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An iOS 11 feature could let you quickly disable TouchID and keep cops out
TouchID has always been a legal grey area when it came to cops and border patrol asking you to fork over your phone. But with the new update in iOS 11, that no longer seems to be a problem. Read More
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Facebook downranks video clickbait and fake play buttons
Ever gotten tricked into clicking a fake play button on Facebook that opens a link instead of starting a video? I did, repeatedly, and wrote a story in 2014 titled “Yo Facebook, Ban Links With Fake Video Play Buttons”. Now Facebook is doing just that. Today it started downranking the News Feed presence of links that display a fake play button in the preview image, as well as… Read More
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Essential Phone now available to order, ships soon to pre-sale customers
The Essential Phone has arrived, a bit later than originally announced. The first smartphone from the new company founded by Android creator Andy Rubin is now available to order, via Essential’s own site, Best Buy, and Sprint. The phone is still listed as a pre-order in all three spots, with shipping information to be conveyed later, but this is the closest people have been able to get… Read More
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Android newbie HMD’s Nokia 8 flagship lets you livestream ‘frontbacks’
Rebooting the venerable Nokia smartphone brand has not been a rush job for HMD Global, the Foxconn-backed company set up for the purpose of licensing the Nokia name to try to revive the brand’s fortunes on smartphones. But after starting with basic and mid-tier phones, it’s finally outted a flagship Android handset. Read More
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Ofo comes to the US, joining the bike-share fray in Seattle
Seattle seems like an unlikely venue for a duel between bike-sharing companies: it’s rainy, hilly, its residents can’t drive and another bike-share program recently went belly-up publicly and ignominiously. But Ofo, one of several Chinese giants in the space, is the third company to launch in the city in a month. It’s the company’s first foray in the States. Read More
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Apple could guide you around your city using augmented reality
ARKit is one of the biggest changes in iOS 11. Under the hood, Apple is about to transform the iPhone into a very capable augmented reality device. Felix Lapalme has been looking at assets in the Maps app package to find out if the company is going to leverage augmented reality for turn-by-turn directions. On July 22nd, he dug around a beta version of iOS 11 and found this mysterious 3D… Read More
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Pinterest users can now pinch-to-zoom on photos in the app
Pinterest is adding a new feature today that allows users to pinch a photo to zoom in and out on various Pins, matching a feature that’s available on a lot of other services. As the company becomes increasingly focused on mobile and discovery centered around photos, users will start expecting the kinds of behaviors that exist on other services to exist on Pinterest. Read More
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45 million people send birthday wishes on Facebook each day
Roughly 1 in 30 Facebook users tells someone Happy Birthday each day, showing Facebook’s first major emergent behavior is still going strong. Now Facebook is equipping the 45 million people sending birthday wishes each day with some new features. Now instead of just posting a soulless “HBD” or “Happy Birthday!” on someone’s wall with no personal message… Read More
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Facebook and Instagram get redesigns for readability
Taking inspiration from line drawings, Reddit and Messenger, Facebook is overhauling the design of the News Feed to make it more legible, clickable and commentable. Meanwhile, Instagram today got a little redesign itself with comment reels now being threaded so you can have sub-conversations in public. Read More
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Facebook adds eBay’s Daily Deals to its Marketplace on mobile
Facebook is again getting into the daily deals space, this time in collaboration with eBay. The company has launched a new feature within its Marketplace section on its mobile app, where a selection of inventory from eBay’s Daily Deals program is now available. The deals can be shopped directly in Facebook’s app, but checkout takes place on eBay’s website through an… Read More
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Facebook boosts snubbed Stories Camera with Live, GIF & text sharing
Despite the tepid reception for Facebook Stories, the social network is doubling down on its full-screen Camera feature. Today Facebook added the ability to go Live, shoot two-second GIFs and share full-screen text posts on colored background from Facebook Camera, which lets you share to Facebook Stories, Direct messaging and the traditional News Feed. Read More
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OneSignal raises $7M for its free push notification tools
Push notifications are one of the main ways we connect with our apps — but according to OneSignal CEO George Deglin, most of the tools for managing those notifications are too expensive without offering the features that developers need. Deglin’s company started out as a Y Combinator-backed mobile developer called Hiptic Games. It was as a game developer that he said he first… Read More
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GoDaddy launches SmartLine to give businesses a second mobile phone number
GoDaddy may be best known for its web domain registry (a business that’s been in the headlines recently), but it’s also moving into the voice and telephone business, starting with last year’s acquisition of FreedomVoice. Today the company is launching a new app called SmartLine, aimed at addressing a basic need of small businesses — more and more of them (86 percent… Read More
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Snapchat “Crowd Surf” stitches together everyone’s concert videos
Snapchat’s got a new trick to stay one step ahead of Instagram by turning everyone’s quick video clips from concerts into a much more watchable music video you control. Snapchat “Crowd Surf” uses artificial intelligence machine learning technology to analyze when lots of people are all recording the same musical performance at the same time. It can then lace together… Read More
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Facebook is rolling out a Trending News section on mobile, now with its own link
Facebook is rolling out a “Trending News” section on mobile that includes its own link in the app’s main navigation. This follows the company’s earlier announcement this spring of a redesign for Trending Topics, an increasingly important part of Facebook’s social network, where it tracks the news stories that are buzzing across its service. That redesign is… Read More
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TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 will feature some of tech’s wildest success stories
TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 is less than a month away at Pier 48 in San Francisco. This year’s lineup includes a stellar group of speakers, including Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, Golden State Warriors superstar forward (and also investor) Kevin Durant, Forerunner Venture’s Kirsten Green and Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun. Read More
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Google’s voice typing tech adds support for 30 more languages, reaching further into Africa, India
Google today is expanding its speech recognition capabilities to support dozens of new languages, particularly those in emerging markets in India and Africa, the company announced this morning. That means more people around the world will gain the ability to search the web by voice as well as type via voice using Google’s keyboard app, Gboard. The company says with the update… Read More
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Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2
Snap’s Spectacles sunglasses may prove to be more of a fad than a must-have device. Snap revealed during its call following weak Q2 earnings that it generated $5.4 million in “Other” revenue, which would equate to around 41,500 pairs of its Spectacles camera sunglasses at a $130 price point. Read More
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