HBO’s new Westworld trailer shows AI ethical questions made flesh

 HBO has what looks like an expansive new epic TV series on the way, only this time it’s swapping fantasy, swords and castles for androids, AI and western duds. Westworld is a new sci-fi series coming to the cable network beginning in October, based on the Michael Crichton film from 1973. IN the original, a high-tech theme park with western, medieval and ancient Roman-themed sections… Read More

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Prisma adds offline mode to its crazy popular art filter app

 Art filter app sensation Prisma, which has revved up from nothing to an incredible 55 million+ downloads for its iOS and Android apps in just two months this summer, has now added an offline mode. Read More

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Google will soon start punishing mobile sites that show hard-to-dismiss popups

 Google today announced two major changes related to its mobile search results. The one you’ll probably notice first is that Google is removing the “mobile-friendly” label that highlighted pages that were easy to read on mobile from its mobile search results pages. In the long run, though, the second change may be more wide-reaching: starting on January 10, 2017, the company… Read More

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Yandex applies AI to filter annoying ads on Android, powered by user reports

 The rise in consumer usage of ad blockers is leading to a few creative alternatives to try to achieve a ‘better relationship’ between ad tech and web browsers. To wit Russia’s Yandex, which has just announced it’s adding a complaint button to its Android browser to lets users report ads they find annoying. Read More

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Android Nougat comes out of beta

 Google surprised everyone when it launched a public beta of the Android Nougat back in March. Annual updates are nothing new for Android, but not only did this announcement come very early, it also offered users the option to easily install the beta with an over-the-air update. Now, half a year later, Nougat is out of beta and available for Google’s own Nexus devices (the Nexus… Read More

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Gartner: Android’s smartphone marketshare hit 86.2% in Q2

 What growth there is left in the smartphone market continues to center on emerging markets where consumers are upgrading from feature phones. Read More

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Google updates Classroom with new tools for students, parents and teachers

 Google Classroom, the company’s platform that brings together Google Apps for Education and a number of tools for managing classes and content, is getting one of its regular summer updates today (right in time before the next school year starts). While Classroom has traditionally focused on offering tools for teachers and students, this new version now also brings in parents and guardians. Read More

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Russian court rejects Google’s latest Android antitrust appeal

 Google has had another appeal against Android antitrust charges turned down by a Russian court. At issue is how the company requires handset makers using its Android OS to also pre-load Google apps and services onto devices in order to get access to the Play app store. Read More

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Google’s mysterious new Fuchsia operating system could run on almost anything

 Google has a new operating system called Fuchsia in development, with the early results publicly available on Github (and you can even compile and run it yourself, should you feel daring. The new OS differs from both Android and Chrome OS since it doesn’t run on a Linux kernel, and instead uses as its core code something called Magenta, which might make it better suited to running on… Read More

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Microsoft debug policy leak could make Windows Phones useful again

 Microsoft looks to have inadvertently made some of its own orphaned devices useful again, after accidentally leaking a debug policy that could allow owners of Windows powered hardware such as earlier iterations of Windows Phones smartphones or ARM-powered Windows RT tablets to install alternative operating systems like Android and Linux. Read More

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LinkedIn open sources nifty Android app testing tool

 LinkedIn announced today that it is open sourcing a tool called Test Butler, which was developed in-house to overcome limitations on Android app test emulators. As LinkedIn was developing its latest Android app, it decided to completely overhaul the way it develops and tests apps, but it ran into a huge testing limitation, one that was slowing it down it in an unacceptable way. “We… Read More

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Android will now send push notifications when new devices are added to your account

 Google today rolled out a new feature for Android users designed to keep their accounts more secure: notifications about newly added devices. That is, when a new device is added to your Google account, you’ll receive a push notification on your current Android device about the security event. The notification will ask, “Did you just sign in?” If the activity appears… Read More

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LG’s new flagship will be the first phone to ship with Android Nougat

 Samsung’s all set to steal the smartphone spotlight tomorrow at its big Unpacked event, but LG’s kicking August off with an important announcement of its own. The electronics giant will attempt to send a shock to its struggling mobile device wing with the launch of the V20, a new flagship that will be the first handset to ship with Android 7.0. LG’s still keeping plenty… Read More

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