April, 2016

• 29 April

  Samsung cooks up crazy prototype gadgets like VR camera necklaces, helmet speakers

  

  This seems to be the week Samsung shows off cool gadgets we’ll probably never get to buy. First it demoed robots that sense emotion and voice-activated light switches. They’re reference designs Samsung hopes customers will build using its Artik chips, not products it will sell on its own. Then it displayed some crazy gadgets — …

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• 29 April

  Snapchat to show Olympics highlights in deal with NBC

  

  Snapchat has officially entered the social-media race for Olympic gold. The millennial-friendly ephemeral-messaging app, which has morphed into a home for both amateur and professional video clips, has scored a deal with NBC to show highlights from the 2016 Summer Games. It’s the first time the TV network has let anyone other than its own properties distribute such highlights, reports …

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• 29 April

  Instagram forces anti

  

  Photography social network Instagram is forcing a non-profit anti-littering app to change its name, claiming it infringes on its trademark, the BBC reports. Littergram, which is available on iOS and Android, allows residents of Kent, in the south-east of England, to report dumped rubbish to the local council. Instagram is concerned that the similarity of the name, together with the …

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• 29 April

  Feds say wireless auction off to a good start

  

  Good news, YouTube fans and Netflix fiends: The government is freeing up a bonanza of new airwaves to get all those streaming videos to your mobile devices. The FCC says the early stage of its latest wireless spectrum auction has been a success with TV broadcasters pledging to sell the maximum amount of spectrum available. On Friday, the Federal Communications …

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• 29 April

  Microsoft Cortana now only works with Bing, Edge browser on Windows 10

  

  Enough’s enough, says Microsoft. The software giant announced in a blog post Thursday that, on Windows 10, its Cortana voice assistant won’t be able to deliver results from any search engine other than its own Bing or via any browser but Windows 10’s Edge. The move is Microsoft’s way of protecting its own properties. Basically, the company says it can’t …

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• 29 April

  The best iPhone apps for tracking steps

  

  Activity trackers certainly have their place, but if you’re just looking to track your steps throughout the day, there’s really no reason to spend $100+ on a fancy Fitbit when you carry your iPhone around 24/7. Plenty of iOS apps can give you the same data (steps, stairs, miles, calories burned, etc.) as an activity tracker, thanks to your iPhone’s …

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• 29 April

  NFL prospect suffers social media nightmare as draft begins

  

  Top NFL draft prospect Laremy Tunsil couldn’t protect his Twitter account the way he protects his quarterback. Just minutes before the NFL draft began Thursday in Chicago, a 30-second video surfaced on Tunsil’s verified Twitter account showing the former University of Mississippi offensive lineman wearing a gas mask and smoking from a bong taped to it. The tweet was quickly …

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• 29 April

  Twitter’s identity crisis: Is it a social network or news app?

  

  Is Twitter going through some sort of midlife identity crisis? The app now is listed under “News” in the App Store instead of the social networking category. Clearly, it’s time for a pep talk with Larry. (Yes, that is the Twitter mascot’s real name.) But that’s not the only weird tech news in this CNET Update. Instagram is trying to …

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• 29 April

  Google patents device that you inject into your eyeball

  

  Up next in “terrifying things I don’t ever want to have done”: Google has filed a patent for a vision-correcting electronic device that has to be injected directly into your eye. The device, Forbes reports, is designed to help the focusing of light onto the retina, resulting in the correction of poor vision. It will contain its own storage, radio …

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• 29 April

  Funding fracas rattles effort to modernize old

  

  An attempt to breathe new life into old-school flip phones is in trouble because a Chinese investor is withholding funds from a startup whose software is at the core of the effort. Tsinghua Unigroup International paid only the initial portion in 2015 of its planned $100 million investment in Hong Kong-based Acadine Technologies, leading the startup to warn dozens of …

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