Apple Acquires Podcast Search Startup ‘Pop Up Archive’

Apple has acquired podcast search startup Pop Up Archive, according to Harvard University’s Nieman Lab via AppleInsider.

Apple more or less confirmed the report by issuing its standard statement about acquisitions: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Pop Up Archive was an Oakland-based online platform focused on building tools to transcribe, organize, and search audio files, including a podcast search engine Audiosear.ch, according to the report.

Pop Up Archive was founded in 2012, and has since grown off an extended series of seed investments and grants from sources like Bloomberg Beta, 500 Startups, and the Knight Foundation, among others. The company also has a close relationship with PRX; in 2012, the two organizations partnered up to build PRX’s original web-based archive system.

Both the Pop Up Archive and Audiosear.ch websites state that operations shut down on November 28, 2017, presumably around the time Apple acquired the startup. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

While no other details about the acquisition were shared, it can be assumed that Pop Up Archive’s search tools could be used to improve podcast search and discovery in Apple’s official Podcasts app for iPhone and iPad.

Tag: Podcasts
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Apple’s iPhone X is available SIM-free in the US

Apple is offering another reason to nab its thousand-dollar smartphone. A month since the iPhone X landed, the handset is now selling SIM-free and unlocked in the US with full support for both CDMA and GSM networks. You should see the new “buy without a carrier” option on Apple’s online store, allowing you to ditch the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint. Click on it, and you’l be able to choose your finish (silver or space gray) and the storage: 64GB for $999 or 256GB for $1,149.

Apple put to bed initial reports of iPhone X shipping delays (over component shortages) by delivering the smartphone quicker than expected. Snap one up now, and you’ll get it as soon as December 12. If you’re eager, you can even collect in-store on the same day in select regions (just type in your zip code to peep the ETA in your area).

Source: Apple

Google embraces the notch with iPhone X Gmail update

First released on November 3rd, the iPhone X forced developers to scramble to adapt apps to that famous notch and the lack of a home button. Google is no exception, and after optimizing its productivity suite last week (Docs, Sheets and Slides), it’s now Gmail’s turn. No longer will you have to put up with a letterboxed view of your communications, as Google’s mail app now integrates the cutout in its top rail.

It’s a bit odd that it took Google until now to get to Gmail for the iPhone X, as it has already seen its way to updating Waze, YouTube, Google Home, Maps, and the aforementioned Drive apps. Luckily, iOS Gmail users will get more in the bargain than just the notch feature. Google has also added support for third-party email apps including iCloud, Outlook and Yahoo mail — a feature it first revealed in a beta not long ago.

BT Sport to offer 360-degree video highlights and replays

Tottenham Hotspur star Dele Allie weaves through three defenders before whipping a cross into the feet of Harry Kane. You jump out of your seat, only to let out a groan as the linesman blows his whistle and raises a flag for offside. But was it offside? You’re not so sure. If only you could get a different perspective… Enter the BT Sport app. The British broadcaster has announced today that it will soon offer 360-degree highlights and instant replays. They will be shown alongside standard replays for “a minimum of” 20 sporting events — including the UEFA Champions League, the Premier League, the FA Cup and World Title boxing — over the next six months.

The first supported fixtures will be Tottenham versus APOEL Nicosia (Champions League) on December 6th and Tottenham versus Manchester City (Premier League) on December 16th. These are big games (if you’re a fan of Pochettino and his merry men, anyway) which you’ll be able to watch from a variety of camera angles not available during the normal broadcast. That means you can review and debate key moments, or just marvel as Kevin De Bruyne, Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling slowly dismantle Spurs’ title-winning hopes. Similar to Google’s YouTube app, all of the clips will be viewable with or without a compatible VR headset.

BT is far from the first sports broadcaster to experiment with 360-degree video. Sky has committed to virtual reality, with a range of 360-degree films from the Tour de France, Formula 1 and other sporting events. The BBC offered 360 video during last year’s Olympics, and across the pond the NBA is broadcasting every league game in VR. It’s not clear, however, how large the audience is for this sort of content. Watching through a headset is certainly novel, and the pitch-side view is a cheap substitute for being there in person. But a new standard for watching sport? I’m not so sure.

Fitbit’s Ionic will let you stream Deezer from your wrist

Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch suffers from a dearth of apps, we noted in our Engadget review, but the wearable firm is trying to flip that equation with an update to its Fitbit OS. It brings over 100 new watch faces and 60 apps, including Yelp, Nest, Hue Lights and Flipboard. The most interesting one is Deezer, as it will run on the Ionic without a smartphone, lightening the load for runners and other athletes. The company also launched Fitbit Labs, a new effort to create apps that motivate athlete behavior changes and accelerate Fitbit’s pace of innovation.

The addition of more apps is a big deal for Fitbit, because as of now, the Ionic only supports Pandora, AccuWeather, Starbucks (in North America) and Strava. Along with those already mentioned, apps available today for free download include the female health tracking app Clue, Game Golf’s score tracker, which will give precise distances to the green, Surfline, The New York Times app, TripAdvisor and United Airlines. More are coming in January, including British Airways, Lyft and Walgreens.

The lack of music services is a sore point on the Fitbit Ionic, but Deezer will come to the device around the world later in 2018. The main takeaway is that you can listen to music offline and without the need for a phone, presumably on wireless headphones or earbuds like Apple’s AirPods. A full feature list isn’t available yet, but Deezer says that Premium Plus subscribers will get a personalized music experience and be able to use Flow, which creates a personalized soundtrack using smart data, editorial recommendations and analytics.

Fitbit has occasionally struggled with product and feature design, so Fitbit Labs is an effort to keep its apps, watchfaces and other software features on track. The company is using its savoir faire in data analysis and behavioral sciences “to test potential new features in the form of experimental apps and smart clock faces designed to motivate users and drive behavior change,” it wrote. There’s also a new APK for developers.

Fitbit Labs has built a few fanciful apps like Fitbit Pet, that keeps you active by caring for a virtual dog or cat, and Treasure Trek, a gamification app aimed at motivating you toward your step goals. Others include the Mood Log mood tracker, Tennis game-tracking app, and the Think Fast task-switching game that shows how sleep and nutrition impact your mental sharpness. Fitbit Pet is available now, and the other apps are coming by the end of the year.

Other new features include enhanced options for Fitbit Pay and the Fitbit Leaderboard directly on the Ionic watch. The company said it will continue to add new apps and clockfaces “throughout 2018 and beyond.”

It’s always an uphill battle for an individual manufacturer like Fitbit to get developers on board, considering that they may already be working on Android Wear and watchOS apps. Fitbit is a big enough player in the health and fitness game to make it work, but it’ll have to continue to develop and expand Fitbit OS and its Ionic lineup. The new OS and apps, available today for Ionic owners, will likely help that cause.

Samsung’s 512GB chip will give your phone PC-like storage

Samsung has begun mass production of the world’s first 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS), meaning its flagship phones can now hold double what they could last year, when the company released its 256GB version. Phones with the new chips can store up to 130 10-minute UHD videos.

Read and write performance has been given a boost, too. Sequential read and write speeds reach 860MB per second and 255MB per second respectively — not a huge increase on the 256GB chip but enough transfer a 5GB HD video clip to a solid state hard drive in around six seconds, or more than eight times faster than a standard microSD card. It also has a random read speed of 42,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and a write speed of 40,000 IOPS.

Samsung pitched previous versions of this technology to the automotive market as cars will soon need to record high volumes of sensor data, but says at this time that next-gen smartphones and tablets are the best candidates for the chip, and plans to “steadily increase an aggressive production volume” to meet increasing demand for advanced mobile storage.

Via: Business Wire

Lifeprint Launches Larger WiFi-Equipped AR Photo Printer That’s Available Exclusively From Apple

Lifeprint, known for its photo printers that come equipped with augmented reality technology, today announced the launch of its latest printer, which is larger than the original version to let iPhone users print bigger pictures.

The new Lifeprint photo printer can print images that are 3 by 4.5 inches, up from 2 by 3 inches. WiFi is new to this version of the printer, which means you can print to a Lifeprint printer from anywhere in the world and send photos to printers owned by friends and family. Bluetooth is also available for local printing.

With Lifeprint printers, you also can print a still of a video or a Live Photo and then use the Lifeprint app to see an augmented reality version of the video, essentially bringing your photos to life. It’s a little bit gimmicky, but it can be a fun way to share videos with friends. It’s also a neat way to print and share Live Photos.

Like many of the miniature iPhone printers on the market, Lifeprint printers use ZINK paper, which allows for color images without ink cartridges. ZINK also has a sticky back, so all of your printed photos double as stickers. On the downside, ZINK is expensive at over $1 per photo when using the Lifeprint-branded paper in the new size.

You can print photos, videos, Live Photos, GIFs, Snaps, and more with Lifeprint, and the Lifeprint app has built-in tools for editing your images and adding stickers, filters, and captions. There’s also integration with Instagram and Facebook so you can print directly from your social network.

“For our second printer, we wanted to go bigger and broader. The larger film is classic instant camera size and really captures that retro look and feel. Perfect for decorating your walls. But more importantly the WiFi capability means you’re always connected. This allows users to print to and from anywhere in the world. No matter where you are, you’re connected and ready to print. And of course, the magical Harry Potter-like Hyperphotos still bring those videos to life in your hands. Super cool.”

Lifeprint’s new 3×4.5 printer is available exclusively from Apple.com and Apple retail stores for $149.99 starting today. Film is priced at $50 for a pack of 40 and $30 for a pack of 20.

Tag: Apple retail
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DirecTV Now Reaches 1M Subscribers While AT&T Continues to Promise DVR, 4K, and More Coming in 2018

AT&T this morning announced that its over-the-top streaming service DirecTV Now has surpassed the one million subscriber mark, with the milestone coming in just a little bit over a year since the service launched on November 30, 2016. DirecTV Now originally debuted only on iOS and Apple TV devices, and continues to promote the Apple TV in offers where new subscribers can pay for four months of service upfront ($140) and get an all-new 32GB Apple TV 4K ($180) for free.

In comparison, Sling TV is said to still sit at the top of the OTT streaming service bundle market with about 1.7 million subscribers as of Q3 2017. Around this time, Sling TV was followed by PlayStation Vue (455,000 subscribers), YouTube TV (325,000), Hulu with Live TV (150,000), and FuboTV (100,000), according to research firm Guggenheim Securities (via Variety). At the end of the same quarter this year, AT&T reported about 787,000 people had signed up for DirecTV Now, which has now grown to more than one million in just over two months.

“This milestone is an incredible testament to the thousands of hours many people spent working to bring this product online and continually improving it during the past year,” said David Christopher, president, AT&T Entertainment Group. “We’re thrilled so many customers have come to love DIRECTV NOW and can’t wait to bring them a host of new features in 2018.”

“To reach 1 million subscribers is an important benchmark for any OTT video service, but to go from zero to 1 million subscribers so quickly is quite an achievement,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of Research, Parks Associates.

As it celebrates the milestone, AT&T also looked forward into the New Year and listed a few upcoming features coming to the service in 2018. According to the company, subscribers can expect the following features to be added to DirecTV Now sometime next year:

– A DVR in the cloud to record your shows and access virtually anywhere
– 4K Ultra High Definition (UHD) quality video
– Capacity for more than 35,000 titles on demand
– Individual profiles
– Adding an additional concurrent stream
– More……surprises!

One of the most-requested additions to DirecTV Now is a cloud-based DVR for recording and storing shows to watch later, and AT&T originally stated that the DVR would be launching in fall 2017. The DVR has been in beta for weeks now, so it appears that AT&T is still fine-tuning the experience ahead of the wide launch next year. It’s not clear if all of the new features will debut at once, but besides the DVR subscribers can expect an overhauled user interface, 4K video, expanded on demand options, and more.

Tags: AT&T, DirecTV Now
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Apple Devices Could Have Reversible Emoji Next Year

The Unicode Consortium has proposed new guidelines that would allow for reversible emoji. In other words, emojis such as a car or train that currently face to the left or right only would be able to face either direction.

Reversible emoji mockup via Emojipedia
Apple and other vendors would be able to choose which emoji can be reversible on their devices, if any, according to their preferences.

The guidelines are still a draft that should be finalized by time the next major batch of over 100 new emoji characters are made available for companies like Apple to implement starting in the second half of 2018.

The Unicode Consortium has also introduced a handful of new emoji candidates for the second half of 2018, including a swan, badger, infinity, and pirate flag, according to Jeremy Burge at Emojipedia.org.

Unfortunately, for true emoji aficionados, it looks like “Frowning Pile Of Poo” and two other faces haven’t made the cut for the next batch.

Emoji 11.0, proposed earlier this year, currently includes 130 new emoji candidates. Some notable inclusions are faces with red hair, faces with no hair, faces with curly or afro hairstyles, and hot and cold faces.

Other candidates include new superheroes, a firecracker, a fire extinguisher, a test tube, a lacrosse stick with ball, a softball, and a bagel.

The timeline means that iPhones and iPads could support both the new and reversible emoji in iOS 12 or iOS 12.1 around September to November of next year. The new batch should extend to the Mac as well in a future macOS update.

The emoji included in this article are sample images by Emojipedia.org and could vary slightly from Apple’s final designs.

Tag: emoji
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Vivaldi now supports Linux running on ARM-based chips, including Raspberry Pi 3

Vivaldi said on Tuesday, December 5,  that it released an optimized version of its web browser for Linux distributions running on devices with ARM-based processors, such as the Raspberry Pi 3, the Raspberry Pi Zero, and the Asus Tinker board. The browser joins Vivaldi’s other builds for Windows, MacOS, and Linux installed on machines with x86-based chips manufactured by Intel and AMD.

“Vivaldi is a web surfer’s complete toolbox that you can personalize and make your own. We strive to add more flexibility for the thriving culture of computer hobbyists and hope that every owner of Raspberry Pi will have fun using Vivaldi,” says Jon von Tetzchner.

The browser is served up as a DEB file, and requires a superuser account to unpack and install. It’s optimized for small devices relying on single-core ARM-based processors, but users can tweak the browser’s settings to get even better performance. These include the ability to disable animated images, and setting the default viewing mode to filter out everything but text (aka Reader Mode).

Vivaldi users shouldn’t experience a “watered-down” version of the browser on ARM-based devices, though. According to Vivaldi, everything offered in the other versions are completely intact, such as cramming multiple pages under a single tab, capturing screenshots, and using the in-browser note-taking component. We took the Windows 10-based version for a spin earlier this year right here.

Vivaldi is the brainchild of former Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. He parted ways with the company and browser he helped create in 2013 to continue his vision of a solution built for power users. By then, the Opera browser was on a different path than what he originally envisioned, so he set out to pick up where Opera 14 left off with a completely new solution called Vivaldi.

The name stems from Italian Baroque composer and virtuoso violinist Antonio Lucio Vivaldi. Tetzchner wanted web surfers to be “composers,” enabling them to customize the web browsing experience in every way possible. The browser’s palate of editing tools span from customizing the interface colors to rearranging its components to viewing detailed statistics of where the user goes online.

Vivaldi officially hit the scene for Windows, MacOS, and Linux in 2016, and is now finally available for Linux machines running on ARM-based chips. For users running Raspbian, Vivaldi says all that’s needed to install the browser is to double-click on the downloaded installer. Instructions for all other Linux-based distributions will depend on the platform and user permissions.

“Enthusiastic Raspberry Pi users who are looking for a more feature-rich and flexible browser, will find Vivaldi a thrilling experience,” Tetzchner said.

To download Vivaldi for Linux running on ARM-based devices, head to Vivaldi.com.

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