Bing Maps’ traffic cam views let you preview your commute
When you switch on the traffic layer in Bing Maps, you’ll now get a lot more info than color-coded route details. On top of letting you know how bad (or good) traffic is along your route, Bing allows you to see where traffic cameras are for a look at that commute. You can also check multiple cameras at the same time if you want to take a glance at the places where you typically encounter delays along the way. Like Google Maps and other navigation apps, Bing Maps already let you know if you should expect a backup, and now you can take a look at the congestion, or lack thereof, for yourself with this latest addition.
Source: Bing
Hoopla’s public library app gets Chromecast support
Hoopla, the app that lets you borrow videos, books and music from your local library digitally, has been on a roll this year when it comes to adding comics. Now, it’s making a play for your living room by adding Chromecast support for videos. You’ll need a public library card to access Hoopla’s streaming catalog, as always, but at least you won’t have to worry about late fees. Anything you borrow from Hoopla expires automatically (and yes, multiple people can view the same file at once). Digital lending isn’t anything new for libraries, but usually it involves fighting with a clunky library website, rather than having everything accessible through a simple app. Hoopla currently covers 865 library systems, and its library now has more than 400,000 pieces of media.
Source: Hoopla
Uber forms safety board, hopes to restore faith in its drivers
Uber’s rapidly becoming a polarizing topic, with people either prepared to defend it to the hilt or attack it with similar fervor. Much of that hate comes from a belief that the firm has a lax attitude towards background checks and its passengers safety. That’s why the company is hoping to remedy the problem by appointing its first ever safety advisory board. According to the LA Times, the panel is made up of weighty names that include Ed Davis, Boston’s former police commissioner and Cindy Southworth, vice president at the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
Source: LA Times
Snapchat’s new feature lets users dive deep into ‘Stories’
Following on a series of recent upgrades and UI improvements, Snapchat began rolling out a new feature for its users on Monday, called Story Explorer. With it, users will be able to more fully examine and interact with the events that they’re most interested in, similar to Twitter Moments. Simply swipe up from the bottom of any curated Story and the app will load up more Snaps relating to it. The new feature is currently only available for New York and Los Angeles Live Stories but the company plans to expand it to other Stories “very soon.”
Source: Snapchat
Use your Apple Pencil to alter photos, make music and weigh things
The Apple Pencil is aimed at professional artists who want to use the iPad Pro as a fancy creation tablet, but Simon Gladman has other uses in mind for the stylus. He made three Swift apps that use the Apple Pencil in new ways: as a synthesizer powered by AudioKit, in an image-editing program and as part of an electronic scale. PencilSynth uses the Apple Pencil’s position on the iPad Pro to control the sound emitted, changing pitch and frequency as the Pencil travels at different angles across the screen. PencilController offers three image-filtering modes (hue/saturation, brightness/contrast and gamma/exposure), each controlled by holding one finger on the appropriate mode key and moving the Apple Pencil around a pivot point on the screen. PencilScale is the most “experimental” of Gladman’s projects, using the Apple Pencil as a stand for a series of weights sitting directly on top of a scale app. Gladman calls PencilScale “sensitive, but not terribly accurate.”
Via: MacRumors
Source: Simon Gladman
Belgian Twitter users post cat pics to help police in weekend raids
Belgium’s capital, Brussels, entered lockdown this weekend as authorities swept the city for suspected terrorists, including at least one high-profile fugitive wanted in connection with the Paris attacks. On Twitter, authorities prompted residents to refrain from posting pictures or information about ongoing police movement — and Belgian residents obliged, with a twist. They flooded the hashtag #BrusselsLockdown with pictures of cats, making information about raids harder to find and showcasing the country’s solidarity against terrorism. On Monday, as the city remained under its highest-level terror alert, Belgian federal police thanked residents on Twitter with a picture of cat food and the message, “For the cats who helped us last night… Help yourself!”
[Image credit: Flickr/julochka]
Via: The New York Times
Fitbit Surge and Charge HR automatically detect and log exercises
Just in time to entice holiday shoppers, Fibit is updating its Surge and Charge HR fitness trackers with a handful of new features. First, a SmartTrack feature automatically recognizes exercises during your workouts and records them in the Fitbit app along with details on duration, calories burned and heart rate. SmartTrack can determine if you’re on the elliptical, outdoor biking, running, walking or doing one of a few aerobic workouts (Zumba, cardio-kickboxing , dance, etc.). It can also detect if you’re playing sports like tennis, basketball and soccer. You can personalize the activity recognition too, telling the tech which movements you want logged as exercise and how long you want to be moving before it starts to track them. By default, you’ll need to be in motion at least 15 minutes before the recording starts. When it comes to heart-rate tracking, the two wearables are getting improved PurePulse performance for those more intense workout sessions. By using Exercise Mode on the Charge HR and multi-sport modes on the Surge, the gadgets will provide a better “experience” during and after those high-energy activities like Zumba.
Samsung Pay gets support for cards from Chase bank
Today, Samsung’s making good on a promise recently made to people in the US. The company has announced that its mobile payments system, Samsung Pay, now works with Visa debit and credit cards from Chase bank. Last month, Samsung also said the app would be adding support for gift cards from “top” retailers in entertainment, dining, grocery and fashion, but this feature hasn’t officially launched yet. Nevertheless, this shows Samsung is serious about expanding Pay and that, most importantly, it’s getting the backing it needs from banks, retailers as well as carriers.
Shazam’s song recognition just got a lot faster
Shazam is doubling down on what it does best with its latest update: Recognizing songs when your memory (or pop cultural knowhow) fails you. And, for the first time, the app now highlights a search feature on its main page, which lets you dig for more information about songs and artists. The goal, naturally, is to convince you to stay within Shazam rather than hopping over to the web for music research. In my brief testing, the new Shazam app recognized songs from television and radio in a few seconds — at times it even found a result in under a second. It feels significantly faster than previous versions of the app, which sometimes took over five seconds to lock onto a song. That’s not a huge difference, but given that Shazam has been around for years (it was one of the first killer apps back when the iPhone’s App Store launched in 2008), it needs to keep improving to keep up with competitors like Soundhound.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Shazam
‘Futurama’ will be resurrected as a mobile game
If the TV show that you love gets axed before you’re ready to let it go, then there are a couple of things you can hope for. For instance, a streaming service could step in to fund a new season of the show, or people can turn to Kickstarter and do it themselves. But it turns out that there’s another route towards salvation in the form of a mobile game, which is how Futurama is going to make its auspicious return. 20th Century Fox has signed a deal with German game developer Wooga to create Futurama: Release the Drones. The story will see the Planet Express crew take on MomCo in a delivery war, with players asked to connect groups of drones to solve puzzles.
Source: Wooga
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