One of the first things you could customize on a mobile phone was ringtones. Now that customizability includes wallpapers, apps, and widgets, and voice calls are a little rarer, the ringtone might have lost some of its flair.
However, you might still want to listen to something better than different types of beeps.
Unfortunately there's no single way to explain how changing a ringtone works on Android phones, because manufacturers might have implemented the feature in different ways and thus different smartphone models behave differently.
Most, if not all, Android phones allow the usage of external ringtones. We'll try to go through a couple common ways to change your ringtone on an Android phone to either a pre-installed one or one of your choice.
Selecting your default ringtone
1) Open Settings from your app drawer or from the sliding notification bar
2) Head down to Sounds (might also be called for example Sounds and notifications, or Sound & vibration)
3) Select Phone ringtone (or Ringtone)
4) Choose your preferred ringtone from the list (note: selecting ringtone will also play it)
Apple's latest and greatest iPad, the 2018 edition of iPad Pro, is a marvel of a tablet. While it doesn't have many of the proper computer features, it is a mighty powerful device.
One might claim that what makes it marvelous isn't so much the power, but how it's built. The build is indeed extraordinary in its thinness.
Unfortunately there seems to be a problem with the thinness.
Customers have been complaining that they've received bent iPads straight out the packaging. Reports about the bendgate quickly reached Apple, who just claimed it was normal and thus not covered by warranty.
Now couple days after, even the Apple VP of Hardware Dan Riccio has commented saying that it is indeed a minimal variation in the production, not so much an error of any kind.
According to Riccio there might be 400 micron variations which translates to less than half a millimeter. Thats just ten times the thickness of human hair.
Pictures surely have showed more variation than that, but that's Apple's official stance. According to Apple the quality meets the company's quality standards of design and precision manufacturing.
In both your professinal as well as personal life you might come up with situations where recording a phone call is worth a fortune. Perhaps you want the details as fresh as possible, and there's really no better way to get every nuance right.
Fortunately smartphones allow recording calls, although the ease of it definitely depends on the phone, which we will go here through for both Android phone as well as iPhones.
Is recording calls legal?
The feature is not found in most smartphones by default because in some states and countries recording calls might be illegal.
In the U.S. recording calls is legal, although consent law depends on your state. Federal law as well as most states have adopted one-party consent which means that at least one of the parties (which could be just you) in the conversation needs to know of and accept the recording.
Two-party consent laws are in effect in California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Recording calls in Android
You can find an endless sea of both free and paid apps for Android that promise some type of recording function. So the problem becomes: which of these dozens of apps should you pick?
Microsoft has turned from an entirely software-based company into a hardware maker with some interesting devices.
Surface lineup includes some of the most impressive laptops, tablets, and hybrids, but Microsoft is developing devices even beyond that.
Lately Microsoft came up with ANC headphones, and next year it is planning to introduce a webcam, Thurrott.com reports.
According to the information, Microsoft's upcoming webcam features 4K resolution for video recording and supports unsurprisingly Windows Hello facial recognition.
The camera is also compatible with Xbox One which can be used in Kinect-like fashion.
Microsoft's webcam game has been already ahead of Apple, whose MacBook cameras are very low quality. Surface devices have passable camera but even those aren't enough for the pixel hungry streamers.
A video made by a former NASA engineer went viral this week, but it turns out some of the reactions of package thieves were staged.
Mark Rober delighted the Internet with his invention; a smart glitter bomb with multiple cameras, GPS and fart spray aimed at package thieves. After a package was stolen from his residence months before, Rober designed a device that would spray the thieves with glitter when opened, film their reactions and also unleash an intoxicating fart spray.
Even if the devices could not be recovered, the four included phones recording the reaction were set to upload video to the Internet using LTE. GPS also allowed Rober to find out exactly where the packages are.
However, Rober has since re-uploaded the video to cut out about 90 seconds of reactions after finding out that some of the reactions were staged. Unbeknown to Rober, a friend had recruited others to fake their reactions, posing as victims.
After the edit and re-upload, Rober apologized to his subscribers and explained the situation.
Note about 2 missing the reactions in the video- I was presented with information that caused me to doubt the veracity of 2 of the 5 reactions in the video. These were reactions that were captured during a two week period while the device was at house 2 hours away from where I live. I put a feeler out for people willing to put a package on their porch and this person (who is a friend of a friend) volunteered to help. To compensate them for their time and willingness to risk putting a package on their porch I offered financial compensation for any successful recoveries of the package. It appears (and I've since confirmed) in these two cases, the "thieves" were actually acquaintances of the person helping me. From the footage I received from the phones which intentionally only record at specific times, this wasn't clear to me. I have since removed those reactions from the original video (originally 6:26-7:59). I'm really sorry about this. Ultimately, I am responsible for the content that goes on my channel and I should have done more here. I can vouch for that the reactions were genuine when the package was taken from my house. Having said that, I know my credibly is sort of shot but I encourage you to look at the types of videos I've been making for the past 7 years. This is my first ever video with some kind of "prank" and like I mentioned in the video it's pretty removed from my comfort zone and I should have done more. I'm especially gutted because so much thought, time, money and effort went into building the device and I hope this doesn't just taint the entire effort as "fake". It genuinely works (like all the other things I've built on my channel) and we've made all the code and build info public. Again, I'm sorry for putting something up on my channel that was misleading. That is totally on me and I will take all necessary steps to make sure it won't happen again.
Here's the now-edited video of Rober's revenge on package thieves.
Google has silently launched Chrome Canvas, which allows you to doodle and take notes in your browser that will be saved to your Google account.
It isn't just compatible with Chrome either, it will work with any browser that supports WebAssembly. You don't need to download and install it, it can be accessed by simply visiting the URL: https://canvas.apps.chrome/
It offers basic drawing tools, including Pencil, Ink Pen, Marker, and Chalk. There is also an eraser. If you don't have a touchscreen, you can use your mouse or touchpad to control the tools.
Your drawings are saved to your Google account and can be downloaded as PNG graphics files at any time.
A report from the New York Times into how Facebook shared user information with third-party services has the social network on the defensive.
The report detailed how Facebook has shared access to user data with third parties including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Microsoft and more over the years. However, the company responded to the report insisting that no user data was shared with those third parties without authorization.
"None of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without people's permission, nor did they violate our 2012 settlement with the FTC," wrote Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Director of Developer Platforms and Programs, at Facebook.
Furthermore, most of the features driven by the data sharing are now gone. Facebook shut down instant personalization, which powered Bing's features, in 2014, but did acknowledge that it had left APIs in place after the shutdown that left some partners with access to data until late 2017. The social network stresses that Instant Personalization only involved public information.
Facebook has been scrutinized in several countries by politicians and regulators for its use of user data, and allegations that it has been used as a means to influence elections by Russia, Iran, and other states.
Apple has announced that it is stopping the sales of a couple older iPhone models in Germany due to a recent court order.
Chipmaker Qualcomm and Apple have been exchanging blows in the courtroom over patents recently, and one of the cases has gone to trial already.
San Diego based Qualcomm won the case and due to that Apple has decided to pull both iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 from its own stores. Third party retailers will still be selling the devices.
In the court case Qualcomm claimed that Apple was infringing the company's patents on power saving. The District Court of Munich agreed, and even though Apple is planning on an appeal, they've pulled the phones from the Apple Stores both offline and online.
The issue is with hardware, a chip made by Qorvo, so there isn't an easy software update to fix it. Fortunately for Apple the newer models like iPhone X or XS do not have the same chip.
In the U.S., Qorvo's chip has been determined to not infringe on Qualcomm's patent portfolio.
This isn't the first time Apple has suffered losses against Qualcomm in the courtroom. However, in China the issue was with software and Apple was able to patch it.
Last year was immense for virtual money, or cryptocurrency as the kids like to call it, Bitcoin. 2018 was supposed to be even bigger as Bitcoin was meant to break through to the masses.
It never really happened, and the value has melted away fairly consistently over the months.
Even though Bitcoin's value has been eroding, cryptocurrency aficionados still believe in revolutionizing the monetary system.
According to Bloomberg sources, Facebook isn't trying to build a currency for its social media site, but instead is trying to develop a cryptocurrency for WhatsApp.
However, it's not the most renegade of the cryptocurrencies since its planned to be pegged to the U.S. dollar to give it more stability.
What they call stablecoin would be featured in WhatsApp but the development idea likely comes from Messenger boss David Marcus who formerly worked for PayPal.
There no release date for the stablecoin yet, and Bloomberg doesn't expect it to be released in the nearest of futures, especially not here in the West.
Alfonso Ribeiro, who played Carlton in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, is suing Epic over a dance displayed in Fortnite.
The dance is known as the "Carlton dance", and is performed with Tom Jones' It's Not Unusual. The dance in Fortnite is very similar to the Carlton dance and is even performed with music reminiscent of the Tom Jones classic.
Figures from the NPD Group are being touted by Nintendo as evidence that the Switch is the fastest selling video games console of the current generation.
Launched in March 2017, the Nintendo Switch console has amassed 8.7 million unit sales. Nintendo notes that this is faster than competitors (namely PS4, Xbox One) at the same stage of their lifecycle. Nintendo is also the overall top-selling U.S. software publisher so far for 2018, according to NPD data through November.
Of course, there are millions more PS4s and Xbox One consoles in the wild, having launched in the fourth quarter of 2013. However, the numbers for the Nintendo Switch show that the Japanese gamemaker has moved beyond its Wii U falter and is going strong.
Nintendo's software performance should receive an additional boost from the December release of the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate game, which has become not only the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch game of all time but also the fastest-selling game in the Super Smash Bros. series, with U.S. sales of over 3 million units in just 11 days.
Facebook has released a statement on its official developer blog announcing a bug that has potentially leaked photos from millions of Facebook users.
The bug found from the photo API of Facebook gave app developers access to photos not meant for public consumption from up to 6.8 million users.
It allowed app developers to scrape the photos of the user who granted access via Facebook login to its photo library. However, because of the bug the app developer could access not only the public photos but also photos that were uploaded to Facebook but weren't published.
The bug was fixed 12 days after it was revealed in September. According to Facebook a total of 876 app developers (up to 1 500 apps) had access to illicit private photos.
Facebook is working with app developers to make sure all the wrongly accessed photos will be deleted. If you are among the ones affected, you'll be notified via Facebook.
You can also check the third-party apps you have given photo access to via Facebook login to see if they have photos that shouldn't be public.
Virtual Reality might be the most popular futuristic fad that we've had since 3D movies. People, however, don't seem as interested in investing in VR as perhaps expected, and that means it might end up in the bin next to 3D movies.
One indication of how hard it is to monetize VR, is that IMAX is abandoning the technology in its theaters. IMAX has announced that it will close all VR theaters in early 2019.
IMAX began offering VR showings around two years ago, but the theater chain never managed to attract enough people to put on the goggles and experience virtual reality in their locations.
While customers reported satisfactory experiences, there just wasn't enough customers to keep running the experiment. IMAX even tried bringing in VR suits that react to the content.
IMAX opened a total of seven VR centers, but at this point already four of them have been closed. The last three, in Los Angeles, Bangkok, and Toronto, will be closing in the first quarter of 2019.
In early 2018, Apple announced that it would be increasing the investments in the United States. What portion of that is because of President Trump's policies is unsure, but now Apple has revealed news about a massive investment in Texas.
Apple is planning on investing $1 billion to expand their campus in Austin. The facility will at first employ 5 000 people but maximum capacity should reach up to 15 000.
Austin will become Apple's second largest facility only behind the headquarters in Cupertino, CA (pictured).
In addition to Austin, Apple is going to open new offices in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City. All of these additions seem to serve a purpose in attracting talent from the likes of Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle as well as Qualcomm in San Diego.
Expansions are also expected in Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Portland, Oregon and Boulder.
If you are targeted by a WhatsApp spammer or get numerous calls and/or texts from specific numbers, you might want to block the number. Fortunately on both Android and iOS (iPhone) it is a fairly easy task.
Let us walk you through.
Blocking calls and text messages on Android
Android smartphones come in all kinds of colors, sizes, and brands, which might make it a little bit harder to find exactly what you are looking for. With these tips you should, however, find the right setting in most of the Samsung Galaxy phones as well as several other manufacturers' devices.
Whether you want to block a number from your contacts or a previously unknown number, you should open up the Phone app. On the top right corner you should find the menu (three dots), click Settings (in some cases Contacts Manager).
In this menu you should find an option called Blocked numbers which should have a list of your currently blocked numbers, and an option to add a new number to the list.
After the number is added to the list, you should no longer receive either texts or calls from that number.
Blocking calls and text messages on iPhone On all the iPhones, no matter the generation, the blocking of numbers is done in the same fashion. If you have already received a call or a text message from the number you want to block, open the Phone app (or Messages) and select the number to block from Recents list.
World's largest social media platform, Facebook, is constantly looking for new ways to monetize its user base of two billion. Now the company is negotiating with HBO to delivering pay TV to customers.
If negotiations go as planned, Facebook intends to sell and deliver Facebook users with HBO and other pay TV content. This might happen as soon as next year, Recode reports.
Facebook is somewhat late to the party, the likes of Google with YouTube are already selling TV subscriptions and delivering TV on their internet platforms.
Probably the hardest part of the equation is that cable companies want to promote their own platforms, and deliver exclusive content on there alone.
In addition to YouTube, competitors include Amazon with Prime Video and Apple, who are planning to revamp their TV service with exclusive content as well as content from cable companies.
Facebook has been in discussions with at least Showtime and Starz in addition to HBO.
For years upon years processors have been built largely in the same fashion. Technology has improved the precision and nanometers are chipping away as companies perfect techniques to built smaller and smaller chips.
Intel has learned it can built the transistors in three dimensional space rather than just placing them next to each other in a level plane of silicon (like in the picture).
As simple as it may seem, previously building transistors on top of each other hasn't been easily accessible. The new technology Intel calls Foveros could unlock a true breakthrough in chip manufacturing, Wired reports.
It uses the same kind of technique used already in memory chips, where three dimensional manufacturing has been achieved. Foveros allows chips to include different kinds of chips in system-on-chips – for example modem, GPU or CPU – to be stacked.
This saves space which translates to more efficiency and more performance in the real life, especially in applications like mobile computing.
Foveros also allowes Intel to customize the layout for different kind of requirements and isn't stuck to one chip setup.
Intel's lead in the desktop CPU space has been sufficient that there hasn't been any major strides made in the past few years. Perhaps it is feeling the pressure of Ryzens now, as next year's update seems more interesting.
The chip manufacturer has announced next year's new CPU architecture that is known as Sunny Cove. Sunny Cove brings along a significant upgrade as it is the first desktop CPU Intel produces with 10nm technology.
This improves the efficiency in a multitude of ways, one of which will be the compression performance. Intel claims that the upcoming processors improve on compression speeds by up to 75 percent over previous generation chips.
Performance improvements can be seen also in cryptography, including of course both encryption and decryption.
Architecturally Sunny Cove is a close cousin of Skylake but there are some important distinctions that make it perform better. Intel has improved it to perform instructions better in parallel and with lower latency.
Also the L1 cache has been increased by 50%.
The architecture is now out but there is still no actual CPUs to talk about. Intel is promising first Core branded Sunny Cove chips to be revealed in the latter half of 2019.
It was iPad that was supposed to be the savior of the press whose beloved paper was in deep decline already in 2010 when Steve Jobs introduced the tablet.
Virtual newspapers never caught on like many anticipated, and most of the news money has flown to internet conglomerates. A total of six billion dollars has disappeared from newspaper revenue in just three years in the States.
Apple is looking to grab some of the money in transition, and, according to Bloomberg, has a new service in development.
The Cupertino giant has been slowly inching its way towards content business, and especially subscription services. Apple Music was the biggest move, similar things are happening in the video entertainment space, and now Apple is planning to release a subscription news service.
Apple acquired Texture, a digital magazine service, last March which might be the basis the upcoming subscription service is built upon. According to the information, Apple intends to include the new service as a premium option inside its current Apple News app.
The guess is that Apple will launch new subscription news service in the spring of 2019.
Puma introduced a futuristic running shoe in the 80s it called the RS-Computer. The company called these their first computerized running shoes.
The product was meant for serious runners who wanted data, such as distance travelled and calories spent, from their running efforts. Now Puma has been struck by a retro spark as they are re-releasing the RS-Computer to the market.
The new edition of Puma RS-Computer look almost identical to the original ones, and there's still the awkward bump in the back for the computer part.
Obviously this would no longer be needed in "computerized shoes" as technology can fit in much smaller spaces, but Puma has decided to respect the original retro look from the 1980s.
Puma has, however, updated the tech. There's now a three-axis accelerometer for improved movement recognition, LED indicators, one USB port for charging, and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity.
The release of the new RS-Computer is set for December 13, but there will only be 86 pairs sold, so unless you are really lucky, or wealthy. You might want to look elsewhere.
Perhaps Adidas will bring their first ever computerized shoes, the original Adidas Micropacer, back from 1984.
Mozilla has released a new update to their web browser Firefox. The new versio, v64.0, doesn't bring any major features, but there is a few new features and plenty of other improvements.
This includes improvements to performance and easier performance management. You'll now find a new Task Manager page from about:performance, which allows you to get a better picture of power consumption by tab.
New enhanced tab management on the other hand allows you to select multiple tabs from the tab bar and close, move, bookmark, or pin them quickly.
Mozilla has also improved the recommendations engine that will now suggest new and relevant Firefox features, services, and extensions based on how you use the web. This feature is only enabled in regular browsing and doesn't affect private browsing.
Other updates include changes to web developer tools including WebVR support and macOS keyboard fixes among other things.
As the year closes to an end, Google has released their traditional list of top searches for the year. There's a clear trend, and it's a rather gloomy one.
Good news don't seem to be anywhere, so it is not a surprise that many of the top spots in Google searches were celebrities that died this year.
Whether it was the untimely death of a 28-year-old DJ Avicii, the suicide of troubled chef Anthony Bourdain or the unfortunate although more expected passing of a legendary Stan Lee, top ten was filled with demise.
Google, however, took the results to a different direction in their video "Year in Search 2018" where they did feature few of the celebrities that passed this year, including Stephen Hawking and Anthony Bourdain. The video is more hopeful and focuses on people searching for good things, which apparently they did more than ever.
The top spot was taken by World Cup, which was held in Russia this year, and the only other non-person taking a spot in top 10 was the movie Black Panther. News category included searches like Royal Wedding, Hurricane Florence, and Election Results.
You can find more about the top global searches here.
OnePlus held a launch event today in Woking, UK where it joined McLaren in their McLaren Technology Centre to unveil the latest and most definitely greatest smartphone to date.
New OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition is a take on the company's current flagship where speed is bumped up even further. For those who don't know much about the latest OnePlus device, it is focused on speed already.
The new McLaren Edition comes with a tagline Salute to Speed, and brings a few more improvements to quickness. While the main chip is the same Snapdragon 845, there is an improvement on RAM.
The McLaren version has a whopping 10 gigabytes of random access memory, an upgrade to an already impressive 8 GB on the regular OnePlus 6T. OnePlus has been pushing boundaries in RAM for years now, and they seem to be determined to be on the leading edge.
In addition to speeding up the multitasking with more RAM, the OnePlus 6T McLaren has a new Warp Charge 30 technology, which charges the phone with lightning speed.
OnePlus 6T is already one of the fastest charging phones on the planet, and this might make the new version the ultimate champion in charging speeds.
It means that only a 20 minute charge will top the battery with a day's power, this usually means with OnePlus phones 60 to 70% charge, without even heating the phone excessively.
Google revealed two months ago that it was time to shut down their social media platform Google+.
For years Google+ has been considered a dead platform, even though it still has some 100 million users. In October, the search giant announced that it would close Google+ by next August.
Now, after learning about a security hole in Google+ code, they've decided that it should be run down quicker than originally intended.
New schedule is that Google+ will shut down four months earlier in April, 2019. The reason of closure is still the low usage base, but after finding a bug in the code last month that could pose a threat to information security, Google wants to limit the chances of any kind of breach.
The bug was fixes on the spot, and there is no known abuses of the security hole it created. The bug gave app developers access to users' data that wasn't meant public, including names, birth dates and email addresses.
Obviously Google+ has not been the company's priority for quite some time, and thus there's a worry that other bugs might be found, too.
Apple and Qualcomm have been duking it out in the court rooms over patents. It used to be Apple and Samsung but nowadays American chip manufacturer is Apple's key rival, it seems.
Now a court in China has ruled against Apple in a case regarding two patents, WSJ reports. This will potentially bring a halt to some iPhone imports.
Fortunately ruling does not affect the most recent iPhone generation, but all the models from iPhone 6s to last years iPhone X are under threat of not being allowed to be sold in the country.
The case was about software patents so nothing physical on the device is disallowing the sales of the iPhones, and Apple could change their operating system to accommodate the patents.
One of the patents has to do with resizing a picture and another app management using a touch screen.
Apple stressed that this is just Qualcomm's ploy to misdirect from its own wrongdoings. The court battle will continue indefinitely and more rulings and appeals are expected.
For now Apple seems confident, and claims that all its iPhone models will stay on sale.
Windows has been the operating system of choice for computers almost since its inception but Microsoft has never managed to scale it down to lighter, smaller, and less powerful devices in the same way.
Whether it is Windows Mobile, Windows RT, or even the latest Windows 10 S for more portable computers, Microsoft's lighter OS offerings have never gotten popular.
Microsoft has a new ace up its sleeve, according to Petri.com.
This time around it is known as Windows 10 Lite, and according to the information it is designed from the ground up to dethrone Chromebooks as the go to cheap computers.
Windows 10 Lite is supposedly designed to run with low power, turn instantly on and be always connected in the same way as ChromeOS. It replaces Windows 10 S, which is upgradeable to full-fledged Windows 10.
There is no word on whether Windows 10 Lite is also upgradeable as well, but seeing that it doesn't support traditional Windows executables, only UWP and PWA apps, it seems obvious that it is a completely separate experience.
Also, it will likely not be sold separately. Only OEMs will have access to it for it to be pre-installed, which makes sense.
All the major smartphone events for the year are long gone, except for a Nokia event today in Dubai, so it is perhaps time to start focusing on next years early offerings.
Qualcomm agrees and has today announced new products that will land on many of the upcoming year's greatest smartphones.
At their Snapdragon Summit in Maui, the company is debuting the new top-of-the-line Snapdragon system-on-chip and other products.
The new Snapdragon 855 is, of course, Qualcomm's flagship product and will be heading to dozens of top notch Android smartphones next year. So what can we expect?
Well, first off Qualcomm calls it "the world's first commercial mobile platform supporting multi-gigabit 5G." In addition to supporting 5G it will improve AI performance up to 3x.
According to TechCrunch, Qualcomm is also designing a designated gamer version of the chip called "Snapdragon Elite Gaming", although other details are still not revealed.
Another interesting announcement out of Maui is a new ultasonic fingerprint sensor, which will likely be seen in the upcoming Galaxy S10, just like the new Snapdragon chip.
Ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensors are promising to be faster than last years in-screen sensors. In addition it should work even when the finger or display are dirty is the screen has a screen protector, TechCrunch reports.
One of the largest Q&A website in the world, Quora, has been hacked. The company has released a statement saying that an unauthorized entry was made an attained user information from the database.
A security breach by a malicious source resulted in leakage of information from approximately 100 million user accounts. That's a third of the websites 300 million user base.
According to the company, they've hired a security team to help them investigate the breach, informed the law enforcement, and are in the process of informing all affected users.
The leaked date includes personal information such as names, email addresses, encrypted (hashed) passwords, and data imported from linked networks when authorized by users.
The database that was breached also stored the questions, comments, answers as well as private messages.
Quora has logged out all affected users and reset the passwords for users that use password as an authentication method.
No social security numbers, credit card information or other extremely sensitive information were stored on Quora's databases.
Quora believes it has found the security hole but the investigation is still on-going.
Microsoft is taking big steps to renew Windows 10 and some of its core apps and functions. Updating the iconography of Office, and eventually entire Windows 10, is one of the most recent steps.
New updates, due next year, to PowerPoint on the other hand will bring new AI functions. This means that PowerPoint will support real-time translating.
Real-time translating is used to generate captions for slides from one language to another. You can use it also to turn your speech into caption in the same language.
To easily make a more inclusive presentation, you can switch the translation depending on the audience and thus use the same slides for different audiences.
Microsoft is also bringing the real-time translation and subtitling to Skype calls which might be an even more useful feature.
Real-time translating is said to arrive in January 2019, and it will land on both Windows and Mac, as well as the cloud version, Office 365.
Just a few years ago, in the eve of Windows 10, Microsoft made the decision to retire the good ol' Internet Explorer for a new and improved browser.
Windows 10 launched with this new Microsoft Edge browser, a completely new and revamped browser experience. Unfortunately not a lot of people were impressed as the adoption rate has been low enough for Microsoft to plan some radical reroutes.
According to The Verge, Microsoft is already developing a new browser to replace Microsoft Edge. The browser is known in dev teams as codename Anaheim, and is based on Google's Chromium.
Chromium is Google's open source web browser project which is the basis on the world's leading browser Google Chrome.
According to the information gathered by The Verge, Microsoft doesn't have enough resources to keep developing the core functions of the browser including enhancing speed, and thus is looking into switching from proprietary tech inside Edge to Google's Chromium.
Once Microsoft's switch is done, assuming the rumors are correct, it will be a field day for web developers. Microsoft and Google sharing web engines will for sure make it easier to develop websites.
Sony has today launched officially its newest gaming console. No, it's not the PlayStation 5, instead it's, of course, the PlayStation Classic.
Sony revealed PlayStation Classic mid-September, and now couple months later it is ready to be released to the public. Today also marks the 24th anniversary of the original PlayStation, a perfect day for a PlayStation Classic launch.
The new mini console brings old school aesthetics from the nineties in a tiny package that holds 20 pre-installed games and includes two controllers.
Retro consoles have recently been super popular after the initial NES Classic in July 2016 from Nintendo.
Microsoft has been working on revamping Windows UI and especially Office over the past months. Now the company has announced the new palette that will bring new color to the Office 365 icons.
The last the Microsoft updated the icons was in 2013, a couple years before Windows 10 launch. Now the software giant has updated the icons to reflect their new visual language better.
You'll still have a blue Word icon, a green Excel, and an orange PowerPoint, but simpler while still retaining the descriptive elements expressing what each application is used for.
The Office icons are just a beginning, says head of Office design at Microsoft Jon Friedman. The same design language will gradually find its way to all of Windows 10.
While Friedman doesn't give us a timeline, and he does say it's a huge undertaking and it has just begun, we can expect the new look to be introduced to other aspects of Windows 10 next and following year.
Obviously bringing all of Microsoft's products under the same design is the purpose eventually.
One of the first things you could customize on a mobile phone was ringtones. Now that customizability includes wallpapers, apps, and widgets, and voice calls are a little rarer, the ringtone might have lost some of its flair.
Apple's latest and greatest iPad, the 2018 edition of iPad Pro, is a marvel of a tablet. While it doesn't have many of the proper computer features, it is a mighty powerful device.
In both your professinal as well as personal life you might come up with situations where recording a phone call is worth a fortune. Perhaps you want the details as fresh as possible, and there's really no better way to get every nuance right.
