Following the controversial firing of the editorial team who managed the Trending Topics that appear next to Facebook’s News Feed, the company is now actively working on technology that will help prevent fake news stories from showing up in the Trending section. Similar systems have been rolled out to News Feed in recent months, and now that same technology is making its way to… Read More
It’s the most wonderful time of year to be a television fan, but fall premieres during Peak TV can be overwhelming. With broadcast, cable, streaming, DVRs, phones, AppleTV – and all the think pieces! – there’s a lot to absorb and process in the next several weeks. We went ahead and picked the five fall shows we’re most excited about to save you some time and trouble during TV’s favorite season.
SEE ALSO: If you’re not already, you need to start watching FX’s ‘Atlanta’
This is Us
Sept. 20, NBC
Are you the type of highbrow masochist who wept on a weekly basis through six seasons of Parenthood? Well, YOU’RE IN LUCK! NBC has a new ensemble drama about life and family and the love that brings the utmost joy and maximum amount of ugly cryingThis Is Us follows the stories of two young parents (Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia), siblings grappling with the personal crises of health and career (Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz), and a grown man (Sterling K. Brown) in search of his biological father. Oh, and they’re all 36 and have the same birthday, so expect that and more to tie them together. …
More about Marvel, Luke Cage, Netflix, Insecure, and This Is Us – Source
Chinese phone makers have grown tremendously over the past few years: not only are they selling more and more devices than ever, but they are also putting more effort in designing these phones to a higher standard. ZTE has been a vivid example of that: it has entered the US market with its Axon series and has seen a fair amount of success with the Axon 7 and Axon 7 Mini, phones that sell for less than the mainstream brands, yet come equipped with similar features.
The ZTE Nubia Z11 is the company’s new top-of-the-line product, a 5.5″ Android … – Source
There are no spoilers for the 2016 NBA Finals, we already know that Cleveland made history. But the NBA and Oculus just made sports-media history by giving us those epic moments in virtual reality.
SEE ALSO: Watching sports in virtual reality isn’t great now, but it can be
In partnership with Facebook’s Oculus team, the NBA has released a VR documentary that immerses you in the dramatic games in Oakland and Cleveland that led to LeBron James and Kyrie Irving delivering the Cavaliers its first championship.
Narrated by actor …
More about Documentary, Virtual Reality, Vr, Kyrie Irving, and Lebron James – Source
Amazon brings its voice-controlled Echo speakers to the UK and parts of Europe. – Source
Apparently, a director of Chinese studies at analyst powerhouse IHS took to an Asian social network to announce that the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 5s will feature Qualcomm’s Sense ID ultrasonic fingerprint technology. It’s an innovative solution which recognizes the user’s fingerprint using ultrasonic waves to scan and build a 3D model of it.
An advantage of the sensor is that it works through different materials, such as steel, sapphire, glass, and some plastics, which lets it function almost anywhere on the device’s surface. Allegedly, this will let Xiaomi position the … – Source
Apple’s Tim Cook confirmed soon after announcing the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus that his company will not publish sales during the last first weekend of pre-orders, possibly in an attempt to lower expectations.
Now a new study shows that 67% of US respondents are highly unlikely to purchase the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus. According to ReportLinker, while there’s a decent percentage of iPhone owners who plan to upgrade to the new model, Apple’s iPhone 7 does not seem to attract new customers as well.
No less than 85% of US respondents who own smartphones powered by OSes other than iOS … – Source
Besides launching iOS 10 yesterday, Apple also released WatchOS 3. This is the latest build of the operating system employed by the Apple Watch, and it opens some apps in one third of the time it takes WatchOS 2 to do the job. That’s because many apps will now stay in the wearable’s native memory instead of being stored on a paired Apple iPhone.
One of the new features, Scribble, allows you to respond to a message by using your finger to write out a word. One of the cool things that Scribble does is allow you to write as fast as you can without having to wait for the program to figure out … – Source
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More about Mashable Video, Pc, Entertainment, Gaming, and League Of Legends – Source
Android users including myself were obviously a bit jealous when John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, announced during the September Apple event that Pokémon Go would be available for Apple Watch users. The big question was, “Will it be an Apple exclusive?” Well, according to Hanke himself, the answer is likely to be a no.
By now, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you must know just how popular Pokémon Go is. It broke all sorts of records left and right since its debut in July: it reached 50 million installs on Google Play in the blink of an eye, and recently it was titled the fastest mobile game to reach $500 million in revenue.
Among all the fancy gadgets that Apple showed off a week ago, perhaps its announcing that Pokémon Go will come to the Apple Watch garnered the most reaction out of the audience. There’s no denying it: the world still loves Pokémon Go, and a good chunk of the world population doesn’t own the Apple Watch. It simply wouldn’t make sense for Pokémon Go to be limited to just one wearable platform given its insane popularity. And I’m glad to see that Hanke agrees:
Our whole mission as a company is to evangelize this whole concept of playing games outside, real world games. Apple Watch we think is a great vehicle for that. As other devices come on the market – if those are Android Wear devices or if they are devices from other quadrants that are interesting for gameplay and mobility, and being active – we’ll look into supporting those, too.
When Hanke was asked specifically if Android Wear will see Pokémon Go, he replied that it’s “pretty likely.”
We are seeing the Pokémon frenzy die down a bit, but Hanke assures us that the game in its current state is merely the “tip of an iceberg” and that the game will change substantially over the years. Among the possible changes is battling: Hanke says that users will probably be able to battle one another in the future. Given Niantic’s expertise and experience with Ingress, another AR game from the company, it would be safe to assume that game updates are planned strategically to retain players.
Are you excited about Pokémon Go coming to Android Wear? Let us know in the comments below!
Sensay, one contestant at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Battlefield, is aiming to be the first breakout cross-platform chatbot — but, unlike most that provide services and information at a convenience chat, its currency is people. Read More
For all the high-tech advances in healthcare when it comes to drugs and devices, doctors, their back offices, pharmacies, labs that conduct health tests and insurance providers aren’t exactly in easy communication about or with the people in their care. And patients don’t have a single, easy place to interact with doctors and track their own medical data. That’s a hard thing… Read More
Enlarge / The City of Berkeley, as seen in the foreground, looking west towards San Francisco. (credit: Daniel Parks)
SAN FRANCISCO—Two titans of the legal world faced off Tuesday before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a case that pits the cell phone industry against the city of Berkeley, California. If the court ends up reversing a lower court’s earlier decision and ruling in favor of CTIA – The Wireless Association, it would overturn a new Berkeley city law that aims to alert cell phone users about possible radiation risks by forcing retailers to post signs in their stores.
That law went into effect earlier this year after the cell phone trade group sued to halt it. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled in favor of the defendants in CTIA v. City of Berkeley, allowing a municipal ordinance to stand, with one small revision.
This photo showing the required warning was taken Monday at a cell phone store along Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley. (credit: Rebecca Farivar)
The Cellular Telephone Industries Association (CTIA), meanwhile, has argued that this violates the industry’s First Amendment rights, as it compels speech. “This is confusing,” Ted Olson, a former solicitor general under the George W. Bush administration, argued before the 9th Circuit on behalf of CTIA. “What the [Federal Communications Commission] says, your honors, with respect to its findings of cell phones used in the US is that they are safe. What Berkeley’s message says is: ‘Watch out!’”
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Affectiva CEO Rana el Kaliouby made a pair of announcements at TechCrunch Disrupt today that should bring the company’s emotion-detecting systems to quite a few new people. First, the Affdex SDK and APIs are now free to any company that learns less than a million dollars a year. Read More
Intending to “piggyback” on the work that the intelligence community has done with In-Q-Tel, the Defense Department will start making venture investments, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt.
The initiative will build off of work that the Central Intelligence Agency has been doing for years.
The CIA began planning its investment program in 1998 and… Read More
