Instagram adds event video channels to the ‘Explore’ feed
Instagram wants you to know it’s more than just photos; it’s about videos too. That’s why the app has been investing quite a bit in surfacing them more in its Explore tab. Earlier this year, it added a video channel for easier to find clips and further sorted them into 23 different categories, such as dogs, comedy and travel. Now Instagram has added yet another way to find interesting videos: through events.
Starting today, the Explore tab will have an events video channel that showcases the latest and greatest footage from events around the world. That could include concerts, sporting events, theater performances and more. So you could theoretically look for clips taken during festivals like Lollapalooza, or a concert in another city, and watch them right on Instagram.
The feature will only be available in the US to start. Like the rest of Explore, the videos you see in the tab will be personalized for your particular tastes, so it’ll float what it thinks are clips of of your favorite events to the top.
Kobo’s new Aura One e-reader is big and waterproof
Whether you read before bed, in the bathtub, during your commute or at the beach, Kobo wants to be there for you. The e-reader maker just released the $229 Aura One, a 7.8-inch waterproof slate that features a colored backlight for better nighttime reading. I’ve been trying to find time to read with an Aura One for the past week, and I have to admit the tub and bedtime friendliness of the device are huge benefits.
The Aura One meets the IPX8 waterproofing standard, meaning it can be submerged in up to 2 meters of water for up to 60 minutes. It held up under the running water of my shower, although the screen became a tad finicky when wet, flipping pages even without me touching it. If you’re reading in a bathtub (not under running water) or by the pool or beach like most bookworms, you probably won’t find the water to be a huge interference, and you can easily wipe it dry after a dip. Also, the grippy back has a textured finish that made the One feel sturdier and easier to hold onto when wet.
In addition, the company built in a front light system that uses RGB bulbs instead of just white ones. This is supposed to make e-reading before bed less detrimental to your sleep patterns. Researchers have found that blue light suppresses the production of the sleep hormone melatonin more than any other light, so staring at an artificially lit screen at night can make falling asleep more difficult. Also, according to Kobo, warmer-colored lights can signal to your brain that it’s the end of the day, so it can start preparing your body for slumber.
With the Aura One’s software, you can select the exact color temperature you prefer from a scale of blue to red. You can also program your typical bedtime, and the e-reader will automatically change the front light color gradually throughout the day so that by the time you’re reading at night, your e-book is lit by a warm orange glow. Those who have used Apple’s Night Shift mode in iOS 9.3 and up will find this familiar — it’s basically the same feature.
Because I was born and raised in modern times when electricity was plentiful, I wasn’t used to reading by candlelight, which is what the orange light here is meant to mimic. But the Aura One’s more reddish tone definitely felt better for my eyes compared to my iPhone’s screen in the dark, which often felt as if it was burning my retinas off.
Another piece of good news for my eyes is the Aura One’s generous 7.8-inch footprint. The larger screen allows for bigger words that are more comfortable to read than on my relatively tiny Kindle (second-gen). Its sharp 1,872 x 1,404 resolution gives it the same 300 pixels-per-inch screen density as the Kindle Oasis, which has a 6-inch panel. And despite the larger display, the 230-gram One did not feel too heavy, as I held it up for 15 minutes before passing out.
Of all the new features of the Aura One, though, I’m most excited by a less obvious addition. Last year, Kobo’s parent company, Rakuten, bought audiobook and e-book company Overdrive, which Kobo said is the largest provider of e-books to public libraries. The Overdrive integration means that when you’re looking for books to buy in Kobo, and you have a library card, you could choose to borrow the book instead. That’s fantastic news for Scrooges like me with a library membership.
At $229, the Aura One undercuts its closest competitor, the Amazon Kindle Oasis, by about $60. But not everyone wants a larger e-reader, and those who want a thinner, lighter slate will still prefer the Oasis. Amazon has some nighttime reading tech of its own, including a “blue shade” mode in its Fire tablets, which blocks blue light and lets you read by red or yellow light. Its Paperwhite e-readers also have a so-called night mode that inverts the color scheme to white text on black, which is easier on the eyes. Also, while Kobo has more than 5 million titles in its store globally, Amazon carries 4.6 million books in the US alone. For those who read a lot before bed, though, and don’t want to worry about getting their device wet, the Aura One looks to be a solid option.
Facebook opens up Messenger to ad bots
Right now, Facebook lets Messenger bots from brands like Expedia and HP help you make a purchase, but they can’t try to sell you a new product. However, a policy change means those automated assistants will soon be able to send subscription messages, ads and promotions for services like makeup consultations. If you’re worried about spam, Facebook emphasized that the user is in control. “All conversations between businesses and people must be initiated by the person receiving the messages, who can then mute or block the business at any time,” wrote Product Manager Seth Rosenberg.
When you initiate a request via Messenger, the business has 24 hours to respond. However, replying back via an “eligible action” (like typing “learn more” or “make appointment”), resets the clock. Those who subscribe to a company’s Messenger feed, by comparison, will get messages unprompted and more regularly, but no promotional content is allowed. If subscribers reply to a message, however, it will switch into standard messaging mode, meaning ads and promos are fair game.
Existing companies using the service have three months to comply to the new rules for standard messaging, which are now in effect. For firms who want to start, Facebook promises to review new bots within five days.
The new subscription options are starting in beta for companies involved in news, productivity and personal trackers (bots used for fitness, health wellness and finance). Any interested organizations have six months to tell Facebook how, exactly, they plan to use it — presumably, Facebook doesn’t want the experience to be too spammy.
The service is a crafty way for Facebook to monetize its 1 billion monthly Messenger users, since it keeps folks in control of promotions. There are reportedly 18,000 bots on the service, and 23,000 companies using Facebook’s own “Wit.ai” deep learning tech that enables natural language recognition.
Via: Venture Beat
Source: Facebook
BBC picks new weather partner after 93 years with the Met Office
Although it’s been almost a year since the BBC announced its 93-year partnership with the Met Office was coming to an end, the broadcaster didn’t have replacement lined up at the time. During those months, it has considered bids from various new providers and ran what it calls “an open competition” to select a supplier who would appease licence payers by delivering high-quality services while keeping costs low. Today, the BBC confirmed that Netherlands-based Meteogroup was able to meet those requirements, allowing it to take over from the Met Office from spring 2017.
According to Nigel Charters, Project Director of BBC Weather re-procurement (that’s a real thing), the deal will save the BBC “millions of pounds over the next seven or so years.” At a time where the Beeb is cutting all it can to reduce its budget, the agreement will please the corporation’s bean counters.
MeteoGroup is already the UK’s largest private sector weather business and provides weather services for both Channel 4 and Sky. Its meteorological data will be fed into the BBC’s TV broadcasts and mobile app, which will require an upgrade to show “even more science and forecasting detail.”
Via: BBC News
Source: About The BBC Blog
LG gives select Korean G5 users access to Android Nougat
LG is giving very few G5 users a taste of Android’s upcoming mobile platform. And when we say “very few,” we mean it: the phonemaker is limiting beta Nougat access to 2,000 G5 owners, which is but a minuscule fraction of the world’s Android users. Also, if you want to be one of the lucky 2,000, you need to be in South Korea.
If you just happen to be in LG’s home country, you need to download the OS Preview application from the local version of Google Play, according to Droid Life. After you’ve installed and downloaded the OS, you can send in your thoughts to the phonemaker. Now, if you’re in the US and other parts of the globe, though — or if you’re using another Android device — you can always sideload the developer preview in case you really can’t wait for the platform’s official release.
Via: Droid Life
Source: LG
Huawei Honor 8 goes after millennials with fancy dual cameras
It’s not even been a year since Huawei brought its affordable Honor line to the US, and the company is already releasing a follow-up. The Honor 8 is a smartphone designed with millennials in mind, and will be available for pre-order on August 17th via the Honor website, Best Buy, Amazon and a bunch of other e-tailers for $400. I had a chance to check out the Honor 8 ahead of its US release and was impressed by its dual-sensor camera and eye-catching design. At that price, however, the Honor 8 faces some stiff competition.
Huawei believes millennials are energetic, expressive and passionate. Thus, Michelle Xiong, vice president of the company’s handset division, said it decided to focus on three key points to target the young crowd: unique aesthetics, solid cameras and a useful fingerprint sensor.
The Honor 8 was made with what Huawei calls “multilayer optical filming” that helps it catch and reflect light in a subtle way. Although it looks a lot like the Galaxy S6, the 8 is quite pretty in its own right. When I tilted the phone from side to side, I could see vertical lines appear and fade. In addition to the slightly curved 2.5D glass all over, the handset’s bezel is also made of aircraft-grade aluminum.
Huawei also offers a special warranty for the Honor 8 on top of its standard 12-month option that fixes damage to the handset’s glass covering for the first three months after purchase.
Thanks to the attention to materials, the Honor 8 feels sturdy, but ZTE’s $400 Axon 7 has a more solid build. I also appreciate that Huawei kept the rear cameras under the glass instead of having them jut out like the cameras on other phones, such as the iPhone 6s, Galaxy S7 and Nexus 5x.
Speaking of the rear camera, Huawei outfitted the Honor 8 with a 12-megapixel dual-sensor setup. An RGB sensor captures color data, while the monochrome lens records details. This combination is similar to that in Huawei’s more premium P9 flagship, which was co-engineered by popular camera maker Leica. The images I snapped with our preview Honor 8 indeed looked clear and bright, with accurate colors, and selfies taken with the 8-megapixel front camera were similarly vibrant.
The camera app offers a bunch of cool modes, such as a so-called Wide Aperture setting that lets you adjust the focal point and amount of depth of field (blurred background) after you shoot a photo. Huawei also made it easier to quickly snap pictures by building in some shortcuts. You can trigger the shutter by laying your finger on the fingerprint sensor below the rear camera or by saying “cheese.” When the phone is asleep, you can launch the camera (and immediately take a picture) by double- or triple-pressing the volume down button, depending on how you set it up.
None of those features are new for Huawei’s phones, though. Like the P9, the Honor 8 comes with the company’s EMUI 4.0 software overlaid on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This brings nifty features such as the ability to assign custom tasks to individual fingers laid on the sensor, as well as using your knuckle to outline a specific area of the screen to capture it.
The similarities to the P9 don’t end there. The Honor 8 also has a 5.2-inch, 1080p display, a USB Type-C charging port and a 3,000mAh battery that supports fast charging. Huawei says the phone will go from 0 to 50 percent after 30 minutes of being plugged in.
While both phones use the company’s own octa-core Kirin chips, the P9 has the faster Kirin 955, as opposed to the Honor 8’s Kirin 950. Huawei said the Kirin 950 is equivalent to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820, which powers most of this year’s flagships, but we’ll have to put the Honor to the test to see how it holds up.
The Honor 8 comes in black, white and blue, the latter being my personal favorite. It’s so popular, in fact, that folks in China are snapping up that version (which retails at about US$360 there) and reselling it for about US$500, according to Honor president George Zhao.
Too bad the Honor 8 doesn’t cost the same in the US as it does in China. Other midrange phones on the market, such as the OnePlus 3, the ZTE Axon 7 and the Alcatel Idol 4S cost the same and the latter even comes with its own VR headset in the box. But so far the Honor 8 appears to have a pretty decent camera, and if it does offer performance that parallels its rivals, it could be a worthy adversary. Stay tuned to see how well it stacks up against its competitors.
Baltimore PD’s phone surveillance allegedly violated FCC rules
A new legal complaint filed by a Georgetown Law professor claims that law enforcement agencies using Stingray cell-site spoofing devices are in violation of standard FCC rules because they don’t have the proper spectrum licenses to operate the equipment. The complaint, filed by professor Laura Moy on behalf of three different advocacy groups, specifically calls out the Baltimore Police Department for violating the Communications Act, blocking emergency 911 service and disproportionately affecting African American neighborhoods in Baltimore.
Stingrays act as a small-scale cell tower, forcing nearby phones to connect to the device so it can gather identifying information like location or SIM card and carrier data. Newer models can even listen in on phone calls. Although they are generally used to locate criminal suspects, critics claim Stingrays are a violation of privacy because the devices indiscriminately gather information from everyone in the area and cannot be used to specifically target a person of interest. A federal judge also recently threw out a evidence obtained by the DEA while using a Stingray setup, arguing, “absent a search warrant, the government may not turn a citizen’s cell phone into a tracking device.”
According to Ars Technica, the Stingray’s effects on 911 calls were unproven until recently, when several Canadian law enforcement agencies admitted they could only run the devices for three minutes at a time in order to avoid disrupting emergency service and breaking local telecom laws. By applying that same principle to Baltimore, Moy’s complaint alleges police put local communities in danger and violated FCC regulations when they deployed the devices in thousands of cases.
What’s more, the Baltimore Police Department has no formal policy regarding the use of the devices, but by mapping out all of the locations where BPD deployed Stingrays, Moy’s team at the Institute for Public Representation showed the department was using them far more often in black communities. In other words, the civil rights violations committed by the BPD and detailed in the DOJ’s recent report extend to high-tech surveillance as well.
“You have law enforcement agencies around the country making widespread use of licensed spectrum without getting licenses to do that,” Moy explained to Wired. “That’s a very clear violation of the Communications Act. Right now the FCC is just looking the other way.”
Via: Ars Technica, Wired
Source: Complaint for Relief Against Unauthorized Radio Operation and Willful Interference with Cellular Communications
Verizon flirted with more bloatware for its devices
Engadget parent company Verizon apparently wants to litter your phone with even more crap you don’t want. Pre-installed apps from its brand partners would arrive with your new handset from Big Red, according to a report from AdAge. The publication’s sources say that it’d cost advertisers between $1 and $2 per device. Verizon supposedly started pitching the idea to retail and finance companies late last year. Apple’s tight grip on how iOS works means that this would only be available to Android customers, where the apps would download automatically when a new handset was activated.
AdAge writes that it isn’t clear whether the carrier actually secured any deals for this. One of its anonymous sources encouraged his or her client to not throw money down because there was no guarantee the app would actually be used or opened, despite being billed for it. We’ve reached out to Verizon for more information and will update this post if there’s a response.
Source: AdAge
Apple builds an R&D center in China to survive a tough market
There’s no question that China isn’t as much of a money maker for Apple as it once was. However, it’s not about to quit the country — if anything, it’s settling in for the long haul. The company has unveiled plans to build a Chinese research and development center by the end of the year. Just what it’ll work on isn’t evident at this stage, although it’s part of an overall increased investment in Apple’s second-largest market.
It has a few good reasons to set deeper roots in China. Much as with the massive investment in Didi Chuxing, it’s at least partly about assuaging regulators who’ve been banning services and are otherwise jittery about an American company on their turf. Apple is trying to show that it can create jobs and otherwise contribute to the Chinese job market beyond stores and factory contracts. This also helps Apple recruit Chinese talent that would be difficult or impossible to bring overseas.
The moves might be necessary in a nation whose smartphone market is particularly volatile. Apple isn’t the only one hurting — IDC estimates that Xiaomi, a darling of the Chinese market just a year ago (it’s sometimes billed as China’s Apple), saw its shipments plunge a whopping 38.4 percent year-over-year during the second quarter. The exact reasons for its trouble are mixed, although it’s a latecomer to advertising (it historically relied on online sales) while rivals have stepped up their game.
Both Apple and Xiaomi might also simply be facing a changing of the guard. While Huawei is still the top phone brand in China, it’s technically eclipsed by BBK’s rapidly growing smartphone empire. It owns Oppo and Vivo, whose shipments surged (in Oppo’s case, by 124 percent) to make them the second- and third-largest phone brands in China this spring. Combine that with the smaller but plucky OnePlus badge and BBK largely has the country covered, ranging from budget phones for the mass market to attention-getting flagship devices. Anyone trying to take on BBK faces a multi-pronged assault, making it that much harder to topple.
Source: Reuters, IDC
Airbnb tests an app that plans your trips
Airbnb’s efforts to plan your whole trip, not just your stay, just got a little more concrete. The home rental outfit is testing an Airbnb Trips app for Android (an iOS version should also be in the works) that shows you what to do once you’ve unpacked your bags. You can flip through a guidebook of local attractions, not just the tourist traps, and set an itinerary to keep you moving during your vacation. The test is closed to the public, but it’s just as well. A Bloomberg source says that the features and even the name could change between now and launch, so what you see now may not be representative.
It’s not certain just when Airbnb Trips will be ready, although Bloomberg believes the company may use its yearly conference in November for a debut. The Information recently claimed that Airbnb would kick off a program that pays hosts to recommend restaurants and offer tours, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the two are related. One thing’s for sure: Airbnb appears bent on cornering your whole travel experience, rather than leaving the tourism to outsiders like TripAdvisor.
Via: Bloomberg
Source: Google Play
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