In April, Google announced that it would comply with feedback given from the European Commission on the way that Android carries itself with Chrome and Google Search. In order to make the playing field fair for other web browsers and search engine providers, it will kindly and easily offer the user to download and install other web browsers and search engines.
Source: Android Police
The update was set to hit over those coming weeks and we're already starting to see the pop-up prompt at least one user to install extra search engines and mobile browsers.
One of the readers over at Android Police has revealed that the change Google announced was already taking effect, albeit not to everyone in Europe just yet, but it should be rolling out over the coming days.
Once you do get the update, a new prompt will show itself once your Google Play Store is updated and will ask you whether you'd like to install any other search engines or browsers outside of Google's offerings.
Samsung’s A-series of midrange phones have three new members: the Galaxy A50, A20 and A10E. If you want a new Galaxy phone, these are some of your cheapest options, sitting just above Samsung’s entry-level Galaxy J line. The A-series is much cheaper than a top tier Galaxy phone. The Galaxy S10 Plus, for instance, costs $1,000 and the supposedly upcoming Galaxy Fold (Samsung delayed its launch due to a number of screen issues on its pre-production units) is priced at nearly $2,000.
The most advanced of the new trio is the Galaxy A50, which we got an early glimpse of in February at MWC 2019. It costs $350 and features a 6.4-inch display, a 4,000-mAh battery and 64GB of built-in storage with the option to expand up to 512GB. On the back are three cameras, which includes a wide-angle lens as well as a “depth lens,” which is used to take portrait shots with blurry, dramatic backgrounds.
The $250 Galaxy A20 has a 6.4-inch screen, a 13-megapixel rear camera and the same 4,000-mAh battery as the A50. Lastly, the cheapest of the bunch of the Galaxy A10E. At $180, it features a 5.83-inch display, an 8-megapixel camera and a 3,000-mAh battery. Both of the phones have just 32GB of onboard memory, but you can expand storage with a microSD card (not included).
All three phones run Android 9.0, with Samsung’s new One UI layered on top. Though exact availability dates for the Galaxy A20 and A10E have not been released, the Galaxy A50 will be available on June 13.
These days, sleep monitors come in all shapes and sizes, from wearables to bedside pods. None of them are more interesting than those that rest below your head, however. Today's smart pillows are designed to track your sleeping habits, help you avoid snoring problems, and lull you to sleep with a range of sounds without disturbing those around you. Opting for a smart pillow is a no-brainer — it's choosing the right model that's tricky.
Thankfully, through continual testing and ample research, we've rounded up some of the best smart pillows on the market. It begins with the iSense Sleep pillow, which has an excellent app for monitoring the nuances of your sleep cycle, but there are five other models to choose from if you're in the market for something different.
iSense Sleep Smart Pillow
The iSense Sleep Smart Pillow might be one of the least-intrusive options available, yet it still provides a slew of useful info regarding your sleeping habits. The tracker pairs with an app that shows you how well you slept, and provides data pertaining to your breathing, heart rate, and overall quality of sleep. The app does a good job of displaying this info in the form of numbers and charts, too, and the pillow itself use cross-cut memory foam cube filling that can accommodate a range of sleeping positions. It even gives you a simplified sleep score, just in case you're looking for the abridged metrics.
Goodnite Smart Anti-Snore Pillow
If you snore, you likely know how difficult it can be to alleviate the issue. Thankfully, this Goodnite pillow uses sensors to detect your head position and any signs of snoring. If the device thinks you're snoring, the pillow will gently inflate, pushing your head to the side and helping open airways that will reduce snoring. The pillow also works in tandem with a mobile app, which tracks your snoring so you can see if you are actually getting better. If you find that changing your head position helps prevent you from snoring, then Goodnite's aptly named Anti-Snore Pillow is likely right for you.
10Minds Motion Pillow
A supplemental pad and memory foam pillow combination, this 10Minds model is similar to the Goodnight snoring pillow but with a more traditional design. The pillow uses four airbags that inflate and reposition your head if it detects snoring, and the pillow cover is designed to disperse sweat and heat more efficiently so you stay cooler. The accompanying mobile app provides additional functionality, including the ability to record your snoring and adjust inflation levels, as well as charts for tracking your snoring habits over time.
Dreampad
The Dreampad is a pillow built with audio in mind. The pad's speakers are designed to provide quiet, clear audio that only you can hear, even with someone else resting beside you. The embedded speakers connect to the accompanying Dreampad app via Bluetooth — though, cable connections are possible — and you can choose from 10 different audio tracks that are specifically designed to help you fall asleep. You can also adjust their volume and playtime until you've created the perfect program to help you drift away. It's a unique approach to sleep that could be exactly what you need.
Zeeq Smart Pillow
The Zeeq pillow does a little bit of everything. First off, there's a snoring function that detects snoring and prompts vibrations, which encourage you to change your position without waking up. There's also a wireless speaker you can use to play music or sleep tracks, as well as tracking features that are designed to measure your restlessness and pinpoint any disturbances in your sleep cycle. There's even an in-pillow alarm clock and an array of memory foam clusters, the latter of which help accommodate various sleeping positions.
The problem with being a jack-of-all-trades is that it can be difficult to do any them especially well, which is why the Zeeq isn't higher up on our list. Other pillows do a better job with audio, snore control, and sleep tracking. That said, Zeeq's offering is a solid choice for those who want a little bit of everything, or want to experiment with various sleeping aids.
Moona
Moona is a crowdfunded pillow pad that combines a pad, bedside pod, and an app to give you the most accurate sleep data possible. Working together, they monitor your sleep habits, provide gentle wake-up notifications, and generally learn your sleep habits to help you create the healthiest schedule for your cycle. You can even delve into things like temperature profiles, and the pad includes a small water pump that can help cool you down by cycling water through the pad when things get too hot. It's an ambitious project that's certainly worth a look as long as you don't mind replacing your alarm clock.
The Google Pixel 4 just keeps on leaking these days, even if its launch is only expected to happen in October. Following some controversial-looking renders that showed it would have a huge camera hump on the back with a similar design to that of the upcoming iPhones’, today we bring you three exclusive shots of the Pixel 4, courtesy of Shivam Pandya.
We have to warn you that the prototype captured here seems to be inside one of those bulky cases that are meant to obscure as much of its design as possible. Still, we can see the right-aligned oval punch hole cutout in the display for two camera sensors, as well as a display ‘chin’ that’s significantly smaller than what we had in past Pixels.
That means there’s no more front-facing speaker inside that bezel, instead there’s a down-firing one nearby. Overall all four bezels seem to be pretty much the same size, and symmetry from this point of view isn’t something Google’s ever done before.
Note that these shots contradict the previously outed renders somewhat, because those had a visible earpiece lower than the rim of the top side, whereas these don’t. The last picture to the right has the new Pixel next to what seems to be a Pixel 2 XL, so it is very likely that what we’re looking at here is the Pixel 4 XL, not its smaller sibling.
Keep in mind that Google has been rumored to have three separate design teams working independently on the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, without any coordination between them. In the end the company’s management will pick one design and go with that. This is apparently Google’s way of ensuring that it doesn’t end up with any more design flops in its smartphone lineup, following the incredibly divisive looks of the Pixel 3 XL with its gigantic notch and the Pixel 3 with its gigantic bezels in a world that’s almost entirely gone bezel-less now.
Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Twitter co-founder and Medium CEO Ev Williams said he got excited about the Web because he thought that with more information at our fingertips it would make people smarter. But the rising popularity of social media sites also created an environment where people have become wired to respond to short-term feedback such as the numbers of likes on a tweet or an Instagram post.
“We get hooked on that just like we get hooked on sugar,” he said on stage at Recode’s annual Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona.
When Williams looked at the cycle before Donald Trump was elected president, he doesn’t think people are becoming more intelligent. More information doesn’t make you smarter, he said, if people don’t know how to digest or contextualize it.
“I think part of it is just the limits of the human attention span,” he said.
Social media sites, including Twitter, have been trying to foster “healthier” conversations on their platforms in what can be a space filled with bullies and trolls. Studies have also linked social media to depression and anxiety.
To undo the unhealthy nature of instant feedback, Williams said that people need to build systems that don’t emphasize likes or followers. Photo-sharing site Instagram has been testing the ability for users to hide their “likes.”
The problem, Williams said, is that people have combined the idea of connecting with others with social competition. But that system can burn out users.
“That social competition at all times is exhausting emotionally,” he said.
On this episode of Digital Trends Live, host Greg Nibler and DT Producer Adrien Warner dig into the trending tech stories of the day, including highlights from E3, the Uber Elevate Summit, Portal's new devices, the Beyond Burger's arrival in stores, and a very special goodbye to the Mars Rover.
Later, Nibler welcomes Todd Weaver, founder and chief executive officer of Purism, to discuss the company's dedication to online personal data privacy and security.
DT Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Kaplan then joins us from New York to speak with Neil Sweeney, founder and CEO of Killi, about how to control and monetize your own digital identity, and how to make money from your first-party data.
We're also joined by Michael Mansouri, senior technology adviser at Hawkeye Systems, Inc., to talk about the company's military-grade 360-degree camera, and taking 3D imaging to the next level using A.I.
Finally, we continue our coverage of E3 with DT correspondent Riley Winn, including a conversation with DJWheat (aka Marcus Graham), director of creator development at Twitch.
The AI and ML deployments are well underway, but for CXOs the biggest issue will be managing these initiatives, and figuring out where the data science team fits in and what algorithms to buy versus build.
IBM is aiming to use artificial intelligence inside of its Watson Studio data science platform to automate data prep and some of the drudgery needed before rolling out enterprise AI.
The data prep and governance tools are included in AutoAI. AutoAI will be core to Watson Studio and its efforts to free up data scientists to focus on models. According to Forrester, 60% of respondents cited data quality as a big hurdle to deploying AI.
Analytics has evolved from the basics — visualizations, historicals and dashboards — to the more complex with recommendations and predictions of outcomes. Now it’s time to step it up and get prescriptive.
Watson Studio is combining AutoAI along with its Watson Machine Learning to automate core steps in deploying AI. AutoAI is available in Watson Studio on IBM Cloud. Key features include:
Automation of data preparation and preprocessing.
Model development and feature engineering.
Hyperparameter optimization to build data science and AI models.
A suite of model types for data science including gradient boosted trees and processes to experiment with machine learning.
IBM Neural Networks Synthesis (NeuNeuS), which is in open beta. NeuNueS allows data scientists to optimize speed or accuracy and track model training.
For IBM, AutoAI is part of a Watson Studio build out as well as a broader data science portfolio that includes IBM Watson Assistant and Discovery and Watson Machine Learning.
Source: Android Police
