Google selling select Pixel and Pixel XL cases at half-off

Save 50% on the “Pixel case” models from Google for either size Pixel while supplies last.

One of the first things you’ll notice when you take a new Google Pixel out of the box is that there’s a lot of glass involved. Unless you’re super careful and lucky, that means there’s a good chance you’ll scratch things up. Or even have a phone that looks like it stormed a beach during a war or something. Seriously, I don’t even.

Regardless, even tiny scratches that normal users can create are no fun. Because of this, most people want to put a case on their new Pixel. Google’s making this easier by putting the really nice “Pixel case” line on sale for half-off.

This is only for the Pixel case line. Not any live cases or Otterbox cases or anything else. It’s for both the regular Pixel and the Pixel XL, and the cases will set you back $17.50 each in either size. The available colors are gray, blue, green, peach, coral and clear. This only lasts until they run out, so hit the Google Store up right away to make sure you get the color you want.

See the Pixel case at Google

See the Pixel XL case at Google

Supreme Court rules sex offenders can use social networks

It’s understandable why governments would want to keep sex offenders away from social networks — you don’t want predators messaging their potential targets. Is an outright ban taking things a step too far, though? The US Supreme Court thinks so. As part of a ruling in a case where a college student preyed on an underage girl, the court has struck down a North Carolina law preventing sex offenders from visiting social internet sites that children might frequent. Simply speaking, the law was so broad that it violated free speech rights, disconnecting offenders from modern life.

If you aren’t on social networks, the court says, you frequently can’t interact with society in perfectly innocuous ways. You may chat with friends on Facebook, for example, or look for a new job on LinkedIn. Deny those to someone and you’re hindering their ability to exercise their First Amendment rights. How is an offender supposed to rehabilitate if you prevent them from accessing crucial websites for decades after they leave prison? It’s deliberate acts (such as looking up or contacting a target) that are the real crimes, not existing in the same virtual space.

The court adds that North Carolina’s law could easily be misinterpreted to include just about any commercial site with a social element and access for minors, such as Amazon or WebMD. However well-intentioned the law may be, it would be all too easy to toss an offender back into prison simply because they went shopping or researched symptoms.

The judges are aware that safety still has to be taken into consideration. Judge Samuel Alito is concerned that treating all sites as platforms for free speech risks making it difficult to block access to any site. Would you want a creep getting access to a teen dating site or a children-only forum, for example? It’s much harder to monitor kids online than it is at a playground or school, so some kind of restriction might help. However, both Alito and the court at large agree that any laws need to be specific enough that they address the actual threats, not just day-to-day internet use.

Via: AP (Business Insider)

Source: Supreme Court (PDF)

Google Play’s new feature for Samsung phones isn’t so exclusive

Google Play Music and Samsung have a history of exclusives, and now they may have debuted their best one yet. Android Authority reports that Google Play Music’s playlist New Release Radio, which is a personalized playlist of new release music with daily updates, has been made available exclusively to Samsung device owners over the last day or two.

Spotify’s personalized Discover playlists are incredibly popular; as of last year, over 40 million users had listened to almost 5 billion Discover Weekly songs. While this is a great new feature, it’s a little puzzling why Google wouldn’t want to make this playlist available to all subscribers, using it as a lure to bring in more listeners who currently use other services. It seems like a bad idea to make such a potentially popular feature exclusive only to a small percentage of Google Play listeners.

Or is it? There are reports on Reddit that users have been able to add the New Release Radio station to their libraries when using the Google Play web interface. One of our own Engadget editors tried this trick and was able to access the playlist on an iPhone, Android device and on the web. We’ve reached out to Google and Samsung on the exclusivity of this deal and will update when we have a comment.

It’s unclear what exactly is happening here, and whether the ability to access the playlist from non-Samsung devices is a bug or an intentional workaround for Google Play listeners. However, anything that helps users wade through the countless new music releases every week is welcome news, so here’s hoping that this playlist isn’t, in fact, a Samsung exclusive.

Via: The Verge

Source: Android Authority, Reddit

Time Warner is the latest broadcaster to ride Snapchat’s coattails

Snap seems to have no trouble scoring giant media deals. The social app creator has forged a $100 million, 2-year agreement that will have Time Warner making short-form original shows (around 3 to 5 minutes per episode) for Snapchat viewers. While it’s still too early to know what those shows will entail besides a variety of genres, Time Warner will make as many as ten shows per year. You can also expect to see a lot of related ads: the company has promised to buy promos for HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. content.

This isn’t Snap’s first major video deal by any stretch. It has arrangements with ABC, ESPN, NBC and numerous other networks. However, the sheer volume of shows could help. As Variety notes, Snap wants to go from premiering one new original episode per day to three by the end of 2017. It won’t get there through the Time Warner deal alone, but this is an important step. And there’s certainly motivation to hurry — Facebook is preparing originals that could compete directly for the attention of Snapchat’s young audience.

Source: Variety

Outlook for Mac adds features Office 365 already has

Outlook 2016 for Mac users are about to get a big update with some of the most requested features for the venerable Microsoft email program. You can now send your emails when you want with a new Send Later feature, use delivery and read receipts to make sure your emails are received and even create calendar events and tasks from your emails. You can also save your oft-repeated emails as templates to make sending them much faster, and Microsoft has simplified the account setup process.

The Send Later function is hidden under the little down arrow by the Send Email button and will be available to Office Insider Fast members now and Office 365 subscribers in July. All other new features should be ready for Office 365 subscribers right away, including the easier onboarding process, which automatically detects your email settings from your address so you don’t have to, and read receipts, which may be the bane of our existence, but seem to make business users pretty happy.

This brings Outlook 2016 for Mac up to parity with Outlook 2016 for Windows, which already has these features. In addition, Gmail users can so similar things with extensions and built-in features, as well. Goog’es business-flavored G Suite allows administrators to enable read receipts, third-party Boomerang can let you schedule your emails and the even your basic Gmail account can create Google Calendar events on the fly. Still, it’s got to be great to finally be able to schedule your emails or find out if they’ve been received when you’re using Outlook on the Mac.

Source: Office Blogs

Armani is the latest designer to take a chance on Android Wear

Emporio Armani is the latest fashion house to jump onboard the Android Wear bandwagon. The company unveiled its first touchscreen smartwatch collection at Milan Fashion Week recently, with singer Shawn Mendes as the spokesperson for the line. The new series is part of Fossil Group’s 300 smartwatch models slated for release this year, and will be available on September 24 through Armani’s website, stores and participating retailers.

Like the Fossil Group’s other fashion-focused Android Wear smartwatches, the Emporio Armani collection will have its own customizable watch faces to complement the brand’s physical aesthetic. Armani will also offer eight interchangeable straps to go with the timepiece. Otherwise, the watch seems like a typical Android Wear 2.0 device, meaning it will track your activity, alert you to your smartphone notifications and let you summon Google Assistant. It uses a Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, which is also common among the latest crop of Android smartwatches, as well as a round AMOLED display.

Emporio Armani doesn’t have pricing to share for the touchscreen smartwatches just yet, but given its existing hybrid smartwatches (non-touchscreen) cost between $200 and $375, it’s likely the new range will cost more. Whether the watches will be worth the price will depend on how well they’re built, and we’ll have to wait till they’re available to know for sure.

Source: Emporio Armani

Sony taps crowdfunding to deliver its kid-friendly coding kit

Sony’s answer to Lego Mindstorms is a robot-building kit called Koov. It’s the first product from Sony’s Global Education division, and it’s meant to help kids learn to code while they have fun building robots. The company has put the design kit on Indiegogo to gather some $100,000 in crowd-sourced funding while getting valuable feedback on the kits, which include more than 30 hours of kid-friendly coding instruction and multi-colored blocks with sensors and actuators. The project currently sits at almost $5,000 in funding; kits are set to ship out to backers in November.

Like Lego’s Mindstorms and WeDo, the Koov project aims to help kids develop “21st Century Skills” like creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum areas. Experiential projects like these help children learn the processes behind things like building robots so they can learn while they interact with physical and digital systems.

The Indigogo kits — which come in variously-sized packages — come with colored blocks in seven different shapes, along with cool sensors and actuators like an accelerometer, infrared sensor, push switches, LEDs, motors and more. Kids will use the Koov app on iPad, Windows or Mac to manage the whole process. Once kids have learned how to build robots and code in fun behaviors, they can share them in a secure social space. The little coders can check out other robots and download the code, enabling them to remix ideas, which will extend the learning even more. According to Sony, there are already thousands of people sharing and remaking robot recipes in Japan and China.

Source: Indiegogo

Jaguar thinks the Gorillaz app is a good way to find engineers

Jaguar Land Rover has teamed up with an unlikely partner to recruit its next wave of engineers — the animated band Gorillaz. The auto company will be using the band’s mixed reality app to challenge aspiring team members, fast-tracking the best performers through recruitment.

Gorillaz released the app earlier this year as an interactive lead-up to their album Humanz. Today, the app launched a new Jaguar Land Rover recruitment area, which will test prospective applicants in two parts. For the first, users will assemble the Jaguar I-PACE Concept, the company’s upcoming electric sports car. The second task involves an alternate reality game featuring a series of code breaking puzzles. The company says they need 5,000 recruits this year.

Noodle, the totally fictional lead guitarist for Gorillaz, was named a Jaguar Land Rover ambassador last year and was quoted in a statement from the company saying, “Can you crack the code? Put your skills to the test!! Hey, maybe you might land yourself the most BADASS job you can imagine. Dare to win!”

Alex Heslop, head of electrical engineering at the company said in the statement, “As the automotive industry transforms over the next decade, fuelled by software innovation, we have to attract the best talent and that requires a radical rethink of how we recruit.”

Those interested in competing can download the app now and I dare you not to dance while watching the recruitment video below.

Source: Jaguar Land Rover

Hasbro’s Gaming Crate delivers new board games every quarter

There are a plethora of subscription boxes to choose from these days, including nerdy ones like Loot Crate and Minecraft, kid-friendly boxes like the one from Nickelodeon, science-based subscriptions from MEL Chemistry and makeup assortments like Birchbox. Now even venerable toy company Hasbro has decided to jump into the fray with a a subscription service of its own, called the Hasbro Gaming Crate. It comes in both kid-friendly and more adult-oriented flavors and will send you three games every three months for $49.99.

Both of the featured games this first month have something you wear while you play. The first Family Crate will have an exclusive VR board game, Mask of the Pharoah, which was originally titled Mask of Anubis in Japan. It comes with a board, digital app and VR mask; players explore a pyramid in ancient Egypt while describing what they see. The Party Crate features Joe Santagato Speak Out, where you have to wear a weird mouthpiece that keeps your mouth open while you try to say different adult-themed phrases.

There are other board game boxes out there, like Board Game Bento and Awesome Pack, but this is the first time a major company has offered such a service. Hasbro will also curate each three-month delivery to include a few themed items that complement the included games. The company is offering free shipping on the first crate, too, which could help convince you to take the plunge. You can sign up now and crates should ship this fall.

Via: TheVerge

Source: Hasbro

PureEarth wants to liven up your wallpaper game

Overview:

PureEarth is a wallpaper app that focuses mainly on pictures from exotic locales from around the world, and interesting camera angles and picturesque scenes. It is a simple, easy app that offers some excellent wallpapers for those who are interested in visually impressive wallpapers.

Developer: Daniele Orlando

Cost: Free

Impressions:

PureEarth is similar to Google Wallpapers, except without the enhanced exploration features that let you see more info on the location and the photographer. What it lacks in those geographical features, however, it makes up for in the ability to alter the photos with filters and other editing tools before you download, to make the image more unique or visually different.

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Also, you can upload your own pictures to the app to share if you happen to have your own excellent scenic photos. You just have to make an account and upload them, and you can let everyone enjoy your favorite photos.

One thing I definitely think needs improvement in PureEarth is an organization system for the pictures. While it does have a search function, the pictures are just organized into a continuous scroll that can’t otherwise be sorted in any way. I wish there was some option to sort with filters, maybe by name or location, or scene type to make it easier to find something you like.

Conclusion:

I like PureEarth Wallpapers. It offers a lot of quality, visually interesting wallpapers for your devices and is ad-free and easy to use. I have been cycling through a few different wallpapers all week and have been very happy with the selection of images. If you’re looking for a good wallpaper app, definitely check out PureEarth.

Download PureEarth from the Google Play Store