Wednesday, July 1, 2015

IT News Head Lines (Engadget) 7/2/2015





0800 numbers are now free to call from mobiles
Before dialling an unfamiliar service number, many of us feel an overwhelming sense of dread. Not just for 0800 and 0808 "freephone" numbers, which are now free to call from a mobile, but numbers starting with 084, 087 and 09 too. From experience, yo...

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3D plant scans will help build lighter, stronger cars
Don't look now, but the plants in your backyard might just shape the next generation of cars. University of Freiburg researchers have found a way to study the junctions between living plants' branches and stems using MRI scans, giving insight into ho...

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Aviate's 'Smart Stream' is Yahoo's version of Google Now
Yahoo has given Aviate its first major makeover since acquiring it in 2014, completely replacing its contextual panel called "Spaces" with a new feature called "Smart Stream." This "stream" surfaces different cards throughout the day, depending on yo...

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Apple's GarageBand uses trackpad pressure to control your tunes
Apple's Force Touch trackpads haven't done a whole lot in official apps besides fast scrolling and shortcuts, but they'll do considerably more if you grab the latest version of GarageBand. As of the 10.1 update, you can use the pressure-sensitive pad...

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Sprint (almost) fixed the low video cap on its new 'All-in' plan
This morning Sprint announced it planned to "end consumer confusion and frustration" with an "All-in" pricing plan that combined unlimited data with a two-year phone lease for $80 total. The only problem? An absurd limit capping video streams at 600K...

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Smart software fixes bugs by 'borrowing' from other apps
The days of waiting anxiously for bug fixes (assuming they come at all) might soon be over. MIT developers have built a system, CodePhage, that automatically patches flaws by borrowing features from other apps. The tool scans apps to see how they per...

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YouTube app for Android and iOS now supports 60 FPS playback
Google's been systematically rolling out high frame rate (HFR) video -- that's 60 frames per second -- across its YouTube ecosystem for a couple of months now. HFR debuted on standard videos last October. It hit YT's live streaming service in May and...

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The Olympus Air lens camera can be yours for $300
Nearly five months after introducing its Air lens camera in Japan, Olympus is finally ready to bring it to the US. The AIR A01, as it's officially named, is a shooter that attaches to and pairs with your smartphone or tablet -- in similar fashion to ...

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VPNs may not protect your information as well as you think
VPNs (virtual private networks) are a popular choice for sidestepping censorship and geographic restrictions on services like Netflix with more than 20 percent of Europeans using them. However, researchers at the Queen Mary, University of London rece...

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Acer rolls out a curved, super-wide display with AMD's gaming tech
You can get desktop PC displays that are curved, super-wide and gaming-friendly, but all three at once? That's tricky. Thankfully, Acer thinks it has an answer. The company has just launched the 34-inch XR341CK in the US, giving you a curvy, 21:9 asp...

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NSA can restart bulk data collection, says surveillance court
The ongoing saga around the NSA's bulk data collection program is getting even more confusing. A U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled yesterday that the program can temporarily resume, refuting a Second Circuit court decision from May d...

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Doomed Indiegogo campaign hopes to crowdfund Greece's debt relief
Can crowdfunding do something better than make a beer cooler with a built-in Bluetooth speaker? That's what Thom Feeney believes after setting up an Indiegogo campaign to pay Greece's $1.7 billion loan fee that it owes to the International Monetary F...

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Facebook Messenger's money-sending tool arrives for all US users
When it first announced plans to let you send money to your pals in its Messenger app, Facebook said the feature would roll out in the States in the coming months. Well, the time has come. After flipping the switch for folks in New York City and the ...

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The best of Public Access Vol. 3: the Atari ST, virtues of HD Audio and more
You can learn a lot from someone's personal gadget arsenal, whether at home or on the road. This past week on Public Access gave us a glimpse of your technological inclinations and taught us quite a bit. Miné Salkin's at-home gear is all about enabli...

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This is what innovation looks like in big-budget video games
Indie games don't sell as many copies as big-budget titles, although not necessarily because they're lower-quality. In general, indie game development starts with a handicap: a limited market. They are, mostly, experiences made for niche audiences. A...

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Cisco buys a DNS provider to protect you in the cloud
When you think of internet security from Cisco, you probably imagine firewalls and routers (usually) stopping hackers and malware from hitting your network. You're going to have to expand that definition very shortly, though. Cisco has snapped up Ope...

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A closer look at Apple Music: feature-packed, but a bit disjointed
Apple Music is here. Finally. Now that the company steered the streaming service to a successful launch, it now has to prove to the world that it's actually something worth paying for — after all, there are like 80 other streaming-music services (may...

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'Quiplash,' a streaming party game for 10,000 people
Most people haven't hosted a party for 10,000 guests (the bathroom situation alone is daunting), but thanks to the internet and Jackbox Games, that's now a super-easy, low-mess situation. Quiplash is the newest game from Jackbox -- makers of You Don'...

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Apple will replace your battery once it hits 80 percent health
Apple's recently changed the terms of its AppleCare+ extended warranty program. Now, no matter what iOS or OSX device you own (yes, even the Watch), Apple will replace the battery as soon as it hits 80 percent health. That's up 30 points from the pre...

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YouTube shows off some upcoming features for video creators
YouTube's always placed huge levels of importance on its community, starting with the people who regularly upload content to the platform. Now, to make things better for video creators, the Google-owned service has revealed a list of features that ar...

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Beats Music iOS update provides a transition to Apple Music
Now that Apple Music has arrived, Beats Music is on its way out. To help with the transition from the old to the new, the Beats Music iOS app was updated to lend a hand. Subscribers can take playlists and any saved music over to the new service witho...

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NASA prototypes a drone aircraft destined for Mars
No, you're not looking at a very sophisticated boomerang -- that may be the first aircraft to fly the Martian skies. NASA has revealed that it's building a prototype for Prandtl-m (Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars), a glider dr...

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Sprint's 'all-in' plan gives you a phone and service for $80 (update)
Sprint has been experimenting with including phone leases in your plan for a while, and it's clearly enraptured with the idea -- enough so that it's making the lease a part of its everyday service. The carrier's new All-In plan gives you a phone and ...

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How to avoid being charged by Apple Music after the free trial
Apple Music is finally here, along with a free three month trial to let anyone give it a listen. But what if you don't want to be on the hook for a $10 a month subscription fee on September 30? Or, what if you opted into Apple Music by mistake (which...

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Top Googler leaves to set up new cybersecurity agency
One of Google's most well-regarded security researchers is leaving the company, reportedly to help the government beef up its cybersecuity. Re/code is reporting that Peiter "Mudge" Zatko will be building a new agency that examines electronic threats ...

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Available Tags:3D , Google , other , YouTube , Android , iOS , Olympus , Acer , gaming , Facebook , Cisco , Apple , NASA

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