Pay for your next pizza without ever leaving Telegram

The latest update to messaging app Telegram has added a couple of welcome features to the platform that presents itself as a secure alternative to WhatsApp. The first enables users to record minute-long videos to send to one another instead of having to type out their feelings using boring old words. Telegram is boasting that sending these clips will be much faster than other services, since the video is compressed and transmitted while you record.

As part of Telegram’s new push into video, the company has launched a new feature, Telescope, to enable public broadcasts. If you have fans, and want to address them directly, you can record a video that anyone can see — even if they’re not on Telegram. All anyone has to do is head over to a public URL based on your public channel name to keep in touch with your latest update to your adoring public.

Telegram’s also getting into the mobile payments game with Payments for Bots, that lets you compensate bots for various services rendered. The transactions are being handled by Stripe in the US, with more providers coming online for other countries and regions in the coming days. RazorPay, for instance, will enable the service in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, while Yandex Money will do the same job in Russia. The platform also works with ApplePay, and Telegram is enabling bot developers to build commerce products quickly and without prior approval. If you’re wondering, yes, the feature has existed in other places before: Facebook implemented a very similar system on its platform late last year.

Rounding out the new feature list is Instant View, a new way of reading linked websites in a similar way to Google’s AMP and Facebook’s Instant Articles. If you share an article with someone else, they’ll be able to read a version presented in a “uniform and easily readable way,” with a clean, text-heavy layout. This works even if the source website hasn’t been optimized to work with mobile devices, and should load fast too, since a copy of the text is stored on Telegram’s servers.

Source: Telegram, (2), (3)

London airport to use ‘digital’ air traffic control tower

London City Airport will be the first in the UK to replace a traditional air traffic control tower with a “digital” one. A new, 50-metre tower will be built in the middle of the airport’s long-stay car park, overlooking the runway, with 14 cameras and two custom pan-tilt-zoom cameras. The combined 360-degree footage will then be fed to a facility in Swanwick, Hampshire, where NATS, the UK’s lead air traffic control provider, is already based. Operators will then monitor the live video on 14 HD screens, positioned in a circular formation to replicate a conventional tower.

Airport management says the digital version will give controllers better oversight of the runway. All of the cameras offer close-up views and the two pan-tilt-zoom cameras can magnify up to 30 times. Staff will also have an audio feed from the airfield and radar readings to help them manage takeoffs and landings. The screens will also overlay important information, such as weather, flight numbers and aircraft call signs, to improve operator awareness and speed up decision making. The hardware, supplied by Saab Digital Air Traffic Solution, is already being used at Örnsköldsvik and Sundsvall airports in Sweden.

Construction of the “digital” tower will begin later this year and is scheduled to be completed in 2018. A year of testing and training will follow, before a full switchover in 2019. Until then, the existing air traffic control tower will operate as normal. “With London City Airport’s plans to grow and an existing tower which is reaching the end of its operational lifespan, this cutting edge, proven technology future-proofs London City Airport’s air traffic control for the next 30 years and beyond,” Declan Collier, the airport’s chief executive said.

Via: Insider

Source: London City Airport

Medium is making audio versions of its best blog posts

Minimalist blogging platform Medium is expanding into audio. Readers who have a $5 per month subscription can now listen to stories published by fellow members, as well as those hand-picked by Medium staff. As TechCrunch notes, more than 50 stories have an audio version at launch, and more will be added over time. It’s a small number, however each one has been recorded by a professional voice artist, rather than a robotic text-to-speech service. You’ll find them at the top of articles, both on the web and in Medium’s mobile apps, with some basic playback controls.

Audio stories join exclusive articles, ad-free reading and offline access as Medium membership perks. It’s an unusual offering because you’re supporting a platform and many different writers and publishers, rather than a single entity like The New York Times. Back in January, Medium chief executive Ev Williams called ad-driven media a “broken system” that “doesn’t serve people.” The comments were made in a post confirming 50 job cuts and a move away from its own ad products. Its future now depends on subscribers, however earning them will be no simple task.

Via: TechCrunch

ICYMI: The evolution of car safety and a tiny search and rescue robot

Today on In Case You Missed It: While we’re all focused on cars becoming autonomous and electric, automakers have also been making important advancements in safety. No where is that more apparent than in a collision between a 1998 Toyota Corolla and its 2015 counterpart conducted by New Zealand’s ANCAP. The safety advisory slammed the two vehicles into each other head first. It’s impressive to see the difference between 2015 model with its mostly intact cab and the car built in 1998 which is so mangled there’s a good chance the person behind the wheel would not have survived.

Meanwhile, while you usually associate search and rescue with people in yellow vests and dogs, researchers at UC San Diego have created a tiny robot that walks by inflating and deflating the bladders in its legs. By removing mechanical parts from the appendages, researchers believe it would be good for squeezing in and out of small spaces to help find survivors of a collapsed building.

As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @strngwys.

A new ‘Life is Strange’ game is in the works

The episodic, time-bending teenage drama of Life is Strange is coming back for a second season. Developer Dontnod Entertainment confirmed the news in a brief YouTube video, but said little about the premise or when it will be released. “We’ve been working since the release of the boxed version last year on a new Life is Strange game, with the Life is Strange team, and we cannot wait to share more with you,” Luc Baghadoust, executive producer teased. The original game has now passed the 3 million mark, which no doubt helped with the decision to green-light a sequel.

The original Life is Strange revolves around Max Caulfield, a photography student living in the fictional town of Arcadia Bay. She discovers the ability to rewind time and is soon swept up in a mystery concerning her classmates and the faculty at Blackwell Academy, a school specializing in science and the arts. It’s a narrative-driven adventure game that serves up basic puzzles through a dynamic time travel mechanic. Pulling the trigger reveals a meter with dots that represent pivotal points in time — release at one of these and you’ll have the option to step in and change something.

It’s a brilliant coming-of-age story filled with interesting characters and messy, believable relationships. Admittedly, the dialogue can be a little rough, but the underlying emotions always manage to shine through. A sequel could continue Max’s story or focus on an entirely new set of characters. A different time in Arcadia Bay, perhaps, or another city altogether. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too long to find out.

Source: Life is Strange (Tumblr)

Facebook Signs Deals With ESL and MLB in Ongoing Streaming Video Push

After its first sports-related streams went live early last year, focusing on soccer and hockey, Facebook this week has made inroads into two new categories that will bring fans of eSports and baseball both live and on-demand content (via The Wall Street Journal).

Facebook already had deals with five eSports teams who published live and on-demand videos to the platform, but this week the company made a bigger deal with ESL, originally known as the Electronic Sports League, an organizer of eSports competitions. For those unfamiliar, eSports coverage follows players throughout a variety of competitive-focused video games, most popularly including titles like StarCraft II, Counter-Strike, League of Legends, and Overwatch, among others.

In a blog post announcing the deal, ESL confirmed that fans will be able to watch all IEM and ESL One events in up to six different languages, and a few national championship and online leagues, on ESL Facebook pages. The partnership is also bringing an exclusive new weekly show to Facebook that will allow viewers to comment and interact with the video stream while “highlighting up and coming players.”

In total there will be 30 hours of weekly ESEA Rank S streams, a weekly half hour show hosted by Mark “Boq” Wilson, and more coming down the line. The broadcasts will start in June with the Counter-Strike-focused Rank S matches, and eventually grow to include videos of player interviews, competition commentary, and more all streamed on Facebook.

Currently, the most popular destinations for ESL-backed matches are Twitch and YouTube. Notably, the deal with Facebook is said to not interfere with ESL posting and streaming on other platforms simultaneously. Still, Facebook is said to be looking to build an “ecosystem” of game streams that convince gamers to tune into the social network over its live streaming rivals.

Facebook Inc. is paying professional videogame teams and others in the esports industry to post videos on the social network, part of a shift in strategy to deliver more-premium programming to the company’s nearly two billion monthly users.

Under the deals signed with Facebook, esports partners must produce a minimum number of hours of video for the social network, and in most cases the partners are allowed to simultaneously publish to rival platforms such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

In addition, Facebook and Major League Baseball have announced a deal of their own that will bring 20 live-streamed Friday night MLB games to Facebook during the 2017 season, located on MLB’s Facebook page. The games will be free for any United States-based Facebook user, and the first game will broadcast tonight, May 19, with the Colorado Rockies and Cincinnati Reds facing off.

Facebook has long been pushing into video content, from setting the groundwork by testing autoplay videos with sound in its mobile app, to most recently gearing up to debut original TV shows directly within the social network. Over time, Facebook’s move to more “premium” video content is said to gradually gain precedence over live and recorded video from users.

People scrolling through Facebook’s news feed are more likely to watch polished videos with audio turned on, making them potentially lucrative vehicles for ads, analysts say. Such content increasingly will appear in news feeds over off-the-cuff live videos from users, as Facebook wants to be seen as a hub for long-form video.

Streaming and on-demand video is becoming an area of interest for other social networks besides Facebook, with Snapchat recently being rumored to launch a collection of 3-5 minute TV shows within its mobile app. Twitter has been the home of sports, news, and entertainment video streams for a while now, and most recently revealed plans to launch a full, always-on network of news shows in partnership with Bloomberg.

Tag: Facebook
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Ford Brings CarPlay to 2016 Vehicles With SYNC 3 Update

Ford today released a SYNC 3 software update that adds CarPlay and Android Auto support to its 2016 model year vehicles.

Ford said customers with Wi-Fi-enabled vehicles can set up their vehicle to receive the update automatically. SYNC 3 version 2.2 can also be downloaded from the Ford Owner website and installed with a USB drive, or customers can visit any Ford dealership to have the update process completed for free.

Last summer, Ford made CarPlay and Android Auto available in all of its 2017 vehicles with SYNC 3. At the time, it promised it would bring CarPlay and Android Auto to its 2016 model year vehicles by the end of the year, and while it missed that target by about five months, the update has now arrived.

In late 2015, Ford retroactively added Siri Eyes Free support to 5 million 2011-2016 model year vehicles.

CarPlay brings Maps, Phone, Messages, Music, Podcasts, and a number of third-party apps like Spotify to a vehicle’s dashboard. Apple’s in-car software can be controlled with Siri and a vehicle’s built-in controls for convenient access to common iPhone features. It’s compatible with iPhone 5 and later.

Related Roundup: CarPlay
Tags: Android Auto, Ford, Ford SYNC
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Android O’s revamped notifications will anticipate your every need

Why it matters to you

Overwhelmed by notifications? Not to worry — Android O gives you greater control over them than ever.

Buzzing alerts and annoying vibrations are the bane of any smartphone user’s existence, but Google’s addressing the problem in the next version of Android. At Google’s 2017 I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California, the company laid out a vision for notifications that reorder intelligently and automatically, based on priority.

New to Android O is notification snoozing. After dragging a notification to the right-hand side of the notification shade, a clock-shaped icon appears — tapping on it brings up a list of time increments. Tapping one schedules  the alert to appear later.

Android O implements “attention-based sorting” — in essence, new hierarchies of alerts that Android collates by importance. It’s divided into four major categories: Major Ongoing, People to People, General, and By the Way.

• Major Ongoing notifications, the highest-ranked notifications, are for high-priority tasks like turn-by-turn navigation and music playback controls.
• People-to-People notifications include alerts from messaging apps. They’re ranked more highly than others, and they expand up to to three lines of text — giving you a preview of emails, texts, and other messages.
• By the Way notifications show a single line of text that can be expanded with a tap — like a weather or traffic alert. They don’t appear on the lockscreen.
• General notifications is a catchall for notifications that don’t fit into the other three categories.

The new notifications framework dovetails with another new Android O feature: Channels. They’re custom categories of notifications from specific apps that include a set of behaviors, like vibrating or triggering a ringtone.

Google used an airline app as an example. One of the app’s channel might include flight updates and fare alerts, while another, separate channel might show rewards points reminders.

In Android O, you can swipe to see the name of the channel in the notification pane, and switch off the ones you want. Alternatively, you can hop into a notifications settings screen that shows the app’s name, a shortcut to the app’s storage settings, a toggle that blocks all of the app’s channels, and a list of the app’s channels.

Beyond notification categories and channels, Android O makes it easier to see which alerts need your attention. Animated dots over app icons indicate new messages, emails, or other content. And developers can color notifications manually (otherwise the background changes based on app content — music controls show album artwork, for example).

The onus is on developers to implement all these features, of course, but Google’s doing its part to spur them along. Starting with Android O, notifications and notification channels will become mandatory — developers who target the latest software development kit must tap into the new systems.

Here’s your first look at the Meizu M5c

Meizu’s M5c is all set to make its debut shortly.

Meizu’s upcoming phone in the budget segment will be the M5c. An anonymous source shared a screenshot of the device’s official listing on Meizu’s website with us. The non-final version of the listing doesn’t list the specs, but it does give us a look at the design of the phone as well as the color options — black, blue, red, pink, and gold.

In terms of design, the M5c doesn’t look all that different from the M5, and the naming convention suggests it could be a more affordable variant of last year’s budget offering with more color options. There’s no timeframe for when we’ll see the M5c, but an official unveil shouldn’t be too far away.

BlackBerry KEYone is now up for pre-order at Rogers

Rogers is the first carrier to kick off BlackBerry KEYone pre-orders in Canada.

The BlackBerry KEYone is launching in Canada on May 31, and Rogers is now taking pre-orders of the device. You’ll be able to pick up BlackBerry’s latest phone for $679.99 CAD outright, or for zero down on a two-year Premium+ Tab plan.

Bell and Bell MTS are slated to kick off the pre-orders for $699.99 CAD, with SaskTel and Telus also expected to stock the KEYone sometime later today.

There’s plenty to like with the KEYone, including the full QWERTY keyboard, Android 7.1.1 Nougat complemented by BlackBerry’s suite of apps, a Snapdragon 625 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 32GB storage, microSD slot, 12MP camera, 8MP front shooter, and a 3050mAh battery.

If you’re in the market for a phone with QWERTY keys, the KEYone is your best option. From the Android Central review:

On its own, the KEYone is a pretty good phone. It’s also the best phone with a keyboard you can buy. The gulf comes from the fact that no one else is doing what BlackBerry Mobile is doing, and no company comes close to offering the combination of features, performance, battery life and a physical keyboard.

See at Rogers