This is the OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition

The OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition is exclusive to India and China.

OnePlus crushed it in India over the course of the last year, amassing over 40% of the market share in the premium segment. As a way of thanking its community, the Chinese manufacturer rolled out a Star Wars-themed edition of the OnePlus 5T. The company is now continuing its collaboration with Disney to introduce an Avengers variant of the OnePlus 6 alongside the standard verison

Like last year, the limited edition variant will be sold primarily in Asian markets. There were rumors ahead of the launch that the device will make its way to the UK, but OnePlus has quelled the speculation by confirming that the OnePlus 6 Avengers Edition will be exclusive to India and China.

With that out of the way, onto the device itself. This is the OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition.

OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition: What’s in the box

OnePlus has custom packaging for its limited edition variants, and the OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition is no different. The large box comes emblazoned with the Avengers insignia, and inside you’ll find the phone as well as a custom Iron Man case (which is reminiscent of the Kylo Ren case included with the 5T Star Wars edition).

Aside from the case, you get the standard Dash Charge wall charger along with the red USB-C cable. Oh, and there’s also a medallion in each box, which I’ll talk about below.

OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition: Infinity Medals

Each OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition box contains a collectible that OnePlus is calling a medallion. There are six medallions in total (for the six Avengers), and they combine to form the Avengers insignia.

OnePlus is rolling out a Infinity Medal Challenge for fans where they’ll win a prize if they collect all six medallions. OnePlus isn’t revealing what winners will receive just yet, only hinting that it will be special.

OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition: Design and hardware

The OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition comes with a glass back, albeit with a kevlar finish underneath that allows it to stand out from the standard editions. The Alert Slider is furnished with a gold hue, and the Avengers insignia round the back and the OnePlus logo feature a gold finish that contrasts very well with the kevlar pattern.

Unlike the matte finish of the Midnight Black and Silk White versions, the Avengers variant has a glossy back that’s similar to that of the Mirror Black edition. While the material itself is the same, the pattern beneath the glass as well as the gold accents create enough of a differentiation.

Aside from the design tweaks, the OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition shares the same internal hardware as the standard edition, but you do get more storage. The Avengers variant will be the only OnePlus 6 model in the country that features 256GB of storage, with the standard editions available in 64GB and 128GB.

OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition: Iron Man case

With OnePlus switching to a glass back, you’ll want to invest in a case to protect it from the occasional tumble. The Avengers edition comes with an Iron Man case that does the job magnificently.

Like the Kylo Ren case last year, the Iron Man case adds a considerable amount of bulk to the phone, but you get added protection for your device. The downside is that most of the unique additions on offer with the Avengers edition are hidden away underneath the case.

OnePlus 6 Marvel Avengers Edition: Pricing and availability

The OnePlus 6 Avengers edition will go up for sale in India starting May 29 for ₹44,999.

The device will be sold exclusively in India and China, and will not make its way to Western markets. That’s a letdown considering the mass appeal of Marvel’s movie franchise, but it looks like licensing fee was the main motivator behind OnePlus’ decision to limit the variant to these markets.

While Marvel movies may not generate as much revenue from India, they have a massive fanbase in the country — even more so than Star Wars — so it’s likely that the Avengers variant will be sold out in a matter of weeks. That was the case with the Star Wars edition last year, so if you’re holding out for a new phone and are a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, best act fast.

Google Assistant routines: Everything you need to know

Get more done with Google Assistant using Routines!

The dream of living in a futuristic smart home where you can control everything with just your voice within reach, thanks to Google Assistant and Google Home speakers.

Routines allow your Google Assistant to trigger multiple actions when you say a specific phrase. Google unveiled routines earlier this year with six standard routines baked into the Google Home app. At Google I/O, Assistant was front and center showcasing a bunch of cool new features being added — including the addition of custom routines.

What’s new in Google Home and Assistant at Google I/O 2018

How do Routines work with Google Assistant?

If you’ve ever played around with Alexa routines, it’s essentially the same situation now for the Google Assistant. With routines, you can pre-program Assistant to perform specific tasks when you say certain commands.

Google has included a number of ready-made routines that cover six common scenarios where you’d want Google Home to automate certain actions:

• Good Morning Routine: With the Good Morning Routine, your Assistant can turn on your lights, give your daily briefing, tell you the weather, play music, and more. All you need to say is “Good Morning”, “Tell me about your day”, or “I’m up”
• Bedtime Routine: Use this routine to have your Assistant turn off your connected smart lights, brief you about your upcoming day, set a morning alarm, etc. All you need to say is “Bedtime” or “Good night”
• I’m Home Routine: You can set your Assistant to turn on your lights, give any home reminders, and play your favorite music. All you need to do is say “I’m home” or “I’m back”.
• Commuting to Work Routine: Assistant will brief you on your upcoming calendar events for the day, tell you about your commute, start plaing music or podcasts and more. All you need to say is “Let’s go to work”.
• Leaving Home Routine: Your Assistant can ensure all your smart home products (smart lights, smart thermostat, smart plugs, etc.) when you leave the house. All you got to say is “I’m heading out” or “I’m leaving”.
• Commuting Home Routine: This routine can be set to give you information about your commute, text others to say you’re on your way home, play music or a podcast and more — all by just saying “Let’s go home”.

All these routines can be customized based on the smart home products you may have connected in the Google Home app.

These Products and Services Work with Google Home

Can I create custom routines?

Custom routines are a thing, but are still rolling out and only currently available in the U.S., so the rest of us will have to wait.

If the feature is live in your Google Home app, it’s a cinch to create your own routines. From the Google Home app, tap the menu icon in the top left corner and find the “More settings” section.

If you see the Routines section, tap it and then tap the “+” icon to create your own routine. From there, you’re able to create a custom command which will be the words or phrase you’ll use to trigger your custom routine. You can either type out the command or tap the microphone to speak it to Google. Next, you’ll set what actions you want the Google Assistant to take on your commend and that includes practically anything that the Google Assistant can control and also the option to

In the future, Google will be adding the option to let you schedule routines to go off automatically at a certain time of day without needing to be manually triggered, opening up a whole new level of smart home awesomeness.

What’s the difference between Routines and Shortcuts?

If you don’t see the Routines section in your Google Home app, you should instead find Shortcuts, which operate similar to routines although don’t allow you to do as much with one voice command.

The main difference is that Shortcuts are used to customize a single action with a customized trigger word, where as Routines let you group multiple actions together. Keep in mind that you won’t be able to use multiple voice queries for setting actions for Shortcuts or Routines — yet.

Google Home

• Google Home review
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• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo
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How to Quickly Resize Images on Your Mac Using an Automator Service

Resizing images in macOS is easily done in the Preview app, but if your daily workflow requires you to scale images to a specific size – for uploading to a blog, for example – then using an image resize service is a much faster way of getting the job done.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use the Automator app to create a simple service that will have you resizing images in just a couple of clicks, without even going near an image editing app. Keep reading to learn how it’s done.

How to Create a Resize Image Service in Automator

Launch Automator from the Applications folder.

Click New Document.
Choose Service as the type of your document.

Click the Service receives selected dropdown menu and select image files.
Select Files and Folders in the Actions sidebar, and drag Get Specified Finder Items to the workflow area.

Select Photos in the Actions sidebar, and drag Scale Images to the workflow area.

Automator will prompt you to add a Copy Finder Items Action to save the original files in a separate folder. We’re sticking to a simple workflow of resizing images here, so we click Don’t Add.
In the Scale Images action panel, type the width that you want to resize your images to. We’re going to use 1200 pixels.

In the Automator menu bar, select File -> Save…, call your new service “Resize Image”, and click Save. Next time you want to resize an image, simply right-click (or Ctrl-click) the file in Finder and select Services -> Resize Image from the contextual dropdown menu. You can also drag a selection box over several images and resize them all in one go using the service.

Why not assign a key shortcut to your image resize service to speed up the process? To do so, launch System Preferences, select the Keyboard pane, and click the Shortcuts tab. Select Services from the sidebar and you should find Resize Image near the bottom of the list. Just click it, select Add Shortcut, and finally, enter your custom key combination.

Related Roundup: macOS High Sierra
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Apple Pay Launches in Ukraine

Apple Pay launched in Ukraine today. Owners of Apple devices in the country this morning found that they could add credit cards to the mobile payment system, including MasterCard and Visa (via Tehnot).

Ukraine’s finance minister Oleksandr Danyliuk took to Facebook to herald the launch, which initially supports cards issued by the country’s nationalized PrivatBank, with Oschadbank expected to follow soon.

Apple Pay заработал в Украине. Поддерживаются карты ПриватБанка VISA и MasterCard pic.twitter.com/Ofx2bYDvC2

— alexanderslev1n (@alexanderslev1n) May 17, 2018

During the company’s May earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple Pay would expand to Norway, Poland, and Ukraine “in the next several months”, without providing specific launch dates. Separately, a launch in Ukraine was also rumored for Q2 2018.

The last Apple Pay launch took place in Italy in the middle of May, with users in the country able to add Visa and MasterCards issued by Boon, Carrefour, and UniCredit into their iPhone.

Over the last few years, Apple has been working to expand Apple Pay to additional countries, and it is now available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, UAE, Ukraine, and Brazil.

(Thanks, Oleksandr!)

Related Roundup: Apple PayTag: Ukraine
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Revamped YouTube Music is Google’s latest effort to take on Spotify

In its latest effort to sort out its music- and video-streaming subcription offerings, Google-owned YouTube looks set to launch a revamped version of YouTube Music on Tuesday, May 22.

YouTube executives confirmed to several publications that the new service will cost $10 a month, in line with competing music-streaming services, and will “eventually” replace Google Play Music. Anyone interested will be able to try out the refreshed service for free before deciding whether to subscribe.

Described by Recode as “functionally the same” as the existing version, YouTube Music will, however, prioritize audio over video, and focus on improved personalized playlists based on a user’s YouTube history.

YouTube Music will be “largely devoid of video,” according to Cnet, which has seen the redesigned YouTube Music app in action. It said the app’s home screen lets you scroll through lots of recommended music and playlists, including “individualized selections of new releases, a My Mixtape personalized playlist, collections similar to an artist you’ve been listening to a lot lately, a selection called Throwback Jams, before you get to recommended music videos and professional clips of live performances.”

Also on Tuesday, YouTube Red, which offers original and ad-free video programming for a fee, will become YouTube Premium and only be accessible to new users by adding an extra $2 to the monthly YouTube Music subscription, taking the cost to $12.

With so many people hitting YouTube for their music fix, Google has always felt well placed to attract people to a subscription-based music service. But up to now the company has failed to nail it. It kicked off with Google Play Music in 2011, but its performance has been disappointing in comparison to rival services such as Spotify and Apple Music. In 2014, it followed up with Music Key, offering subscribers ad-free music videos, but a lack of interest saw Music Key succeeded by YouTube Red in 2015.

Now Google is hoping the latest changes to its various subscription services will finally start to gain traction among music fans and help it to be a real player in the paid-for music-streaming space.

The revamped YouTube Music service will see a gradual rollout in the U.S. starting on Tuesday, with select overseas markets also targeted.

Google’s new YouTube Music plans are here — and we’re gonna pay more for what we like right now

YouTube is taking the reins for Google’s music strategy — and it’s soft launching on Tuesday.

Google’s music strategy has been fractured and confusing and falling behind for years, with Google Play Music being treated like an orange-haired stepchild, YouTube Music being ignored by some users and unheard of by the rest, and YouTube being a place where people of all kinds come to listen to music — both legitimately uploaded and not-so-much.

Google’s been amassing a new team to take on the music industry, from streaming competitors like Spotify to the record labels that control what music can appear on what platforms and how.

We’ve been waiting months for the shoe to drop and Google to reveal its new strategy. And thanks to Bob Lefsetz posting a rambling preview, we’re don’t have to wait much longer.

We’re still digging through the post, but the long and the short of it is:

• YouTube Music is getting an overhaul, which an emphasis on personalization. YouTube Music will be able to leverage your YouTube viewing history and listening habits to offer different types of music based on where you are, what you’re doing, and what your preferences are.
• New emphasis will be placed on new releases. If you like an artist or genre, YouTube Music will put their new singles and albums right on your homepage, so you don’t find out about Daughtry’s new single months after it came out like me.
• YouTube Music already has Google Assistant integration, but Lefsetz’s demo makes it sound like it’s been put on steroids.
• The new YouTube Music app is soft-launching on Tuesday, “and then spread slowly thereafter.” What timeline that means for the desktop experience overhaul, I have no idea.

Then we get to the important bits: what these changes mean for the regular YouTube experience. The current YouTube Red offerings — getting rid of all the ads, access to YouTube’s Original shows like Cobra Kai, offline and background playback — are going to be a $2 add-on on top of the required $10/month YouTube Music subscription.

Rumors have circulated that Google Play Music — Google’s original music offering and the mechanism for their 50,000 song music locker and music purchases — will be killed off by the end of this year in favor of the new service. However, the leak from Lefsetz doesn’t mention Play Music anywhere, so we’ll have to wait for the official announcement from Google on its future.

We also have no mention of family plan pricing anywhere yet, nor if any current YouTube Red subscribers will get grandfathered into the new “YouTube Premium” system under their current $10 price — or $8 if you’ve been a Google Play Music subscriber since its launch five years ago. There’s a lot we still need to hear, but the genie’s out of the bottle now…

In the meantime, what are your thoughts on the upcoming changes to YouTube Music?

New $10 YouTube Music Service to Launch Next Week, Replacing Google Play Music

Google is launching YouTube Music next week, shortly followed by YouTube Premium – a revamped version of its ad-free YouTube Red subscription service with a renewed focus on original programming. Announced on Wednesday in a blog post, the shake-up in services represents a splitting of the original YouTube Red subscription model, which gave users both ad-free music streaming and access to original video content for $10 a month.

The new YouTube Music-only service will also cost $10 a month and replaces Google Play Music – existing subscribers will be migrated automatically (that includes non-paying users who have purchased music via Google Play or used the service to upload tracks and playlists). The rebranded service includes personalized playlists, intelligent search, support for background playback and music downloads for offline listening.

The streaming service will also remove ads from music videos, but not the rest of YouTube. An ad-supported version of YouTube Music will be available for free. As part of the launch, Google is promising a “reimagined” mobile app and desktop player that’s “designed for music”.

YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else – all simply organized and personalized. For the first time, all the ways music moves you can be found in one place.

YouTube Premium, meanwhile, will cost $12 a month, and includes all the benefits of YouTube Music plus access to original shows as well as ad-free viewing for all of YouTube. The extra $2 over the original YouTube Red subscription will make way for more YouTube Originals from around the globe, featuring comedies, dramas, reality series, and action adventure shows from the U.K., Germany, France, Mexico, and more. Existing YouTube Red members will continue to pay the current price for YouTube Premium, however.

YouTube Music and launches on Tuesday, March 22 in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Korea, rolling out to more countries in the following weeks. They will include Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

YouTube Premium will roll out “soon” in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Korea, later followed by Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Tags: Google, YouTube, YouTube Red, YouTube Music
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Designer of out-of-this-world superyacht MY Roswell welcomes spaceship analogies

If at first glance, MY Roswell makes you think “spaceship,” Monaco-based superyacht designer George Lucian will be pleased. Lucian hints broadly at his latest design’s inspiration, and the source of its name, when he kicks off the ship’s announcement with the question: “Is this yacht coming from another dimension.”

Lucian’s design goal was to create “an iconic, worldwide recognizable yacht inspired from the future.” Keeping in mind that the Roswell is a superyacht concept, not an actual vessel under contract and construction, Lucian’s design doesn’t incorporate any alien technology. The Roswell’s design elements and operational technologies are already in use on superyachts plying the seas and oceans.

Lucian provides only general measurements and descriptions of the superyacht’s length, structural components, propulsion mechanics, and passenger and crew capacities. Full specifications are unavailable. Should a buyer give Lucian a consignment to build the Roswell, details would certainly change to suit the owner.

The Roswell’s aluminum 65-meter hull — about 213 feet — easily places it in the superyacht class, which is defined by international consensus to include yachts that are 30 meters or longer.

Lucian wants the yacht to be stealthy, not just in design, but also in operation, which means it must be quiet. Therefore, the designer specified fully electric running capability. To avoid cranking up the noisy onboard generators until out of port, as much deck surface as possible was covered with solar panels to capture energy.

Electric motors won’t be the only power source. The Roswell will also have two diesel-electric engines for longer cruises. No power output or cruising range is available.

Lucian’s concept yacht is designed to elude detection, at least while out to sea. Angular structural modules and patterns and reflective hull surfaces intentionally minimize radar detection.

The designer’s wish for the Roswell while in port, however, abandons any attempt of stealthiness. “Unlike its radar footprint, its presence in any harbor will for sure be anything else but discrete, ” according to Lucian.

The Roswell’s amenity list includes a large outdoor covered living area on the main deck bow, a beam-width swimming pool, lounge, and dining area. Large glass doors between the main deck salon, bow deck, and the yacht’s stern deck are designed to give passengers the sense of traveling in a huge open loft. The upper deck would house the bridge, a sky lounge, and a helicopter platform.

Lucian’s design concept nominally accommodates 12 guests and 12 crew members, although the final positions and layout of the cabins and quarters will be determined by the designer and the buyer.

The MY Roswell is not the designer’s first superyacht concept. Other concepts include a mega sailing yacht, “SY Project Origami,” and “MY Dare to Dream,” a superyacht airship carrier.

And about the Roswell’s name.

No one denies a balloon crashed on a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, in early summer 1947. Everything else about the balloon has been in contention ever since.

Some claim the accident involved a UFO the government has been covering up for 71 years. It didn’t help matters when, after initially stating the crash involved a weather balloon, the U. S. military admitted in the mid-1990s that the structure was a nuclear test surveillance balloon used in the super-secret Project Mogul.

The Roswell controversy continues to inspire books, films, and now, a 65-meter superyacht.

Facebook Stories grows up, adds new options, from audio to archiving

If you ask Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Stories are the future for social video sharing. Facebook is continuing to pad that future with a handful of updates to Stories, rolling out Wednesday, May 16, in India before popping up in the network globally. The update moves Stories beyond the full-screen visuals with an audio option, along with adding the option to archive Stories and a tool that saves photos and video to Facebook to free up smartphone storage.

The audio post adds a recorded message with a colorful background designed to mesh with Stories’ full-screen flip through the visuals from the day. The same tools for adding stickers and doodles to photos are also possible on that background.

The audio feature is designed for sharing content that’s less visual. The tool is also helpful for content that’s hard to type out — which can sometimes be a language issue, like in India where the feature first tested, which has 22 official languages. The update may also be helpful for influencers that don’t work with as many visuals, such as podcasters and radio personalities.

Stories’ visual focus isn’t going anywhere though — and soon Stories don’t have to disappear after 24 hours either. While Stories won’t be publicly available after 24 hours, the update brings the option to archive those Stories, allowing users to go back and view the content they shared later — after all, looking back for a #ThrowbackThursday image doesn’t work with self-deleting content. Instagram, where the Stories format grew quickly, already has a similar archive feature.

The third part of the Stories-focused update allows users to save images from the Facebook Camera to a private Facebook cloud storage. The network has several reasons for trying out the ability to save those photos without saving them directly to the smartphone. First, in many areas, like India where the feature is first launching, smartphone space is hard to come by, leaving limited room for saving photos and videos on the device itself. Second, by allowing saves, users can take pictures in the moment, but add the images to Stories later.

During the last earnings report, Zuckerberg said that Stories would be a focus for the company. While Facebook seemed to have slower growth, Instagram Stories and the similar WhatsApp status have well surpassed the users from Snapchat, where the format originated. A recent study by Block Party said that Stories grew 15 times faster than Feed-based sharing, with 79 percent of companies posting Stories, nearing the 97 percent posting to news feeds.

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Apple Music Competitor Tidal Allegedly Months Behind on Royalty Payments

Subscription based music service and Apple Music competitor Tidal is months behind on its royalty payments to record labels according to a report from Norwegian news site Dagens Næringsliv that was translated by Music Business Worldwide.

Multiple sources have said that Tidal has not making timely payments to “three major international companies,” claims confirmed by two Norway-based labels: Propellor Records and its distributor, Phonofile, a company owned by Sony.

Phonofile CEO Sveinung Rindal said that reports of delayed payments are correct, while Propeller Recordings CEO Frithjof Boye Hungnes said the company had not been paid since October. “People are talking about withdrawing [their music from TIDAL]; I think there is a pretty upset mood,” said Hungnes.

Tidal in December was said to be facing money problems due to stalled user growth, and reports suggested that it could run out of working capital within six months.

Dagens Næringsliv has been investigating Tidal in recent weeks and has also accused the streaming music service of falsifying and inflating streaming numbers for Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo album and Beyonce’s Lemonade album.

Tidal claimed that Kanye West’s album achieved 250 million streams within 10 days and that Beyonce’s album reached 306 million streams within 15 days, figures that were said to be false following a year-long investigation conducted by Dagens Næringsliv and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Center for Cyber and Information Security.

During the time that Tidal announced the Kanye West album figure, for example, Tidal said that it had 3 million subscribers. At 3 million subscribers, to each that streaming number, each Tidal subscriber would have needed to play the Kanye album more than eight times per day, as Music Business Worldwide points out.

Tidal has called the claims a “smear campaign” of lies and falsehoods, constructed from stolen and manipulated information. “We will fight these claims vigorously,” the service said in a statement.

Tags: Apple Music, Tidal
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