Spotify and Apple are staring each other down while flipping the bird

Spotify and Apple are staring each other down while flipping the bird

Figuratively, of course.

The companies are at it again, and this time it’s not only bothersome to the businesses themselves, but to the end consumer.

Going to the next level in an ongoing spat over Apple’s subscription rules, it would appear that Apple has rejected Spotify’s latest update to its app in late May, citing business model issues. Shortly before that, Spotify turned off billing within the Spotify iOS app altogether, cutting off free users ability to upgrade and even shutting off existing premium mobile users payments, forcing online upgrades. With it, Spotify cut off Apple’s full source of revenue from the Spotify service.

WhatsApp’s 1 billion users now make 100 million calls every day

WhatsApp’s 1 billion users now make 100 million calls every day

WhatsApp is keen to stand out amongst its rivals as more than just a messaging app. In an effort to promote its additional features, it has announced some impressive figures in regard to its voice-calling function, which was rolled out just over a year ago.

The app states that its users across iOS and Android now make 100 million calls a day. WhatsApp did the math and worked out that totals a whopping 1,100 calls a second.

The numbers are notable, but hardly surprising. After all, the app boasts 1 billion users, making it the biggest chat platform in the world. It only became a comprehensive communications platform by adding VoIP in April of last year, playing catch up with the likes of Skype, and Viber.

Since its acquisition by Facebook for a staggering $22 billion in 2014, WhatsApp has continued to operate independently under the leadership of co-founder and CE Jan Koum.

Despite dominating the overseas market — in particular India, Brazil, and Africa — WhatsApp is still struggling to gain a foothold in the U.S. where it faces stiff competition from apps including Facebook Messenger, and iMessage. America is high on Koum’s global domination agenda. In fact, he wants everyone who owns a smartphone to use WhatsApp.

“We’re nowhere near that,” Koum told USA Today. “But we hope that over a certain period of time we will get that critical mass.”

WhatsApp is no stranger to mass usage. At present, its users send 42 billion messages, 1.6 billion photos, and 250 million videos each day. So how exactly does Koum plan to overcome the U.S. stumbling block? As always, he’s relying on organic growth.

“As long as our user base continues to grow, at some point it will have critical mass, and at some point it will tip and at some point people will just have to use WhatsApp because their friends are using WhatsApp,” states Koum.

To that end, social media sites such as Facebook may even be aiding his plans. As WhatsApp’s parent company pointed out recently, it is influencing people to connect across the globe like never before. If you end up making a new friend overseas and plan to message them, chances are you’ll need to download WhatsApp.



source: www.digitaltrends.com

Dropbox launches a new way to scan documents with your phone

Dropbox launches a new way to scan documents with your phone, and other sharing features

Dropbox today is releasing a slew of new enterprise features as it continues to try to woo larger businesses in an effort to build a strong new line of business.

The most interesting new feature is probably a tool in its mobile application that allows business users to scan documents and upload them directly into Dropbox. The idea is that there is still a lot of activity and business development that happens in the real world, and Dropbox hopes to seamlessly extend that into its services.

“We all still love using analog tools, writing on white boards and using sticky notes and printed pieces of paper,” head of product Todd Jackson said. “We want to take analog info, help users get it into Dropbox, and make it more searchable and accessible.”

Here’s one of the more unique aspects: the company uses optical character recognition (or OCR, for short) to recognize text on the document that it’s scanning. That makes content within those documents — if it works — actually searchable inside the app. Given that Dropbox’s strength has generally been its core technology, and its quick synchronization tools, the company is clearly leaning on that in order to build a differentiated product.

“The way we view our job is to take all this complexity that exists in real world and get to simple, that’s what separates Dropbox from other companies,” head of product Todd Jackson said. “We sweat the details, launching new features and products is just table stakes. The hard part is how you integrate into workflows and help make work simple.”

There are plenty of use cases for something like this. A lot of design happens on real-life media and in conference rooms, for example. But all that information has to be stored somewhere, eventually, and be easily accessible. If Dropbox can make that experience more seamless, it might find a user base that rapidly adopts the technology in favor of traditional flatbed scanners — or, worse, huge binders full of documents.

Starting off, the scanner — and other tools — will be available for iOS users. The tools aren’t on Android just yet, and the company didn’t have a direct response as to when they might be available to Android users.

The company is releasing a slew of other features for its business customers, as well. One is a big “plus” button at the bottom of the app, placed front and center in the same way Instagram’s photo button is placed, that’s used to make new Office documents. From the app, users can create Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents. Users can also import those documents they scanned into the Office documents.

Another feature available today is the ability to view previews of previous versions of documents. That, in theory, makes it easier for business customers to review which versions of documents they want to revert to without having to revert to each one, one by one, to find the base case they are looking for after iterating on it a lot. One new tools, which aren’t available yet, are the ability to add area-specific comments to documents, as well as the ability to share view-only folders.

All of these are basically built out to make Dropbox a more rich enterprise experience. And for good reason: Basic online storage is becoming commoditized, especially as companies like Apple and Google are ever-increasing the free storage they offer to their users. So Dropbox has had to make a pivot of sorts (though it is still finding new features for its basic users) to building robust tools for enterprise customers in order to generate new business for the company.

It’s a tricky balance, however. There’s an enormous amount of competition in the space, whether that’s Box’s collaboration tools or simply going with Microsoft’s tools — though there are a lot of integrations into Dropbox, and the company focuses on finding ways to work with those companies rather than directly compete. Nonetheless, Dropbox faces an uphill battle convincing enterprise customers to adopt its tools.

Dropbox has found itself in an interesting position. Its customer base has traditionally been geared toward traditional consumers, but some of its recent consumer apps — like Carousel and Mailbox — have been whiffs and the company has had to do some soul-searching on which tools it wants to focus. The user implications for tools like these are obvious, and the market is certainly large, but the question is whether they’ll find widespread adoption in businesses.

The company says it has 500 million registered users, and Jackson was quick to note that it already has a sizable presence in larger businesses. Dropbox has said it has around 150,000 paying enterprise customers, and a majority of the Fortune 500 are currently using Dropbox in some fashion (including the free services), Jackson said.

There’s another challenge here: convincing much larger businesses, which traditionally move very slowly, to adopt these tools. It appears the bet is by making it simple for potential customers, it’ll attract attention from both the bottom up and top down. That’s going to basically be a core requirement for Dropbox’s new products to find widespread adoption. Dropbox has also made some other novel moves recently migrating its data to its own infrastructure. Jackson said that the move hadn’t necessarily had a large impact on the company’s relationship with businesses.

“That’s certainly been great for Dropbox in terms of business model, I don’t know that our business customers really feel one way or the other,” he said. “They trust Dropbox to keep their data safe.”

That’ll be important for the company as it continues to move forward. There’s a huge question mark for CEO Drew Houston, and whether he’ll be able to build a strong sustainable business given the commoditization of online storage. Houston said earlier this month at the Bloomberg Technology conference the company had become cash-flow positive, though that definition is certainly going to be scrutinized in multiple ways by Silicon Valley observers.



source: www.techcrunch.com

Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera

Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera. You Should Consider It, Too.

A Palestinian hacker who said he had breached Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile showed the page in 2013.

Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful men in the world because billions of people give Facebook, which he founded, free access to their personal data. In return, users receive carefully curated snapshots of his life: baby photos, mundane office tours and the occasional 5K.

On Tuesday, observers were reminded that Mr. Zuckerberg, 32, is not just a normal guy who enjoys running and quiet dinners with friends. In a photo posted to his Facebook account, he celebrated the growing user base of Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. An eagle-eyed Twitter user named Chris Olson noticed that in the image’s background, his laptop camera and microphone jack appeared to be covered with tape.

Other publications, including Gizmodo, used the tweet to raise the question: Was this paranoia, or just good practice?

3 things about this photo of Zuck:

Camera covered with tape
Mic jack covered with tape
Email client is Thunderbird pic.twitter.com/vdQlF7RjQt

— Chris Olson (@topherolson) June 21, 2016

The taped-over camera and microphone jack are usually a signal that someone is concerned, perhaps only vaguely, about hackers’ gaining access to his or her devices by using remote-access trojans — a process called “ratting.” (Remote access is not limited to ratters: According to a cache of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, at least two government-designed programs were devised to take over computer cameras and microphones.)

Security experts supported the taping, for a few good reasons:

• The first is that Mr. Zuckerberg is a high-value target.

“I think Zuckerberg is sensible to take these precautions,” Graham Cluley, an online security expert and consultant, wrote in an email Wednesday. “As well as intelligence agencies and conventional online criminals who might be interested in targeting his billions, there are no doubt plenty of mischievous hackers who would find it amusing to spy upon such a high-profile figure.”

• The second is that covering photo, video and audio portals has long been a basic and cheap security safeguard.

“Covering the camera is a very common security measure,” Lysa Myers, a security researcher at the data security firm ESET, said in an email. “If you were to walk around a security conference, you would have an easier time counting devices that don’t have something over the camera.”

• Third, Mr. Zuckerberg is not immune to security breaches.

A recent hacking of his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts shows that he most likely committed two basic privacy faux pas: He may have used the same password across several websites and did not use two-factor authentication.

Judging from his photo, however, it appears that Mr. Zuckerberg was taking simple precautions to protect himself from anyone who may try to gain remote access. The practice is fairly technologically simple: Hackers trick people into clicking on links or unfamiliar websites containing malware that allows them access to the devices.

Mr. Zuckerberg is not the only high-profile case: James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., also puts tape over his computer’s webcam, for surprisingly simple reasons, according to NPR:

“I saw something in the news, so I copied it,” Mr. Comey said. “I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.”

People who are not billionaires or high-ranking government officials are not without risk, said Stephen Cobb, a senior security researcher at ESET.

“For people who are not C.E.O.s, the threat is people scanning the internet for accessible webcams for a range of motives, from voyeurism to extortion,” Mr. Cobb wrote in an email.

Experts don’t have a good estimate for how often such attacks occur, but according to a 2015 report released by the nonprofit Digital Citizens Alliance, the practice is a growing problem for consumers, especially young women. The report also said that trojans account for some 70 percent of all malware.

“They’ve been one of the most popular types of malware on every operating system, for quite a long time,” Ms. Myers, of ESET, said. “The best ways to protect against them are to update all your software on your machine regularly, and use reputable security software, including anti-malware and a firewall.”


source: www.nytimes.com

Next year’s iPhone

Next year’s iPhone may feature a futuristic design that makes Jony Ive’s dream a reality

Apple’s PR team was hard at work this morning setting expectations for this year’s iPhone refresh. According to a few near-simultaneous reports including this one in The Wall Street Journal, Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus won’t feature any major design changes. Instead, they’ll be pretty well aligned with all of the rumors and leaks we’ve seen: the new iPhones will look a lot like the current iPhones, but they’ll ditch the 3.5mm audio jack and they’ll be slimmer. Remember what we said was probably our first look at a real iPhone 7? Well, it was indeed probably our first look at a real iPhone 7.


We covered WSJ’s big iPhone report earlier on Tuesday, but it’s worth diving into it again. Why? Because a couple of lines near the end of the article give us some pretty big hints of what we can expect from Apple’s future iPhones.

A string of reports leading up to today’s big planted story suggested that Apple’s 2016 iPhones will be relatively minor upgrades compared to new model number upgrades in previous years. In the past, Apple would release a big redesign and then an “S” model the following year before launching another big upgrade. This time around, Apple’s 2016 iPhones will basically be “6ss” models, offering plenty of internal upgrades but not much in the way of a new design.

Then, in 2017, Apple is expected to completely overhaul the iPhone’s design.

We’ve read in the past that next year’s iPhone will feature an OLED display with no home button and some new features like wireless charging. Now, WSJ’s report suggests that the “iPhone 8” or whatever Apple ends up calling it might arrive with an even bigger redesign than we thought.

“For years, Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive has expressed a desire for the iPhone to appear like a single sheet of glass, according to people familiar with the matter,” WSJ reporters wrote. “The current design ideas for the 2017 iPhones are expected to push the handsets in that direction by eliminating much of the bezel around the display with the OLED screen.”

With current technological limitations in mind, it’s highly unlikely that Ive will realize his vision entirely, which might resemble the concept image at the top of this post. But next year’s iPhones will apparently head “in that direction,” which certainly sounds like a good thing for Apple fans following 2016’s minor update.



source: bgr.com

Plume Wi-Fi Pods Could Boost Your Home Network

Plume Wi-Fi Pods Could Boost Your Home Network

So continues the slow march of Wi-Fi mesh networks into the home. We already have the Eero$199.00 at Amazon, the Luma, and soon Ubiquiti's Amplifi. Not to be outdone, the Plume is also up for pre-order now, and it promises a router-less mesh network that, in theory, should automate many of the annoying configuration complexities that come from linking together multiple access points in a single location.

The Plume—which sounds like a large, fuzzy feather—is actually a series of small plug-in pucks, sized almost like nightlights, that you deploy around your house to give you wireless coverage wherever you want it. Unlike a traditional Wi-Fi router/extender combination, the small pucks all work together to ensure that they're connecting to one another in the best possible way. That, presumably, means better speeds for your connected devices.

Instead of using a traditional Wi-Fi router, you just use the pucks. The one you plug into your DSL or cable modem (or fiber gateway, if you're fancy) serves as the primary "hub" for all of them.

"A single router can no longer meet the Wi-Fi demands of most homes today. While the latest generation of multi-router systems improve signal strength, they can choke the overall system capacity and speeds. These unnecessarily expensive products are based on decades-old technology that compounds the issue of a central router and cannot handle the complex variables and loads affecting a Wi-Fi network in a modern connected home," said Plume CEO and co-founder Fahri Diner in a statement.

"We approached the problem from a unique angle. Rather than introducing more routers, we decided to deconstruct the traditional router by leveraging inexpensive and scalable compute power from the cloud. The intent was to give people more Wi-Fi, in more places, on more devices, more of the time—all at a more affordable price point."

Plume does seem to be trying to distance itself from the notion of a "traditional" mesh network, in that the company says its devices all use different Wi-Fi bands to connect to one another to alleviate any performance issues that would come from the devices using the same Wi-Fi band. The Plume devices also allegedly "tune" your network to prioritize connections for devices that need it most, and Plume even learns your normal habits to ensure that you always have enough bandwidth to stream your Sunday night Game of Thrones.

"By actively monitoring the home network, as well as the devices connected to it, Plume detects interference and continuously makes decisions to improve signal, speed, and resiliency. For example, the system monitors the UHD TV box in the living room and boosts Wi-Fi capacity there so the 4K stream never loses resolution. Plume also directs mobile devices to seamlessly roam as they move around the home," reads Plume's description.

Each Plume device comes with a gigabit Ethernet port, supports AC1200 speeds, and costs $39 for a pre-order or $49 when the devices launch this fall.


source: www.pcmag.com

OnePlus 3 vs. Galaxy S7

OnePlus 3 vs. Galaxy S7 edge real-life speed test: Prepare to be surprised

OnePlus’s phones have been labeled as “flagship killers” and in 2016 OnePlus has gone further than ever, creating an impressive high-end device that’s priced at mid-range levels. One of the OnePlus 3’s features that immediately stands out is the amount of memory. With 6GB of RAM, the device should be even faster than competing devices that have 4GB of memory or less. But does that 6GB of RAM really offer users a faster mobile experience?

A real-life speed test comparison between the OnePlus 3 and the Galaxy S7 edge answers that question. Samsung has been the one company pushing the industry forward in the RAM department. It kept adding more and more RAM to its devices (even though its flagships were consistently beaten by iPhones sporting much less memory), but now it’s time to see if RAM always translates to a faster user experience.

YouTube channel “C4ETech” conducted a real-life speed test that shows who the real winner is. The test involves running the same series of applications on each device twice under similar testing conditions. In the first run, we get to see which device is quicker at opening apps. In the second run, we see how fast a device reopens the same apps, and whether a certain app is still in memory.

You’d think that the 6GB of RAM in the OnePlus 3 would give the phone a serious advantage over the Galaxy S7 edge, which has just 4GB of RAM. But you’d be wrong. Not only is the Samsung phone much faster, but it looks like the OnePlus 3 is in desperate need of an update to improve RAM management.

You can see the entire speed test in the video embedded below.

Samsung is expected to pack 6GB of RAM in the Galaxy Note 6/7, set to launch in early August, so it’ll be interesting to compare that phone’s performance to the OnePlus 3.


source: bgr

Motorola Moto G4 review

Motorola Moto G4 review: It's the ONLY budget smartphone worth buying

The latest instalment in the Moto G saga is a superb smartphone. A little large, perhaps, but for the money, it's basically flawless

The Motorola Moto G4 follows a long line of successful budget smartphones that stretches all the way back to 2013, but it’s got its work cut out in 2016. With Samsung and others joining the budget fray, the Moto G4 needs to do something special to maintain its position at the top.

Lenovo (the new owner of the Motorola brand) hasn’t made life any easier for the Moto G4 by bumping up the base price. The cost of 2016’s model is £169 inc VAT, up £20 on last year's Moto G (3rd gen). That might not sound like much – it's the price of a small round of drinks in central London, or a Domino’s Extra Large pizza – but it represents a 13% rise, which is not insignificant.

Motorola Moto G4 review: It's big, very big

What does that extra cash get you? For starters, a larger screen. The Motorola Moto G4 has a 5.5in display, making it a whole half-inch bigger than last year’s model. It’s now up there with the giants of the smartphone world such as the OnePlus 2 and the iPhone 6s Plus in terms of its dimensions and, there’s no denying it, it’s one hell of a slab.

Rather impressively, however, Motorola hasn’t just upped the size without considering the consequences. At the same time as embiggening the screen, it has slimmed down the case significantly, and now measures 2mm thinner than the Moto G3. The Motorola Moto G4 is a mere 9.8mm thick, and best of all it feels sturdy with it, with curved metal edges adding to the high–quality feel.

In terms of the overall aesthetics, it isn’t as brash and loud as previous Moto G handsets and, for me, that's a bit of a shame. I loved the rounded contours, ribbed rear panel and bold camera surround of last year’s model, and the more subtle look of this year’s Moto G4 feels like Lenovo is playing it a bit safe.

Still, if the plain black and silver finish you see in the photographs here doesn’t float your boat, it is possible to customise the Moto G4 via the Motorola Moto Maker website. In all, you have eight rear-panel colours to choose from (including black) and five “accent” colours, which should give you ample opportunity to add a bit of personality.

The only big downer when it comes to the design is that the Moto G4 isn't IPX7 water-resistant like the Moto G (3rd gen). It's still splash-proof, courtesy of a special coating, but don't go dropping it in the bath.

It’s also mildly disappointing to discover that there’s still no NFC or fingerprint reader (you’ll have to stump up for the Moto G4 Plus if that’s on your shopping list), so you won't be able to take advantage of the wonders of Android Pay.

Motorola Moto G4 review: Specifications, performance and battery life

The key reason for the Moto G family’s success has been the combination of sensible design and build quality with a keen sense of value, and the Moto G4 maintains that tradition. Inside is an octa–core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 running at 1.5GHz, and this is backed by 2GB of RAM and either 16GB or 32GB of storage.

First impressions of the phone are that it’s pretty responsive, but with the odd glitch here and there. There’s some lag while zooming in and out of images in Google Photos, while scrolling quickly through image-heavy websites isn’t as ultra-smooth as on more expensive handsets with 8-series Qualcomm chips.

There’s nothing here, however, to make you grind your teeth or curse under your breath, and in the benchmarks, the Moto G4 is clearly faster than last year’s model.

In fact, of the budget models I’ve pitched the Moto G4 up against here, it’s the Honor 5X that gets the closest in terms of overall performance. The Moto G (3rd gen) is significantly slower across the board.

On battery life, however, the Moto G4 has overall performance sewn up. Although the Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 is only a 28nm part, it seems to be highly efficient and, coupled with a 3,000mAh battery, comfortably delivers a day of moderate use. When we ran it through our standard video-rundown test, the Moto G4 lasted 13hrs 39mins, which is an above-average score and almost three hours longer than the Honor 5X lasted in the same test.

Motorola Moto G4 review: Display

In terms of its speed and battery life, the Moto G4 is a budget tour de force, and it continues that trend with its screen. Its 5.5in IPS screen has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, and it’s sharp enough that you can’t see any pixels unless you squint really hard (or get out the magnifying glass). Best of all, though, Motorola has clearly spent some time perfecting how it performs.

In fact, for a phone that costs a good deal less than £200, the Moto G4’s screen is astonishingly good. Maximum brightness reaches right the way up to 540cd/m2, outstripping the best phones in this price bracket by a huge margin, and it’s almost twice as bright as its predecessor.

The contrast ratio is great, too, and although the sRGB coverage isn’t quite as good as phones with OLED displays (the Galaxy J5 and OnePlus X, for instance), it’s good enough that colours still look vibrant and easy on the eye. This screen’s only weakness is that it dims to only 22cd/m2 – if you’re in the habit of checking your phone in a darkened cinema, this will earn you the ire of your fellow movie-goers. Otherwise, it’s an absolute cracker.

Motorola Moto G4 review: Cameras

Happily, the camera is also great. You get a 13-megapixel rear camera with an f/2 aperture and a dual-LED flash for low-light indoor shots. There's no laser or phase-detect autofocus here (for that you have to move up to the pricier Moto G4 Plus), nor optical image stabilisation, but there’s no problem with image quality.

Photographs shot on the Moto G4 are packed with detail and well exposed. Noise is kept under control in all but the darkest of scenes, and the HDR mode works well to equalise extremes of shadow and highlight (as long as you hold the phone steady).

I especially like how easy it is to drag the focus and exposure point around the screen and adjust the exposure compensation to suit. The only problem I had was that autofocus was somewhat slow to lock onto a subject, and occasionally a little jumpy and erratic.

And don't kid yourself that you’re getting Nexus 5X or 6P levels of quality here. The Moto G4’s photographs lack the fine detail and low-light performance of those phones.

For the money, however, what the Motorola Moto G4 is capable of is nothing short of stunning, and it’s significantly better than the Moto G (3rd gen), capturing far cleaner, sharper and less noisy images.

Motorola Moto G4 review: Software

Of course, what usually puts the Moto G head and shoulder above its rivals is the quality of its Android skin, and the refreshing lack of any irritating or unnecessary eye-candy. Fortunately, nothing has changed on this front. The Moto G4 runs on a base of Android 6, and it looks, largely, as Google originally intended.

Motorola’s own features, such as they are, are mostly highly useful and unobtrusive. The gestures, for instance, which allow you to quickly switch on the torch by lightly karate-chopping the phone’s screen, or activate the camera by quickly twisting it twice in succession, are pure genius.

The Moto G4’s Active Display is just as handy. It displays recent notifications, the time and the date whenever you pick up the phone, so you don’t have to go fumbling around finding the power switch.

Motorola Moto G4 review: Verdict

As an all-round package, it’s very hard to find fault with the Motorola Moto G4. It may be a touch more expensive than last year’s Moto G, but since it’s better in most ways – with superior battery life, a better camera, a brighter, bigger screen and a sleeker, more grown-up design – you won’t find me complaining.

There may be some who moan that the Moto G is now too big, and yes, for those with smaller hands and pockets it may be a stretch too far. But let’s not get too hung up about what the Moto G4 isn’t and celebrate what it is: it’s one hell of a smartphone, and delivers more bang per buck than any smartphone to date. If you’re looking to spend less than £200 on your next handset, there’s simply no better choice than the Motorola Moto G4.


source: www.alphr.com