Scrolling mobile web pages in Safari is about to get a whole lot smoother

Why it matters to you

Scrolling across iOS and Safari should be much more uniform in the future, but not everyone is happy with Google’s hand in it.

Apple is making changes to the way the Safari mobile browser operates in order to make scrolling smoother, regardless of the website being viewed. As it stands, certain sites can scroll a little differently depending on whether they use Google’s accelerated mobile pages (AMP) system.

Although Google’s AMP system is supposed to speed up page navigation and scrolling, it’s not something everyone is happy with. Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber bashed the system on a Hacker News post. This lead to a member of the AMP team commenting about the scrolling disparity in Safari. They claimed to be aware of the issue and that they had actually spoken to Apple about it. Better yet, the Cupertino, California-based company listened.

Instead of taking the AMP team’s suggestion that it make scrolling on AMP sites the same as those on regular sites, it’s pledged to do the opposite. As Engadget explains, the reason is that Google’s AMP scrolling in Safari is actually far closer to how scrolling works in other aspects of iOS, due to a deliberate design decision in Safari made some time ago.

That decision is no longer relevant, so Apple is now looking to make scrolling faster and smoother across all websites, regardless of their AMP implementation.

This is likely to be a mixed bag of an announcement for iOS users. While a unified scrolling experience is much less confusing for the average user and AMP has its fans, there are others who don’t like the way it operates. AMP currently breaks a few features on Safari, such as auto-scrolling at certain taps and automatically hiding top and bottom bars.

Certain developers don’t like the way that Google has control of such an important part of the iOS ecosystem either, but with Apple planning to make AMP-like changes to Safari, they may have to accept that moving forward.

Apple is expected to implement the new, AMP-like scrolling officially in the next Safari mobile release.

How (and when) to clear app cache or data on Android

Apps sometimes can misbehave. If it happens to you, here’s something to try.

Update May 2017: This post has been updated to be in line with newer versions of Android.

Every Android smartphone has an application manager that you can get to through the settings menu. It’s usually in the top level somewhere, though it can vary a little by phone. But once you get to it, you’re at the heart of the matter. This is where you can see every application that’s installed on your phone or tablet. And it’s a handy place to clean things up a bit should they go wonky. Here’s what’s up:

Clearing the app cache

As you use applications, they start storing files for reference later. These files are stored in an app “cache.” For instance: When you’re using the Android Central app, it’ll save images and other pieces of the stories you’ve read so that they don’t have to be downloaded each and every single time the app needs them. This saves you time and data.

But maybe you want to clear an app’s cached data, either to regain some used space or to try to fix a misbehaving app. This is where you can do it. Just tap into the app, and then tap the “Clear cache” button.

The next time you use the app it will download everything it needs from the internet like it did the first time you used it. Clearing cached data does not clear other data like logins or saved games.

This often fixes things, especially when an app pulls its content from a website that always changing and adding more content. If this doesn’t work, move to the next step.

Clear app data — or resetting an app

Clearing app data is a little more drastic. You’re wiping the cache, but also clearing any and all settings that go along with that app. You’re basically starting that app over, from scratch, and it’ll behave as it did the first time you installed it. This is generally a last resort type of thing. If you clear app data on, say, the Facebook app, you’ll need to log back in. If you clear data on a game you’ve been playing, you’ll be back at the beginning, as if you’d never played it. (And let’s hope that game is properly saving your place to the cloud.)

Next, open the app and sign in or do anything else you need to get started using it. With no “old” data in place — either stored settings or cached — you’re essentially running the app for the first time again. See if your problem is resolved and if so you’re golden.

One nice thing to do if this fixes any weirdness with an app is let the developer know. It’s mighty hard to keep track of versions and data conversion and everything else about making and publishing a great app and they’ll appreciate the heads up if you found a bug that affects everyone.

When to clear cache or data …

So when should you clear an app’s cache manually? Chances are you’ll never need to. But should an app start to “feel” sluggish or otherwise start misbehaving, this is where I’d start. Clear the cache.

And should an app really go haywire — or if you just want to start it from scratch — you can go all out and clear its data and start over from the beginning. Just tap the “clear data” button. You’ll get a warning asking if that’s really what you want to do. Confirm that, and you’ve reset the app to scratch.

HTC U11 hands-on: MrMobile’s new squeeze

By now you’ve seen the HTC U11 hands-on treatment: the smudge-prone but beautiful backplate; the conventional face; the interface that reacts to a squeeze as well as a swipe. But thanks to some canceled flights and some overzealous NYC security guards (long story) I got to spend a little longer with the HTC U11 than I might have, and as a result I was able to produce a slightly more in-depth hands-on than would otherwise be possible. That’s thanks to Android Central, whose HTC U11 review unit I took for a spin around Mountain View during Google I/O, so be sure to give Android Central’s HTC U11 Preview a look once you’re through watching MrMobile’s hands-on … and stay tuned for much more coverage on the smartphone you can squeeze in the weeks ahead!

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Netatmo Weather Station is long on looks, longer on data

It was time to update my home weather station from something functional but ugly to something decidedly more modern. Netatmo has fit the bill nicely.

I was going to show you my old weather station — a venerable beast from Oregon Scientific, which is quite good at this sort of thing. But alas, as soon as I took it off the wall it disappeared to wherever Phil’s Old Stuff disappears. (Basically an older, less sexy version of this.)

So. Time for something new. Something connected, and something definitely more modern.

A quick search of ye olde internet consistently returned offerings from Netatmo. They haven’t changed a lot over the years, which actually is a good thing in this case. So that’s the direction my credit card was pointed.

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The basics: the standard Netatmo Weather Station comes a relatively small indoor sensor, and an outdoor sensor. They look, well, like silver cans. The indoor one measures temperature and humidity and sound level and carbon dioxide levels. The outdoor sensor does temperature and pressure and humidity. They connect to your smartphone, and connect to each other. Note that there’s no external display here — you have to use a phone or tablet or computer or something to actually get data.

There are two additional modules that can be connected — a rain gauge, which I grabbed because Florida, and a wind gauge, which I didn’t get because I don’t care quite that much about just how breezy it is.

Setup was as simple as you’d expect for this sort of thing — you just follow the instructions in the app. I’ve used it with Android and on iOS — but there’s also an honest-to-goodness Windows Phone app as well. The web interface may be my favorite of the bunch, actually, full of features and nicely designed. And finally I’ve settled on the third-party app Baratmo for my Mac menu bar.

So now I have access to all my weather information — inside and out. And I can get to it from anywhere, and in more detail than what even my $250 Nest thermostat provides. (By the way: Netatmo is a Works with Nest device, but you can tie it in via third-party services like IFTTT.)

What’s missing? Not a whole lot. I do miss having a single place at home where I can see all this info at one time. For as much as I loathed that aging LCD display, it did its job without complaint. So I’m hoping someone builds a skill for it to work with the upcoming Amazon Echo Show. And I’d like a little more historical data — how much rain did I get in the last week versus just the last day.

But strictly from a data standpoint? This has been a good purchase.

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Galaxy S8 iris scanner unsurprisingly bypassed with picture of an eye and a little time

Our expectations of what it takes to get into our phones have been set too high.

The Galaxy S8’s iris scanning is quicker and more accurate than when it debuted (for a short period) on the Galaxy Note 7, saving us from using the fingerprint sensor every time we want to unlock the phone. But it doesn’t guarantee your phone can’t be accessed by an unwanted person, as the Chaos Computer Club has easily demonstrated.

The CCC shows how it could simply take a photo of a person’s eye — with up to a 200 mm lens from 15 feet away, it says — and then print it out on typical paper, cover the paper with a wet contact lens to mimic an eye and instantly gain access to the phone. With a sufficient amount of time and complete access to the phone, you could theoretically unlock any Galaxy S8 with iris scanning enabled.

Despite Samsung’s claims that iris scanning is nearly on-par with a fingerprint sensor’s security and far stronger than face recognition, this shouldn’t come as any surprise. But in the CCC’s own article on the iris scanner bypass, it links to its defeating of Apple’s TouchID fingerprint sensor years ago. It has been demonstrated numerous times that other fingerprint sensors can be bypassed with a certain level of trickery and time — so how worried should you be?

Each option you have for unlocking your phone comes with trade-offs and potential risks. For most of us out there who simply want to keep our private information locked up should our phone be lost or stolen, a fingerprint sensor or iris scanner is sufficient. It’s easy enough to use that we’ll actually keep it enabled 100% of the time, while being difficult enough to deter the most-common threats to the physical security of the device.

The average criminal looking to steal a phone isn’t printing a high-resolution image of your eye.

The average criminal or sleuth looking to steal a phone and unlock it for a quick factory reset and sale isn’t taking a high-resolution photo of our eyes and printing it out. Not only would they be far better off looking over your shoulder in public to see what your backup PIN or pattern is instead, they’d just as easily throw your stolen phone in the trash when they realize it couldn’t be unlocked and quickly resold. But the most important thing at that point is that all of your data is safe, because they weren’t going to be willing to go through the process to get a scan of your irises or fingers to unlock it.

Yes, your Galaxy S8’s iris scanner can be defeated in the right circumstances — those circumstances include a targeted attack that requires time and complete physical access to the phone. But that doesn’t mean you need to move away from iris scanning or be unnecessarily worried about the security of your data when using it.

Only roughly two-thirds of modern Android phones are using lock screen security at all — we need to get that number a lot closer to 100 percent before we start nitpicking about which security form we’re using and how easy it is to defeat.

Google Allo is the best way to send love notes without even trying

This one quick trick made possible by Assistant is a great reminder of the inherent power that exists in Google’s little messaging app.

Admittedly, it was a bummer that Google failed to make any mention in the I/O keynote of what else Allo might have in store for it. There wasn’t even a tease for the much anticipated desktop app coming to fruition, nor was there much hope that SMS integration would come and take the chat app out of its rut.

Overall, the lack of a unified messaging strategy remains one of the bigger frustrations of being a faithful user of the Google ecosystem. And it’s particularly excruciating when you consider how much of Assistant’s abilities are going to waste as Allo struggles to proliferate.

Google Assistant’s abilities are going to waste as Allo struggles to proliferate.

Google I/O offered a tiny glimpse at what’s coming to Allo’s future, though, at least with regards to its announcements for Assistant. With the news that the Machine Learning platform will be certifiable in French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese this summer, and that it’s officially coming to the iPhone, there is a bit of hope that this translates to more people discovering the usefulness of a chat app with Assistant’s abilities baked in. Who wouldn’t want a future where you could remotely turn off the Nest thermostat inside a group chat with the other members of your household, for example? Or where you could simultaneously make last minute dinner arrangements?

I’ve recently learned a new trick that became a helpful remind of why Assistant is worth bundling into a messaging app. You can program Assistant to actually assist in scheduling daily interactions with another person. It’s fun to set up if you’re using Allo to communicate with your spouse, your roommates, or a few of your closest friends, for instance. And though it’s such a simple gimmick, the fact that it was so easy to do makes me yearn for Allo’s ubiquity even more.

How to set up Allo to send daily love notes

Whether you want to send your loved ones a daily affirmation, or you’re simply into Nicolas Cage’s most famous movie lines, you can effectively subscribe so that these things show up at the same time every day in a preferred Allo chat window.

In the Allo conversation of your choice — in this case, I chose the thread between me and my husband — activate the Assistant and type in Send me daily love quotes. Assistant will offer up a few different time slots for your choosing. You can even edit the subscription time later if you like.

You can set up daily love quotes with your loved one (left) or jump straight into the daily Oprah affirmations with Allo.

What you program doesn’t have to be a love quote — it can be utterings form anyone or anything, as long as Google can pinpoint it. In a separate chat with just the Assistant in Allo, I looked up Oprah quotes and then typed in Send me daily. Every day at 11 a.m., I get a message from Allo with inspiring messages from Oprah, like, “My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with.” This is the future, people. Embrace it.

In all seriousness, this silly little trick to keep love quotes going between my husband and I is enough of a reminder of the kind of untapped power that lives inside Google’s wannabe messaging app. It has quite a bit of work ahead of it before it’s as robust as Facebook Messenger or Apple’s iMessages, but let what it does now be a reminder of what will make it worth using once SMS integration or a desktop client finally come to.

Allo: Everything you need to know

Google announces the fourth class of its Launchpad Accelerator program

Startups from a variety of regions will convene later this summer at Google’s headquarters in San Francisco.

Google’s Launchpad Accelerator program is a boon for those smaller startups and development teams in parts of the world where Silicon Valley doesn’t have as much reach. The company has announced that it’s officially solidified its fourth-round roster to learn and work alongside a bevy of Google mentors in its San Francisco offices later this summer. Beginning July 17, Google will assist the Launchpad Accelerator participants from various parts of the world — including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America — in learning about its products and how to best integrate them into their respective applications.

If you’re curious about who will be in the trenches, there’s a full list of participating startups on display in the official blogpost and you can download some of their apps from the Play Store right now. Some of the Launchpad Accelerator apps include Piggipo, an app that helps people in Thailand manage and monitor their credit spending; GAMEE, a social gaming app from the Czech Republic; and Paystack, which helps set up businesses in Africa to accept digital payments.

After the two-week period, participants will receive equity-free support and credits for Google’s various products. They’ll also continue to work closely with the company once they return back to their home country for six months.

Google’s $5000 Jamboard collaborative whiteboard is now available in the U.S.

This is the future of office collaboration — but it’ll cost you.

Google’s enterprise-focused smart whiteboard, called the Jamboard, is now available for those in the U.S. who are ready to increase collaboration and move beyond smelly dry erase markers. The Jamboard at its core is a 55-inch 4K touchscreen panel powered by an NVIDIA Jetson TX1 board, focused on super-fast touch response with low-latency stylus input as well.

The Jamboard hooks into G Suite accounts to pull in files and documents from Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, letting everyone work and draw together at the same time. Everything is saved constantly to the cloud, so you can pull in members to collaborate remotely, or move between Jamboards and computers seamlessly.

The Jamboard is a smooth $4999 to buy, but that’s really just the starting price. If you want to use it on a rolling stand rather than mounting it on a wall, that’ll set you back another $1199 (or $1349 after September 30). There’s also a yearly service fee, which comes in at $300 if you sign up early (again, before September 30) or $600 per year thereafter. That’s of course above and beyond the fees you’re paying for your G Suite enterprise app platform.

$5000 is a small price to pay if it dramatically improves collaboration at work.

That’s a whole lot of money when looking at it from the point of view of an individual, but for even a small business that could be just a drop in the bucket of your yearly technology budget. It only takes a couple minutes of video from Google to show just how much something like the Jamboard could improve collaboration by removing the friction of moving data between platforms and having it visualized in a room.

You’ll have to be in the U.S. to buy a Jamboard today, but it’ll be coming to the UK and Canada this summer with an expansion further in the coming months.

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You won’t empty your wallet for studio-grade headphones with the Status Audio HD One’s at $30

Our friends at Thrifter are back again, this time bringing you studio-grade headphones for much less!

Wireless headphones have grown in popularity lately, but wired headphones are still invaluable for many since they don’t need to be charged, offer a more reliable connection and more. Over-the-ear headphones can range in price from around $10 to over $300, depending what you are looking for. If quality is the main concern for you, but you don’t want to go broke buying a new set of headphones, we’ve got just the deal for you. Status Audio, a company that specializes in high-quality affordable headphones, is currently offering its HD One wired headphones for just $29.92 with coupon code THRFTR32.

So, you’ve never heard of Status Audio? Don’t worry, these headphones have a 4.3 out of 5-star rating at Amazon with over 700 reviews, and the company’s other headphones, the CB-1, maintain a 4.8 out of 5-star rating with over 250 reviews. With the HD One’s you’ll get:

• THE STATUS AUDIO ADVANTAGE – No logos, no celebrities, just sound. Join the 100,000+ customers enjoying premium sounding, beautifully constructed headphones at a fraction of the price of the big name competition.
• SLEEK AND MINIMAL – Prefer not to be a walking billboard? The HD One headphones are 100% free of logos and branding, and are coated in a rubberized matte finish that doesn’t show fingerprints or reflect light. Perfect for a minimal look or for customizing.
• STUDIO GRADE – 40mm drivers deliver an exciting sound signature that responds to all genres of music. Deep, articulated bass with a sizzling high end. Exceptional detail and clarity throughout the entire frequency spectrum. This is the big, crisp sound you’ve been looking for.
• FIT AND FINISH – On-ear design that is lightweight and comfortable for long-term use. A unique foldable design collapses into a small form factor, ideal for travel and commuting. Substantial, yet highly portable, these are your go-to headphones for your morning commute and throughout the day.

You don’t have to take our word for it that you’ll be impressed with the quality of these, though. Try them for yourself now for just $29.92, which happens to be the best price we’ve tracked on them, and let your ears show you just how good they are.

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For more great deals be sure to check out our friends at Thrifter now!

Twitch adds video speed controls to slow down that amazing play

Now that Twitch is making a bigger deal out of pre-recorded videos, it’s competing more directly with services like YouTube — and that means adding the kind of playback controls you take for granted elsewhere. Accordingly, the service has introduced a reworked video settings menu that adds speed controls. You can slow all the way down to 0.25X to relive a game-winning moment, or ramp up to 2X if you’re skipping through the slow parts.

The revamp also streamlines access to the most common settings and groups some that were otherwise scattered. These additions aren’t likely to change your viewing habits in the near future, of course. Twitch may be diversifying beyond games, but the odds are still high that you’ll head elsewhere if you’re watching non-gaming clips. However, you could see this as laying groundwork. The more Twitch expands its catalog, the more people it will attract beyond Twitch’s core gamer audience. It needs to be ready when those newcomers arrive, and even little features like this could help win them over.

Source: Twitch (Medium)