Duplicate Files Fixer review: automatically detect and remove duplicate items to save space.
Does your device run out of storage, forcing you to painstakingly go through your phone and delete your contents ? Too busy or just too tired to go through your contents? Worry no more! Duplicate Files Fixer(free), available and rated 4.5 stars on the Google Play Store, does all this for you.
Objective View
Entailing a simplistic and easy to use interface, this is a user-friendly application that can be operated 
by anyone. Within the program, you are met by several options including Scan Audio, Scan Videos, Scan Pictures, Scan Documents and Full Scan.
Upon inspecting the miscellaneous categories, your device will scan each for the respective content and display a screen with all the duplicates. It then has all the duplicates selected and gives you the ability to unmark the duplicates you intend on keeping. After pressing the delete button, you are asked to confirm your decision in the event of you making an error.
Although the purpose of this application is to optimize your tech by cleaning duplicate files, it does not include the option to delete the original file. Sometimes when choosing what to clean, you may come across files you have no intention of keeping and want to delete it as well as the duplicate, but alas, you can only remove the duplicate and have to locate the original afterwards. Perhaps developers would take a look into that matter.
Summary
I used this application for a mere few hours and found that it is an absolute blessing. I was able to delete approximately 800 megabytes of duplicate files alone, including pictures, voice notes, music tracks and documents. It’s a really simple program and has only one screen excluding 
the help menu which includes a basic tutorial of pictures. Despite the few flaws and improvements which could be made, Duplicate Files Fixer was definitely well thought out and has a smooth and polished UI.
In conclusion, this simple program is definitely worth downloading, and it will most definitely help you clean up your device and free some space for your more important information, but more so, it will help save your time.
Google Play Store – Duplicate File Fixer
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Control Alexa and your entire smart home from your car with HeadsUp
HeadsUp is a San Francisco startup that is aiming to be the end-all, beat-all when it comes to in-transit control. Founder Arnab Raychaudhuri, formerly an employee at the Pentagon, is the mastermind behind this in-vehicle heads up display. After building and rejecting over twenty prototypes across two years of brainstorming, the company eventually arrived at the final iteration of their product: a seamless and safe voice-controlled hub that keeps you in constant contact with your technological ecosystem.
HeadsUp was developed with Amazon’s Echo-housed digital assistant Alexa. The idea was to create a way to control things like your smartphone or smarthome in the safest possible way without distracting from the road. Alexa offers natural speech technology that does away with the user having to remember specific commands. With HeadsUp installed, you can be driving home from work and, with just a few vocalized sentences, have your house set to Party Mode just in time for your arrival. Control Sonos to start your favorite playlist, have Nest turn up the heat and adjust the lighting, and get ready to walk into exactly the right environment to relax.
See also: Amazon working on a smaller, cheaper, portable Echo
HeadsUp also functions as a kind of stand-in for services like Siri or OK Google, allowing users to more fluidly control their smartphone while driving. The service is optimized for road noise, which conventional voice-controlled features tend to struggle with. Sending message, getting directions, or getting business hours for that restaurant you’re thinking about hitting up can all be done without ever touching your smartphone.
The pre-order campaign for HeadsUp has gone live, and those interested can grab one at the reduced price of $299.99 while the pre-order campaign lasts. If you’re interested, head on order to the campaign’s landing page for more information. In the meantime, what are your thoughts regarding HeadsUp? Worth the cash, or not an extreme enough advancement over conventional voice control apps to justify the price? Let us know your take in the comments below.
All your Netflix streams now come straight from Amazon
The closure of Netflix’s last data center might not be news, but who’s picking up the slack on the outside might be. The firm has revealed that it’s now moved its entire online business to Amazon Web Services, the retailer’s cloud computing division. In a blog post, Netflix VP Yury Izrailevsky reveals that Netflix began closing its homegrown data centers back in 2008 after a server issue brought the (then) DVD-rental business to its knees for three days. Since then, it’s been slowly moving over to Amazon’s world-renowned servers which offer far more power, scale and reliability. It should go without saying that the fees Amazon charge per-stream are significantly smaller than what Netflix was shelling out when it was going solo.
By this point, you’re probably shouting at your screen wondering when we’re going to mention the elephant in the room. Amazon, of course, owns AWS, but also has its own competing video streaming service that’s trying to beat Netflix into the dust. First up, Netflix’s success is Amazon’s as well, with the former encouraging people to ditch cable, which Amazon can piggy-back onto into people’s homes. Secondly, the company must be making some serious bank from Netflix’s vast user base, so it’s win-win for Jeff Bezos.
It’s not as if we haven’t seen co-operation like this from other tech companies, either, with Samsung both a rival to Apple and also one of its key supply partners. Same goes for Samsung’s relationship with Qualcomm, since both are competing chip manufacturers, but the former also helps the latter build its hardware. Then there’s Sony, which sells its smartphone image sensors to plenty of other businesses in the smartphone pantheon. Yeah, folks, co-operation and loving thy neighbor is all the rage, and long may peace and love reign throughout the world.
Via: Fortune
Source: Netflix
Twitch streamers raised $17.4 million for charities in 2015
Twitch is huge. There’s no getting around this fact: Video giant YouTube basically copied Twitch’s gameplan last year, the site launched Twitch Creative and Twitch Plays sub-sections, it dominated the streaming eSports market, and debuted a successful convention that attracted more than 20,000 people. Twitch has grown so rapidly since its launch in 2011 that it’s already jumped the shark at least once.
Just in case anyone was still confused about the bright purple future of live streaming, today the company shared some internal statistics from 2015, including the fact that it helped streamers raise $17.4 million for more than 55 charities last year.
Twitch boasts an average of 1.7 million streamers every month, with an average of 550,000 concurrent viewers. Plus, Twitch argues, its audience watches videos for longer stretches of time than they do no YouTube: 421.6 minutes per viewer for Twitch versus 291 minutes per viewer for YouTube, based on comScore data. Twitch topped out at more than 2 million concurrent views on August 23rd, thanks to two eSports events, the League of Legends NA LCS Finals and ESL One: Cologne 2015.
Last year’s top games on Twitch were League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, while Destiny and FIFA 15 were newcomers to the top 10. Mobile views now make up 35 percent of Twitch’s audience.
For perspective, rival (and dominant) online video outlet YouTube boasts more than 1 billion users who watch hundreds of millions of hours on the site every day. But, these services have different markets — Twitch focuses on live content, while YouTube is all about those jump cuts. Both services are clearly learning from each other as they, and their audiences, evolve.
Source: Twitch
‘Top Gear’ gets its cast as Clarkson begins filming for Amazon
At last, we know who will be standing alongside Chris Evans for the highly anticipated Top Gear reboot. Former Friends star Matt LeBlanc had already been confirmed, but now we’ve got another four faces to divulge. Motorsport pundit Eddie Jordan joins from the BBC’s Formula 1 team, while Rory Reid comes across from Recombu Cars — his career highlights include this impressive rap review for the Rolls-Royce Ghost Series II. Joining them are German racing driver Sabine Schmitz, best known for her white-knuckle lap of the Nurburgring in a van, and Chris Harris, a successful motoring journalist that now runs his own YouTube channel.
With six presenters, it’s safe to assume the Top Gear format will be changing a little bit. When Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond ran the show, they would often appear individually in pre-recorded segments before coming back together for the studio bits and larger “challenge” documentaries. A larger crop of faces should give the show better variety, and spread the risk associated with each new presenter. However, it’ll also mean giving them all less screen time.
Coincidentally, Jeremy Clarkson tweeted yesterday that his new motoring show for Amazon Prime begins filming today. The new-look Top Gear is already in production, so there’s a good chance both programmes will run at roughly the same time. If that happens, it should be an intriguing head-to-head — for many Top Gear fans, Clarkson and company were the core of the show, and that’s reason alone to check out their new series. The BBC has a bigger reach than Amazon Prime though, especially in the UK, and the Top Gear brand is sure to pull in some curious viewers this May.
Source: BBC (Press Release)
Amazon’s Lumberyard is a free triple-A game engine
Amazon has announced that they are launching a new game development engine called Lumberyard. However, what makes this newsworthy is that the A-Z service/content/product provider is putting this system in your hands for the low, low cost of Free.
In terms of visual technology, Lumberyard takes its cues from CryTek’s CryEngine. It has everything you would need to create lush, triple-A game environments from advanced particle effects to real-time fluid dynamics. You’ve even got the vegetation tools that made the Far Cry series so lush right at your fingertips. Amazon says that their engine can create games for Windows, Xbox One, and PS4. However, updates are in the pipeline to make game development possible for Mac, Linux, iOS, and – you guessed it – Android.
See also: An introduction to Unity3D for easy Android game development
So what’s the catch here? I mean, sure it’s great for Amazon to help lower the bar set for game developers and make high-end tools available to indie designers looking to make a real impact on the gaming world, but what’s in it for them? Altruism looks nice enough in PR, but it doesn’t pay your employees.
The hitch is that Lumberyard limits what servers you can use for the games developed on it. Even if you create the next Dota 2, you won’t be able to use cloud resources from Amazon competitors like Google or Microsoft. You’ll have to buy server support from Amazon.
While that seems restrictive at a glance, it’s really not that bad of a trade-off. If you’re designing a single-player game, for instance, there’s no need to buy server time anyway, so you just got to develop a high-end game with tools that didn’t cost you a penny. And even if you are creating a multiplayer game, as long as Amazon doesn’t start price-gouging indie devs – which seems unlikely – then this looks like a pretty fair arrangement for both parties.
What are your thoughts regarding Lumberyard? If you’re a game dev, let us know if this is a tempting offer in the comments, and let us know what you think the pros and cons of getting into bed with Amazon would be!
Amazon renews ‘Mozart in the Jungle’ for a third season
It was only a matter of time, really. Hot on the heels of two Golden Globe wins, Amazon has renewed Mozart in the Jungle for a third season. The company is shy on what the new run will entail, but it does say that the streaming series will have Rodrigo de Souza and the orchestra try to conquer Europe. Frankly, it would have been surprising if Amazon hadn’t continued the series. Even if Mozart didn’t win any awards, it’s one of the tentpole shows for Amazon alongside the likes of Transparent and The Man in the High Castle — it’ll likely stick around as long as it continues to reel in subscribers.
It’s not over. #MozartInTheJungle will return for a new season. pic.twitter.com/gHrbfQEKHI
— Mozart in the Jungle (@MITJAmazon) February 9, 2016
Source: Amazon
Amazon Japan has free on-call wine advisors
In some cities, Amazon will deliver you alcohol, including wine, within an hour. But which one to choose? Japanese enthusiasts will now get help thanks to the new Sommelier service. Between noon and 5 p.m. ET, you can leave your number and one of the site’s professional wine advisors will call back to let you know if a Chinon has good body and vanilla overtones, or whatever. You can also tell the sommelier what you’re serving, and they’ll recommend a wine based on your budget. In one example, they suggest a Beau Rivage Blanc French Bordeaux or a KWV Classic Collection Pinotage from South Africa for yakitori skewers.
If you chat with a sommelier and promptly forget everything, they’ll also follow up with an email summary of your conversation. There’s no word on whether Amazon will bring the service elsewhere, but Japan would be a good testing ground, as its site offers nearly 8,000 different wines. There are even more than that in the US store, with drastically varying prices, and god knows the clueless among us can use all the help we can get.
Via: Wall Street Journal
Source: Amazon (Japanese)
Amazon’s new game engine comes with Twitch baked in
Amazon might be known for selling you things, but its cloud services now have just as much of an impact. It already powers many of the most popular apps and websites on the planet, but it’s easy to forget that the company has an impressive online gaming presence thanks to Twitch. With its latest announcement, Amazon has decided to combine all of its strengths and unveiled Lumberyard, a new free gaming engine designed to let developers build A+ games and integrate all of its online services at the same time.
Amazon says Lumberyard is built around making games social. The company wants developers to focus on creating unique games that can support huge communities from the beginning, rather than getting bogged down with the complexities of building a custom engine or firefighting server issues. Once signed up, studios gain access to features that let them play around with character animation, camera frameworks, animation and particle editors, audio tools, weather effects and AI elements. Lumberyard is based on Crytek’s CryEngine and features Double Helix technology it acquired in 2014.
Sure, that sounds great for developers, but what does it mean for you? Because Lumberyard already has cloud elements built into its editor, developers can specify how many Amazon servers they want to use and let the company automatically scale everything to ensure you can connect to a multiplayer game during busy periods. Game makers can also include community news feeds, gifting platforms, leaderboards and in-game messaging with the click of button.
A screenshot from Alien Abode, a game created with Amazon Lumberyard.
Then there’s Twitch. While Amazon has been pretty quiet on the game-streaming front, the company now looks set to give the service a much needed boost. As with Lumberyard’s other online features, studios can now include Twitch features and enable mod support directly from their editor.
With Twitch ChatPlay, Amazon boasts that developers will be able to implement real-time features that let viewers vote on an in-game outcome, send gifts to their favorite streamers or increase a game’s difficulty based on a player’s viewer count. It could also pave the way for more “Twitch Plays..” games with its built-in support for chat channel commands. Twitch JoinIn, on the other hand, takes viewer interactivity one step further by letting fans instantly jump into a streamer’s game with single click.
Lumberyard currently allows developers to build PC and console games, but Amazon says mobile and VR support is coming soon. While the editor is free, the online retailer will make its money based on the number of active daily users a game has, which may help smaller projects get off the ground quicker and give gamers a wider array of titles to play.
Source: Amazon Lumberyard
Amazon India no longer accepting mobile phone returns
Getting a smartphone? You may want to think hard about where you are buying it from; at least if you live in India and are thinking of getting your handset from Amazon. The popular carrier has just changed its return policy in this country, and not for the better.
The terms on Amazon India’s return policy page have been updated, stating that customers will no longer be able to return smartphones, shall they decide they no longer need it. This applies to all orders “fulfilled by Amazon”. So no refunds for you as of February 7th!
This means that if you are to hit that buy button, you better make sure it’s the phone you really want. But don’t worry, it’s not all bad news today. Amazon India is still making sure you get what you deserve, as a customer. You can still get phones replaced at no cost in the case that the product is defective, damaged or missing. Just make sure you get it done before the 10-day window.
Please Note: All Mobile phones that are fulfilled by Amazon, purchased on or after 7th February 2016, will have a replacement only policy. Mobile phone items that are fulfilled by Amazon will no longer be eligible for refunds. In case you have received a defective or a damaged mobile phone, you will be eligible for a free replacement.
Pretty bad news for Indian online shoppers, but there are plenty of other options. Among them is Flipkart, which still allows returns for items, even if the reason is simply that you are not satisfied with your purchase.
Surely, this will bring some big changes to consumer decisions and competition in India. Do we have any Indian phone buyers? Which online retailer are you going with for your next online purchase?
AIVAnet 