Stephen Shankland

Hit the road, headphone jack. USB wants your job

Traditional audio jacks on your phone or laptop are one step closer to the grave with the completion of technology that will let USB ports take over the job. The USB Implementers Forum announced Tuesday (PDF) it’s done creating an audio technology that will let the widely used USB port handle headsets and microphones. USB …

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​Minecraft Education Edition coming Nov 1 to a school near you

Microsoft on November 1 will begin selling Minecraft Education Edition. The school-specific version of its megahit video game can help kids learn even as it turns them into new Microsoft customers. The software will cost $5 per student per year, but it can also be purchased at the school district level, Microsoft said in an email to prospective customers Thursday. …

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USB

Still shocked by Apple killing off the headphone jack in the iPhone 7? The beloved HDMI port on your laptop and TV may be next on the chopping block. That’s because starting in 2017, the new USB Type-C will have the ability to work like an HDMI port, which up to now has been the lifeline for getting what’s displayed …

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​Phase One gets new lenses as pro camera market livens up

Phase One has two new reasons for big-budget photographers to invest in its high-end camera system: new 45mm and 150mm “blue-ring” lenses designed to handle the highest image resolution. Even full-time photography professionals struggle to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on medium-format cameras. These models feature large image sensors that can capture rich color and plenty of detail …

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​SanDisk shows off 1

If you’re the type who does a full day’s shooting in 4K video with an action cam, drone or SLR, you’ll appreciate SanDisk’s announcement Tuesday that it’s working on an SD memory card with a whopping 1 terabyte of storage capacity. That’s more storage space than flash memory-based laptops come with and four times that of a top-end iPhone 7, …

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​Adobe Lightroom embraces Canon’s hot new camera

Adobe Systems on Tuesday updated its Lightroom photo-editing software to support a major new camera, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV — but not yet some of the changes technology encroaching onto the photography market. At $3,500, the new Canon SLR may be out of reach for many, but its predecessors have been extremely popular among pros and enthusiasts, so …

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Why US internet controls became a political battlefield (FAQ)

To hear the rhetoric, you’d think Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to take over the internet on October 1. That’s the date the US Commerce Department has said it will transfer a final aspect of internet governance to a nonprofit international group called ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Under the plan, the US government will …

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​Microsoft’s SwiftKey brings artificial intelligence to your phone keyboard

Artificial intelligence today can organize your iPhone photos, answer your Gmail, endow drones with vision and decode human speech. And with Microsoft’s newest SwiftKey keyboard app, AI will guess what you’re about to type next, too. On Thursday, Microsoft released a new version of its SwiftKey for Android that includes an AI technology called a neural network to try to …

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​T

Got an older iPhone? Don’t install Apple’s latest iOS software on it, US carrier T-Mobile warned Thursday before instructing users later in the day how on how to resolve the issue. “iPhone 6, 6+ & 5SE customers — Do not download iOS10. We are getting reports of connectivity issues & Apple is working on a fix,” T-Mobile tweeted Thursday. “If …

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Apple reportedly mops up messaging porn problem on iOS 10

Apple’s new iOS 10 software for iPhones and iPads has a nifty new feature: you can search for and insert animated GIF images directly from the Messages app. It appears to have turned not-so-nifty though as people discovered it can be a conduit for porn, too. Deadspin flagged a My Little Pony image for adults, not kids, with a search …

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