Software & Apps - Page 67

Uber is still fighting an uphill battle in many places around the world as the Taxi industry strongly fights the rise of this new ridesharing application. The latest news comes from an Australian outback region called the Northern Territory, announcing that its Government refuses to allow Uber to operate legally.

Coming after a cabinet meeting in which discussed the Commercial Passenger Vehicle Industry Review Report, Gizmodo explained that attempted negotiations between Uber HQ and this local Government did not amount to much. Local Transport Minister Peter Chandler stated that "This was a Cabinet decision where we would stop Uber at the moment from coming to the NT," with Brad Kitschke from Uber replying "I think the Territory does risk being left behind."

While numerous other Australian states have accepted Uber with open arms, it seems that the Northern Territory will not follow the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales or Western Australia just yet.

One of the issues with texting today is a lack of interoperability, meaning you can't text with anyone from any device. Fortunately, Google has partnered with mobile industry leaders to push Rich Communications Services (RCS), the open standard replacement for SMS texting that, in combination with an Android RCS client, will solve this issue. If you're an iPhone user, this is effectively the Android equivalent of iMessage.

Apart from being able to text from anywhere, other benefits of the new standard and client include group chat, high-res photo sharing, read notices, and eventually, advanced calling features. Happily, an open source version of the client will be published at some point, so you can likely expect forks tailored to your preferences down the line.

Mention has been made of a "global rollout" of RCS, though it's not clear yet when exactly that will happen. As ever, we'll keep you posted.

Screen dimming software f.lux isn't having much luck with iOS lately, but Android progress seems to be coming along. Recently, a beta became available to interested users, likely indicating it's not too far off from a public release.

To gain access to the beta, you must have a rooted phone. Assuming you fulfill that criteria, head here to request joining the Android testing group, then here for installation instructions.

Requiring a rooted phone no doubt will alienate many users, so hopefully that gets nixed prior to the public launch. Should we hear anything to that end, we'll be sure to report it.

A document leaked to TechCrunch reveales Facebook will be integrating advertising into its Messenger app starting in the second quarter of 2016. It's not the advertising you'd expect, though. Rather, advertising messages will be sent to users who have previously initiated chats with the company.

"Our aim with Messenger is to create a high quality, engaging experience for 800 million people around the world, and that includes ensuring people do not experience unwanted messages of any type," a Facebook spokesperson commented, neglecting to confirm or deny the news.

Opera is almost at version 37.0 and is adamant about continuing to innovate in the browser realm despite the fact that a Chinese company is on the verge of buying the parent company, Opera Software. Version 37.0 is supposed to have a few fun surprises in the final version, things that aren't mentioned in any logs whatsoever.

The focus is on fixing a tremendous amount of bugs that have been found and adding in a few much needed changes to keep it competitve, such as smooth scrolling. But there'll be more too. "Now we are preparing small surprise for you, or actually, two, if we manage to fix everything on time. You will not find it in changelog, not even in the flags," Błażej Kaźmierczak said in an official blog post.

If you'd like to participate in the beta, with it's clean interface and rather quick browsing engine, you can download it here. Just know that it's not quite production ready yet, even though it's in great shape. The interface and intuitive way in which you interact with it is a surprise given the last time I played with it nearly three year ago. They've stepped up their game quite a bit!

Google has been letting Yahoo, Hotmail, and Outlook email users plug their accounts into Gmail for about a year now, but it's been without the benefit of arguably the service's most appealing feature: superb spam protection. That changes today with Gmailify, which again lets you link your account to Gmail (without changing the actual address), but this time includes the spam protection as well as Gmail's inbox organization scheme and Google Now cards.

To get started, simply open the Gmail app, sign in to your non-Gmail account, and enable Gmailify. Should you change your mind, you can unlink you account whenever you like.

If you have an email account that isn't with Yahoo, Hotmail, or Outlook but want to take advantage of this service, Google says it will be adding other providers at some point in the future.

The latest Instagram update is here, with celebrities now being able to feel more secure in their accounts after large profile hacks - including Taylor Swift and Kris Jenner - recently finding their accounts inaccessible.

Before now, all you'd need to access an Instagram account was the username and password - but the Facebook-owned image sharing service is now rolling out a new two-factor authentication feature. Instagram now lets you verify your account through a phone number, so if you log into your account online - you'll need the text message Instagram will send you with its authentication code. This code is required before you can log into your Instagram account.

Instagram has been slow to update its app with two-factor authentication, and considering Facebook owns the company and has had two-factor authentication for five years now, this is really behind the times.

Windows 10 has had a great Netflix app for quite some time, and now Hulu has followed suit with an app of their own. Available starting today in the US across PC, tablet, and mobile devices, the release coincides with the Hulu Original "11.22.63" launch, created by Stephen King and J.J. Abrams and starring James Franco.

The app features universal voice search and controls through Cortana (say Hey Cortana, Hulu play 'Empire' and it will immediately begin playing the show from where you left off), as well as Live Tiles support (pin the app to your start menu and see featured shows at a glance).

Head here to download the app.

Faced with the issue of redundancy after launching Google Photos last year, Google has decided to retire its Picasa photo service on March 15. You will continue to be able to use it, but there will be no official download available, and no updates. The Web Albums service will go offline May 1.

"After much thought and consideration, we've decided to retire Picasa over the coming months in order to focus entirely on a single photo service in Google Photos," Anil Sabharwal, Head of Google Photos writes in a new blog post. "We believe we can create a much better experience by focusing on one service that provides more functionality and works across mobile and desktop, rather than divide our efforts across two different products."

If you do use Picasa, you'll be taken care of: Google says it will "take some time in order to do this right and provide you with options and easy ways to access your content." In the meantime, you can already access all of your Picasa photos and videos via Google Photos. If you have some weird hatred of Google Photos, you'll soon be able to access your content in a new, currently unspecified location, although you won't be able to manage albums.

Microsoft will be holding a press event later this month centered around its Xbox One and Windows 10 cross-platform ecosystem. Details are a bit light, but sources indicate that Xbox head Phil Spencer will be there, and a roadmap for future Windows 10 content will be presented.

Redmond wants to remind everyone that Windows 10 is still exciting, and to prove it, the tech titan is holding a new presser just three weeks head of GDC 2016. The Windows event kicks off on February 25, and will focus on the hottest new Xbox One games as well as the future of Windows 10 as a whole, so we'll probably get more info on Redstone and cross-platform Xbox One-to-Windows features.

According to Windows Central, who has been invited to the shindig, attendees will have "the chance to hear from Head of Xbox Phil Spencer and get hands-on with the best games and platform experiences launching this spring on Xbox and Windows 10." So we'll likely see the usual suspects like Xbox One's former-exclusive Quantum Break as well as the Windows 10 flavors of Killer Instinct and Gears of War.

Since the release of Windows 10, we've been slowly learning just how much of a spying tool it is for Microsoft, but these new numbers are going to blow you away.

Voat user CheesusCrust has completed some extensive testing on Windows 10, where he reports that during an 8-hour period, Windows 10 attempted to send back data from his PC to over 51 different IPS addresses owned by Microsoft, and at a staggering 5500 times.

After 30 hours, the data being sent back to Microsoft from Windows 10 expanded to a huge 113 non-private IP addresses. These IP addresses being non-private means that hackers can intercept that data, which makes anyone using Windows 10 very, very vulnerable. You might think this is just a once-off, and that the proof can't be replicated? Yeah, well, no.

It looks like the mobile app market is doing extremely well, with a new report from App Annie expecting to see global spending reach $50.9 billion this year - with the Google Play Store to overtake the Apple App Store in 2017.

App Annie released its new Mobile App Forecast recently, predicting that worldwide mobile app store revenues would hit $101.1 billion in 2020. The analyst firm is expecting consumer spending on apps to be up 24% year-over-year at $50.9 billion this year, with these numbers including non-gaming apps, but not mobile commerce and advertising revenue.

The company expects the Apple App Store to be the single highest grossing app storefront into the near future, with $44.8 billion generated in 2020, it will be overtaken by the Google Play Store in gross revenue numbers next year, with $55.7 billion expected in 2020. Why is Android poised to take over? The report points to the huge growth of Android in emerging markets like India, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia.

Microsoft has been pretty secretive about the contents of its Windows 10 updates, but that's no longer the case as of today. The company has launched a new section of its website which details all updates in changelog form, starting with two updates released today (one for each Windows 10 branch).

"We're committed to our customers and strive to incorporate their feedback, both in how we deliver Windows as a service and the info we provide about Windows 10," they write. "In response to this feedback, we're providing more details about the Windows 10 updates we deliver through Windows Update. You'll see a summary of important product developments included in each update, with links to more details. This page will be regularly refreshed, as new updates are released."

Today's update includes some minor quality of life changes alongside some potentially major security improvements. For the details on it and future updates, hit the source.

After what feels like forever, multi-account support will arrive to Instagram in an update this week. After some people received the feature recently, the rest of the world gets to join in very soon.

Instagram will make its server-side changes that will find their way into v7.15 of Instagram or higher, but with the Play Store version of Instagram already at v7.16, it can be confusing. This means that multi-account support isn't hitting everyone just yet, but it will be enabled very soon.

In order to get multiple accounts working within Instagram, you'll need to tap your username at the top of your profile, which will then let you change accounts. Your profile picture will be used throughout the app, which will let you keep tabs on which account you're signed into at that moment.

If you've been using 1Password on Android, you might have noticed an update arrived that delivers some rather large changes to the password manager.

1Password now sports a Material Design makeover, which makes the password manager look awesome in all areas, and provides more room within the UI. Not only that, but we have new toolbars all over the place, and a floating button that provides an easy way to add new URL-password combinations.

But, for those that own smartphones with fingerprint sensors like the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, you can use your fingerprint scanner to quickly unlock 1Password. All you need to do is launch the app and scan your finger, which will bypass the required master password. 1Password v6 also includes the beta of 1Password for Teams, which is a grat feature if you share log-ins with family or co-workers, so you can have a single account for all of your password-saving needs.

Last month it was reported uninstalling the Facebook app on Android dramatically improved performance; other reports have surfaced indicating 20% of battery life can be saved in doing so. The Guardian, curious to see the impact on iPhones, set to work with its iPhone 6S Plus and found battery life was impacted by 15%, even across multiple phones. As well, about 500MB of space was saved between the size of the app and its cache.

Between these benefits and the option to use the well-designed Facebook mobile website (which can be linked to via your home screen), you can see there are few reasons to keep the Facebook app on your phone, and many great reasons not to.

Facebook has been alerted to the performance issues; a spokesperson says the matter is being investigated.

After blocking auto-play flash ads back in September and "social engineering attacks" in November, Chrome will now throw up a full page warning (pictured below) when you arrive at a page with deceptive download links and ads (like those that tell you to 'click this link' to clean your viruses). Well, sometimes, maybe: the new feature of sorts will be likely be rolled out gradually.

The warning represents an expansion of Google's Safe Browsing, which warned you about malware and such.

It must be noted deceptive ads like this can be difficult for webmasters to control, as they are often generated by random ad servers. If nothing else, this could well discourage ad providers from creating these type of ads in the first place. With Chrome's massive browser share, it's not hard to believe.

Now available in over 60 countries, offering ridesharing, food delivery and working on driverless transportation, there is no denying that Uber is a force to be reckoned with, showing extremely successful performance in its short history.

Sometimes when a business expands they start releasing weird promotional videos and blog posts, with a new promotion seeing Uber likened to the invention of the bit and also to atoms. Attached to a new logo, this Uber promotion discusses current services and the advancement of driverless technology, explaining this company as some form of futuristic technology service.

Uber explains that to them the Atom is represented by "growing cities," then hinting that they are the pioneers of bringing atoms and bits together. Reading this explanation might make it sound like satire, but it's not. Read the full blog and watch the video here

Audio streaming service Deezer will come pre-loaded on Huawei's Honor smartphones in Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North Africa, Russia and South East Asia starting today.

Deezer boasts 40 million songs as well as 40,000 podcasts and audiobooks, and includes features like personal mixes. The company also hosts great live sessions like this one.

If you haven't been keeping up, Huawei recently became the #1 smartphone provider in China and #2 provider in Europe. Speculation says they're poised to overtake Samsung before long; the Deezer deal should only help that aim.

Samsung brought adblocking to mobile browser this week which promptly caught the ire of Google. Now pulled from the Play Store, the Adblock Fast app -- which used Samsung's custom API -- exceeded 50,000 downloads and appeared in the top charts in its short lifespan.

Fast was developed by Rocketship Apps; one of its staff members Brian Kennish posted this e-mail from Google which was sent to them after the app was pulled without warning: