Ahmed Kaludi

Google Fit update brings Android users real-time exercise tracking

In a statement on the official Google Chrome Blog, the browser’s developers have announced the availability of a new version in the stable channel. It brings some performance improvements and a handful of new features.

Google’s development efforts on Chrome have been moving forward at an impressive pace. The company is iterating very quickly on new features and stabilizing them as they trickle down through the various release channels. The most noteworthy new features introduced in the stable release of Chrome 9 are support for WebGL and Chrome Instant.

WebGL is a relatively new standard that emerged in 2009 with the support of the Khronos group. It provides a set of JavaScript APIs that wrap the functionality of OpenGL ES, allowing developers to render 3D graphics in the Canvas element. Mozilla and Apple have also adopted the standard and have their own increasingly mature implementations. Google officially supports WebGL with hardware-accelerated rendering in Chrome 9. To take the feature for a spin, you can try out some of the WebGL demos at the Chrome Experiments website.

Another major feature in Chrome 9 is support for Chrome Instant, the browser equivalent of Google’s instant search innovation. As the user types a URL, the autocompletion mechanism will automatically load pages. This feature is integrated into the browser, but is not enabled by default. Users who want automatic loading will have to opt-in by toggling a preference in Chrome’s settings panel.

Users can download the latest version of Chrome from Google’s website. For more details about some of the bug fixes, you can refer to the release notes.

YouTube Kids, the family-friendly video app, is now available outside the US

Mozilla has rolled out an eleventh beta release of Firefox 4, the next major version of the browser. In addition to the usual assortment of bugfixes and performance improvements, the new beta also adds support for a “Do Not Track” setting.

The implications of behavioral advertising are a growing source of concern among privacy advocates. In an effort to appease regulators, the most prominent Internet advertising companies voluntarily offer a cookie-based opt-out service that allows users to indicate to advertisers that they don’t want to be tracked. It’s a good start, but Mozilla sees a lot of room for improvement.

The browser vendor recently proposed a simpler and more seamless solution which involves adding an optional header to HTTP requests. The header can be used to transparently inform advertisers that the user doesn’t want to be tracked. It’s a better long-term approach than the cookie-based solution because it’s easier to manage and integrate into existing software.

Mozilla has implemented the feature in Firefox 4 beta 11. The browser’s preferences dialog has a new checkbox that the user can toggle to control whether the opt-out header is transmitted to servers. The setting is disabled by default, but is relatively easy for users to find and enable.

As we explained when we compared the tracking opt-out philosophies of Google and Mozilla last month, the downside of introducing a new Do Not Track mechanism is that won’t actually work until it gets buy-in from the major advertising companies. As far as we know, the new header isn’t actually recognized by major advertisers yet.

Due to the lack of industry support, toggling the new setting will have no real effect for users at this time. It seems premature to be exposing the feature through the Firefox user interface, but doing so could potentially help to encourage broader adoption by advertisers and other browser vendors. It’s worth noting that the advertising industry has been relatively supportive of opt-out technologies in the past, so there is hope that Mozilla’s solution will gain some traction.

Best Android browsers: 6 of the best for surfing the net

Google Now, the mind-reading personal assistant for iOS and Android, has gotten a ton of updates lately, making it the perfect smartphone companion for…well, anything. Here’s a list of the coolest stuff it can do

10. Keep Your Commute Simple

You spend a lot of time driving (or riding transit) between work, events, seeing friends, and everything else. Google Now can make it a lot easier.

9. Keep an Eye on Stocks & Sports

You probably already know about this one, since it’s been there since the beginning.

8. Travel Without Stress

If you’re leaving town, Google Now knows it—and can provide you with a ton of useful information

7. See How Far You’ve Walked (or Biked)

If you have Location Reporting and Location History enabled on your phone, Google Now will pop up a card once a month that estimates how far you’ve walked or biked, based on your phone’s accelerometer (Android only).

6. Go Shopping, Online and In-Store

You probably already know that Google Now will provide tracking information for packages you’ve ordered online.

5. Stay Up to Date on Movies, Books, and TV Shows

When you search for a movie, book, TV show, music artist, or video game on Google, it’ll remember—and give you information about it in Google Now.

4. Access Tickets for Upcoming Events

If you have a concert or other event coming up—and you were emailed the ticket—Google Now will remind you of the event, tell you when to leave, and give you one-tap access to the email with your tickets.

3. Keep Up With Your Favorite Web Sites and News

You probably know that Google Now will give you information on things you’ve recently searched, but it can do more than that.

2. Get Reminders Anytime, Anywhere

As if all the above weren’t enough, you can tell Google Now to remind you of just about anything, right when you need it the most.

1. Ask Your Phone Anything

Of course, Google Now does most of the above on its own, but you can ask it just about anything and get a smart answer, too.

How to Back Up and Restore WhatsApp Chats with Google Drive

Microsoft today announced that it had wrapped up work on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and would start delivering the major upgrade on Feb. 22 through Windows Update.

The company said it had reached the “release to manufacturing,” or RTM milestone for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and was shipping the code to PC and server makers today.

Customers who subscribe to either TechNet or the Microsoft Software Developer Network (MSDN) can download Windows 7 SP1 starting Wednesday, Feb. 16, the same day companies with volume license agreements can grab the upgrade.

The general public must wait until Tuesday, Feb. 22, when SP1 hits the Windows Update service. Microsoft typically reserves the last Tuesday of each month for shipping non-security updates.

Snapchat’s Live Stories now show you moments from multiple angles

Podtrac, TNS and eMarketer have put together a few reports indicating the effectiveness of podcast advertising relies on its longtail, as contrasted with the instant gratification methods more prevalent in other types of Internet based advertising like Google’s AdSense or YouTube’s overlay ads for video. The companies studied podcast advertising from February 2006 to March 2008 across multiple product categories and ad types. Unaided awareness for podcast ads was 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television

In eMarketer’s analysis of the data, Doug Keith, president of Future Research Consulting was quoted as saying: “The data suggest audiences are paying close attention to show content and the embedded ads within them which greatly increased ad effectiveness in the studies. The high unaided ad recall figures are no doubt the results of a less cluttered environment.”

t’s great data, and bodes well for the producers in the podcasting world looking to make their bones and their living producing audio and video content. As James Lewin at Podcasting News notes, though, since the data comes from a company that makes their living evangelizing podcasting, the data is a bit suspect. What makes it even more suspect is the fact that it comes from PodTrac, a monetization group that unfortunately has a reputation amongst the podcasting producers’ community for a lack of responsiveness to talent inquiries, a severe shortage of advertising opportunities, and a history of slow payments.

Amazon’s £50 tablet is actually really good

This 7-inch slate will set you back just £49.99 – yes, really – and while your wallet will breathe a sigh of relief, your tech-loving mind won’t be getting wound up by the tablet’s shortcomings. On first use, there really aren’t that many.

Yes, there’s no escaping that this is a no-frills affair, but for £50 what do you expect, really? Slightly portly at 10.6mm thick and 313g in weight, the new Amazon Fire tablet is nonetheless a comfortable device to hold.

Affordable tablets that pair a wallet-friendly price tag with anything but an abysmal array of specs and a disappointing user experience are still something of a novelty. Enter though, the new Amazon Fire tablet.

Its weight is well balanced across its 7-inch form, and its matt finish gives a reassuring amount of grip. It would be nice if the screen wasn’t swallowed up by some oversized bezels, but that bare-bones price tag makes it hard to grumble at this too much.

Aside from the chunky frame giving the screen a slightly recessed look, the Fire’s 7-inch, 1024 x 600 pixel IPS panel provides pleasingly detailed results. Given that image quality is usually the first thing on the chopping block when the prices come tumbling, this makes for a nice surprise.

Offering image quality equal to devices two or three times its price, the Fire’s modest 171PPI resolution offers decent visuals by any standard, and outstanding results for the cost. There is some notable pixellation to text, making reading a little tricky, but image-viewing and movie-watching is perfectly acceptable for casual use.

Sony Xperia Z5: Bond’s phone reviewed

The Sony Xperia Z5 isn’t just any phone. Oh no: this is James Bond’s phone, you know. Hand-crafted for him specially by Q… ok, a multi-million dollar product-placement deal in new movie Spectre. But the question remains: does that make it a good phone for you, a mere non-secret agent?

Well, Sony’s £530 answer to the iPhone 6S and the Samsung Galaxy S6 is the company’s best handset to date. A promising step up on last year’s Xperia Z3(don’t ask what happened to the Z4, yeah?), the Xperia Z5 is accomplished on most fronts and offers the best smartphone camera we’ve ever seen.

Be warned though: despite being Bond’s handset of choice, this device won’t make you good at driving like a boss, fighting hoards of henchmen or wooing ladies. Maybe they’re saving that for the Z6.

That’s not to say there aren’t some design improvements that have been bestowed on the Z5, however. The frosted-glass rear of the device, for example, offers a nice point of differentiation in a metal and plastic-obsessed market – an unusual finish that oozes class without being too much of a fingerprint magnet. It’s water and dust resistant too, but we wouldn’t advise testing its ability to withstand a drop.

The Z5 isn’t an ugly phone. It’s not quite the sleek, suave bit of kit you’d expect to see in the hand of the world’s coolest spy, but it’s not too shabby. It does look pretty familiar though, echoing the look of both the Z3 and Sony’s flagship phones of the past three years. This is a company that’s all about evolution over revolution.

Hands on OnePlus X review: a startlingly good budget phone

Last year, OnePlus upset the whole flagship world with its OnePlus One and it followed it up again this year with the even better OnePlus 2. That’s not going to happen here with the OnePlus X though.

Unlike OnePlus phones of the past, the X is more about style than it is about spec, coming in Onyx and Ceramic versions (glass and, well, ceramic) but still offering a really cheap price.

The main thing to get excited about is the design – this isn’t a phablet any more, rather a smaller phone with a five-inch screen that sits much more nicely in the hand.

However, the design isn’t supplemented by a totally awesome spec sheet – rather, just a sprinkling of attractive specs that are supplemented by some rather crazy ones.

Design

The phone is definitely better crafted than ever before, with both the glass and ceramic versions looks rather nice and feeling decent in the hand. There’s actually very little to tell the ceramic and glass variants apart… weirdly OnePlus has polished the ceramic down to a glass-like finish, so it feel the same but is a little sharper and weighter.

The 13MP sensor is using Isocell technology and it’s really rather quick. When we run it through a harder camera test we suspect that it will come unstuck in the more technical images, but in quick snaps its shows that it’s got a great macro mode, quick snapping ability and enough modes to play with to make it worth trying out.

Apple TV review: the super-shiny new media streamer is here

The Apple TV is so Apple. The app-enabled set-top box from Cupertino is tiny and beautiful, fast and slick, a big step towards the future… and sometimes annoying and occasionally limiting. What else did we expect?

While the previous Apple TV models (which are still available much cheaper) were just streaming units, limited to whatever ‘apps’ they came with and whatever you streamed over AirPlay, the new Apple TV is smarter.

It’s basically an iPad mini 4 without a screen or battery – its core is an A8 processor, meaning that it’s capable of running complex apps, and it comes with an App Store anyone can develop and submit apps for. It runs tvOS, which is pretty much iOS redesigned and reworked for the big screen, and with a few features specific for making it easier to find things to watch. Like iOS, you grab apps from the App Store and put them into a Home screen grid, and you can make your most-used ones more prominent – if you’ve used an iPhone or iPad, it’s all pretty intuitive.

The one area that Apple has badly got wrong, though, is the keyboard. When you need to type (such as a search term or password), the keyboard appears in a long line of the alphabet, which you have to scroll all the way through for every. Single. Letter. It’s maddening, and it makes you want to select the option to turn off the need to enter a password when you buy something (when you set up the Apple TV, you can place an iPhone near it to share your Apple ID details, but you still need to enter passwords in many places) – but if this is going in a family home, you probably won’t want to do that…

Samsung Gear S2 review: a giant leap in smartwatch design

In the past, the quality of Samsung’s wearables was questionable, just look at the Gear 2, Gear Live, and hideous Gear S.

But when the Korean company unveiled the Gear S2 just before IFA 2015, it surprised us with a smartwatch which actually looked wearable.

Has Samsung broken tradition and built a smartwatch worthy of a place on your wrist, or is the Gear S2 destined for the sock draw?

Design, Build Quality and Screen

We’ll start where we always do, with the design, an area where Samsung has struggled in the past. The Samsung Gear S may have been very smart, with no reliance on a smartphone, but no one in their right mind would want to wear it.

Thankfully the Gear S2 is much more of a looker, with it’s fully circular screen, clean aesthetics and a futuristic design which pays homage to traditional watches.

The watch feels solid and well made, with durable (if not premium) materials.

The rubber strap and metal casing is comfortable to wear, and it’s reasonably lightweight, coming in at 47g.

There isn’t a huge number of design options, with the standard S2 only available in black or white.

The Samsung Gear S2 measures 42.3 x 49.8 x 11.4 mm, which is larger than some competitors, but due to a less bulky design, it feels smaller.

Interacting with the device is primarily done with the rotating bezel around the screen. It’s not an exaggeration when we say the bezel is a breakthrough in smartwatch interaction.