s open-source operating system, is riddled with vulnerabilities. That’s according to Motherboard, which spoke with an Israel-based Tizen security expert.

Samsung’s Tizen contains as many as 40 unknown bugs, or zero-days, that could allow a cyber criminal to hack devices without needing to physically access them. “It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen,” Amihai Neiderman, a Kaspersky Labs researcher, told Motherboard. “Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it.”

More: South Korea’s antitrust watchdog concerned Google meddled with Samsung’s Tizen

One security flaw involving TizenStore, Tizen’s app store, could let a hacker pack malicious code with a software update. TizenStore takes measures to ensure that only verified software is installed on Tizen devices, but those measures can be overridden. “You can update a Tizen system with any malicious code you want,” said Neiderman.

Another flaw exploits buffer overrun, a condition that occurs when the space to which data is being written is too small for the data. Tizen’s protections against it are insufficient, Neiderman said.

And Tizen failed to use encryption for secure connections when transmitting certain data. “They made a lot of wrong assumptions about where they needed encryption,” Neiderman told Motherboard.

More: Samsung launches a new contest to attract developers to its nascent Tizen platform

The problem stems in part from unwieldy code. Neiderman told Motherboard that much of the Tizen code base is old and borrows from previous Samsung projects, including Bada, a discontinued mobile phone operating system. “You can see that they took all this code and tried to push it into Tizen,” he said.

That’s bad news. Samsung, in a long-running effort to reduce its reliance on Google’s Android operating system, is shipping a growing number of devices with Tizen.

“Tizen is going to be Samsung’s next biggest thing. We might see the new Galaxies running Tizen, it could happen that soon. But right now Tizen is not safe enough for that.”

More: Samsung hopes to entice developers to build apps for Tizen TVs with update

Tizen powers more than 30 million of the company’s smart TVs, tens of millions of Samsung Gear smartwatches, and prototypical smart washing machines and refrigerators. And it’s in smartphones as well. Samsung has Tizen running on phones in countries like Russia, India, and Bangladesh, and plans to have 10 million Tizen phones in the market this year.

Samsung told Motherboard that it’s working with Niederman to address the bugs. “We are fully committed to cooperating with Mr. Neiderman to mitigate any potential vulnerabilities. Through our SmarTV Bug Bounty program, Samsung is committed to working with security experts around the world to mitigate any security risks.”

It sounds crazy, but NASA is seriously growing space crystals to help make better drugs

Why it matters to you

Space-grown crystals may help chemists discover more effective drugs faster.

Crystals grow differently in space than they do on Earth, and astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) have been tasked with finding out why. In a series of experiments, the ISS scientists will try to determine why crystals often have fewer imperfections and bigger sizes when grown in microgravity, research that may help accelerate drug development here on Earth.

In order to efficiently design drugs, chemists must first understand the structure of the proteins the drugs are intended to interact with. The problem is that proteins are tiny and have to be crystallized to reveal their 3D blueprint. By growing higher-quality crystals in space, researchers may be able to unravel the complexities of some of these proteins and adapt their crystal-growing methods to create better blueprints.

Scientists are unsure why crystals grow with fewer imperfections in outer space, though most theories attribute the quality to slower growth. One of the ISS experiments (The Effect of Macromolecular Transport on Microgravity Protein Crystallization — or LMM Biophysics 1) will investigate these theories.

The other experiment (Growth Rate Dispersion as a Predictive Indicator for Biological Crystal Samples Where Quality Can be Improved with Microgravity Growth — or LMM Biophysics 3) will try to discern which crystals are best grown in space, since past research has shown that only certain proteins benefit from microgravity.

More: Rift-exclusive ‘Mission: ISS’ simulates life on the International Space Station

“Some proteins are like building blocks,” Edward Snell, LMM Biophysics 3 primary investigator, said in a press release. “It’s very easy to stack them. Those are the ones that won’t benefit from microgravity. Others are like jelly beans. When you try and build a nice array of them on the ground, they want to roll away and not be ordered. Those are the ones that benefit from microgravity. What we’re trying to do is distinguish the blocks from the jelly beans.”

By distinguishing blocks from jelly beans and determining why microgravity effects growth, the hope is that these ISS experiments will accelerate drug discovery by allowing for better protein mapping.