Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac. He covers Google for 9to5Google.com, the best gadgets and deals on 9to5Toys.com, and delivers a weekly roundup of EV and solar news on Electrek.co. Sometimes he makes weird electronic music as one half of Makamachine.
Contact Jordan with news tips and long-winded complaints:
In this week’s top stories: A first look at the iris scanner on Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Note 7, new Huawei devices, hands-on with the Moto G4 and G4 Plus, and the Pokemon Go craze continues.
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Following a proposal by Google earlier this year, the Unicode Technical Committee today approved a new set of emoji that aims to improve gender equality.
More than 90 percent of the world’s online population use emoji. But while there’s a huge range of emoji, there aren’t a lot that highlight the diversity of women’s careers, or empower young girls…. the emoji representing women aren’t exactly, well, representative. So we’ve been working to make things better.
Today Alphabet-owned Nest is launching its latest product with the debut of the previously rumored Nest Cam Outdoor, as well as a redesigned app and new features.
The most notable enhancement over the original, indoor-only version of Nest Cam is necessary weatherproofing for outdoor use.
‘Pokéstops’ and ‘gyms’, the real-world points-of-interest players of the hit augmented reality game ‘Pokemon Go’ navigate to, will soon include “sponsored locations” promoted by advertisers, reports Financial Times.
“There is a second component to our business model at Niantic, which is this concept of sponsored locations”, Mr. Hanke said, where companies “pay us to be locations within the virtual game board — the premise being that it is an inducement that drives foot traffic.”
Some companies, like Best Buy, are already trying to tap into the foot traffic from the game before they can even pay to do so:
[tweet https://twitter.com/BBYNews/status/753284891001757696]
Read the full story on the upcoming feature.
In this week’s top stories: Our roundups of the best Android phones and best budget Android phones for July, Pokemon GO’s official release takes over the app charts, Android One launches in Japan, and much more. Head below for these and the rest of this week’s most shared stories.
Google just confirmed its latest acquisition with an announcement on its Google Cloud Platform blog that it’s purchasing video/broadcasting platform Anvato.
Google is rolling out an updated Gmail API today that will give app developers more access to settings for filters, signatures, auto-replies, IMAP and POP settings, forwarding addresses and auto-forwarding, and send-as aliases.
Update: Verizon’s new plans and features are now official.
CNET reports that Verizon is about to overhaul its plans to include higher priced tiers that offer more data, as well as some new features and perks for customers.
The price hikes include $5 to $10 increases, while data caps for the plans will get increases ranging from 1GB to 6GB of additional data versus the current plans:
The low-end “S” plan will go up by $5 to $35 a month, but will include 2 gigabytes of data, twice as much as before. The “M” plan will go up by $5 to $50 a month, while its data will rise from 3GB to 4GB. The “L” plan will go up by $10 to $70 a month, while data increases from 6GB to 8GB. The “XL” plan will go up by $10 to $90 a month, but you’ll get 16GB, up from 12GB before. Lastly, the “XXL” plan will cost $10 more at $110 a month, but you will get 24GB instead of 18GB.
Among the announcements that will likely arrive at a press announcement the carrier has scheduled for tomorrow are a “Safety Mode” through the My Verizon mobile app that will allow for unlimited usage at capped speeds, and a new option for rollover data.
You can read more specifics on the new plans over at 9to5Mac.
In this week’s top stories: The next version of Android is officially ‘Nougat’, more Nexus leaks, new Chromebooks, the latest new apps and updates & much more. Head below our handy roundup of links to this these and the rest of this week’s top shared stories.
Google is rolling out an update to its Keep note-taking app that brings new auto-created topics that group notes together for automatic organization and easy searching.
In this week’s top stories: Specs for the rumored HTC ‘Sailfish’ Nexus device leak, more on the OnePlus 3, Google’s new Prompt two-factor feature, we review Sony’s Xperia X, and much more.
Following yesterday’s announcement that the YouTube Android app is gaining live streaming functionality, today YouTube is announcing a number of other new updates for creators as part of its presence at this year’s VidCon.
Dropbox is getting some notable updates today for both the mobile apps and desktop that bring a number of new productivity tools and features to the service. It’s also changing its mobile camera uploads feature for basic users to require they have the desktop app installed or a paid Pro account.
In this week’s top stories: What’s new in the Android N Dev Preview 4, the official OnePlus 3 launch and first impressions, Android apps come to Chromebooks in Chrome OS Dev 53, and much more. Head below for the handy links to these and the rest of this week’s top shared stories.
In this week’s top stories: We breakdown the best Android phones you can buy right now, get a closer look at upcoming Android devices including the OnePlus 3, Galaxy Note, and Project Tango devices, and give you the latest app news and updates alongside our picks for the best 5 Android apps you should download this month.
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Reuters reports that Amazon is preparing to take on Google, Apple, Spotify and the other music streaming services with a similar, full-fledged competitive subscription music service. That would be a step up from the limited catalog of music it currently offers to subscribers of its Prime shipping service that bundles perks for various Amazon services for a monthly or yearly fee.
Gmail is experiencing downtime this afternoon as some users are having issues with receiving messages and accessing their account. Google confirmed the issue on its apps status page and said it was investigating reports as of 1:56PM EST.
The company provided a later update at 2:46PM EST today noting that it’s continuing to investigate and confirming it’s discovered that “some messages sent to consumer Gmail accounts are being rejected due to authentication enforcement.”
Google plans to provide another update by 3:46PM EST with more details on when it expects to resolve the issues.
We’ll keep you posted here with further updates and let us know in the comments below if you’re still having problems with your account.
One day after announcing availability of its Vive VR headset for consumers following a few delays, HTC today announced an enterprise edition of the product.
The Nvidia Shield set-top box is about to become the “first all-one Plex box” as Plex announced today the Android TV-based device will gain full media server support later this month. That’s in addition to the Android app offering it currently has and will make the Shield the first device other than a dedicated PC, Mac or NAS with full support for the popular Plex Media Server.
Starting today, HTC’s Vive VR headset is available to purchase direct from HTC at vive.com in at least 24 countries with the device expected to ship to customers in the next 2-3 days. And it’s also being made available to preorder at select retail partners including Microsoft Stores, GameStop and Micro Center with those orders expected to arrive beginning sometime this week.
HTC originally launched preorders in February and started shipping in April, but until this week orders have been backed up and the company has been experiencing shipping delays and complaints from preorder customers.
In this week’s top stories: Samsung unveiled new wearables and wireless earbuds this week as hints at the upcoming Galaxy Note 7 surfaced. We also had some more OnePlus 3 announcements and leaks ahead of an official launch, talk of Huawei manufacturing Googles’ next Nexus device, and an interview with Google’s Sundar Pichai discussing Nexus phones and a number of other topics. Head below for the handy links to these and our other top stories from this week.
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In this week’s top stories: The latest OnePlus 3 news comes alongside our first look at an upcoming Batman-themed Galaxy S7 Edge from Samsung. A handful of Google apps received notable updates this week, as did a US field test for the much anticipated Pokémon GO mobile game arriving this summer. And Google exec Eric Schmidt makes some noise with comments about Galaxy S7 being better than iPhone in our latest Talking Schmidt. Head below for the usual handy links to these top stories and more.
In this week’s top stories we round up all of our coverage from Google I/O, the company’s annual developer conference where it also took the wraps off a number of upcoming hardware and software products. Android N Developer Preview 3, the Play Store comes to Chrome, Google Assistant, the new Daydream VR platform and much, much more.
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Shipments of Chromebooks outpaced Macs in the US for the first time in Q1 2016, that’s according to data from IDC shared during a session at Google’s I/O developer conference today.
