The NBA’s fitness app gives you training tips from the pros
The options for fitness apps are seemingly endless these days, and now the National Basketball Association (NBA) is adding yet another. Thanks to a hand from Under Armour, the pro basketball league now has it’s own exercise and training app: NBA Fit. The NBA says the mobile software combines Under Armour’s Connected Fitness platform with fitness tips and videos from players in the league and the WNBA. There’s also pointers from strength and conditioning coaches.
While the advice will be focused on training and nutrition as it relates to basketball, there will be challenges for you to compete against your pals. If you’re familiar with Under Armour’s Connected Fitness platform, you can expect a similar experience here. To keep tabs on a workout though, you’ll have to also install the UA Record app as NBA Fit is more of a content and social hub than an activity-tracking tool. Bummer.
Partnering with UA is an interesting move for the NBA, as Adidas is its current uniform and apparel provider for the league and Nike is set to take over in 2017. However, the reigning MVP, Steph Curry, is one of Under Armour’s biggest athletes and it also has quite the slate of exercise and nutrition apps already. Need some training tips? The NBA Fit app is available free of charge via Google Play and iTunes.
Source: NBA Fit
Facebook intros diverse Messenger emojis for all platforms
Facebook has created brand new emojis for Messenger, redesigned its old ones and standardized them for all operating systems. The social network will begin rolling out 1,500 newly designed emojis tomorrow, which will show up the way you see them on your device no matter the recipient’s platform. No more empty boxes taking their place if you’re chatting with someone using another OS. Even better, the new graphics embrace diversity — they include hand gestures and human faces in different skin colors, as well as images of same sex couples.
If you have an iPhone or an iPad, you already have access to Apple’s diverse smileys. But Messenger’s new selection is accessible everywhere the app is available, including Android and the web. At the moment, you can only use hand gestures in FB’s original blue-and-white coloring on Android, and you barely even have choices on the web. Messenger will ask for your preferred skin tone when you get the update, though you can change it again later.
Facebook is also taking a leaf out of Google’s book and launching more emojis that represent women, showing them in professional attire (e.g. police officer) and doing various activities like swimming, running and surfing. Finally, all 1,500 options will be available through the app’s new emoji picker when they make their way to your device.
OnePlus is ditching its invite system once and for all
The worst part about OnePlus phones? Trying to buy them. All three of the company’s phones have been sold, at least initially, using an often frustrating invite system. Fans could obtain one by completing various competitions, responding to social media posts or by cajoling their friends who had already bought a OnePlus phone. But no more. With the OnePlus 3, which will be launching on June 14th, the company is killing the invite system once and for all. Fans with a OnePlus VR headset will get a head start, but then it’s fair game from 3pm ET on the OnePlus website.
OnePlus has always argued that the invite system was necessary to control demand for its phones. Co-founder Carl Pei says it stopped the company from building too many handsets, which could have sat unsold in a warehouse somewhere. Unlike Amazon, which can easily take the loss on some unwanted Fire phones, OnePlus had to be careful with its supply chain. “The invite system allowed us to scale our operations and manage our risks to help us grow more sustainably,” he explains in a forum post.
“Invites are gone forever from future OnePlus product launches.”
Two years later, much has changed. OnePlus is no longer a fledgling brand with few fans and zero reputation. It’s delivered three, mostly excellent phones and has built a strong, loyal fanbase that crave new announcements. With the OnePlus 3, the company is finally ready to sell a phone like a conventional OEM. How that will affect its image — and the hype associated with each product release — remains to be seen, however.
Source: OnePlus
Google Play will suggest neglected apps for you to uninstall
When you add an app from Google Play and space on your phone is tight, you’re often stuck wondering which of your darlings programs you should kill delete. According to Android Police, Google Play is going to help your decision-making process by offering up suggestions as to what you no longer need. When you’ve run out of on-board storage, you’ll be given a list of your least-used apps, ranked in order of weight. So, in the example, the store suggests that you wipe Google Translate or Facebook Messenger and free up some much-needed space. It’s not clear if the feature is rolling out to users worldwide or if this is a limited trial, but we’ve asked Google to let us know.
App size is increasing at a time when many mainstream phones are losing their microSD card slots, and that’s causing a headache for plenty of users. Devices from companies as diverse as OnePlus and Samsung have moved away from providing expandable storage, and last year Hugo Barra told Engadget that “SD cards will disappear.” It doesn’t hurt, of course, that manufacturers can charge a premium for built-in storage that it can’t for third-party cards. Then there’s the fact that the threat of an app being nominated for deletion might just inspire developers to start trimming the fat from their products.
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Android Police
Samsung brings back its free Gear VR promo
Miss out on your chance to get a free Gear VR headset by pre-ordering a Galaxy S7? You can rest easy. Samsung is launching a US Father’s Day promo that gives you a gratis Gear VR when you buy one of the company’s higher-end phones from the past year, including most Galaxy S6 and S7 variants (sorry, no S6 Active) and the Galaxy Note 5. The deal also gives you an Oculus bundle with “hit games and experiences.” You’ll have to buy the phone between now and June 19th to qualify, but that’s no big deal if you were already thinking about an upgrade and just needed a nudge to get moving.
Source: Samsung Promotions
Australia puts traffic lights in the ground to alert phone addicts
The German city of Augsburg has already tried putting traffic lights in the ground to keep cellphone-obsessed pedestrians from walking on to train tracks, but the Australian state of New South Wales wants to take things one step further. It tells Mashable that it’s going to install ground-based traffic lights at key crosswalks in Sydney (likely in its central business district) as part of a trial starting in December. The aim, unsurprisingly, is to prevent an unpleasant encounter with a car while you’re busy texting your friends.
There’s no mention of how quickly these lights would expand if the trial goes forward, but it’s easy to see them popping up at many busy intersections if they take off. After all, we live in a world where phone fans sometimes get their own sidewalk lanes — lights are just the next logical step.
Source: Mashable
‘Alto’s Adventure’ zen mode is built to help you relax
Alto’s Adventure is already something of a tranquil experience between its endless snowboarding and beautiful pastoral landscapes, but developer Snowman wants go even further. It’s introducing a “zen mode” to Alto that removes scores and lets you continue from wherever you crashed — all you have to do is enjoy the experience. There’s also a more relaxing soundtrack in this mode, and you’ll even get a photo tool that lets you zoom in and peek behind foreground objects that might clutter the scene.
The update will arrive on June 2nd for all iOS users. As for Android? That’s coming “soon,” Snowman promises. Alto might not be your first choice for a chillout session (a soothing album and a quiet room would be my pick), but this should help for those moments when you’re more interested in tuning out than beating your previous run.
Via: The Verge
Source: Built by Snowman
BT Mobile begins offering handset plans
BT’s acquisition of EE clearly hasn’t dampened the company’s aspirations to become a mobile player in its own right. BT waded back into the space over a year ago now, with a simple selection of 12-month, SIM-only plans. It appears, however, that was just the beginning. Today, BT Mobile grows into a more fully featured provider, as it’s begun offering an assortment of smartphones on two-year, pay-monthly contracts. It’s not the widest range, but BT’s filled the virtual shelves with a number of popular devices from Apple and Samsung, including their latest flagships, and a couple from Sony for good measure, headlined by the new Xperia X.
BT has kept things relatively simple on the pricing front, too. There are just three different tariffs available with every handset, split into two tiers depending on whether you want an “all-rounder” like the Samsung Galaxy A5 or 16GB iPhone 5s, or a “premium” device such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 or iPhone 6s:
All-rounder
| £25 | 400 | unlimited | 500MB | £20 |
| £30 | 1,000 | unlimited | 2GB | £25 |
| £40 | unlimited | unlimited | 15GB | £35 |
Premium
| £36 | 400 | unlimited | 500MB | £31 |
| £41 | 1,000 | unlimited | 2GB | £36 |
| £51 | unlimited | unlimited | 15GB | £46 |
By standardising the price of plans, BT has taken a different approach to subsidised handsets. There’s little wiggle room in the monthly cost to account for varying handset prices, so customers make up the difference with upfront payments. In fact, only a couple of device/tariff combinations let you walk away with a free phone, and upfront payments can go as high as £430 for a 128GB iPhone 6s Plus on the £36 per month premium plan.
Unlike most second-tier providers, BT Mobile is in the position to offer a number of perks with its contracts. Like the SIM-only plans, these new two-year tariffs include complimentary access to BT’s five million WiFi hotspots and free BT Sport Lite (essentially just BT Sport 1) through mobile apps, among other things.
It’s quite interesting to see BT expand its mobile offering, particularly after absorbing the UK’s largest carrier. Considering the discounts for broadband customers, though, it makes sense for BT to cater to device needs, inspiring loyalty to its other services. No doubt it helps assure regulators they were right to clear the EE acquisition and ignore competition concerns, too.
Source: BT Mobile, BT
ICYMI: Adorable robot overlords, all-in-one home brews and more
Today on In Case You Missed it: ASUS debuted a $600 home companion robot named Zenbo, who is designed to help out around the house (so long as its chores don’t involve actually holding anything). Whirlpool launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdsource a $1200 all-in-one home brewing kit that turns beer precursor into sippable suds in as little as a week. And we take a look at the upcoming VR game Mosh Pit Simulator, which will bring GoatSim-level insanity to your VR headset.
As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Mobile ad blocking is still relatively uncommon in the U.S.
Out of 1.9 billion smartphone users on the planet, about 419 million — or 22 percent — of them use mobile ad blocking tools, a new study from PageFair has found. While ad blocking has barely caught on in the United States, more than a third of all the smartphone users in the Asia-Pacific region use an app or browser to stop advertisements from reaching their phones.
55 percent of that global smartphone userbase lives in the Asia-Pacific region, NiemanLab notes, but it makes up 93 percent of the people who use ad blocking services. According to PageFair’s head of ecosystem Johnny Ryan, slower devices and expensive mobile data are to blame for the sudden surge in popularity in places like China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. By comparison, slightly more than two percent of smartphone users in the U.S. use ad blocking apps like Brave or Opera on their phones.
Given this popularity in Asia, it should be of little surprise that four out of the top five ad blocking apps are variations of Alibaba’s UC Browser. (Although PageFair’s report notes that lead might be shaken up by ASUS’ plan to ship phones with built-in ad blocking.) Now that Google has loosened restrictions around ad blocking on Android, the coveted fifth-place spot goes to the simply named “Adblock Browser for Android.”
AIVAnet 