Technology news

Facebook and the MLB announced a new partnership today that will see 20 regular season baseball games live-streamed on Facebook this season, according to TechCrunch.Games will air weekly on the MLB Facebook page
The games will air weekly on the MLB Facebook page, starting tomorrow night with the Rockies vs. Reds game at 7:10PM ET. According to TechCrunch, the broadcast will be sourced from a local broadcaster from one of the participating teams, without local blackouts. Future Friday night games

Google's approach to money is many-pronged. There's Google Wallet, Android Pay, the open Payment Request API it's spearheading, and now the brand new "Google Payment API," to name just a few of its approaches.
This latest system will allow you to buy things — both inside apps and on websites — using your Google account. Most people have a credit card stored with Google for some reason or another, like for Google Play Store purchases, or a YouTube Red subscription. The new API will al

GUEST: The world’s largest gaming company is taking on the world’s largest gaming platform.
The number of Chinese Steam users has reached 17 million, based on SteamSpy. With its current growth rate, it’s just a matter of time before it surpasses the US and become the biggest national community on the world’s largest gaming platform. Meanwhile, on April 20, the world’s biggest gaming company, Tencent, officially announced that its Tencent Games Platform will be renam

Microsoft announced an update for OneNote today across Windows 10, Mac, iOS, Android, and the web, featuring an overhauled design meant to offer improved accessibility and a more consistent feel across the various platforms.Navigation has been vastly simplified in the new app. Microsoft has moved all controls to be located on the left side of the screen in a series of nested menus, making it simpler to switch between sections, notebooks, and pages from a single place in the app. Additionally, th

GUEST: As you no doubt have experienced, a new market of conversational devices and services has emerged. From Amazon Alexa and Google Home to Facebook Messenger bot and intelligent assistants, we’re surrounded by conversation. (Between us, when was the last time you checked the weather on a device other than Alexa or Google Home?)
While those devices and services are new and extremely dynamic, we can find a few success cases. Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple’s Siri are three wor

Google has a new tool called Seurat that's designed to take high-end, film-quality 3D scenes and turn them into something that can run on mobile hardware. To demonstrate the technology, Google partnered with IMXLAB at Lucasfilm to take a high-fidelity digital set from Rogue One, which originally took hours per frame to render, and compressed the polygons and textures into something that could run in realtime on its prototype WorldSense headset.
We got to check out a demo, and it did indeed look

Earlier today I published an article about Facebook Messenger’s new, somewhat improved home screen. But despite the company’s attempt at some cleanup, I came away with the same feeling I’ve had for months: Messenger has transformed into a bloated mess. Commenters on that story agree, and so does pretty much everyone I’ve asked here at Vox Media’s New York office. If you’re tired of Messenger Day and seeing games you’ll never play, I come to you with good

Yesterday, CBS dropped the first real trailer for the upcoming subscription-only series Star Trek: Discovery, finally giving fans a idea of what the first Trek TV show since 2005’s Enterprise will look like. It’s a good trailer, showing off some of the characters, including Commander Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) who in a series first will be a lead character who isn’t a Starfleet captain. Reportedly, Discovery will tell a more personal story focusing on Burnham, in ad

The Chromebook Pro was meant to be a grand coming-out party for Android apps running on Chrome OS. The Samsung device would show Google’s ability to not just dominate the education space with web apps, but remove the “native app” issue for anybody that was holding out. But the feature has been stuck in a buggy beta for months and the device itself was delayed. Not great.
We fully expected an update this year at Google I/O, and now we have one. Although Google chose not to say a

The Chromebook Pro was meant to be a grand coming-out party for Android apps running on Chrome OS. The Samsung device would show Google’s ability to not just dominate the education space with web apps, but remove the “native app” issue for anybody that was holding out. But the feature has been stuck in a buggy beta for months and the device itself was delayed. Not great.
We fully expected an update this year at Google I/O, and now we have one. Although Google chose not to say a

 Yesterday at Google’s developer conference I/O, the company announced upgrades to its Payment API that will make it easier for end users to switch between their multiple payment cards when checking out on the mobile web, or paying for things in apps – even if those cards were not saved in Android Pay. Today, Google announced a few more changes to its payments business –… Read More

Extreme floods along the coastline may become much more common if sea levels continue to climb unchecked, new research says. Scientists estimate that as soon as 2030, a 4-inch sea level rise could double the frequency of severe flooding in many parts of the world, and increase it by as much as 25 times in the tropics. For the communities and ecosystems in the floodwaters’ path, the toll could be catastrophic.Right now, the global sea level is slowly but surely creeping upwards a fraction o

For the venture capitalists, hedge funders, investment bankers and private equity folks trawling the skyways looking for deals, there’s nothing more important than a strong network. But for most firms keeping track of meetings, managing follow-ups, and plotting a next move is still a pretty low-tech process (ironic considering all the CRM tools these guys have built for others). Well,… Read More

During today’s upfronts, The CW dropped the first trailer for Black Lightning, its latest superhero show. It shows off plenty of superpowered action, but the show won’t be part of the larger DC universe that the network has put together.Played by Cress Williams, Black Lightning is one of DC’s first black superheroes, and as the name suggests, his powers are based in electricity. In this trailer, he’s described as a hero who kept the streets safe from a gang known as the 1

Bungie just unveiled a whole bunch of new information about Destiny 2, the follow-up to the original 2014 online-only shooter. After a series of teaser trailers and cinematic clips, Bungie finally took the wraps off. Here’s what we know:
Story takes center stage
Destiny 2 will have a greater focus on the story (something the first Destiny famously struggled with), with more cinematic cut-scenes and story missions than ever before. Players will battle Dominus Ghaul, the leader of the Red Le

 Amazon has long relied on customers providing feedback and providing other ranking data as part of the process of encouraging more sales on its platform, and now the e-commerce giant is adding a new twist on this to spur more buying in its books business.
Today, Amazon announced Amazon Charts, a new kind of bestseller list that will give users, for the first time ever, a top 20 list of… Read More

 YouTube appears to be further opening up mobile live streaming by dropping requirements on subscriber counts in order to gain access to the feature, according to reports out today. Google, however, has disputed claims saying the new functionality is now available to all users, instead stating that only a subset of YouTube’s users have access for the time being. That said, mobile… Read More

Selena Gomez released a new song called “Bad Liar” today, which, if you keep up with those kinds of things, you might already know about. What you might not know is that there’s also a new video for the song, and you can only watch it one particular way: vertically, on a smartphone, exclusively on Spotify.
Another thing: you won’t find the “Bad Liar” video if you just mosey over to Gomez’s Spotify page. It’s only available as part of Spotify’

The FCC has voted to begin undoing the net neutrality rules that were put in place just two years ago.
In a 2-to-1 decision, the commission voted to open debate on what are essentially two things: first, a proposal to reverse the Title II designation used to enforce tough net neutrality rules on internet providers; and second, the question of whether the FCC ought to impose any kind of net neutrality rules at all.
Today’s vote doesn’t immediately undo the 2015 Open Internet Order. In

When I go to an art gallery or museum, I sometimes have to resist the urge to touch things. I want to know it’s like to run my hands along a twisted sculpture and feel the cool metal, or to trace my finger along ancient wooden carvings. Most enticing of all are paintings: I’ve always imagined that the texture of “Starry Night” would add another layer of depth to the viewing experience. Of course, you can’t touch precious works of art. But you can get some of that sa

Lenovo is refreshing its IdeaPad and Legion gaming laptop line today, along with the announcement of a new Flex 2-in-1. Three new IdeaPads are being released this June — the 720S, 320S, and the 320. They stand out more than anything else because they’re being released in real, non-generic laptop colors. They’ll probably appeal to college kids. I embedded a photo of the purple 15-inch 320 IdeaPad above, but it’s also available in a red, white, silver, blue, and black. The

Facebook Messenger is being updated across both Android and iOS with a refreshed, simpler look that puts an emphasis back on messaging. The app “is now organized around making Messenger your hub for connecting with all the people and businesses you care about,” according to VP David Marcus. The revised home screen layout certainly makes more sense than the bloated, confounding mess that’s on my phone right now. Across the top are tabs for Messages, Active, and Groups. Pretty se

Donald Trump has made himself “vulnerable to fake news” by not adequately staffing the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, according to a letter sent to the president by members of the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology.The letter — signed by House representatives including Don Beyer (R-VA), Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) and Mark Takano (D-CA) — urges the president to quickly appoint a qualified candidate to head the OSTP. The OSTP is responsibl

The Folio Society is a British publisher that releases some incredibly beautiful books, like their editions of American Gods and I, Robot. Today it adds to its lineup with The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, a collection of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. The edition comes with an excellent preface from Watchmen author Alan Moore and with some stunning art from Dan Hillier.
Lovecraft has become an increasingly controversial figure in the literary community. He’s lauded for his wei

Yesterday was the day Google was expected to announce the big new features coming to Android this year. It had already announced some basics back in March, but the I/O conference is usually when we hear about the real highlights — the stuff consumers are actually going to look forward to. But the presentation came and went, and the most exciting thing Android got was app notification badges. Seriously.
Barring any secrets Google is hanging onto, there’s no denying that this is one of

SiriusXM is in talks to acquire Pandora, according to reports from CNBC and the New York Post. Given that SiriusXM’s parent company Liberty Media and Pandora have been in off and on discussions for over a year at this point, the talks aren’t surprising in the least. But it doesn’t mean a sale is imminent.Last year, Liberty Media reportedly made a $3.4 billion bid to purchase Pandora, which was declined by the board of the streaming service, due to a disagreement on the valuatio

Now that Google Assistant has officially arrived to the iPhone (at least, for US-based users) a lot of people may be wondering why Google pushed the AI as a separate app from the main one. Here’s an overview of the differences between the two.
While it’s not officially called “Google Search” (and rather, just its plain ol’ namesake), many people refer to it as such because that’s essentially what the app is designed for. iOS users can download the app to add a