Your crucial travel partner this summer is none other than Google Maps
Why it matters to you
Figuring out how to get somewhere is only half the battle — you have to figure out where you want to go first. Google Maps is here to help on both counts.
It’s never too early to start planning your summer vacation (Memorial Day is just around the corner, after all), and here to lend a helping hand is Google Maps. Not only will the app tell you how to get places, it’ll tell you what places you should plan on getting to. By examining historical Google Maps data, the team over in California’s Silicon Valley is bringing you the top trending places of the season across the country. So whether you want to go to the buzziest scenes or stray far from the madding crowd, Google Maps has you covered with its series of lists.
For example, if you know that you’ll want a boozy beginning to your summer, you can check out Google Maps’ summer bars list, which is rife with watering holes in New York City. There are bars are outside, on patios, on roofs, and even on the water, so come prepared to party.
On the other hand, if you’re more interested in an educational summer, you can venture into Google’s edutainment list, which highlights the museums, aquariums, and zoos you ought to see throughout the United States.
But whether you’re learning or letting loose, you’re sure to work up an appetite, which you can satiate with the restaurants list, which features dining locales from fast casual to seafood buffets to pizzerias. And best of all, most of these restaurants come with pretty idyllic views, as do the beaches on the trending summer beaches list from Google Maps.
No matter where you choose to go, you can go with friends (or have them meet you there) using Google Maps’ Location Sharing feature. And now that you can use the service even if you’re offline, you can totally go off the grid without losing your sense of direction. And Google Maps also comes with automatically translated reviews of various hot spots, so you’ll be in the know no matter what language you speak.
So regardless of what your plans are for the summer, make sure you have Google Maps in your back pocket, and you’ll be fully prepared.
Apple and Nokia resolve their patent spat, sign multiyear licensing agreement
Why it matters to you
The new partnership will give Apple continued access to Nokia’s thousands of hardware and software patents, many of which are used in Apple’s most-popular devices.
Apple and Nokia have agreed to bury the hatchet — at least for now.
After Nokia sued Apple and filed several complaints against the company in both Germany and the United States earlier this year, alleging that Apple infringed upon Nokia patents, the two parties have settled out of court. Reuters reported that on Tuesday, the lawyers for the companies announced that they had inked a new patent license agreement and business deal.
“(The agreement) moves our relationship with Apple from being adversaries in court to business partners,” Nokia’s chief legal officer Maria Varsellona said in a statement.
As part of the agreement, Nokia will receive an upfront cash payment and higher patent revenues from Apple starting from the current quarter, after the previous patent license contract between the companies expires. That’s good news for Nokia, which cut its annual forecast in December for patent and brand licensing in the absence of a new deal.
“We are pleased with this resolution of our dispute and we look forward to expanding our business relationship with Nokia,” Apple chief operating officer Jeff Williams said in a joint statement from the companies.
No fewer than 32 patents were involved in the lawsuit, related to everything from the display to user interface to software.
In a press release earlier this year, Nokia noted that it has invested over $120 billion in research and development over the last two decades, and owns tens of thousands of patents that cover technology found in smartphones, tablets, computers, and other electronics. The company is alleged that Apple had infringed upon some of those patents.
Apple complained that it was being overcharged for the patents.
“Since agreeing a license covering some patents from the Nokia Technologies portfolio in 2011, Apple has declined subsequent offers made by Nokia to license other of its patented inventions which are used by many of Apple’s products,” the company wrote in its release.
“Through our sustained investment in research and development, Nokia has created or contributed to many of the fundamental technologies used in today’s mobile devices, including Apple products,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, Nokia’s head of patent business, in a statement. “After several years of negotiations trying to reach agreement to cover Apple’s use of these patents, we are now taking action to defend our rights.”
The lawsuits were filed with the Regional Courts in Dusseldorf, Mannheim, and Munich in Germany. In the U.S., the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas fielded the complaints. Nokia was also in the process of filing further actions in other jurisdictions, the company said.
Article originally published in March 2016. Updated on 05-23-2016 by Kyle Wiggers: Added in details that the patent dispute has been resolved.
Best app deals of the day! 6 paid iPhone apps for free for a limited time
Everyone likes apps, but sometimes the best ones are a bit expensive. Now and then, developers put paid apps on sale for free for a limited time, but you have to snatch them up while you have the chance. Here are the latest and greatest apps on sale in the iOS App Store.
These apps normally cost money and this sale lasts for a limited time only. If you go to the App Store and it says the app costs money, that means the deal has expired and you will be charged.
Juice
This app pairs your iPhone with your Apple Watch more effectively than ever before. All complication types are supported and you can pick up to three different display styles for each complication from the watch app.
Available on:
iOS
Direction Compass
This is the “must have” tool to locate yourself easily whether it be in a town/ city, while out hiking, on a boat, or more. The app itself is a compass that automatically orients itself.
Available on:
iOS
Phoenix Photo Editor
Phoenix is a powerful and fast photo editor with a lot of editing tools, and importing and sharing options. With Phoenix you will have all the freedom to customize your photos with pretty filters, effects, borders, and fonts.
Available on:
iOS
Willio
Create an event, and add the participants from your contacts. Then add a payment each time someone pays for the group. If the payment should not be split equally among the participants, you can specify specific shares or amounts.
Available on:
iOS
Illuminating Compound Interest
This app is an educational financial app that not only calculates your interest rates but also features plain English explanations of each compound interest calculation.
Available on:
iOS
TranslateSafari
The app is a Safari extension that translates and speaks aloud the entire web page of the Safari app. A must-have app to translate and speak aloud web pages of Safari.
Available on:
iOS
Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.K. may now take seats in the Reading library
Why it matters to you
If you’re a Prime subscriber based in the U.K., you can now take advantage of a rotating library of books and magazines at no extra cost.
Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.K. have finally been given access to the Prime Reading benefit that was introduced to the U.S. version of the service last year. Prime Reading offers a rotating selection of books and magazines for no added fee over the cost of a subscription.
This added incentive shouldn’t be confused with Kindle Unlimited, which is a separate subscription service offered by Amazon that grants unlimited access to a broad range of books, magazines, and audiobooks. Kindle Unlimited certainly boasts a more comprehensive selection, but Prime Reading is no slouch considering it’s a free bonus.
Prime Reading launched in the U.S. in October 2016, so it has taken a little while for the incentive to make its way across the pond. This isn’t particularly uncommon — despite Prime Video having been available in some form stateside since 2006, it wasn’t available in the U.K. until 2014.
However, Amazon should be praised for localizing the content with care, as the reading material available to customers in the U.K. is quite different from the selection available in the U.S.. This is particularly true of the list of magazines that are on offer, which includes the likes of Chat, Red, and BBC Gardeners’ World, according to a report from Engadget.
The fact that Prime Reading offers a selection of content that lends itself to the Kindle line of devices certainly plays into the wider Amazon ecosystem, but the incentive isn’t only available to users of the company’s proprietary eReaders and tablets. The Kindle app can be used to access the library across a wide range of devices.
Prime is a hugely important part of Amazon’s business model, so it makes a lot of sense for the company to continue to bolster the subscription service in all its key markets. Customer retention is key for a business like Amazon, and appealing Prime incentives such as this one help ensure that shoppers keep coming back.
Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.K. may now take seats in the Reading library
Why it matters to you
If you’re a Prime subscriber based in the U.K., you can now take advantage of a rotating library of books and magazines at no extra cost.
Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.K. have finally been given access to the Prime Reading benefit that was introduced to the U.S. version of the service last year. Prime Reading offers a rotating selection of books and magazines for no added fee over the cost of a subscription.
This added incentive shouldn’t be confused with Kindle Unlimited, which is a separate subscription service offered by Amazon that grants unlimited access to a broad range of books, magazines, and audiobooks. Kindle Unlimited certainly boasts a more comprehensive selection, but Prime Reading is no slouch considering it’s a free bonus.
Prime Reading launched in the U.S. in October 2016, so it has taken a little while for the incentive to make its way across the pond. This isn’t particularly uncommon — despite Prime Video having been available in some form stateside since 2006, it wasn’t available in the U.K. until 2014.
However, Amazon should be praised for localizing the content with care, as the reading material available to customers in the U.K. is quite different from the selection available in the U.S.. This is particularly true of the list of magazines that are on offer, which includes the likes of Chat, Red, and BBC Gardeners’ World, according to a report from Engadget.
The fact that Prime Reading offers a selection of content that lends itself to the Kindle line of devices certainly plays into the wider Amazon ecosystem, but the incentive isn’t only available to users of the company’s proprietary eReaders and tablets. The Kindle app can be used to access the library across a wide range of devices.
Prime is a hugely important part of Amazon’s business model, so it makes a lot of sense for the company to continue to bolster the subscription service in all its key markets. Customer retention is key for a business like Amazon, and appealing Prime incentives such as this one help ensure that shoppers keep coming back.
New houseplant wilting already? Grovio will make sure it never happens again
Why it matters to you
Grovio, a new smart indoor watering system, will have your houseplants blooming like never before.
Office and home flora brighten any room — not to mention reduce carbon dioxide, keep air temperatures down, and get rid of pollutants like benzene. But they can be a pain in the rear to care for. If you don’t find them a sunny window and an ideal humidity, it’s pretty much game over — you’ll be staring at wilting, browning leaves before long.
But there’s hope for folks without green thumbs in Grovio, a project from Concepter that aims to take the guesswork out of plant care.
There’s more to Grovio, a 11.8-inch-tall, 1-pound cylinder that connects to a tube and “pot module,” than meets the eye. It packs a light intensity sensor, moisture sensor, air temperature sensor, humidity sensor, and motion sensor that monitor up to three plants simultaneously. And it automatically waters plants according to their specific needs, dispensing tap water from a refillable reservoir (1,600 milliliters) to connected probes.
“When habitable conditions are not provided, it usually kills [plants] quickly,” Oleksandr Ivanov, Grovio’s chief product engineer, told Digital Trends. “That’s because your plants can’t talk and express directly what they need. They may need very careful and accurate watering. Some of them need more light, and some less. Air temperature and humidity are also highly important.”
It’s a hands-off affair if you want it to be. Grovio lasts for up to 45 days on a single water refill and four AA batteries, and adjusts watering rates based on plant type. But if you prefer to be hands-on with your greenery, Grovio’s “suggestions” mode will nudge you to make small changes that could help with growth. If Grovio detects that a plant is receiving too much direct sunlight, it’ll tell you to move it somewhere shadier.
Grovio’s smartphone app lets you get even more granular. It relays watering settings and current soil conditions for your horticultural pleasure. You can name plants, if you wish, and “interact” with them in a chatbot-like interface — if you name your African Violet “Johnny,” for instance, you’ll get a message from the personified plant when it’s “thirsty.”
Grovio isn’t compatible with smart home platforms like Samsung’s SmartThings and Apple’s HomeKit, but it works with voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. You can say things like, “Have you monitored my plant yet?” and you’ll get a response.
One thing Grovio can’t do is fine-tune settings for individual plant species, which Ivanov said would have stretched the company’s engineering resources too thin. “You have to build a database of thousands of plants,” he said. “It’s too much work.” Instead, Grovio will encourage users to send pictures of plants to support staff, who will recommend settings based on climatic conditions, genus, and other factors.
Grovio starts at $150. It launches on Kickstarter today for the discounted price of $90, and begins shipping to backers in November.
Huawei’s all-metal Honor 6A brings an iPhone-like design on the cheap
Why it matters to you
If it’s a small and inexpensive Android phone you’re looking for, Huawei’s stylish Honor line has got you covered.
Good, cheap phones aren’t easy to find. But phones that are good, cheap, and small are an even rarer commodity. Fortunately, Huawei’s budget Honor brand is looking to buck that trend.
The company announced the Honor 6A this week at an event in its native China. The phone features a 5-inch, 720p display and is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 430 system-on-chip. At the back, there’s a 13-megapixel camera featuring phase detection autofocus, and a fingerprint sensor located underneath. There is also a 5 megapixel front-facing camera, and the battery weighs in at a hefty 3,020mAh — generous capacity that is sure to help that 720p screen last a while on a charge.
Best of all, the Honor 6A starts at 800 yuan, or the equivalent of $116 in the United States. For that price, you get 2GB of RAM and 16GB storage. Spend a little extra, and for 1,000 yuan, or $145, Huawei will give you an extra gigabyte of RAM and twice the storage. The phone also accepts MicroSD cards up to 128GB.
In terms of software, Android 7.0 Nougat is on board, with Huawei’s Emotion UI (EMUI) in tow. If you don’t know, EMUI is Huawei’s Android skin, and it’s a pretty drastic change from the stock operating system. There’s no app drawer, for example, and many of the icons are reshaped into rounded rectangles — making it, on the surface, something of a hybrid between iOS and Android.
Because of the heavy customizations Huawei has made to the interface, system updates do tend to take a bit longer to arrive on the company’s devices. However, security patches shouldn’t suffer quite as much.
The iOS/iPhone relationship does bleed into the Honor 6A’s design as well. Looking at it from the front, with the screen off, Huawei’s budget offering is a dead-ringer for Apple’s flagships, save for the lack of a physical home button. In its place, you have the Honor logo. However, the overall shape, speaker cutout, camera and sensors up top, and the hint of shimmering aluminum along the edges mean that, from a distance, you’ll have a hard time telling it apart from Cupertino’s latest.
Fortunately, it’s available in a few colors the iPhone isn’t. You have your pick of silver, gold, pink, and blue — all with a white front. And it must be said, derivative or not, this is a good looking phone, with an all-metal unibody construction that stands out among other low-priced offerings.
The Honor 6A will be available from Chinese online retailers, like JD.com and Vmall, starting June 1. U.S. availability is unknown at this time.
How to prepare your HTC Vive for Star Trek: Bridge Crew
Is my Vive ready for Star Trek: Bridge Crew?
Star Trek: Bridge Crew, the hotly anticipated game that many VR and Trek fans have been waiting for forever is finally dropping May 30, 2017. The ability to sit on the bridge of the USS Aegis and work as a team with your friends on Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR is bound to be popular, but how can you get your Vive ready for what promises to be an authentic Trek experience? Here are a few tips to ensure your bridge station is as good as possible.
Read more at VR Heads!
Fixing Play Music: How Google can improve its streaming music service
How can Google Play Music improve? Let us count the ways…
I’m not exaggerating when I say this: Google Play Music is the first app I use every morning and it is the last thing I see before I put my phone to sleep at night. And no, that’s not just because Google Play Music is my alarm clock. Music is what keeps me sane during chaotic work days, and it’s what cheers me up when life inevitably happens. Google Play Music always has been my most-used app, and it’s changed a lot in since it launched in 2011.
Not all of those changes have been good, and there are more that still need to happen. Here are the biggest things still missing in one of Google Play’s most important services.
UI Overhaul
Four years ago, Google Play Music went from Holo blue/black to a more retina-searing orange/white. Ever since, Play Music has been adding and adding features without any major UI changes, which has lead to the app becoming a bloated mess.
The home page was the portion of the app to most recently receive an update, showcasing recommended albums, artists, and stations. I’m all for recommendations, especially the way Play Music’s keeping improving, but nine times out of 10, we’re not looking for recommendations, but are instead looking to pick up where we left off in our last playlist, or returning to that artist we were listening to this morning. Recents are a relegated to a button below the search bar and in the main menu.
The app is a bloated mess.
The main menu has ballooned over the years. Podcasts were added; Explore split into Top charts and New releases; Recents were added when Now Listening turned into recommendations. Want to open the app and go to a playlist that’s not in your recents? It’s at least three taps, to access a core feature of a music-playing app.
This overhaul extends to playback UI and playlist UI as well. The zoomed-in album art was originally meant to help fill the Now Playing screen, but let’s be real: it looks terrible. Give us that full square of album art. If Google wants to fill the rest of that space, make the controls bigger or space them further apart so that we don’t seek when we meant to Cast or thumbs down a track when we meant to fast-forward.
I’m not asking for Google to scrap everything and start completely over. I’m not asking us to go back to the old, simple layout, either — though I am going to ask for a dark theme ’til I’m blue in the face — but the current UI isn’t nearly as sleek and simple as it was pitched back at Google I/O 2013.
Device Policy Revisit
I accept having a device limit. I do. I even understand having a specific limit on phones, as much as it hurts someone like me who goes through a lot of phones. But the device policy on Google Play Music needs to be revisited for a few very important reasons.
- Your computer can be counted twice because both the web extension and Music Manager count as an activation. This means that if you want to download one song or a thousand, you need two different too that take a fifth of your account devices.
- Chromebooks can actually be counted more than that, as they can take a new activation every time you Powerwash them. I had a single Chromebook take up four activations at once when I was cycling between the different channels.
- Devices that can’t download/upload to your Google Play Library can still count against the ten device limit, like Android Wear 2.0 watches and Android TVs.
- Almost every device that ships Android has Google Play Music on it. There should not be a device limit on something that you have no choice in having. The first thing you do on your phone after setting it up should be something productive like syncing your text messages, not disabling Play Music before it activates itself.
That last one is important because you can theoretically get locked out of your own library. If you burn through your device authorizations with phones and tablets and watches and TVs, you could have ten devices and not have a way to upload new music or download what is already rightfully yours.
Let me repeat that: if you run out of device authorizations and de-authorizations, you can be locked out of downloading music you own.
So long as the de-authorization limit exists — a limit which is unheard of on any streaming service Play Music competes with — Play Music is going to be a service that we use while the Sword of Damocles hangs over our heads. Many of my co-workers at Android Central have sanely said screw this and moved on to other music streaming services, and other local music apps. I, myself, have a local music app that I keep handy for the phones on which I disable Google Play Music, because music is so important and I refuse to get caught by surprise.
Uploads/Downloads without a desktop computer
If we’re really living in a post-PC era where you can live on your phone and in the cloud, then I shouldn’t have to boot up my damn desktop just to add a couple of new songs that I bought on sale on Amazon, or that I had to buy on iTunes because of an exclusive, or that I was sent as a gift from a friend. I should be able to add them directly to my cloud library from my phone so that I can add them to playlists, rate them, and Cast them, because you can’t cast locally stored MP3s in Play Music. We shouldn’t need an old-looking and old-acting Music Manager. We shouldn’t need a Chrome extension.
So long as a song not being in your cloud library is considered a bad thing in Google Play Music, you need to be able to fix it right there in the app. And so long as there’s a chance of running out of devices and not being able to make room for more, any device you use needs to be able to download your library and let you get back what’s yours.
Gapless Playback
We’ve all been there: the music’s going strong, you feel the world drifting away as it overwhelms you. The passion, the elation, aaaaand- the song skips a second while Google Play Music goes to the next song. And that moment, that moment of elation… it’s tripped over itself and fallen face-first on the couch.
So many albums are gapless, and nothing will throw off the groove more than that second, second-and-a-half while Google Play switches off between tracks. I don’t know why Google Play Music haven’t implemented it as standard a feature as it is, even single-developer ‘indie’ music apps include gapless playback because they know how important it is. I don’t need five different crossfade settings, but gapless playback is long, long overdue, and it needs to come.
So, what are you still missing in Google Play Music? Want to upload from your phone while you’re out during the day? Want to ditch the pause in the middle of a ridiculously awesome gapless album? Are you just waiting for a dark theme and a way to set Google Play Music as your morning alarm without jumping through ridiculous Tasker hoops? Me, too, my musical friends… me, too.
Tired of Play Music? Play it somewhere else
How to prepare your Galaxy S8 for Google Daydream
The countdown to Daydream with a Galaxy S8 has begun, are you ready?
Samsung’s Galaxy S8 will soon be the only phone capable of using both forms of high quality mobile VR, so if you’ve been eager to see if the grass really is greener on the other side you’ll soon be able to see for yourself.
Just like the Gear VR, you need to do a few things to make sure your phone is good to go for Daydream. Here’s what you need to know!
Read more at VRHeads.com
AIVAnet 