Verizon will disable the Galaxy Note 7 on January 5th
If you were hoping that Verizon’s decision against disabling the Galaxy Note 7 would give you a long while to use the ill-fated smartphone, you’re in for some disappointment. The carrier has revealed that it’s pushing the phone-crippling update on January 5th, 2017, or just over two weeks after it reaches devices on other US networks. As before, the later-than-usual cutoff is about making sure that you can contact family and emergency services over the holidays if you still haven’t turned in your Note 7.
This isn’t exactly a shocking move, since the writing was on the wall the moment that Samsung started disabling Note 7 charging features. About 93 percent of American buyers had already returned their units before the news, and that ratio is only likely to climb in the days ahead. However, the January 5th Verizon push is still notable. Think of it as an official end date for the Note 7’s brief, turbulent life in the US — it’s the day when Samsung can stop worrying about battery fires and focus on mending its image.
Via: The Verge
Source: Verizon
The Wirecutter’s best deals: Elac B6 bookshelf speakers drop to $230
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, they may earn affiliate commissions that support their work. Read their continuously updated list of deals here.
You may have already seen Engadget posting reviews from our friends at The Wirecutter. Now, from time to time, we’ll also be publishing their recommended deals on some of their top picks. Read on, and strike while the iron is hot – some of these sales could expire mighty soon.
ELAC B6 Debut Series 6.5″ bookshelf speakers (pair)
Street price: $280; MSRP: $280; Deal price: $230
This is the first good drop we’ve seen on these bookshelf speakers. At $230, this is a $50 discount off a pair of already very reasonably priced premium speakers.
The ELAC Debut B6 Series 6.5″ Bookshelf Speakers by Andrew Jones are our top pick in our best bookshelf speakers guide. Chris Heinonen writes, “With detail, soundstage, and bass response that would be impressive at any price point, these make a great stereo pair, and they’re part of a system, so you can add more pieces for a matched surround setup as your needs grow.”
Blue Microphones Yeti USB microphone + Watch_Dogs 2 PC bundle
Street price: $140; MSRP: $140; Deal price: $100
While this bundle is a little different from most of the Blue Yeti deals we’ve seen, it’s still a great deal. We recently featured the Blue Yeti for $90, so getting the recently released Watch_Dogs 2 for only $10 on top of a great deal price for the Yeti is a very good deal. If you’re not interested in playing Watch_Dogs 2 yourself, it can make for a nice gift for any PC gamers in your life, or at very least you can resell it to recoup some of the cost.
The Blue Yeti is our pick for the best USB microphone. Kevin Purdy and Lauren Dragan write, “If you want to plug a microphone into your computer or iPad and quickly sound clear and engaging whether recorded or live, we recommend the Yeti by Blue. It provided the most reliably well-rounded, natural sound out of all the mics we tested whether on Windows or Mac, or whether recording happened in professional studios or in a small square office. It was often the highest-rated in our three different tests, and when it wasn’t, it still ranked among the best. It offers live headphone monitoring and gain control, two key features for any recording setup (other mics lacked these or made using them too complicated). It is more stable on its stand than most microphones we tested, and feels far more solidly constructed and durable.”
Garmin Nüvi 2539LMT car GPS
Street price: $150; MSRP: $200; Deal price: $130
A solid deal on this former car GPS pick at $130, the lowest we’ve seen it new. While the Garmin car GPS line has been refreshed and our car GPS guide has been refreshed with it, the 2539 still has a lot to recommend it, including lifetime maps and traffic. We’re starting to see nice deals like this as stock diminishes.
Eric Adams writes, “Our previous top pick, the Nüvi 2539LMT, remains in Garmin’s lineup until inventory runs out and is still sold by several retailers. It has a crisper, multi-touch pinch-to-zoom screen and longer battery life, but not the upgraded roster of safety and driver alerts found in the Drive 50LMT.”
LucidSound LS30 wireless gaming headset
Street price: $135; MSRP: $150; Deal price: $113
A new low, $7 below the previous best price we’ve seen on this model, and it includes a free copy of Skyrim – Special Edition.
The LucidSound LS30 is our wireless pick in our guide for the best gaming headset. Dennis Burger wrote, “For a wireless headset the LucidSound LS30 delivers exceptional sound quality, simple connectivity, intuitive controls, good long-term comfort, great mic monitoring, and—perhaps most surprising—an amazing price. It doesn’t cost much more than wired headsets with similar build quality and audio performance, and it’s right around half the cost of our previous wireless pick, the SteelSeries H Wireless.”
Deals change all the time, and some of these may have expired. To see an updated list of current deals, please go to The Wirecutter.com.
Facebook Messenger gets a new camera with special effects
Facebook definitely isn’t depending solely on Instagram to take on Snapchat. It’s introducing an upgraded camera in Facebook Messenger that promises to not only be simpler, but help you spruce up your shots with Snapchat-style effects. The camera is quicker to access wherever you are in the messaging app, and shooting video is just a matter of holding down the conspicuously-placed shutter button. And the effects? You can now add 3D masks and special effects, such as turning yourself into a holiday-appropriate reindeer or adding a prop. There’s also a new picker that helps you find “thousands” of art objects and effects.
This attempt to jazz up your conversations applies to text, too. If you tap the palette icon near the shutter, you can add art and stickers to your written words.
Both Android and iOS users should see the features arrive in Messenger today, although holiday-themed effects will have to wait until December 21st.
The additions are clearly meant as hedges against Snapchat’s colorful, goofy conversations, although that doesn’t appear to be the only goal. To some extent, this is a response to Apple Messages, Google Allo and other relatively straightforward chat apps introducing some fun-oriented features. Facebook Messenger isn’t strictly boring, but it’s easy to imagine chatters drifting toward the competition if they find conversations more exciting in those rival apps.
Source: Facebook
Instagram hits 600 million users as its growth speeds up
Instagram’s growth isn’t slowing down just because it reached the half-billion user mark… if anything, it’s gathering steam. The image-centric social network reports that it now has over 600 million users, the last 100 million of which joined in the past 6 months. To put it another way, Instagram’s growth is accelerating — when it reported the 500 million figure, it had taken 9 months to garner the last 100 million. But what’s creating this momentum?
It’s not clear how many of those people are active. With its last update, Instagram noted that 300 million used its apps daily. Most of the 600 million total are likely very active, then, but there’s a chance that some of its new users only occasionally check things out.
The service doesn’t directly attribute its success to specific factors, but there are a few factors likely at work. For one, Instagram’s obsession with beating Snapchat is likely paying dividends. Why split your time between two services when you can create Stories or send disappearing photos in the same place you share many of your other shots? Twitter’s decision to effectively kill Vine may have helped, too, by drawing in people who needed a new home for their looping videos. Throw in increased media use of Instagram and ever-improving phone camera quality and it’s easy to see why Instagram would have room to grow. The question: are Snapchat-like features and live streaming enough to keep the gravy train going?
Source: Instagram Blog
Twitch takes on YouTube and Facebook Live with ‘IRL’
Twitch wants vloggers to leave YouTube and Facebook Live behind. The Amazon-owned video streaming site is launching a new “IRL” section that will allow allow streamers to share their experiences at events, on trips abroad or even just to document their day-to-day lives. Videos can either be live streamed or uploaded for on-demand viewing, and from next year users will also be able to use their smartphone cameras to broadcast through the Twitch mobile app.
To date, Twitch has mostly focused on live content relating to video games. This isn’t the first step it’s taken to remove itself from that niche, but it’s certainly the most significant. Previously capitalizing on its community’s love of cosplay, the site launched the gaming-inspired arts and crafts category, Twitch Creative, before testing more mainstream waters with its social eating channel. Twitch has also been slowly adding uploaded videos to its repertoire over the past year, although that feature remains in beta.
Adding the ability to upload vlogs is a clear attempt to steal some of YouTube’s market. YouTube has been pushing its gaming-specific service hard over the past year, and recently beat Twitch to 4K streaming.
Mobile broadcasting is also a big deal for Twitch. After the success of Facebook Live and Periscope, the company is playing catch up a little, but it’s also ensuring that successful streamers on the platform keep all of their content inside Twitch.
With these markets already cornered by Facebook and YouTube respectively, though, enticing non-gamers to start using the platform may prove difficult.
Aaron Souppouris contributed to this article.
Twitter built and cancelled a messaging app
For years, it’s been rumored that Twitter is working on a standalone messaging app. Direct Messages, or DMs, are certainly popular with some of the service’s most dedicated users. According to BuzzFeed News, a messenger app was in development as recently as September — but its form was a little different than you might expect. It packaged tweets and new “instant messages” around particular topics — a news story or a football team, for instance — which were set by chosen “influencers.” They were threads, essentially, similar to Reddit or Slack where groups could chat.
The spin-off messaging service was designed by Twitter’s Indian engineering center in Bengaluru. It was meant to be a lighter, newcomer-friendly version of the social network for users in emerging markets. The hope was that they would see the tweets and the valuable discussions they spawned. They would then be encouraged to dive into Twitter proper, following the accounts that they had appreciated in the messaging app.
“Look, as a product, Twitter isn’t easy to figure out for most people,” an unnamed source who reportedly worked on the app said. “Everyone around us was hooked to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and I think internally, there was some concern about how much people were engaging with those platforms versus ours. Instant messaging seemed like a natural choice to build something around.”
BuzzFeed News says the app was shelved in September after poor user testing. “It didn’t test out so well in the market surveys that we did with college students,” the source said. The team was let go a few weeks laters, ahead of a larger, global round of layoffs affecting roughly 350 people.
The app’s failure comes with a silver lining: Twitter is aware of the interest in Direct Messages, and the role instant messaging could play in its service. There’s no guarantee that it will ever materialize in a standalone app, however. Twitter has announced its plans to shutter Vine, a creative six-second video-sharing platform. Periscope’s broadcasting functionality is now baked into the main Twitter app, putting its future as a standalone service in doubt. It would seem that Twitter wants fewer apps, not more, in order to focus its business and product strategies. For now, the dream of a dedicated DM app seems to be just that — a dream. Sorry, Twitter fans.
Source: BuzzFeed News
‘1979 Revolution’ lands on Android
1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a powerful adventure game about a photojournalist, Reza, who gets tangled up in the movement to overthrow the Shah of Iran around 1979. And now, the complete game is on Android. 1979 Revolution hit Google Play today for Android devices, following its launch on PC, Mac and iOS earlier this year.
1979 Revolution is all about the decisions that players make during the revolution, and at times it feels more like a documentary than a game. It’s infused with true stories and real photos of the Iranian Revolution, as collected by creator and iNK Stories founder Navid Khonsari. Khonsari lived in Iran until he was 11, and his home videos and personal experiences are scattered throughout the game.
As a former Grand Theft Auto developer, Khonsari is well aware of the impact that video games can have on broader society, he told Engadget in October.
“I’m not saying games can provide world peace because there’s a lot of other parts that need to move, but they can actually start a conversation that goes beyond the single dimension of how countries, regions, people, politics and conflicts are being portrayed in single, five-minute news pieces that generalize an entire nation or group of people,” he said.
The United Nations agrees with Khonsari. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization highlighted 1979 Revolution in a November paper about the ways video games can support peace education and conflict resolution.
“1979 Revolution: Black Friday is a distinctive example of how a digital game can explore the complex and ambiguous ethical dilemmas faced by individuals in a historically and culturally accurate zone of conflict,” the paper reads.
Iranian authorities banned the sale of 1979 Revolution in the country, claiming it is an “anti-Iranian” game. In response to the ban, iNK Stories translated the entire experience into Farsi. It’s now available in seven languages — English, Spanish, Russian, German, French, Turkish and Farsi — and all of these languages are accessible in the Android version.
Source: Google Play
Study: ‘Pokémon Go’ boosts physical activity, but not for long
It was obvious when the need to catch ’em all first hit smartphones all over the world, more people were getting out of the house more to hit Gyms and Pokéstops. According to a recent study published by The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), Pokémon Go increased physical activity for players ages 18 to 35 in the US, but the change didn’t last long. Researchers found what within six weeks of first installing the game, users had gone back to their pre-Pokémon activity levels based on the iPhone’s step tracking totals.
During the first week of playing the game, users took an average of nearly 1,000 more steps a day than they did in the month before downloading the game on their phones. That’s about 11 more minutes of walking in a 24-hour period. The study included 560 “avid” players and 622 users who had yet to play the game for comparison. Researchers found that sex, age, race, body weight, location (urban, suburban or rural) and walkability of the nearby area didn’t have an effect on activity levels.
While the physical benefits may not last, the game did offer real help to people who suffer from anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. You don’t have to look far to find an account of Pokémon Go encouraging someone to get out of the house and interact with others. It may sound simple enough, but it’s a big deal to those who are dealing with depression and the positive effect that a little movement can have on a person’s overall mood goes a long way.
Via: The Guardian
Source: The BMJ
Apple’s iOS support app is now live in the US
After quietly launching in the Netherlands last month, Apple’s standalone support app is now finally available in the US. Serving as iOS users’ one-stop-shop for Apple product problem solving, the app offers a wealth of product information and advice on how to resolve common issues. If you find yourself with a more serious problem, the app can also be used to contact support technicians and even to schedule repair appointments with the Apple Store or an approved third party.
While the Support app will appear as a welcome surprise to US Apple users, those in other territories will have to wait a little longer. Without specifying exact dates or regions, the tech giant states that the app will be available in other countries “in the coming weeks.”
Source: App Store
ICYMI: One day, devices will charge when they’re pushed
Today on In Case You Missed It: Michigan State University engineers built a handful of devices that have one thing in common: They all charge when they’re pressed on or otherwise pushed because the silicone wafers inside have ions in each layer that create energy when folded or manipulated. If the phone Gods care a thing about us, this could mean that one day our devices won’t need to be charged at all– except by being used.
Meanwhile, environmental scientists are sounding the alarm on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which seems to be melting because warm winds have blown the top reflective snow cover off, so the sheet is simply intaking the sun’s rays in some places. If enough ice melts and the sheet collapses, global sea levels would rise a few feet.
If you’ve always wondered what monkeys would say if they could use their vocal cords, a possible rendering can be found here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
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