Want to help Google Home improve? Here’s how to send feedback directly to Google

Google Home is a product that still needs a lot of help.

With Actions on Google, we’re finally starting to see Google Home capabilities expand, but that’s not to say this product is anywhere near perfect yet. Google is going to be improving Home for years to come (or at least, let’s hope it’s years to come), and do you want to know how you can help them make this little air freshener lookalike more helpful in your own life? Give Google some feedback! It’s easy, too!

The easy way

If you’ve got a bug or issue you can easily articulate, simply say “OK Google… Send feedback.” Google will reply and ask you what needs to be improved. Answer it, and the voice recording will be sent to the Google Home team to listen to and act on.

If your issue is long-winded, technical, or you just feel like writing it instead of saying it aloud, you can do that, too!

The slightly-less-easy way

Open the Google Home app.
Tap the three-line menu button in the top left corner of the screen.

At the bottom of the menu, tap Help & feedback.

Tap Submit Feedback Request at the bottom of the screen.
Select Google Home from the list of services to give feedback on.
After typing in your feedback, tap the arrow-shaped Send button.

Keep in mind while submitting feedback that you should provide details for the problems or improvements you’d like to see, but keep things concise. Also try to limit each feedback request to one issue rather than turning a single feedback report into a laundry list of issues, as it can make it harder for support to redirect each issue to the proper people.

Google Home

• Google Home review
• These services work with Google Home
• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo
• Join our Google Home forums!

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Bose SoundSport Pulse review: Fine sounding sports earphones

In the current age of wearable technology it can be tempting for manufacturers to shove as many sensors and features into their products as possible. Watches are mini computers, bracelets can tell us if we’ve had enough sleep and earphones are slowly becoming full-on digital fitness coaches.

The Bose SoundSport Pulse come equipped with a heart-rate monitor, to act as a fitness tracker directly in your ears, while managing to stay true to Bose’s promise of quality audio. Are these sporty in-ears any good?

Bose SoundSport Pulse review: Design

• 28 x 23 x 30mm; 64g
• Carry case included
• Built-in heart-rate monitor
• In-line remote control

As in-ear headphones go, the Bose SoundSport Pulse are pretty chunky because the large plastic casing contains the battery, Bluetooth radios and audio drivers.

When placed into the ear, the big tooth-shaped exterior is hard to ignore, and almost feels unbalanced. Thankfully, they never fell out of our ears, and even if they did then the build and design is sturdy enough that we wouldn’t be worried about them breaking.

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This large black plastic exterior casing is covered in a grippy black plastic and attaches to the glossy polycarbonate earphone. On the right ear, this exterior housing plays home to the power/pairing button as well as the micro USB port, which is covered by a water-sealing flap.

On the left earbud, there’s nothing built on or into the black plastic housing, but there is a heart-rate sensor built into the underside of the earbud to read your pulse.

Like the Lightning connector-equipped JBL earphones we reviewed earlier in the year, the Bose SoundSport Pulse has squashed cone-shaped eartips. Think those cones you had to dribble a football around during PE lessons, make them tiny and use a grey soft silicone, and you’re there.

While it’s not an usual design for an in-ear headphone, this cone shape has its benefits. First of all, it’s more comfortable to have shoved in your ear canal than round ball-shaped tip. What’s more, because it gets wider towards the base, it does a better job of sealing off outside noise, and does it without feeling like you’re pushing all of the air out of your ears and creating an uncomfortable vacuum like so many other earbuds. 

As is usually the case with in-ears, the SoundSport Pulse ships with three different sized ear tips. Curiously however, they’re built into the same piece of silicone as the fins that help the earphones stay in your ears. We can’t help but feel it would be better if they were separate, to make it a more customised fit. It does have one major upside this way though: it’s easy to remove and re-attach. You don’t have to mess with two fiddly, hard-to-apply bits of silicone.

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There’s a three-button inline remote built into the cable which attaches the two earbuds to each other, complete with a small clothing clip. This remote is placed about two inches below the right earbud, so is very easy to reach while jogging along, and the indented multi function button is easy to find without having to look with your eyes. 

This remote features a microphone for hands-free calling, volume up/down buttons and a main central button used for playing, pausing and skipping tracks. It also happens to have a built-in NFC chip for automatic pairing with compatible Android phones.

Bose SoundSport Pulse review: App and fitness tracking

• Bose app for quick wireless pairing
• Third-party fitness apps only

Bose clearly knows what it’s good at: making quality sound. It’s not a fitness tracker company, so the built-in heart-rate monitor is designed to work with third-party apps.

You can connect the earphones in-app and then have real-time heart-rate data tracked by Strava, Endomondo, MapMyRun, Runkeeper or Under Armour’s Record. All the major bases covered there.

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Bose does have an app for SoundSport, called Connect, but it’s kept things simple. Once downloaded, it automatically detects the earphones are nearby (if they’re switched on), then simply drag down on the image of your earphones to connect them.

Disappointingly there’s no equaliser built into the Bose Connect app. Depending on which app you use for music streaming, however, you can adjust the balance with one of those. Spotify, for instance, has a load of preset audio settings.

Bose SoundSport Pulse review: Performance and connectivity

• 9m/30ft wireless Bluetooth range
• 4-hour battery life approx
• USB charging

You can pair the SoundSport with multiple devices. We used them connected to a PC, OnePlus 3T, iPhone 7 Plus and the fourth-generation Apple TV. In each instance it remained connected and clear.

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More importantly, however, is that the SoundSport stay connected when out running. During our testing there was never a single instance of the audio dropping out, not even for a split second, which sometimes happens with Bluetooth earphones. And this was with the phone wrapped around the waist in a snug-fitting belt/pouch.

Bose promises five hours of playback on a fully charged battery, but in our testing it came up a little short. They needed charging after approximately four hours of use. 

Bose SoundSport Pulse review: Sound

Bose has made something of a name for itself when it comes to sound quality. Despite being a pair of sports earphones the SoundSport Pulse continue that reputation with great balance of frequencies.

The audiophile might take a listen and think there’s too much bass, but it serves to provide a fullness and immersive feel to songs when out exercising. Mids and trebles are suitably levelled to produce tracks that are easy to enjoy, regardless of the genre of music.

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If there’s any criticism, it’s that sometimes the higher-end lacks a little clarity. It’s certainly not something you’ll care about while you’re getting your sweat during a 10k run, or bench-pressing the equivalent of a small bus at the gym. You’ll just be enjoying the fact that there are wireless sports headphones with no real compromises on sound. 

Verdict

When choosing earphones to use while exercising there are three key features: they need to stay in your ears, they need to stay connected to the phone, and they need to sound good. The Bose Soundsport Pulse deliver in each of these key areas, plus they’re comfortable to wear.

Sure, they aren’t the most fully-featured fitness headphones on the market, but they don’t need to be. Bose has stuck to what it knows best, and by associating the built-in heart-rate monitor with popular third-party fitness apps rather than trying to create one of its own.

But above all else it’s that signature Bose sound quality that makes the SoundSport Pulse a winner.

Bose SportSound Pulse: Alternatives to consider

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Jabra Elite Sport

£229

If you don’t mind forking out an extra £50, you can grab the truly wireless Jabra Sport Elite earphones which – like the Bose set – have a built-in heart-rate monitor. However, these add to that with gyroscopes and sensors for measuring distance and cadence while you run. With the included battery pack case, you can get nearly nine hours of playback before needing to plug them in too.

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JBL Reflect Aware

£169

They may not be wireless, and be iPhone exclusive (thanks to the Lightning connector), but the JBL Reflect Aware are very comfortable to wear, much lighter than the Bose and have secure fit in the ear. 

EU court ruling could derail the UK’s new surveillance law

The Investigatory Powers Act became the UK government’s new digital surveillance law less than a month ago, but it appears it’s already been deemed unfit for purpose. The EU Court of Justice today delivered its verdict on a long-running case concerning the legality of surveillance measures. It ruled that while the targeted retention of data for the purpose of combating serious crime is permissible, “indiscriminate” data collection is incompatible with EU human rights law. “Such national legislation therefore exceeds the limits of what is strictly necessary and cannot be considered to be justified within a democratic society,” the court said.

This doesn’t bode well for a controversial new power in the IP Act that allows the government to force internet service providers and mobile carriers to store data on the online activity of all customers for a period of 12 months. Your internet browsing history (or rather, just the top-level domains you accessed, such as wikipedia.org) and data around messaging and other online services you use fall under the definition of ICRs. This is far from a targeted measure, though, and thus would appear to be at odds with the EU Court of Justice’s decision.

Furthermore, the court states that governments should not be able to access any personal data without prior authorisation from a judge or independent body. Under the IP Act, ICRs can be accessed without a warrant, and by a number of government organisations unlikely to be involved in the investigation of serious crimes (though the definition of “serious” is unclear, as is unfortunately often the case with legalese). Still, the retention of ICRs goes against basically every precedent laid down by the EU court today.

The government’s use of so-called bulk powers also appears to be drawn into question by the ruling. Bulk powers, in one form, are the equivalent of mass surveillance, whereby data and communications related a large group of people or a large area are monitored. Often, this includes the surveillance of innocent people in order to identify certain suspects or unlawful activity (read: relatively indiscriminate). While these intrusive powers are subject to prior approval — except in urgent cases, where it’s granted after the fact — they can be employed for a number of reasons, including the threat to injury of a person’s mental health. Whether all these potential use cases can be considered “serious” enough to justify these powers is now up for argument.

If our story ends with the Investigatory Powers Act, it starts with the Data Retention Directive. This EU-wide directive was issued in 2006, and compelled telecommunications service providers to store various user data — like IP addresses, the time text messages were sent and received, among other things — for a minimum of six months. The idea being it could then be made available to law enforcement agencies for the purpose of investigating serious crimes.

In a landmark case, the EU Court of Justice threw out the directive in 2014, after a legal challenge from Digital Rights Ireland. While the reasons for issuing the directive were sound, the court said, the data retention requirements were unnecessarily broad, and there weren’t any defined limitations on who could access the data and for what purpose. Basically, it wasn’t comprehensive enough to ensure there was no risk of abuse, therefore it was incompatible with EU privacy and data protection rights.

This posed a serious problem for the UK government, as by this point the directive had trickled down into various national laws and regulations. With these now deemed unfit for purpose, the government rushed to keep its surveillance regime intact by way of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA). The emergency legislation, which was hastily adapted from existing law, came into force mere days after it was first published, albeit with a self-destruct mechanism built in that means it expires at the end of this year.

A few months later, a cross-party pairing of MPs launched a legal challenge against DRIPA, and this time last year the UK’s High Court deemed it unlawful on the basis it, too, was incompatible with human rights laws (namely the fundamental right to privacy). As expected, the government appealed the High Court’s ruling, leading the Court of Appeal to seek advice from the EU Court of Justice before making its own decision.

The most important question asked of the EU court was whether its criticisms of the Data Retention Direction in the Digital Rights Ireland case (the one back in 2014) sets a precedent for future surveillance laws. “Yes” comes the answer from the court today.

While the UK Court of Appeals is focused on the DRIPA case, whatever decision it arrives at will have a direct impact on the Investigatory Powers Act — seen as a fresh start for Britain’s surveillance activities, as the bill consolidates several relevant laws in one tidy package. Based on the advice of the EU Court of Justice, the broad failings identified in DRIPA should also apply to the IP Act, and it should amount to a major reworking of the new laws. Until we leave the EU, that is, and the justice court’s ruling effectively becomes ignorable.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson, one of the MPs that brought the legal challenge against DRIPA, commented today: “This ruling shows it’s counterproductive to rush new laws through Parliament without proper scrutiny… I’m pleased the court has upheld the earlier decision of the UK courts.”

Several other MPs have voiced similar views, reiterating their disapproval of the IP Act and applauding the EU court’s decision. Martha Spurrier, director of privacy group Liberty — one of several organisations that argued from the outset the government was ignoring human rights concerns — said of the ruling: “Today’s judgment upholds the rights of ordinary British people not to have their personal lives spied on without good reason or an independent warrant. The Government must now make urgent changes to the Investigatory Powers Act to comply with this.”

[Inline image credits: Getty (server room) / Yves Herman for Reuters (Theresa May)]

Source: EU Court of Justice (PDF)

Super Mario Run Sets Downloads Record as Nintendo Pushes Out New Game Mode [Updated]

Popular iOS game Super Mario Run set a new download record yesterday, following its release last week on Thursday, December 15. According to app analyst Sensor Tower, the game hit 25 million downloads in just four days, which is faster than Pokémon Go, which took 11 days to reach the same number, although that game’s initial launch was limited in terms of available territories.

SensorTower’s current estimate puts paid users at approximately 2.1 million worldwide. By comparison, the paid game Lara Croft Go, launched in August 2015, has been downloaded approximately 280,000 times worldwide on the App Store since release.

Image via SensorTower
“It can’t be understated, however, that the vast majority of early Super Mario Run downloaders clearly find the full game pricing prohibitive, and we can only image how much better the conversion rate could be at $2.99 or even $4.99,” said SensorTower in a blog post.

Nintendo investors have so far expressed disappointment with Super Mario Run, causing share prices in the company to lose 11 percent since its release. The declines stem from negative user reviews of the game on the iOS App Store, where it is currently rated 2.5 stars out of 5 based on 4,919 reviews. This has led to concerns over the game’s one-time payment model, which eschews the typical model of paying various small amounts for select in-game features.

“Mario is arguably the most popular gaming franchise in the world, yet we see only about 8 percent of those who try the game actually purchasing it,” Sensor Tower analyst Spencer Gabriel told Reuters.

“I don’t think this is a statement on the game’s quality … but rather the perceived value when compared to free-to-play games that offer much more content with optional microtransactions that enable players to experience it sooner.”

In spite of reports that Nintendo won’t be adding extra features to Super Mario Run, the company today rolled out an update to its first iOS title that adds a new gameplay mode allowing users to compete with friends without paying any Rally Tickets.

Dubbed “Friendly Run”, the new mode can be played up to three times daily for gamers who paid $10 for the full content and have cleared World 1, while those who have cleared World 2 get five Friendly Runs per day. Players of the trial version can also get in on the action as long as they have some friends added in the game, but the mode can only be played once a day until the in-app purchase is made.

As noted by MacRumors sister site TouchArcade, with no coins being earned and no Toads or enemy level-ups up for grabs, the new mode is essentially just a practice mode, but it does offer a new way to compete with friends, which should add longevity to the game.

Super Mario Run is available to download for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. [Direct Link]

Update: Nintendo has since released official download figures for Super Mario Run and claims that 40 million people have downloaded the free version of the game in just four days.

Tag: Super Mario Run
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New U.K. Surveillance Powers Are ‘Illegal’, Rules E.U.’s Highest Court

The European Union’s highest court has ruled that the “general and indiscriminate retention” of electronic communications by governments is illegal, in a direct challenge to the U.K.’s recently passed Investigatory Powers Act, the so-called “Snooper’s Charter” (via The Guardian).

The U.K. bill requires that internet service providers retain a record of all websites visited by citizens for 12 months at a time, but today’s decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg ruled that the collection of data in such a manner puts citizens under “constant surveillance” and enables governments to draw “very precise conclusions” about their private lives.

The European Court of Justice.

The interference by national legislation that provides for the retention of traffic data and location data with that right must therefore be considered to be particularly serious. The fact that the data is retained without the users of electronic communications services being informed of the fact is likely to cause the persons concerned to feel that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance. Consequently, only the objective of fighting serious crime is capable of justifying such interference.

It’s unclear at this point whether the ruling can be used to overturn the United Kingdom’s surveillance laws. The U.K.’s Home Office has said it will appeal the ruling, which could eventually prove academic once the country has withdrawn from the E.U. and the ECJ loses judicial authority over the U.K.

Martha Spurrier, director of the human rights group Liberty, said the ruling “upholds the rights of ordinary British people not to have their personal lives spied on without good reason or an independent warrant.”

The government must now make urgent changes to the Investigatory Powers Act to comply with this. This is the first serious post-referendum test for our government’s commitment to protecting human rights and the rule of law. The UK may have voted to leave the EU – but we didn’t vote to abandon our rights and freedoms.”

Apple has long opposed the U.K.’s Investigatory Powers bill, which originally required companies to build anti-encryption backdoors into their software, before an amendment to the wording meant that companies aren’t required to do so when a government agency requests it, unless taking such an action “is technically feasible and not unduly expensive”. The exact definition of those terms are set to be left to the decision-making of a British judge on a case-by-case basis.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tags: European Union, United Kingdom, privacy
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Sky broadband ads now show the speeds you’ll actually get

Sky’s got not one, not two, but three tidbits of broadband-related news to share today, just before knocking off for Christmas. The first is the launch of the “UK’s lowest fibre broadband and line rental offer” at £20 per month, with a one-off £20 setup fee. It’s exclusive to new and existing Sky TV customers, and similar discounts can be found on the provider’s other fibre options. Next up, Sky’s got a new customer support team dedicated solely to fixing broadband issues, which we’ll call the on/off squad. Most interesting, though, is from today Sky will begin advertising the average download speeds of its broadband packages alongside the standard “up to” metric.

Sky says that average speeds will be prominent and will appear in most ads (wherever there’s space to include them, basically). But Sky may well be preempting an industry-wide shift, and a forceful one at that. You see, in November the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) concluded it was about time for a change to the way broadband speeds are communicated to customers. Currently, the guidelines state that “up to” speeds need to represent what is achievable by at least 10 percent of subscribers.

But — surprise, surprise — research shows that most people believe they’re going to receive those kinds of top-end speeds, when the reality is they probably won’t. Given this confusion around “up to” speeds, the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) — the body that sets the rules the ASA then enforce — is now reviewing the guidance on broadband speed claims, with its report due out next spring. Considering the advice of the ASA, it’s probable the CAP will revise the rules, and it would make sense to introduce average speeds as a new ad requirement. If that scenario plays out in the way we imagine, then Sky is simply jumping the gun here, including average speeds before its competitors are forced to follow suit.

The probe into broadband speed claims follows a similar review of confusing internet package pricing this year. Research conducted by the ASA and Ofcom found that due to introductory offers, installation costs, different contract lengths and other variables, 81 percent of study participants were unable to accurately calculate the total cost of their broadband tariff. To make contract pricing more transparent, a new rule came into force at the end of October obligating ISPs to make everything clearer for customers, namely by including the cost of telephone line rental in the overall monthly broadband package price.

Source: Sky