Category: TECH

Xbox Live will soon allow custom profile pics

Staff Writer

Microsoft plans to allow Xbox One gamers to upload and set custom gamerpics in the near future, the company’s Major Nelson announced today via a new post on his official blog. No longer will users be limited to an avatar or game-related snapshot. That’s among the changes and new features outlined in a blog post from Major Nelson. Users will be able to choose a custom gamer pic directly from the console, a Windows 10 PC, or a smartphone, so they have plenty of avenues for picking the image you…

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ISPs argue Web history isn’t “sensitive” they should be able to sell it

Internet providers are continuing to argue that they should be free to share and sell users’ web history without permission because it isn’t “sensitive information.” “Web browsing and app usage history are not ‘sensitive information,’” CTIA said in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission yesterday. CTIA is the main lobbyist group representing mobile broadband providers such as AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile USA, and Sprint. The disagreement is around whether internet providers should be treated differently than web companies, like Facebook and Google. Internet providers argue that it’s unfair that the…

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Nokia Owns The Alcatel Brand Till 2024

Staff Writer

Ever since Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent back in 2015, the situation about the “Alcatel” brand remained unclear, at least for the end users. Back in 2004, Alcatel and Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL Communication created a joint venture for the production of Alcatel-branded mobile phones. In less than a year after founding, TCL Communication purchased Alcatel’s stake and became the sole owner of the newly founded company, But what happened with the Alcatel brand? Who actually owns it? The Alcatel brand was licensed by Alcatel-Lucent to TCL for mobile phones and devices and this license expires at the…

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Google kills off the Captcha Feature

The online tests to check whether you’re a human or a robot  have been a necessary evil, but Google is finally killing them off in their current form. For some time now, Captcha has served as the primary way of telling humans and robots apart on the internet. It made sure that the person looking to access a website was actually a human being – ensuring that robots couldn’t be used to send spam or flood a website with requests. However, the technologies have become more complex and robots have…

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Gmail for Web Can Now Stream Video Attachments

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Google is rolling out a quality of life improvement to Gmail desktop users that makes previewing video attachments in Gmail much smoother and quicker. The email client has now introduced a nifty ability to stream video attachments instead of downloading them. This will let you understand what the video is about before deciding on a download, a rather useful feature to save up on the cramped storage space on PCs and laptops. Previously, in order to view a video attachment in Gmail, you would have to download it to your…

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YouTube to discontinue video annotations

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Annotations Editor was launched in 2008, before the world went mobile. Now YouTube is replacing its annotations engine with what it calls End Screen and Cards, which are existing, mobile-first tools that provide many of the same functions as annotations like linking to other videos and polling viewers. YouTube says it made this change primarily because annotations didn’t work on mobile and most viewers found them obnoxious and unhelpful. The change takes effect on May 2nd, and existing annotations will continue to show up when using the desktop browser version…

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Amazon brings Alexa to the iPhone

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An incoming update for the Amazon app for iOS will add the company’s Alexa voice assistant that was previously limited to the users of its Echo speaker and other Alexa-enabled hardware. Alexa can stream books from the Kindle library or music from Amazon Music Unlimited, Prime Music, or purchased music. Amazon Prime members can stream playlists, stations, and over two million songs for free and many more. Inside of the Amazon App for iOS, there will be a microphone icon near the top of the screen that you can press…

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Samsung Galaxy S8 to Adopt Facial Recognition

When Samsung rolled out the Galaxy Note 7 last year, it introduced a new iris scanning technology designed to bolster device security. However the Galaxy’s note 7 life was short lived. The new Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus will reportedly both include iris scanning functionality. Samsung is planning to add facial recognition technology to its S8 lineup to either complement the iris scanner or replace it altogether. The Galaxy S8 to be unveiled later this month will blend fingerprint, iris and facial detection to verify users accessing mobile services…

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Microsoft is putting OneDrive ads in Windows 10’s File Explorer

Staff Writer

Microsoft made a lot of changes in Windows 10 that helped it put the mistakes of Windows 8 in the rear view mirror. Not all of Microsoft’s ideas are good, though. The company has shown a tendency to get a little too casual with how it promotes its services within Windows. Users have reported seeing ads to sign up for OneDrive,  — Microsoft’s cloud storage service — at the top of the Quick Access screen that comes up when you open a new File Explorer window. Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage…

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WikiLeaks announces tech firm cooperation

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The anti-secrecy platform WikiLeaks has said it would work with tech firms to fix security flaws before publishing them. Customers’ trust in firms like Google and Apple has already been eroded by the Snowden leaks. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and other major tech companies have been faced with new dilemmas by the latest WikiLeaks release. The “Vault 7” dump of CIA files has exposed a number of security breaches in their software, which US intelligence has exploited and kept secret so that it can continue to hack into smartphones, computers,…

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