Netflix adds data-saving quality controls to its mobile apps
Back in March, Netflix revealed that it was working on a “data saver” feature for its mobile apps. Keeping its word, the streaming service announced today that the cellular data tool that allows users to adjust video quality to save data is available in its iOS and Android apps. In fact, we’re seeing the new feature in both Netflix apps here at Engadget HQ. By default, the software adjusts video quality to allow for about 3 hours of streaming per gigabyte of data. The company says that tests showed this to be the best balance of data use and quality when streaming over a cellular connection.
In addition to the default setting, there are options for low, medium and high quality streaming that allow for four hours, two hours and one hour of watching with 1GB of data. There’s also a setting for those with unlimited data plans, and if you don’t want to use any of that monthly allotment, you can opt to only stream movies and TV shows on WiFi. Netflix also offered the reminder that even if you choose higher quality in the app, your mobile service provider may place its own limits on bandwidth. Regardless of networks fiddling with quality, these new quality settings should help folks who enjoy an episode of House of Cards on the go, but regularly exceed their data caps.
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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iPhone soon becoming ‘full replacement’ for Apple TV remote
TV remotes are all well and good, but they have a nasty habit of coming up missing at the worst possible moment — Apple TV’s new wand isn’t immune to this malady. It should come as good news then that Cupertino’s planning an update for the remote app on iOS with new features like voice commands with Siri. The news comes by way of an interview with Apple’s Eddie Cue and Craig Federighi on tech pundit John Gruber’s podcast this week.
More than that, if you’re playing a two player game, an iPhone can sub in as a second controller. Handy! “It really is a full replacement,” Federighi says. Beyond “a couple of months,” though, there’s no firm release date for the update. If you want more insight into Apple TV stuff (like Bluetooth keyboard support), check out the full episode; app talk starts at 22:09.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Daring Fireball
Android app turns your phone into an earthquake detector
Your smartphone can already warn you about earthquakes. UC Berkeley, however, is going one step further: it wants your phone to help detect those quakes. The school has released an Android app, MyShake, that uses your phone’s motion sensors to detect the telltale signs of tremors and combine that with the data from every other user. For all intents and purposes, you become part of a crowdsourced seismic station network — you can confirm a quake just by leaving your phone turned on. That could be a big help when there aren’t enough fixed stations to trigger an alert through conventional apps.
MyShake might even give you a heads-up in the future. Once the software is known to be trustworthy, it could send early warnings to nearby areas and even provide a countdown to help you find a safe area in time. And yes, there are plans for an iOS app as well. The system is only as effective as the number of people using it (a handful of testers won’t accomplish much), but it could prove to be a life-saving tool if it really catches on.
Via: Ars Technica
Source: UC Berkeley, Google Play
Clocks is a dead-simple yet attractive game (review)
Overview
The mobile game market tends to have emphasis placed on opposing ends of the spectrum. On one end you have the very (and sometimes extremely!) grand, detailed, and complex works of artistic and scientific wonder. These games are constantly out developing each other with their intricate world designs, control schemes, and processor-eating technical requirements.
On the opposite end you have a very different expectation. These are games where simplicity rules, and both ease-of-play and addictiveness by design can quickly decide the success of a title. There are plenty of options at both ends.
One such option on the simpler end of things is the title “Clocks”, by the Saskatchewan, Canada-based studio Noodlecake Games. They first hit the mobile game market with their possibly familiar “Stickman Golf” and “Super Stickman Golf” games.
Setup
You can grab the game for free from the Play Store, and startup is as easy as pressing the app icon on your device.
The game does connect with your Google Play Games account, though I’ve never personally used that so I cannot speak to it’s worth here.
Gameplay
The idea of “Clocks” is simple enough. There are two modes, ‘Quest’ and ‘Survival’, though you are forced to start with ‘Quest’. In this mode, in each level you are presented with a different arrangement of clock faces, each with a single hand spinning either clockwise or…you guessed it.
Each clock’s hand is also spinning at a different speed. The only control is a large ‘shoot’ button taking up the bottom of the display; about the size of the Android screen dock on a typical home screen. At the beginning of each level, one clock is highlighted as the one you are in control of.
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The idea is to press the ‘shoot’ button as the spinning hand lines up with another clock of your choice. This action shoots a small dot, or BB, at the clock you’re aiming at. If you hit it, the previous clock disappears and you are now in control of the clock you just hit; ready to shoot the next one of your choosing. You repeat this until you have cleared all of the clocks off the screen, when you are congratulated on-screen and taken to the next level. If you miss, a quick “oh darn”-type message pops up; you’re given the option to try again and again until you complete it.
There are two levels of victory in each stage: you receive a *star* if you complete the stage before the stage’s countdown timer gets to zero, or simply a ‘passable’ score, with the option to move to the next stage or retry for the star.
Once you clear the 10th level, a message displays that you have unlocked access to the ‘Survival’ option of the game. This is an untimed version of the game. You begin with a similar screen of randomly placed spinning clocks, one highlighted as the one in your control, ready to stop and shoot upon your button press.
The difference here is when you accurately shoot a clock and take it over, the old one disappears and a new one randomly appears guaranteeing you never run out of clocks to shoot. The object here is not to clear the screen, but to see how many clocks you can accurately hit before finally missing, which becomes your high score. Successive attempts at this game option are solely to break your record and get a new personal high score.
Summary
Overall I do enjoy this game; the design is simple, but colorful and with good visual contrast, so it’s easy on the eyes when staring at a 5” screen. The gameplay is a matter of simple timing, which makes personal investment a minimum. You can pick it up and put it back down equally easily, which is nice in a typical hectic day. Sometimes you just want to challenge yourself, or while away the minutes in the doctor’s waiting room on something not called Facebook.
Download from the Play Store.
The post Clocks is a dead-simple yet attractive game (review) appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Microsoft’s wacky AI app matches you with a dog breed
Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting pretty good at identifying people, but before it starts looking for Sarah Connor, Microsoft’s Garage team is having fun with it. Last time, the group released an app that (poorly) guessed your age, and the latest app, Fetch, determines what dog breed you’d be based on your photo. It sometimes makes canny matches, but on the other hand, three different pictures of the same person (below) yielded three different breeds of dog — an Afghan hound, a Cairn terrier and a Beagle, so it’s lacking in consistency.
On the other hand, the app is excellent at identifying actual dogs. It correctly identified our family Bull Terrier “Harpo,” even though he was wearing a cone of shame. It also correctly identified a part German Shepherd as such. “We use one of the hottest machine learning techniques available, called deep neural networks,” said Microsoft Research director Mitch Goldberg. “You don’t train it on a particular dog breed. You give it numerous images, and it, in the training process, determines what’s unique in each of the dogs.”
Inputting other animals, including humans, into the app was a hoot, of course. The app related our friend’s pet duck to a Bull Terrier as well, no doubt because of its similar “beak.” Our scraggly cat, meanwhile, was a Malamute that’s “problematic with other dogs,” which is true because it’s, well, a cat. A few of us at Engadget took a spin and found that the dog breeds did line up with our personalities, though we’re suspicious that like horoscopes, it may have been telling us what we want to hear. To see all the results, check the gallery below.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft’s wacky AI app matches you with a dog breed
Artificial intelligence (AI) is getting pretty good at identifying people, but before it starts looking for Sarah Connor, Microsoft’s Garage team is having fun with it. Last time, the group released an app that (poorly) guessed your age, and the latest app, Fetch, determines what dog breed you’d be based on your photo. It sometimes makes canny matches, but on the other hand, three different pictures of the same person (below) yielded three different breeds of dog — an Afghan hound, a Cairn terrier and a Beagle, so it’s lacking in consistency.
On the other hand, the app is excellent at identifying actual dogs. It correctly identified our family Bull Terrier “Harpo,” even though he was wearing a cone of shame. It also correctly identified a part German Shepherd as such. “We use one of the hottest machine learning techniques available, called deep neural networks,” said Microsoft Research director Mitch Goldberg. “You don’t train it on a particular dog breed. You give it numerous images, and it, in the training process, determines what’s unique in each of the dogs.”
Inputting other animals, including humans, into the app was a hoot, of course. The app related our friend’s pet duck to a Bull Terrier as well, no doubt because of its similar “beak.” Our scraggly cat, meanwhile, was a Malamute that’s “problematic with other dogs,” which is true because it’s, well, a cat. A few of us at Engadget took a spin and found that the dog breeds did line up with our personalities, though we’re suspicious that like horoscopes, it may have been telling us what we want to hear. To see all the results, check the gallery below.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Microsoft
Indonesia demands Line remove LGBT stickers from its app
Indonesia’s Information and Communication Ministry spokesman Ismail Cawidu on Thursday has called on social messaging app maker Line to remove a selection of stickers depicting LGBT themes from its online store. While homosexuality isn’t technically illegal in Indonesia (outside of the Aceh province), it is a taboo subject in the socially conservative nation. The stickers’ presence generated a severe online backlash from the apps users, prompting Cawidu’s demand.
Line replied to the enjoiner via Facebook, apologizing for making users “uncomfortable” and promising to remove the offending items in short order. “At Line, we stick to the global benchmark for screening and filtering of content that is sensitive from the perspective of the local culture,” the company’s Facebook post reads. “Line appreciates all the feedback from users and other parties related to the products and features, and we realize how sensitive this matter is and will work hard to ensure that things like this do not happen again.”
The I&C Ministry in turn replied with a post on its own website praising Line’s capitulation. “We appreciate their work in addressing things that could potentially cause public unrest, especially the concerns of mothers of children on the negative influence of LGBT stickers,” it reads. Yes, please, won’t someone think of the children.
Via: Mashable
Beer-tracking app Untappd gets barcode scanning, hails an Uber
If you’re a dedicated beer geek, chances are you’re using the app Untappd to track your libations. For the unfamiliar, the mobile software allows you to log and rate beers while following what and where your friends are drinking. With a new update to the iOS version, the app is getting a load of new features. First, there’s a new barcode scanner that’ll make searching for beers you’re drinking a breeze. Rather than having to manually search, all you’ll have to do is point your phone’s camera at the barcode on a bottle or can.
When you’re ready to head out for the evening, you can hail a ride from Uber inside the app by selecting the venue you want to visit. After you select the option, destination info is automatically sent to the transportation app. Other new features include friends lists to keep your feed tidy, support for 3D Touch, the ability to tag friends in comments and more. The truckload of new stuff is only available in the iOS app for now, but Untappd says the features will make it Android soon enough.
Untappd merged with fellow alcohol app Next Glass last month. In doing so, the folks behind the beer app promised to deliver new features and updates on the regular. Today’s news is certainly a nice start to the partnership.
Source: Untappd
1Password gets Material Design makeover and fingerprint unlock
1Password has pushed out an update for Android devices at last, and it brings huge changes to the app. The password manager will look like a brand new application the moment you upgrade to version 6, thanks to its Material Design makeover. Every section looks cleaner and more spacious. Plus, there are now toolbars everywhere, along with language’s familiar floating button that gives you a way to quickly add new URL-password combinations.
The app’s upgrades aren’t just skin deep, though: if you have an Android device with a fingerprint sensor such as the Nexus 5X or 6P running Android Marshmallow, you can quickly unlock 1Password. Simply launch it and scan a finger to skip typing in your master password. Finally, version 6 comes with the beta version of 1Password for Teams. It’s a useful feature whenever you want to share log-ins with family or co-workers, so you can all access any account needed for the project you’re working on. You can even quickly add a team account by using the built-in QR code reader.
Password managers are a great way to ensure you’re using a unique password for all your online accounts. If you haven’t used one before and would like to give 1Password a try, note that version 6 will only work for Android 4.1 or newer. The app itself is free, but you’d have to pay for premium features, such as being able to add an unlimited number of log-ins and to edit existing ones.
Source: AgileBits
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