Google Home can now show you things on your Chromecast

A visual forecast for the weather is only the beginning.

Last year’s Google I/O was home to a plethora of announcements, but one of the most interesting was a new trick with the Google Assistant that allowed it to send contextual info/graphics to a Chromecast-enabled TV following a voice command. Google’s been radio silent since the initial announcement in regards to when we could actually start using it, but it looks like that day has finally come.

As noted by multiple Redditors, asking Google Home or another Google Assistant-powered smart speaker to show you the weather on your Chromecast device will do just that. For example, saying “Ok, Google, show me the weather on my TV” will now display the current temperature and five-day forecast on your Chromecast-enabled television.

Google appears to be rolling out this functionality to select countries, and at this time, it only works with Google Assistant smart speakers — not phones or tablets.

Also, while this currently just shows the weather, it’s expected that this will expand to more commands/questions down the road. Future use cases could include a visual of traffic on the way to work, upcoming calendar appointments, etc.

If you’ve got a Google Home and Chromecast, do you have access to this? If so, is it something you think you’ll start using on a regular basis?

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Google hit with lawsuit over defective microphones on 2016 Pixel

Brought to you by the lawyers behind the Pixel 2 XL display lawsuit.

Lawsuits aren’t uncommon occurrences in the technology industry. Someone spends money on a phone, something goes wrong, and they hit up their lawyers to issue a class-action suit against the company rather than contacting customer support. In the latest entry of this series, Google is being sued over microphone defects for the original Pixel and Pixel XL.

Shortly after the Pixel’s launch in 2016, there were a few complaints from customers about people not being able to hear them during phone calls. Google eventually responded to disgruntled customers in March of 2017, saying that the subpar microphone performance was attributed to “a hairline crack in the solder connection on the audio codec.”

The firm behind the suit is Girard Gibbs LLP, and if that name sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same firm responsible for the lawsuit regarding the Pixel 2 XL’s display.

While there’s certainly merit to some of the lawsuits that pop up, it’s worth noting that neither of the named plaintiffs in this case actually sent in their phones to Google to be repaired. Even so, Girard Gibbs claims that replacement phones Google issued still had problems with their microphones. Who knows.

I personally think this particular case is a bit silly, but I’d like to get your input on this. Do you think this is a mere cash-grab or has Google had this coming? Sound off in the comments below.

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DJI will create no-fly zones around Olympic venues in South Korea

Days ago, South Korean authorities announced that they’d capture any drone that got too close to Olympics event facilities. If you have a DJI-made craft, you won’t even be able to get close. The UAV maker is releasing a software patch that creates a no-fly zone around Olympic areas.

For the duration of the games, DJI drones won’t be able to fly through areas in the South Korean cities of Pyeongchang, Gangneung, Bongpyeong and Jeongseon.

“Safety is DJI’s top priority and we’ve always taken proactive steps to educate our customers to operate within the law and where appropriate, implement temporary no-fly zones during major events,” the company said in a statement, according to TechCrunch. “We believe this feature will reduce the potential for drone operations that could inadvertently create safety or security concerns.”

DJI has taken ‘proactive steps’ shutting down its drones around big events before, like the Euro 2016 soccer tournament in France and G7 summit in Japan, according to TechCrunch. But the company has accommodated other requests for no-fly zones, including in Washington, DC and in parts of Syria and Iraq to stop extremists from using DJI drones to deliver explosives.

Source: TechCrunch

Microsoft releases its LinkedIn resume helper for Word

Microsoft is now ready to polish your job applications — the company has released its LinkedIn-powered Resume Assistant for Office 365 subscribers. The AI-based helper sifts through LinkedIn profiles to find prominent examples of work experience and skill listings for your dream job, giving you some helpful tips for customizing your CV. You can also tap the ProFinder marketplace to talk to experts who can offer career advice, and search for relevant jobs without leaving Word.

Resume Assistant’s requirements are currently quite stiff: in addition to Office 365, you need to use Word in English and set Windows’ region to one of several countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the US). Support for other platforms, countries and languages will have to wait until sometime in the “coming months.” Still, it’s a start — and if you do live in the right place, this might be enough to help you stand out in a crowded field of applicants.

Source: LinkedIn Official Blog

Reddit bans the ‘deepfake’ AI porn it helped spawn

That didn’t take long. Hot on the heels of Twitter, Reddit has updated its rules to expressly ban AI-generated “deepfake” porn. Where it previously had a single rule forbidding porn and suggestive material involving minors, it now has two — and it’s clear that you’re not allowed to post “depictions that have been faked.” You also can’t post regular imagery of others with the goal of producing fake nonconsensual porn.

Accordingly, Reddit has cracked down on some of the offending communities. It has shut down the deepfakes subreddit that got the ball rolling, as well as YouTubefakes. It hasn’t closed non-deepfake subreddits like CelebFakes, however, and it’s also maintaining the communities with more innocuous intentions, such as FakeApp (the program itself) and SFWdeepfakes. At the moment, this is more about addressing the specific violations that triggered the uproar than to stamp out every potential violation of the policy.

In a statement to Engadget, Reddit reiterated the rule split and stressed that it hoped to create a “welcoming, open platform for all” that trusted its users to foster a space that “cultivates genuine conversation.” You can read the full statement below.

This certainly won’t eliminate all AI-produced porn. However, the deepfakes subreddit is considered the effective birthplace of the trend, and its disappearance might cut back on the volume of fake porn elsewhere. Discord, Gfycat, Pornhub and others have already vowed to ban material. The challenge, as always, is enforcement. There’s no guarantee that sites can or will remove everything. Creepy face swaps may persist for a long time, even if they aren’t as widespread as they have been in recent days.

Source: Reddit (1), (2)

Instagram test lets some share other users’ posts in Stories

Instagram is currently testing a feature that would let users share others’ posts in their Stories, TechCrunch reports. It’s only being tested with a small number of Instagram users and there’s no guarantee that it will see a full rollout, but since people tend to screenshot others’ content and add it to their Stories anyway, this seems like a useful tool that Instagram users would take advantage of. Instagram told us, “We’re always testing ways to make it easier to share any moment with friends on Instagram.”

New Instagram Feature – share feed posts to stories @MattNavarra @ingridlunden pic.twitter.com/keVl4lm9uB

— Zachary Shakked (@zacharyshakked) February 7, 2018

The feature only works with accounts that are public. So if your friend posts a cool pic of you and their account is private, you won’t be able to share that post directly in your Story. However, those with public accounts may not want to have their posts shared this way either, and Instagram lets you shut it down if that’s the case. Even if you aren’t part of the test, you can head over to your settings and scroll down to the “Allow Resharing to Stories” section. Just toggle that off if you don’t want it enabled.

Instagram has released a handful of new features lately. It launched text-only Stories earlier this month and began allowing users to follow hashtags in December. It also released the useful ability to archive your stories and keep in your profile those Stories that you want to stick around. In November, The Next Web reported that Instagram was testing a slew of new features, one of which being a native re-gram button. That function hasn’t been released.

To see if you’re one of the people with access to this feature, tap the share button on a public account’s post. If you have it, you should see an “Add post to your story” option.

Via: TechCrunch

Google and Nest’s hardware teams are joining forces

Google acquired home automation company Nest back in 2014 for $3.2 billion. Now Google is integrating the smaller company even more by merging the Nest and Google Hardware teams into one working group. As noted by CNET, Google’s AI, which powers its Home smart speakers, can now be more easily integrated with Nest hardware.

CNET points to an interview with Google’s Rick Osterloh that helps make more sense out of the announcement. “All of Google’s investments in machine learning and AI, they can very clearly benefit Nest products. It just makes sense to be developing them together,” Osterloh said in an interview. “It’s the natural thing to evolve to.”

Both companies are doing pretty well in the world of connected home devices. Nest claims that it has sold more than 11 million of its own gadgets since 2011, while Google has reported selling tens of millions of devices, including 6.4 million speakers between October of 2017 and the end of last year.

The end result will be a more focused smart home initiative that connects with Nest’s mission “to create a more thoughtful home, one that takes care for the people inside it and the world around it,” as Google wrote in a blog post. The company will combine hardware, software and services from both teams into one unit to create new services and hardware for your home. “We’ve had a head start on collaborating since our teams already work closely together, and today we’re excited to make Nest an integral part of Google’s big bet on hardware,” wrote Google.

Source: Google

Cortana for iPad takes full advantage of the larger screen

Microsoft updated its Cortana app and it now features native iPad support. The interface makes use of the bigger iPad screen, but otherwise it’s largely similar to the iPhone version. The update, spotted by MacRumors, also notes that the app now opens 20 percent faster. “Introducing a brand-new Cortana for iPad design. Enjoy an exclusive layout and interface for your iPad,” says the update release. “Cortana now launches 20 percent faster! Enjoy a lightning-fast experience.”

This is the latest Microsoft update for iOS products. Last week, Microsoft introduced new features for its Office and OneDrive iOS apps that included the incorporation of Apple’s new Files app and it announced that Edge for iPad is finally on the way. A preview version of the latter should drop this month.

The Cortana app update is available today.

Via: The Verge

Source: App Store

This DIY cardboard piano syncs with your favorite MIDI music apps

From an interactive booklet that helps you build six different electronic toys to Nintendo’s own Labo cardboard gadgets, DIY cardboard gizmos and musical instruments are all the rage. Now a company headed up by a former Konami and Sony game developer has taken to Kickstarter for its own folding paper piano, called the Kami-Oto.

Yudo makes iOS apps, and has quite a few musical ones in the App Store. The company’s Kami-Oto is an actual MIDI controller made of cardboard so you can use it with pretty much any software on computer or mobile device. There’s a main circuit board, silicon contact pieces, and cardboard black and white keys you punch out and assemble atop the rest. The company estimates it will take about 30 minutes to make. There are two models, one that uses micro-USB and one that uses Bluetooth. The Kami-Oto also has its own integrated sound generator and tiny speaker, as well, for self-contained music-making without an app.

You can pledge ¥5,000 (about $45) for a Kami-Oto with the Bluetooth chip and extra cardboard sheets on Kickstarter right now. A non-Bluetooth version without extra keyboard parts is offered for pledge sof ¥3,000 (or $27), too. Delivery of all models is expected in August of this year.

Via: Music Radar

Source: Yudo/Kickstarter

Snapchat swaps mess for money

Snap Inc. took a major risk when it completely redesigned Snapchat a few months ago — it’s no secret that people don’t like change. But the company, after constantly struggling to add new users since going public last February, decided it needed to make adjustments in order to attract people and keep others coming back. The solution was to refine the app, with an easier-to-use layout and to separate friends’ posts from media content, Snapchat suddenly became a more refined app. It no longer feels like an overwhelming, discombobulated mix of stories from people you know, others you don’t and publishers that are trying to get your attention. And the move, based on Snap’s Q4 2017 earnings report, seems to be paying off.

Yesterday, the company revealed that it has finally managed to gain a significant amount of daily active users: 8.9 million during the most recent quarter, bringing its total to 187 million. That’s the largest growth since 2016, long before it was a public company. While Snapchat continues to lag far behind rivals like Instagram and Facebook — which have 500 million and 1.4 billion daily active users, respectively — the app’s progress is notable. This rings particularly true when Snapchat’s redesign is still being rolled out and only 40 percent of its users have it thus far.

The response to the major overhaul is indeed a good sign for Snap, and one that it may not have expected. Especially since, for the past three quarters, its future looked quite bleak. There wasn’t enough user growth to keep investors happy, it was bleeding money and laying off workers, all signs that Snap needed to change its strategy.

Snapchat’s redesigned app.

Naturally, more users means more money. Snap posted a record revenue of $285.7 million in the fourth-quarter of 2017, a substantial 72 percent increase compared to the same period the previous year. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel attributed part of this spike to the popularity of Snapchat’s sports content. “This season we entertained more than 30 million football fans in the United States with over 400 NFL Stories,” he said, claiming it helped generate over $100 million in revenue for Snapchat’s content partners. Spiegel added that Snap’s goal is to “deepen these relationships” in the coming years, which presumably means giving users access to more features (like that augmented-reality foam finger) when they’re at NBA or NFL games.

Spiegel didn’t go into any further detail about the rest of Snapchat’s original series efforts, leaving open the question of whether they’re actually successful or not. CNN, for instance, killed its made-for-Snapchat daily show last December, after the show failed to catch on. That said, Snapchat continues to draw interest from big, traditional networks like ESPN, which recently launched a Snapchat-exclusive version of “SportsCenter”. Part of the goal with the redesign was to do a better job of putting these shows front and center, therefore creating more revenue opportunities, and that plan seems to be working.

One of the Snapchat features that’s also turned out to be popular is Maps, which shows a collection of public Stories from events around you so you can see what people are up to at certain locations in real-time. It’s the perfect tool for avoiding FOMO or stalking your friends at a concert. Snap said yesterday that Maps now has 100 million monthly active users, a notable accomplishment considering it only launched in June last year. At the moment, Spiegel said, there are no plans to monetize the feature, but don’t be surprised if that changes.

“Our work during 2017 is proof that we aren’t afraid to make big changes for the long-term success of our business,” Spiegel said, referring to Snapchat’s redesign. He also highlighted how important was to improve the Android app, where there the focus was to have fewer frame drops and, most importantly, fewer crashes.The challenge for Snap now is to be able keep this momentum up. That’s something it plans to do by introducing new features like Live, which is debuting as a partnership with NBC and will let Snapchat users stream “moments” from the network’s Olympic Games directly on the Discover feed.

Only time will tell if Snap’s new strategy will pay off in the long term, but at least right now, it’s in good shape heading into 2018. And that alone is a win for a company that, just a few months ago, was in a downward spiral. Redesigns aren’t always the answer to solve an app’s problems, though that seems to be just what Snapchat needed.