Tech news Archives - Page 2 of 4

June 30, 2015June 30, 2015

Report: New iPhones Likely to Have Force Touch

The successors of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will have Force Touch capabilities. This news comes from a Bloomberg tech report.

“Force Touch was introduced with the Apple Watch, which launched earlier this year. The feature can judge the sensitivity of presses on the touchscreen, pulling up a variety of control options based on how lightly the user taps the device. During Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company revealed it would be available on future Macbooks,” according to Brett Molina for USA Today.

This feature will come with the 6S and the 6S Plus. As of now the phone will have the same dimensions. The 6S will be 4.7 inches and the 6S Plus will be 5.5 inches big.

Essentially, the screen will be able to be adjusted to the pressure of the user’s finger. The apps will be able to be activated based on how hard or how soft users press on them. For this reason, suppliers are having difficulty in providing the right screens.

“The timing and production volume of Force Touch-enabled phones could be impacted by the supply and yield of the displays,” reports Tim Culpan for Bloomberg.

At this point, the feature is already in many of Apple’s other products, so this move makes sense.

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015

Game Time: The Top 5 Announcements from E3 2015

Nintendo

This year’s E3 was not very good for the mega gaming company. There were some lukewarm reaction to its releases and to their presentations. However, there was a gem or two that emerged from the filth. Some of the big moments included the announcement of Platinum Games co-developing Star Fox Zero with Shigeru Miyamoto and Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Fans have been awaiting these two games but Metroid Prime: Federation Force for the 3DS has not been received well. The trailer has been destroyed since its release.

Source: Nintendo/Youtube

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015

Gmail’s New ‘Undo Send’ Option Ends Regretful Messages

Email can be a useful tool for work communication and file-sharing, but if users send a “bad” email with regrettable content, it could ruin their career. A new Gmail feature allows the sender to stop the email in its tracks.

“It lets you un-send an email for a short while after sending. Of course, it isn’t reaching out and snatching the email back — it just holds the email for a brief period sufficient for you to evaluate your regrets — but it can still be a life-saver. This feature has actually been available since March of 2009, but it has been hidden away in the Labs section of Gmail’s settings,” reports
Kristofer Wouk for Digital Trends.

In order to activate the feature, Gmail users with the beta version of the unsend option will have to go to general tabs and click on “Enable Undo Send.”

One cool aspect the feature has is the option to choose time intervals of the unsent email. What that means is that in the settings of the unsend feature you can set the wait to send time to 5 seconds, 10, 20 or 30 depending on how safe you want to be.

This feature does not erase a bad email. It just slows it down so that you can edit it and clean it up if need be.

June 23, 2015June 23, 2015

New PlayStation 4 Will Add 1TB of Storage to Already Powerful System

According to The Financial Express, the ‘Ultimate Player Edition’ PS4 comes with double storage, meaning 1TB, and will be released across Europe on July 15. There is no news on a wider release as of yet.

This new PS4 will be a direct response to Microsoft’s new Xbox One, which will also have more storage capacity. With the new storage, gamers can download games, save highlights, share experiences and extend play with more add-on content.

This announcement is just part of a slew of new products Sony is releasing in the next few months. The company will also release an updated 500GB model PS4 that will be slimmer and more energy efficient for those who are looking for an upgrade.

These two machines will more than likely be released stateside during the holiday shopping season.

Source: Sony/Youtube

June 16, 2015June 16, 2015

Reddit CEO and 500 Startups Founder Awkwardly Discuss Diversity in Tech

Last Friday, interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao and 500 Startups founder Dave McClure were featured panelists at the PreMoney conference for venture capitalists to talk about diversity.

The irony is that the room was packed with mostly white males from various tech companies. This is to be expected when there is a need to discuss diversity in the first place.

Pao revealed some alarming figures about her own company. Currently, Reddit is made up of only 14 percent women engineers.

McClure asked Pao, “How many African-American or Black people work at Reddit? [And] How many Hispanic American or Hispanic people work at Reddit?”

Pao answered uncomfortably, saying that the company does not ask people to self-identify.

McClure continues and asks, “How do you know if this is a stat or a KPI (key performance indicator) that I should be considering? Am I more racist for asking people or for not asking people?”

Pao then responds. “I don’t know. When I look around I want to see diversity on the team.”

“I’m pretty sure there are no Black people in Silicon Valley,” McClure adds.

The whole exchange was uncomfortable for the mostly white audience and the two CEOs. This is proof that even if the tech industry wants to incorporate more diversity, how do they, how can they speak about it, and how will they keep track of their attempts at diversifying if they don’t ask people to self-identify?

“We haven’t counted. We have one African-American engineer. We just hired a general counsel, Melissa Tidwell, who is an African-American woman. I think we have three other African-American people working,” Pao said.

Pao and McClure may be part of the problem by making sure they don’t hurt anyone. The two didn’t address the issue in a bold and straightforward way. Pao has dealt with sexism in the industry firsthand, so she knows the reality of the lack of women in tech.

This panel is proof that Silicon Valley has a long way to go.

Source: CNN Money/YouTube

June 11, 2015June 11, 2015

Facebook’s Messenger Platform Gets Its First Game

Facebook’s newest product is featured in its messenger platform that was revealed earlier this year.

Doodle Draw is a game that allows Facebook users to draw and send images to their friends. And their friends get to guess what they drew.

According to Josh Constine for Techcrunch, “Doodle Draw for iOS and Android will be familiar to anyone who played Draw Something… because it’s a blatant copy of the 2012 flash in the pan mobile game that got acquired by Zynga for an exorbitant price. Don’t feel too bad for the fallen games giant, though, as Draw Something was just a mobile version of the classic party game Pictionary. You can download app developer Clay‘s Doodle Draw here, by tapping the “•••” button in a Messenger chat thread to open the platform app list.”

Since the introduction of the platform, Facebook has tried to get users to use it more. The game is just one attempt to build interest. For those who are not fond of Facebook games, Doodle Draw will not do anything to spark your interest.

It is highly likely that this is just the first round of promotional gimmicks the company will launch.

June 9, 2015June 9, 2015

New Features, Advancements Revealed for Apple’s New Operating System

Apple’s new OS could bridge the gap between your laptop and your phone.

The Yosemite Operating System will focus on sleek app design, speed and reliability that current operating systems may not offer.

According to Ian Sherr and Shara Tibken for CNET.com, “some of the key new features included advancements for its Spotlight search function, allowing users to ask it about the weather, for example, or find stock prices and sports scores. The company also enhanced its search functions in apps like email, where they can easily find messages they hadn’t yet responded to. Apple also made it easy for two apps to run on the screen at once, a function called ‘split view.'”

Some of these features are not new and have been introduced in the Windows operating systems like Windows 8 and 10. Apple is banking on brand reputation to sell its new product. The company wants it to be the most user-friendly OS on the market.

“It’s more of an upgrade to the feel of OS X. This means a lot more gesture control, continuing the tradition of making OS X feel more like iOS. For instance, El Capitan lets you swipe two fingers across the trackpad to delete a message. You can also kill unwanted autoplay music with a single tap. And you can also pull up Mission Control with a three-finger swipe. This kind of stuff is largely reminiscent of Windows 10, and the list of little improvements goes on,” reports Adam Clark Estes for Gizmodo.

The OS will also have widgets that connect users to news, sports and other informational sources. There will be a shared menu that allows developers to create blogs that will also enhance the user’s experience and build a rapport between developer and user. For more information on features check out Apple’s website.

Apple users can upgrade now via the Apple Store.

June 8, 2015June 8, 2015

Schools Use Drones to Spy on Cheaters

Drone technology has come a long way in just the past five years. Companies like Amazon plan to use drones to deliver packages in the near future. We already know that various armed forces around the world are using them for reconnaissance or for offensive purposes.

According to Wired writer Katie Collins, “every year in China millions of students sit a higher education access exam that is so stressful it has been linked to spates of suicides and frequently results in youngsters fainting in the examination room. Known as the ‘gaokao’, the exam is taken over two days, is based primarily on memorization and determines the course of the young students’ lives.”

In the Chinese province of Luoyang, schools have decided to prove that they are a little smarter than cheating kids. The schools are aware that kids might try to use cellphones to find answers they just don’t know.

They plan on using drones to monitor examination rooms. This exam is essentially the SAT on steroids. It has been reported that many students have been so stressed about the test that they committed suicide to avoid shame.

In order to avoid cheating, the drones will hover 500 meters in the air over the test site. It can detect the cellphone and relay that message back to the test proctors via tablet.

June 4, 2015June 4, 2015

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook Delivers Vital Speech on Encryption and Privacy

Apple CEO Tim Cook was honored at the EPIC’s Champions of Freedom event in Washington earlier this week for his leadership in the tech industry.

However, he took that time to highlight privacy and encryption practices. His speech was biting and clawing at Facebook, Google and the national government. In regards to Google, Cook attacked its recently launched photo service.

“Like many of you, we at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make trade-offs between privacy and security. We can and we must provide both in equal measure. We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy. The American people demand it; the constitution demands it; morality demands it,” Cook opened.

Cook went on to discuss the ways companies hijack personal information in order to create personalized ads and make money from your personal details.

“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information. They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”

According to Matthew Panzarino for Techcrunch.com, “this marked the first time that EPIC, a nonprofit research center in Washington focused on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues, has given the honor to a person from the business world. The hosts of the event included cryptographer Bruce Schneier, EPIC president Marc Rotenberg, lobbyist Hilary Rosen and Stanford lecturer in law Chip Pitts.”

Many would say that Cook has blood on his hands. His company had a major iCloud hacking fiasco late last year where many celebrity nude photos were released. Also, Apple has recently launched Google Photos on its iOS.

However, the speech was necessary.