Software

Shazam is now finally a part of Apple, but the best part of this corporate acquisition is that the mobile app will soon become ad-free for all users. Shazam has been downloaded over 1 billion times so far, and nowadays it is being used to identify songs more than 20 million times a day.

Although Android Inc. was founded back in October 2003, it took a while for the eponymous operating system to finally hit the market. This event took place on September 23, 2008, when the HTC Dream — also known as the T-Mobile G1 — was introduced as the first commercially available Android-powered smartphone.

Less than two years ago, Telltale Games was hiring new staff and getting ready to launch quite a few Nintendo Switch titles. Unfortunately, the studio seems to no longer have a future, as around 250 employees have just been laid off and the small team of 25 that remains will complete a few ongoing projects before Telltale Games becomes history.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which is the basis for many cloud and enterprise services, is coming up on its end of life this April. Canonical will begin offering an Extended Security Maintenance service in April that will continue rolling out security patches. However, the service is designed primarily for enterprise customers.

Facebook Dating is a Tinder alternative that does not come with left/right swiping but relies on shared Facebook connections instead. This service uses the data in one's Facebook profile, friends, Group memberships, and so on. The browser version is not available yet, and the mobile apps only work in Columbia for now.

The first official stock release of Oxygen OS (OOS) based on Android Pie (9.0) is now available for Oneplus' latest flagship, the 6. As expected, the ROM contains Pie-compatible navigation and UI features, accent color change support and refreshed DND settings.

Cortana's future is uncertain nowadays because Amazon and Microsoft are now working together on bringing Skype calling to the ever-increasing crowd of devices that feature Amazon Alexa support. According to Microsoft officials, Skype calling support will be available on Alexa-driven devices before the end of the year.

At US$4.75 billion, Marketo's acquisition is Adobe's largest corporate acquisition to date. This company comes with more than 500 partners and a marketing community with more than 65,000 members. Marketo's team will become a part of Adobe's Digital Experience business and its CEO will join Adobe's senior leadership team.

The most comprehensive War Thunder update to launch this month — 1.81 "The Walkyries" — introduces a few new ground vehicles, locations, and a new aircraft. However, the most important change involves the attack helicopters that have been added to the US and Russian branches of vehicles. Sadly, they are not available for everyone yet.

Apple release iOS 12 today as a free update. The new version of Apple's mobile OS includes better AR support, automation via Siri, and performance optimizations. The update largely feels like Apple playing catch up with Android, which has offered some of the new features for years.

Using the rather new backdrop-filter CSS property can lead to a crash of the entire iOS on an iPhone. An exploit that does this and the code behind it have recently been unveiled by a software engineer and security researcher at Wire. The even worse part is that this issue might affect macOS-driven systems as well.

Microsoft's latest corporate acquisition is not the first one in the AI field and it surely will not remain the last, either. Lobe is a company based in San Francisco that provides a simple visual interface that allows anyone to develop and apply deep learning and AI models without having to write code.

The Nintendo Switch has been one of Nintendo's most successful consoles in history. While Nintendo has historically struggled with third party appeal, the Switch seems to have overcome its predecessors' struggles to date has received some of the most popular third party titles. With this most recent Direct, the Switch continues to garner third party games and ports, as well as first party titles.

Although it has grown to become an excellent Gmail alternative, Google's Inbox app remains an experimental piece of code. This means that Google is using the data provided by its usage to improve Gmail and, unfortunately, it seems that the internet giant has decided to discontinue Inbox at the end of March 2019.

Providing health- and wellness-related services to a crowd of over 65 million active users worldwide, Samsung Health has just been updated to version 6.0. This major release comes with a redesigned interface, updated tools, as well as a whole new range of personalization options.

Microsoft is doing an A/B testing of a new functionality in the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview that reminds users of Microsoft Edge whenever they try to install another browser such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft, however, said that this is limited only to the Insider Preview Builds for feedback and will not appear in the final shipping release.

Forza Horizon 4 has just gone gold and will be launching globally on October 2. This racing title will come with no less than 450 cars, but those eager to take it for a spin can play the official demo which is already available for both Windows 10 PCs and Xbox One consoles.

An online retailer has posted a pre-order page claiming to list all the details on the upcoming OnePlus 6T, release date included. it describes a device with a teardrop notch, the Snapdragon 845 and triple cameras. However, some details on this 'leak' do not add up.

Two popular VPNs have been reported as subject to newly-discovered security issues discovered by Cisco Talos. These flaws apply to those using the services on Windows PCs, and could allow a hacker access through a 'Connect' command. Both companies say they have issued updates to prevent this.

NVIDIA brought its GeForce NOW to the AT&T Spark Conference to showcase the service's potential when combined with 5G. The company is confident that its new cloud-based graphics solution can negate the need for expensive hardware in areas such as 60fps gaming. It is now moving to build partnerships to bring this to a wider audience.

Samsung Galaxy Xcover 4, a 5-inch rugged handset that arrived more than a year ago with Android 7.0 Nougat onboard, is finally ready for Oreo. The best part of the update that has started to roll out in a few Asian countries is that it brings Android 8.1 with the August 2018 security patch and Experience UX 9.5 on top — same as the Galaxy Note 9.

As the end of the fifth Fortnite season is drawing near, the start of the Fall Skirmish event is also heading our way. This competition will last for 6 weeks and the best players will have the chance to win a total of no less than US$10,000,000 (yes, that is 10 million). More details will be available later this week.

The Snapdragon Wear 3100 is likely to feature in many next-generation wearables. Qualcomm held a launch event for it yesterday (September 10, 2018). The company claimed it will bring improvements in battery life and usability. The Wear 3100 is also to be used by new, high-end players in the wearables game.

Huawei, and Honor by extension, ended support for bootloader unlocks a few months ago. However, Honor has re-opened the window for unlocks, but with a number of extremely limiting conditions.

The Nintendo Switch Online Service has been anticipated for some time. A rumor that precedes its launch suggests that users of the new feature will be able to back up all their games in a cloud. However, there may be an opt-out for developers.

Device unlocking using an owner's face has become quite popular. Unfortunately, offering truly secure, flexible and effective facial scanning in your product can get difficult and expensive. MediaTek claims that its new take on this form of identification is neither, and is furthermore at least as good as Face ID.

Videos are easier to watch in a darkened room without the inevitable white background on which previews and other objects are shown in Android's YouTube app. This is now a thing of the past, however, as dark mode for the app on non-Apple phones is finally widely available.

Armored Warfare 0.26 goes live today with Israeli tanks (and a new dealer for this branch), Armor Viewer in-garage tool, a new PvP map, overhauled PvE missions, major optimizations, improvements to the game mechanics, a new Special Operations mission, and more. This free-to-play title is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows.

With the release of Firefox 62, Mozilla also stops providing support to Firefox 52 ESR, which is the latest version for those still using this ancient operating system. Firefox 62 comes with support for CSS variable fonts and shapes, dark mode automatically enabled for macOS users, improved scrolling performance in Android, and more.

Google is celebrating its 10th anniversary of Chrome with the release of a considerable update (Chrome 69) for the browser. It features a substantial UI redesign, as well as a new password generator. This version will be available for mobile and desktop.

Samsung continues to ignore those still using premium handsets that are far from museum material yet. The latest victims are the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ — both being barely three years old — which have just been dropped off the list of Samsung devices still receiving monthly security updates.

OnePlus has finally released official Android Pie to users of its latest flagship. However, it is an Open Beta, not a stock Oxygen OS (OOS) release. It has many new features of OOS based on Pie \e.g. gestures and a new UI), albeit with some bugs.

Samsung CEO Kim Hyun-suk said that the company is looking at collaborating with Google to help augment its Bixby voice assistant. Hyun-suk feels that Samsung could leverage its dominance in device sales to negotiate with companies such as Google.

The upcoming Windows 10 feature update for this year will be called the October 2018 Update. This update focuses on stability, overall polish, and under the hood improvements so not too many groundbreaking features are being planned. As usual, the rollout will be staggered and eligible devices will receive it first followed by others pending any major issues.

Google is apparently working on a credential provider that allows users of G Suite to logon to Windows 10 PCs using a Google account. A Google administrator can create a Google Accounts and ID Administration (GAIA) account that allows enterprise users to logon to their Windows 10 PC and access Google services. This feature is still in code review stage and a possible rollout date is not yet known.

The LG V20, G6, and Q6 are finally receiving their Oreo updates. It's only taken the V20 two years to receive its first major update, so LG must be applauded. And yes, that is, indeed, sarcasm.

Those who want to remap the Bixby button of their Galaxy Note 9 can do it thanks to the latest update received by the bxActions - Bix Button Remapper app for Android, which now sports full support for Samsung's latest high-end phablet. Thanks to this app, the Bixby button can be used to perform over 30 actions.

Most of the Samsung Galaxy J5s of yesteryear run Android 7.0 (Nougat). However, new reports indicate that some of these phones are receiving an update. This software skips 8.0 Oreo and goes straight to 8.1 instead. So far, reports indicate that 2017 J5s in Poland and India have seen this version of the Samsung Experience ROM.

The next version of 3DMark, a popular graphics benchmarking tool, will feature support for NVIDIA's RTX tech allowing adopters to test the ray tracing abilities of their cards. UL Benchmarks, the developer behind 3DMark, is hopeful of a release aligning with the next major feature update to Windows 10 slated to rollout in September.

The world's most populated economy continues its growth in the internet users department. According to a recent report backed by the China Internet Network Information Centre, the total number of internet users hit 802 million at the end of June — a 30 million growth in six months.

A document believed to have originated from the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) specifies a new model number associated with the smartphone maker OnePlus. Given the compatibility of the number with the company's naming scheme of the last few years, the document may pertain to the hotly anticipated 6T.

Google disclosed a vulnerability in the Fortnite Mobile APK that allows a pre-installed malicious application to exploit the way the game installs for the first time in Samsung Galaxy devices. Thankfully, Epic has patched this vulnerability in the latest version of the installer but is not very happy about Google disclosing it prematurely.

Version 62 of Firefox will integrate a new add-on called Firefox Monitor that basically informs users if their email accounts have been compromised. The add-on uses the popular Have I Been Pwned database backend to check if the account has been compromised in data breaches.

When Intel banned testing the performance of its newest microcode patch for security vulnerabilities, many tech enthusiasts spoke out against the company. Finally, Intel has listened to the backlash and will soon be revising the restrictions on testing performance.

The Garmin vivofit jr. 2 is a fitness tracker for kids that comes with Disney Princess-themed bands and a mobile app capable of offering an interactive experience which includes popular characters such as Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, and Rapunzel. This smart wearable is already available for US$79.99.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are not just for individuals trying to get around geo-restrictions. Companies may also use them to streamline their online connections. However, a managing director for a UK IT and networking company thinks an emerging alternative is about to make these VPNs obsolete.

Microsoft has confirmed that it has fired four employees and terminated business relationships with four partners in Hungary over ongoing probings for bribery and corruption. The investigation is on for sale of Microsoft software to middlemen for a discounted price who then resold the same to the Hungarian Government at full price.

PUBG now has a version for Xbox One: however, it won't have an official release until September 4, 2018. Many fans may have to wait until then to play the Sanhok map with the console. On the other hand, there will be some new features that may be worth waiting for.

Xiaomi's popular mid-range Mi A1 smartphone continues to receive full software support, the latest update for this handset bringing the official security patch dated August 5. Even better, the new firmware also addresses the notification LED bug that arrived earlier this summer with the Android 8.1 Oreo update.