Daily Archives: December 22, 2015

Google’s new login feature replaces passwords with your phone

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You phone could soon become your password.Remembering passwords is one of the biggest pains of modern tech living. Hundreds of geniuses at dozens of companies have been searching for an easier solution, but Google may be ready to unleash a new solution that uses your smartphone to replace passwords all together. Google’s new login feature went into limited testing this week,

Read the full article…

The post Google’s new login feature replaces passwords with your phone appeared first on Cult of Android.

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WhatsApp will support video calls in a few weeks, report claims

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This year, the biggest new feature that landed in the popular WhatsApp messenger was support for making voice calls. Now that this has been implemented, it seems like Facebook is looking forward to the next thing it can bake into the app. And this could in fact be something that Facebook Messenger can already do, namely video calls.

According to a report from Germany, the latest private beta versions of WhatsApp for iOS have video calling support built-in. You can see a couple of screenshots of the new functionality below. During a video call you can mute your microphone as well as switch cameras, and the small square that shows your video can be moved around freely.

The new feature is in testing, and will apparently make its way to the public in the coming weeks. When it lands, video calling support will make WhatsApp an even bigger competitor to Skype than it was before.

Alongside video calls, a future WhatsApp update shall also sport a new design, with a big focus on the color green. What’s more, some sort of tab-based UI is said to be in testing. Tabs should make switching between different conversations easier than before, as you can jump from one tab to another directly, without having to go back to the conversation list first.

Source (in German) | Via 1 • Via…

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Chromecast gets new games for the holidays, including Angry Birds and Monopoly

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The Chromecast is am immensely useful tool for streaming content from your devices to your TV, but for the holiday season, Google is making it a bit more useful for the family. A bunch of games have been added to the list of Chomecast-supported apps, and a lot of them are Hasbro games.

Angry Birds Friends and Driver Speedboat Paradise have been added, and you play them using your phone as the controller. Hasbro has also added Monopoly Here & Now, Yahtzee Blitz, The Game of Life, Scrabble Blitz 2.0, and Risk. Unfortunately, the Hasbro games are only available in the US and Canada.

While the quality of gaming on the Chromecast can vary (in games like Driver, latency can be a problem), but the Hasbro games are perfectly suited for the big screen. The moves are shown on the TV, while your cards are on your phone or tablet.

Hit the source link for more info and start playing! But remember, Monopoly is dangerous and may cause lots of raging.

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AMD’s GPUOpen Initiative Helps Move The Industry In The Right Direction

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GPUOpen is a new initiative started by Advanced Micro Devices’ Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) as a way for the company to continue to reach out to the needs to developers by giving them a better development environment. The idea behind GPUOpen is born out of the work that Advanced Micro Device’s did with Mantle, their own low-level API which eventually found itself reworked into the industry standard Vulkan API. Thanks to Mantle we also have other low-level APIs that allow developers to get more access to hardware and better performance and experience. GPU Open is the next step in the evolution of AMD’s mission to improve the PC game development environment while also making it more and more open.

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Microsoft Surface Hub gets delayed, becomes more expensive

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The Microsoft Surface Hub was first showcased in January, yet the company still hasn’t shipped any units. The touchscreen PC went up for pre-order in July, and it was first supposed to become available in September. That didn’t happen, as it got delayed to January 2016.

And now it’s been delayed again, in both 55-inch and 84-inch iterations. This time the release time frame has become a lot more vague too, with Microsoft only saying it will deliver the PC sometime during the first quarter of 2016. That could mean March 31, keep that in mind.

But wait, there’s even more bad news. Accompanying the delay is an unfortunate price hike for the already very expensive device. Both models now cost $2,000 more than before. The 55-inch Surface Hub can be pre-ordered for $8,999 (up from $6,999), while the 84-inch unit goes for $21,999 (previously $19,999).

The only good news here is that Microsoft will honor the initial price for those who have already managed to pre-order their Surface Hub.

Source |…

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Google rumored to be working on new messaging service with chatbots

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Google Hangouts has never been an extremely successful messaging service. Most people use apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, and many others. And with the rumors of Google removing SMS support from the Hangouts app, it seems that Hangouts isn’t getting much attention.

The latest rumors say that Google is working on an entirely new messaging service, but instead of just providing messaging capabilities, it will also feature chatbots. You’ll be able to message these chatbots questions and get results based on web searches. There might even be third-party chatbot support so that you can use services other than Google.

Not only will it potentially get people using a Google messaging service, it’ll also help Google keep its search engine dominance. With other chatbot services in the works or already out to a degree, people will be using other services over Google’s for some tasks.

While it’s all just rumors so far, it makes sense for Google to be working on this. As a master of search engines, it’s a natural progression. Hopefully it’ll be more successful than Hangouts! What do you think of this new rumored service? Do you see a use in chatbots? Leave a comment!

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