By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The smell of BBQ is in the air and talk about virtual reality, online privacy and the latest hot apps is on everyone’s minds. It’s time again for South by Southwest Interactive, an annual tech festival dubbed “Spring Break for nerds.”
Published: March 10, 2016 at 04:03AM
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[SUGGESTION] Idea: When you set Grass on fire, after a while, it becomes Coarse Dirt. Then the fire extiguishes.
Simple but cool right? 😀
Submitted March 10, 2016 at 07:37AM by ModdingCrash
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“Complexity is our enemy,” said Rune Garborg, Executive Vice President at DNB.
It’s an intriguing way to characterize an innovation challenge. Norway’s largest and oldest private bank has to compete on numerous fronts, often facing competitors that didn’t even exist a year ago. Add to that the fact that many of those competitors are committed to using technology, customer-centricity, and marketing to disrupt DNB’s business.
“The competition is prompting us to do new things, and do them faster,” he continued. “We have to change our culture and mindset, and that starts and ends with embracing simplicity.”
Garborg continued: “We have lots of good ideas, maybe even more than we need. But the complexity of implementing them in an organization as large as ours can kill too many of them. Customers aren’t asking for complex products or experiences, either.”
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Automakers are engaged in a high-stakes game of keepaway with car spy photographers, going to great lengths to disguise prototype vehicles while they’re being road-tested to prevent competitors and the public from discovering their new features. Here are the tricks automakers use — take our photo challenge to find out whether you have what it takes to see through them.
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Android N’s first developer preview is out with a whole bunch of exciting new features, but if you don’t have a Nexus device, you can’t try it. However, you can get your hands on its sweet new wallpaper — right here! Like many of the stock Android wallpapers that came before it, N’s new background
The post Download Android N’s new wallpaper right here appeared first on Cult of Android.
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Google dropped the Android N build on us out of nowhere last night. This is the first time the company has released the developer preview so early in the development process. Google’s reasoning is that by releasing it to developers early it will be able to incorporate the feedback into the final build when it is released this summer, and that it will also be able to provide the final build to OEMs early so they can begin working on their builds earlier than usual. Basically, Android gets better, and everybody gets it early.
Well, that’s the plan anyway. We will see how that goes. But for now, let’s see what Google has for us in the new build.
Right off the bat we see that the build is only compatible with the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Nexus 9, and Pixel C. This doesn’t necessarily mean the final build won’t be on the popular Nexus 5, but we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for it, as the phone is pretty long in the tooth now.
If you have one of the aforementioned devices, congratulations, you can install the developer preview on your device, which you can get from here. You will also be glad to know that this year onwards the updates to the developer preview will be pushed over the air, just like for stable builds. Once you have it installed, here are some things you can look forward to.
Improved notifications
We have covered some of the notification changes in our previous posts, but now that we have the official version from Android, we are in a better position to comment.
One of the changes is the presence of quick shortcuts when you pull down the notification shade once. Other OEMs have always done this but Google required you to pull down twice to access the toggles, which is not the case anymore.
If you do pull down twice, you will see yet another change, where you can now edit the toggles and the grid is now paginated, which means you have a second page for the less frequently used toggles. This way you can have more toggles without the grid being too long.
Another cool new feature Google is adding to Android N is the ability to reply to messages from notifications. This is something iOS does and it can be very convenient. Say you get a WhatsApp message. The notification might appear on the top of the screen, but you still have to go to the app to reply. With the RemoteInput notification API, you will be able to reply quickly to the message from the notification shade itself without leaving the app you are currently in. Support for the feature will depend upon the developers but hopefully we see all the IM app add support for it quickly (isn’t that the whole point of releasing this preview?)
Split-screen multitasking
Windows does it. iOS does it. Samsung has been doing it since the days dinosaurs walked the Earth. Now, stock Android does it as well. Google has finally added support for split-screen multitasking in Android N.
To use this feature, you have to press the overview (or multitasking) button and then drag one of the windows to the top of the screen to pin it there and then choose from the other apps to fill the rest of the screen. Alternatively, you can just swipe up from the overview key to set the current app to half the screen and then choose from the other apps (h/t Android Police).
This feature currently only works with some apps, mostly Google’s own, and apps will have to add support for it.
Honestly, it’s not the most useful feature on smartphones, but can be very useful on tablets such as the Pixel C. So much so that Google is offering a $150 discount on it for developers to try it out.
Improved Doze and Project Svelte
Doze on Marshmallow would suspend background activities when it detected the device was stationary for a while. To its credit, it did work, unlike the disaster that was Project Volta. With Android N, Google has improved Doze further, and it can now suspend background activities when the display is off, even if the device isn’t stationary. This can be useful when you are out and about with the phone in your pocket. You still aren’t using the device but normally Doze on Marshmallow wouldn’t kick in because it thinks you might be using the device. With the updated Doze, you can expect further savings on battery.
Project Svelte has been improved and now works to reduce background…
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Aunque durante esta semana deberíamos estar celebrando la puesta en marcha de manera oficial de Android N Developer Preview, los ánimos no están muy altos. Y es que según parece, Google, y concretamente Android como sistema operativo, podrían encontrarse en graves problemas judiciales. Si hacemos caso a tres personas cercanas al caso, la Unión Europea podría estar preparando una denuncia por prácticas de antimonopolio.
La cosa pinta mal, ya que los rivales directos del gigante de Internet han recibido la petición de entregar a los poderes reguladores que preparan el caso ciertos documentos. No obstante, parece que los reguladores han pedido eliminar toda mención de secretos o futuros proyectos que se puedan encontrar bajo desarrollo en los documentos .
De esta manera, los que, presumiblemente, se están encargando de preparar el caso contra Google, podrían mostrar versiones no confidenciales de estos documentos, lo que no violaría cualquier supuesto acuerdo de no divulgación. Esta información proviene de varias fuentes que han preferido ejercer su derecho al anonimato.
Y es que el gigante de Internet está bajo un intenso escrutinio después del caso que ocurría hace un año, cuando la Unión Europea fijaba sus miras esta vez en el servicio de comparativas que ofrece Google a la hora de realizar compras. Por lo que hemos podido saber gracias a BloomBerg Business, el negocio publicitario de la compañía de la gran G está siendo escudriñado a su vez.
No obstante, parece la riñas de Google y la Unión Europea datan del año 2013, cuando el organismo europeo recibió las primeras quejas del sistema operativo Android para móviles. La Unión Europea inició una investigación el año pasado, y examinó al detalle los contratos que Google mantenía con los fabricantes, a la vez que las aplicaciones que venían de fábrica en ciertos dispositivos.
Asimismo, el organismo europeo está investigando actualmente si la firma con base en California ha instigado a los fabricantes a obstaculizar el desarrollo de sus propias versiones de Android, lo que tendría importantes repercusiones tanto legislativas como económicas.
Como ejemplo, el año pasado el organismo encargado de las prácticas anti-competitivas en Rusia redactó un auto en el que ordenaba a Google alterar sus acuerdos con los principales fabricantes de dispositivos móviles. Y es que según el organismo ruso, los anteriores contratos aseguraban un mayor dificultad para los desarrolladores de aplicaciones en Android.
¿Piensas que la Unión Europea podría prohibir el uso de Android en los países europeos?
¿Y tú que piensas? Pásate por La Unión Europea vs Android: Google podría estar en serios problemas para dejar tu huella.
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Publicado recientemente en Andro4all
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La computadora volvió a derrotar al mejor jugador de Go en el mundo; aún faltan tres enfrentamientos más para determinar al campeón.
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InPvP, the multiplayer Minecraft server that had 3 million users is returning this year. InPvP Nova not only adds race, building and hide-and-seek mechanics to Minecraft Pocket but also lets Windows and tablet players compete against each other for free.
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