Apps & Smartphones news

• Facebook’s newest music deal opens door to massive UMG library

  21-12-2017 23:45 via thenextweb.com
  
  A scant couple of weeks after Facebook revealed its in-house music library for budding content creators, the social media site has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group (UMG), a conglomerate that owns the souls of hundreds of popular performing musicians. According to UMG, the company will license its music catalogs for “video and other social experiences across Facebook, Instagram and Oculus.” I’m not sure what “other social experiences” could mean, b
  
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• Eric Schmidt is stepping down as Alphabet’s executive chairman

  21-12-2017 23:07 via thenextweb.com
  
  Eric Schmidt will be stepping down from Alphabet’s board of directors to serve as a technical advisor, the company announced today. He will continue to serve as a member of the board. In a statement, Schmidt said: Larry, Sergey, Sundar and I all believe that the time is right in Alphabet’s evolution for this transition. The Alphabet structure is working well, and Google and the Other Bets are thriving. In recent years, I’ve been spending a lot of my time on science and technol
  
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• Rowkin Surge hands-on

  21-12-2017 23:00 via youtube.com
  
  
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• These Gmail searches can clean up even the messiest inbox

  21-12-2017 22:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  Anyone can let their inbox get away from them. Depending on how many things you have tied a particular Gmail address, one or two days of not checking could be all it takes for you to be swamped in mail you don’t really care about. Luckily, Gmail has appropriately powerful search functions to help you find what’s important in your inbox and weed out the rest. Here are several search functions you can use to organize and clean out your inbox. Find important mail An easy way to cut thr
  
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• App Store now requires games to share loot box odds

  21-12-2017 20:49 via thenextweb.com
  
  Apple recently changed its App Store review guidelines — now any game developer who wants to include loot boxes will also have to tell you how likely it is you’ll get the rare item you want. The update, spotted by Polygon, includes a change to the payment section of the guidelines, which now state: Apps offering “loot boxes” or other mechanisms that provide randomized virtual items for purchase must disclose the odds of receiving each type of item to customers prior
  
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• 5 beste smartphones, apps, games en gadgets van 2017 volgens Laurence - Androidworld

  21-12-2017 19:41 via androidworld.nl
  Androidworld
  5 beste smartphones, apps, games en gadgets van 2017 volgens Laurence
  Androidworld
  Het jaar is voorbij gevlogen. Als weekend-redacteur voor Androidworld.nl heb ik een heleboel toffe dingen mogen meemaken, met als hoogtepunt het bezoek aan IFA in Berlijn. Wat vond ik de 5 beste smartphones, apps, games en gadgets van 2017? Hier zet ik ...and more »
  
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• Pokémon GO adds icy new monsters in a holiday update

  21-12-2017 18:39 via thenextweb.com
  
  Niantic is attempting to get its trainers in the holiday spirit with a solstice update that gives players season-appropriate rewards. This holiday season, celebrate with us—and a few new Pokémon friends. https://t.co/HlxGcDNxdq pic.twitter.com/AvlAOjziZp — Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) December 21, 2017 As part of the update, several new water- and ice-type Pokémon will be available, and appearing more frequently. Players can also accrue holiday loot boxes with spe
  
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• Get 2TB of lifetime cloud storage from Zoolz for just $41.50!

  21-12-2017 17:30 via feeds.crackberry.com
  Its convenient and easy to store files in the cloud — but is it cheap? It will be if you take advantage of this great End of Year deal from Android Central Digital Offers!
  It's becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the ever-changing world of physical information storage. New hard drives and flash drives are constantly hitting the market and obsolescence is inevitable. There has never been a better time to store your data in the cloud, and cloud security has also never been better
  
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• This cam site makes your sex toys vibrate harder when Bitcoin price soars

  21-12-2017 16:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  In what could have been a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street, adult webcam site CamSoda is launching a new interactive platform that can get you as excited about cryptocurrency as you are about sex. BitCast, as the platform is called, makes it possible to pair your interactive sex toys with the performance of leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin. Once connected, the real-time price of your currency will dictate the intensity of your toys’ vibrations. The high
  
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• Grammarly polishes your writing across all your apps and emails

  21-12-2017 16:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  Grammarly is the writing app that looks for and finds far more than simple typos and punctuation errors. Right now, you can get a one-year subscription to Grammarly’s premium service for just $69.98 (49 percent off its regular price) from TNW Deals.
  
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• 5 Ways Apple Can Improve The iPhone X in 2018

  21-12-2017 15:57
  Michael Grothaus22/12/2017 - 9:45amIt’s a great phone, but it could be better.The iPhone X is a terrific phone. As I’ve said before, it’s the best Apple has ever made. Some of the highlights are the massive, gorgeous OLED display, the incredibly long better life, and the dual lens camera system. Of course, the impeccable industrial design and the new Face ID biometric authentication system don’t hurt either. But that’s not to say the iPhone X couldn’t be even
  
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• Nokia 9 Appears In Render

  21-12-2017 15:48
  Paul Briden21/12/2017 - 2:48pmNokia 9 leak shows wide-screen display and dual-camera on frontA leak via Chinese social network Weibo had coughed up a brand new render of the forthcoming Nokia 9 flagship. As we expected, the handset packs an 18:9 aspect ratio display and much-trimmed bezels on the front fascia to give way to the screen.
  Interestingly, despite recently leaked specs not mentioning it, the render appears to show dual-camera sensors on the front. This could be a dual-sensor camera, o
  
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• 20 mostly practical gifts for the technophile

  21-12-2017 15:01 via thenextweb.com
  
  Lets face it: A lot of holiday gifts just aren’t that useful, and end up stored in a closet indefinitely. That’s just a waste of money, so we’ve tried to collect gadgets tech that will hopefully avoid the same fate. As such, some of these items aren’t necessarily things you’d normally consider as gifts, and some are on the pricey side. But they are, for the most part, things a techie could make use of on a regular basis. Of course, that’s not to say we haven&
  
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• Let’s agree to stop it with the AI chatbot bullshit in 2018, k?

  21-12-2017 13:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  For well over a year now, chatbots have been sold to us as the ultimate revolution in digital marketing. The wholesale replacement of mobile apps is en route! The holy grail of marketing 2.0 is turning the corner! Really? I’ve got to call bullshit on this. The hype around AI-enabled chatbots is attracting a lot of marketing professionals who can smell the money. It’s a whole new direction after side trips into social media marketing or growth hacking. Well, new year, same bullshit.
  
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• Chuwi’s SurBook is a great Surface clone for entertaining goldfish

  21-12-2017 12:38 via thenextweb.com
  
  I really don’t like being negative. I firmly believe there’s a silver lining, a hidden use, or some beautiful detail to almost everything. But gee shucks, it’s sometimes hard to find. Take Chuwi’s SurBook, a Surface-like tablet pc made by an up-and-coming Chinese manufacturer. My expectations for it were sky-high, since the company had managed to surprise one of our most experienced reviewers earlier this year with a Macbook Air clone for way less than half the pric
  
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• Coming in 2018: The first VR Nobel Prize experience

  21-12-2017 11:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, economics, and medicine gathered in Stockholm last week for the Nobel Week and Nobel Prize Awards ceremony. Apart from the Nobel Prize winners announcement, other exciting news came along – HTC VIVE and Nobel Media announced a partnership to create the first virtual reality (VR) experience for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Understanding circadian rhythms through VR The VR experience “The Circ
  
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• Ready to strangle your business partner? Try co-founder’s therapy

  21-12-2017 10:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  When you hear the term couple’s therapy, the first image that comes to mind is probably something like this: a husband and wife who once seemed blissfully in love have experienced an increasing number of disagreements in their relationship. Tension has escalated into arguments and other problems that have caused one or both members of the relationship to question whether it’s even worth staying together. Now, a solo entrepreneur might wonder what this could possibly have to do with
  
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• After Amazon, Walmart wants to try building cashier-less stores

  21-12-2017 09:59 via thenextweb.com
  
  Recode reports that Walmart is busy at work on a cashier-less store that you can walk into, shop at, and leave without having to physically check your items out. The concept is similar to Amazon Go, a venture from the retail giant that saw it use computer vision tech to allow shoppers to browse a physical grocery store, pick up items they want and be billed on their Amazon accounts automatically, so there’s no need for a cashier. It’s reportedly dubbed Project Kepler, and is being l
  
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• Cyberpunk isn’t just sci-fi — it’s Silicon Valley’s design theory

  21-12-2017 08:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  Molly Millions is cool. Her augmented eyes are coated in mirrors, and beneath her immaculately manicured nails, quicksilver daggers wait to be sprung. Her boyfriend was Johnny Mnemonic, a human hard drive, gray matter encrypted with a passcode that only the highest bidder can unlock. But that was before he died. Now, Molly is a “razorgirl”: a lithe assassin periodically hired for jobs involving computer espionage. Not that she jacks into cyberspace herself. She leaves that to h
  
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• What’s right and wrong about Apple slowing down iPhones with aging batteries

  21-12-2017 07:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  If you’ve felt that your iPhone has been slowing down over time, you aren’t imagining things: Apple has confirmed that it intentionally curbs performance on devices with aging batteries, including the iPhone 7, 6, 6s and SE – and it’ll continue to do so for other products too. Naturally, no one wants sub-par performance from the devices they use daily. But according to Apple, its measure is intended to prevent unexpected shutdowns when their phones attempt to draw more p
  
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• We created an AI-powered coffee bot for our office — here’s how

  21-12-2017 07:00 via thenextweb.com
  
  According to the International Coffee Organization, Finland has the highest coffee consumption per person (our neighbors Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden are also in the top 10) and our Helsinki office housing many engineers and data scientists is no exception. It practically runs on coffee and we take it very seriously. We drink a lot, around seven cups per person per day to be precise and we are pretty fussy about our coffee being at its very best in terms of optimum brew time and te
  
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• Apple’s plan to support unified apps on iOS and macOS could be a game-changer

  21-12-2017 06:32 via thenextweb.com
  
  Bloomberg reports that next year, Apple will set in motion a plan to support apps that work across iPhones, iPads, and macOS desktops and laptops, without the need for multiple versions. The project, which is codnamed ‘Marzipan’, is expected to be announced at Apple’s next Worlwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June 2018. However, plans for Marzipan are still fluid, so it isn’t exactly what the workflow for developers will be like just yet. There are a number of reasons
  
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• Twitter now supports 2-factor authentication without SMS, here’s how to set it up

  21-12-2017 05:34 via thenextweb.com
  
  It’s no fun having your Twitter profile hacked, and you should definitely be using Twitter’s SMS-based two-factor authentication to secure your account. Now, there’s an easier way. Twitter now lets you use third-party apps like Google Authenticator, Authy, and 1Password on your phone to generate numeric codes that you can enter in addition to your normal password to log in. You don’t need to be online or even connected to your mobile carrier for this to work. That’
  
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• Samsung Galaxy S9+ benchmarks, iPhone X parts earnings & more - Pocketnow Daily

  21-12-2017 04:21 via youtube.com
  
  
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• LG Gram 13 inch laptop review: Good things come in small packages

  21-12-2017 01:08 via thenextweb.com
  
  LG’s Gram is an incredibly lightweight little laptop that succeeds in finding a happy medium between power and portability. I tested out the 13-inch model and realized size really does matter: smaller is better. My current laptop is a big, heavy Alienware gaming computer that often sounds like it’s going to blast-off thanks to the numerous fans housed inside of its massive shell. It’s designed to be portable in the sense you can move it from one solid surface to another. I wou
  
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• Facebook defends ad targeting meant to discriminate against older workers

  21-12-2017 01:01 via thenextweb.com
  
  For the unemployed (or underemployed) a Verizon job ad in the Facebook Newsfeed might be just the break they’re looking for. In an ad featuring a smiling millennial woman, Verizon promises “your [sic] more than just a number,” a corporate euphemism meant to relay a company values its employees. In this case, it’s an ironic choice of words. Whether the sentiment was true or not is irrelevant; the ad only appeared in the feeds of those aged 25 to 36. The irony could be lau
  
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