Technology and Computing
Luke Porter / UnsplashThe internet is filled to the brim with opportunities to learn new things. But even if you have the willpower to push forward without the direct guidance of a teacher, it’s hard to dedicate the five to ten hours a week a lot of these courses require to stay on track. Plus, without regular positive feedback, your initial motivation could take a quick nosedive.This is why apps like Duolingo are so wildly popular. The app constantly praises…
Amedia indexing firm by the name of Gracenote recently showed off an app that could fix — or at least mitigate — a longstanding criticism of Apple’s CarPlay system. Apple CarPlay does a lot, from navigation to podcasts to apps. But it’s never supported traditional AM/FM radio. Gracenote wants to fix that, and it’s debuted a new app at CES this week that could help bridge the gap between digital streaming and analog broadcasts for CarPlay users. Gracenote’s demo app…
Health experts around the world continuously worry about the next disease outbreak and where it’s going to start. Over the last few years, we’ve watched as these worries became reality as large outbreaks of various illnesses, such as cholera, have spread in different parts of the world. Cholera is a preventable and easily treatable disease, and yet it presents a huge threat in developing countries – every year, according to the World Health Organisation, there are between 1.3 and 4 million…
A startup called Current is today launching a new way for parents to dole out allowances to their kids: with an app. The company offers a Visa debit card that would allow teenagers to shop in stores or online using funds from their own bank account, which is funded through allowance money that mom or dad transfers from their own bank account. Parents can use the accompanying mobile app to set chores, track spending, encourage saving and more, allowing kids to learn about…
Facebook changed its blue icon that is in the millions of pages on the Web. Now the button “Like” got a new look. The company introduced the new design version of the icon with the following words: “Our hypothesis was that more people would recognize the thumbs-up icon on the like button, so we conducted qualitative and quantitative tests to measure them side by side,” the company said in a blog post. “The results revealed a 6 percent increase in…
Pretty soon Apple Music will receive a major redesign most noticeable difference from the current version will be in appearance. The change will be presented at WWDC 2016 in June. Apple Music will abandon its colorful user interface which currently exists. Instead, Apple will add light and dark design (black and white), but with a “huge” album cover. Covers are currently quite large, so will be interesting to see something even bigger. Source says that the end result is a…
Team from Facebook engineers in London is working on a stand-alone application for camera focusing on live broadcasts of video, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). This new application should encourage the capture and posting photos and video. At the moment it is only a prototype and may never be released for general use according to the report: A prototype of the app developed by Facebook’s “friend-sharing” team in London opens to a camera, similar to disappearing photo app…
The mobile version of Chrome browser already enjoys more than 1 billion active users each month, announced Google. This means that since it was announced the previous statistic four months ago, 200 million more Android and iOS users regularly use the browser – one not bad achievement for the mobile application, which debuted less than four years ago. It is not clear what proportion of these users comes from their operating system of Google and what is iOS devices, but…
Google Keyboard for Android received big update, which brings function for writing with one hand, several improvements in the design and ability to change the size and height of the keyboard. Another useful innovation is the ability to distinguish the keys. The function for one hand writing allows users to choose whether they want the keyboard to adjust for left or right hand, while you can quickly switch back to the larger size. The new icon with the numbers opens…
Already one billion people use the chat application Facebook Messenger each month, the company said. This makes the Messenger fourth Facebook application that enters the elite club of the services used by 1 billion users. Other products of Facebook, who have such a large user base are WhatsApp, Groups and main mobile applications. Over the past few years, Messenger has evolved from just a chat app into a complete platform that allows people to send text, audio, video, emoticons, Gif…
From Spotify sent a letter to Apple’s lawyer of “causing grave harm to Spotify and its customers.” The letter says that Apple rejected the new version of the app for Spotify’s iOS, citing “rules of business model” and demanded that Spotify use Apple’s billing system if “Spotify wants to use the app to acquire new customers and sell subscriptions.” The letter, sent by Spotify general counsel Horacio Gutierrez to Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell on June 26. “This latest episode…
At the end of this week, HTC launched Viveport, an alternative to the Steam which is a catalog of games with virtual reality and now works worldwide. In fact Viveport was released earlier this year, but only in China. Now developers can register at the Vive website. We believe equal access to virtual reality experiences will make the world a better place for people and enterprises alike. Viveport will be generally oriented it will be offering not only games but…