Instagram now lets you bookmark photos and videos
For some, Instagram is a place to see what your friends and family have been up to. For others, it’s an app for marvelling at beautiful food, furniture and places captured by skilled photographers. Like Pinterest, these photos can serve as inspiration for users’ own dreams and personal projects. With this in mind, Instagram is adding a bookmark icon underneath each post in your feed. Tap it and the relevant photo or video will be added to a private page accessible from your profile. There are no folders or “boards,” so everything is lumped together, but it’s certainly simpler than keeping a text document full of random Instagram links.
Source: Instagram
Microsoft’s Cortana bot can schedule meetings on your behalf
Microsoft is trying to turn Cortana into the digital assistant of your dreams with a new AI bot called Calendar.help. The beta service requires an invitation, but once signed up, you link it to your Outlook, Google or Office 365 calendar apps. Then, when it’s time to schedule a meeting, send an email to attendees and Cc: Cortana. The message can include natural language like “sometime next week” or “make this a Skype meeting.” From there, it’ll look at your calendar and contact other attendees by itself to find the best time for everyone.
Cortana keeps things moving along by following up if recipients don’t reply within 48 hours until it finally fixes a date. It then creates an event in your calendar and sends a clickable invitation to all parties, signing off with “Warmly yours, Cortana” and a fancy signature, denoting itself as “Scheduling Assistant to [your name here].”
If this works as well as it sounds, it could be the useful (and ego-stroking) helper bot that busy folks without the cash to pay a human assistant have been waiting for. “All interactions are natural and conversational — as if a real-life assistant was coordinating the meeting,” Microsoft says. It adds that it’s powered by both machine and human intelligence, meaning that Microsoft employees might intervene when the machine can’t handle the job alone.
Microsoft launched the bot at its AI day in San Francisco, where it also revealed a Cortana-powered Harmon Kardon speaker to rival Amazon’s Echo and Google Home. As mentioned, you’ll need to join a waiting list to get Calendar.help, and Microsoft says it’s favoring “those who frequently schedule meetings with people outside their organization.” That means Office 365 business customers may get first dibs, but the program should roll out more widely in the days to come.
Source: Microsoft
You can now livestream directly from Twitter’s mobile apps
The line between Twitter and its livestreaming service, Periscope, is beginning to fade. Starting today, anyone can broadcast by hitting the compose tweet button inside Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, followed by the “Live” button. Instead of being bounced to the Periscope app, however, you’ll now start start a livestream immediately. The functionality is still “powered by Periscope,” and indeed the experience is mostly the same as before — you write a quick caption before you go live, and then registered users can leave hearts and comments while you stream. Is this a direct reaction to Facebook Live’s growing popularity? Almost certainly.
Periscope as a self-contained service won’t be disappearing anytime soon, however. “Our apps and web player on periscope.tv remain the best place to search and discover Periscope content,” the team said in a blog post. While that may be true, the reasons for downloading and using the Periscope app are now greatly reduced. All but the most diehard Periscope fans will be better served by the Twitter app, streaming from the compose interface and watching the broadcasts that pop up in their feed.
For Twitter, it’s an opportunity to reinforce video and livestreaming as a fundamental part of its service. The company has inked a few broadcasting deals, spanning the NFL, Wimbledon tennis and the US Presidential debates, but much of its value comes from user-submitted contributions. That’s what makes it such a valuable tool for activism, citizen journalism and general public debate. The rise of Facebook Live threatens to erode that utility, while publishers, celebrities and brands hunt for larger audiences. Twitter and Periscope’s fusion was inevitable — the question is how long the company keeps the latter around as a standalone entity.
We all saw what happened to Vine.
Google Drive creates a shortcut for iOS to Android migrations
If you’re switching from iOS to Android, Google Drive might be able to help you out: its latest feature gives it the powers to back up your calendar events, contacts, photos and videos. It probably doesn’t sound that useful if you regularly use GCal for your schedule or Google Photos to store your images. But if you don’t, then Drive ensures you don’t have to manually transfer your data — all you have to do is start the backup process within the settings page.
Since the whole thing could take few a hours, and you’ll have to keep Drive active and on screen the whole time, Google advises you to plug your phone in and connect to WiFi. Now, you might not ever put this to use if you got a Pixel and the Quick Switch Adapter that comes with it, but it sure sounds useful for other Android devices. Just don’t forget to switch off iMessage before you leave.
Give the gift of @Android. Drive now makes transferring photos, videos, contacts & calendar events easier than ever. https://t.co/xZpaA3Zmgq pic.twitter.com/TRdH4AYEKd
— Google Drive (@googledrive) December 13, 2016
Via: The Verge
Source: Android
Imgur adds chat so you never have to leave the meme factory
A long-awaited feature has finally made it into the mobile versions of content discovery site/meme emporium Imgur. In a blog post today, the Imgur team announced that chat, messaging and notifications are now available on the gif-heavy social network, while the messaging features of its desktop site are getting an overhaul as well.
Chat works pretty much as you’d expect from any number of social networks: you can send GIFs, post links, emoji and plain old text to other imgur users from their profile, a comment link, the share icon or the chat tab in the Imgur app. Although Imgur’s community manager Sarah Schaff told TechCrunch that the site’s 150 million users form a close-knit and generally positive community, they’ve also gone ahead and built in the ability to block users as a standard social media safety feature. On the flip side, you can now follow other Imgur users by tapping the “+” sign on their profile, which will give you a notification anytime that user hits the Most Viral section of the site.
Unlike Twitter or Instagram, you can’t see who other users follow and there are no Follower/Following counts anywhere. You can, however, use the latest version of the iOS or Android app to update account info and tweak your public bio.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Imgur Blog
Nokia returns with a dumb phone from its new owner
It looks like we won’t have to mourn the demise of the Nokia brand for much longer. HMD Global, the new owners of the Nokia name, unveiled their first device today: the Nokia 150. But don’t get too excited yet. It’s a Series 30+ dumb phone that looks almost identical to the Nokia 216 that debuted back in September (which was notably Microsoft’s last Nokia device).
The $26 Nokia 150 sports a 2.4-inch screen, a VGA camera and an impressive 22 hours of battery life (remember when our phones could last for days without a charge?). It’ll be built by Foxconn subsidiary FIH, who bought Nokia’s feature phone business from Microsoft in May, for distribution in PAC, IMEA and Europe early next year.
HMD previously announced that it would release new Nokia-branded phones and tablets powered by Android, which was heartening news for fans of the brand. Arto Nummela, HMD’s CEO who previously served as an exec at Microsoft and Nokia, said in a recent interview with the Economic Times that those devices will appear in the first half of 2017. Judging from recent rumors, it sounds like HMD might unveil its Android smartphones at Mobile World Congress in late February.
Source: HMD
‘Pokémon Go’ is live in India and South Asia
Pokémon Go has expanded to a new region about once a month, launching in Southeast Asia and Oceania back in August, parts of the Balkans and Central Asia in September and some of the Middle East in November. Today, the game is finally opening in India and these South Asian countries: Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
In a post announcing the expansion, Niantic specifically apologized to their Indian fanbase, citing “a few administrative challenges” that delayed the launch. Players in the country won’t just have Starbucks hotspots, either: regional LTE mobile network operator Reliance Jio has made 3,000 of their stores and partner locations into PokéStops and Gyms. This mobile provider partnership shouldn’t be a surprise, as Niantic partnered with over 10,000 Sprint stores last week to provide American users with the same hotspot action.
Source: Niantic blog
There’s Shazam in my Snapchat
Abracadabra! And just like that, there’s Shazam in your Snapchat.
Snapchat users can now instantly figure out which songs are rudely interrupting their impromptu lunchtime video shoots without even leaving the selfie-taking app. Just hold down on the Snapchat camera screen while a song is playing nearby and Shazam will get to work, providing information about the artist, title, video and related songs. It’s then possible to send the song as a Snap to a friend.
Or, you can send the song to a group of friends. Snapchat today rolled out Groups, a feature that allows users to chat with up to 16 of their friends at once. Of course, conversations disappear after 24 hours and you’re only able to view (or listen to, apparently) individual group messages once.
Source: Shazam
Google makes it easier to get Internet of Things devices online
It’s relatively easy to build your own Internet of Things hardware, but the software is another story. How do you connect it to cloud services, push updates or just write code? Google might help. It’s trotting out a developer preview of Android Things, a toolbox that theoretically makes connecting IoT devices as straightforward as writing an Android app. Think of it as a more mature, more accessible Project Brillo. You’re not only using ordinary Android developer tools (Android Studio and the official SDK), but tapping into Google Play Services and Google Cloud Platform. In theory, most of the heavy lifting is done for you — future versions in the months ahead will even grab regular updates (both from you and Google) and use Google’s ad hoc Weave networking.
This is ostensibly designed for companies building custom hardware, but you don’t need pro engineering skills to get started. Android Things already works with Intel’s Edison, Raspberry Pi 3 and NXP’s Pico, so you can whip up a Google-powered gadget with minimal effort.
Appropriately, Google is improving Weave itself. There’s a new device developer kit for certain kids of hardware (lights, switches and thermostats right now), and Weave devices can hook into services like Google Assistant. And it’s only going to get more ambitious: in addition to more device developer kit support, Google will both offer tools to help write mobile apps and merge its own take on Weave with Nest’s version. Between this and the Android Things release, it’s evident that Google doesn’t want to sit on the sidelines while Microsoft and others make their own IoT platforms. It wants Android at the heart of many of your connected devices, and that means removing as many hurdles as possible.
Source: Google Blog
Snapchat Groups will let you chat with 16 friends at once
Even though Snapchat has quickly become a huge communication platform, there are still basic features it lacks, like group messaging. With Snapchat Groups, announced today, the app is beginning to fill those gaps. It’ll let you start group chats with up to 16 of your Snapchat friends. And, as you’d expect, the conversations will disappear after 24 hour. Recipients will also only be able to view Snaps sent to the group once.
Snap says you’ll be able to create group chats either when sending a new Snap or starting a new chat. You can also tap onto your friends’ names at the bottom of the screen to hop into one-on-one chats.
Groups is also joined by two new tools: scissors and paintbrush. The former will let you turn Snaps into stickers from the preview screen. While the paintbrush will apparently turns Snaps into “artistic masterpieces.” Whatever that means.
Given how much Snapchat has changed the way its users message, you could argue that it didn’t even need a traditional group chat function. But it makes sense when looking at Snap’s evolution as a company. Instead of being a weird thing kids use, it’s trying to become a more useful communication platform.
Source: Snap
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