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Instagram update brings along Vine-like endlessly looping videos

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Instagram has updated its video feature, ensuring that video clips shared to the service now loop continuously, meaning they’ll start automatically and repeat continuously until you scroll past them.

Apparently, the feature is designed to please advertisers, who are always keen to get as many views for their ads as possible. As for the users, they probably won’t be happy given that the feature cannot be disabled altogether. For those who are fearing high data bills, the company has explicitly said that the feature won’t affect how much data the app uses. Read more »

#TileArt by Microsoft will help you customize your Windows Phone homescreen

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Microsoft launched a dedicated app to help Windows Phone 8.1 users customize their device’s homescreen. Dubbed #TileArt, the free app is currently available in the Windows Phone marketplace.

#TileArt will allow users to pin any image or photo to the homescreen of their smartphone. Read more »

Teaser video shows Android 5.0 Lollipop on OnePlus One

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OnePlus is teasing the Android 5.0 Lollipop update for its phone on video. The update is supposed to arrive this month, though the video doesn’t make it perfectly clear if this is a Cyanogen ROM or OnePlus’ new in-house Oxygen software.

There’s certainly a Cyanogen OS 12S ROM for the OnePlus One on the way, but after the two companies had a falling out OnePlus started work on its own software. Read more »

Nokia Conference app for Windows Phone becomes Join Conference, gains Cortana support

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The latest Nokia product for Windows Phone to lose the Nokia branding is the app formerly known as Nokia Conference. From now on, it will live on as Join Conference. The name change has been made official through its latest update, which is now up for grabs in the Windows Phone app store.

The new name isn’t the only change, however. Join Conference has received support for Cortana, which means you can now simply say “join conference” and Cortana will do its magic for you. Read more »

Project tango hardware is getting closer to consumer markets

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Project Tango, Google’s ground-breaking 3D-spacial mapping project has long been under development at the company’s Advanced Technology and Projects division. The captivating new concept has always been very promising, but also strictly confined to future research and development. Now it seems this is finally changing and we might just get the chance to experience some real-world implementations of the Google’s 3D technology on the consumer market.

While no major new leap has been made today’s news from the project team was equally thrilling: Read more »

S Health on Galaxy phones gets a Material Design update

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Samsung updated its fitness app, S Health, with a new Material Design UI, plus Coach by Cigna and a few bug fixes.

It’s now at version 3.5.5, available now in the Galaxy Apps store. Read more »

Google Now update for Android brings support for 40 third party apps

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Google has updated its Google app for Android with support for 40 new third-party apps, including Airbnb, Urbanspoon, eBay, Waze, Instacart, Pandora, and The Guardian. This means that you’ll now see lots of new Google Now cards, giving you information that’s helpful to you, right when you need it.

“In the morning, catch up on news of the day with cards from The Guardian. On your commute, Pandora can give you recommendations for music to play, based on what you like, or you can be reminded to complete your daily French lesson on Duolingo,” the search giant said in a blog post. Read more »

Nexus 7 3G and Nexus 7 LTE finally get Lollipop factory images

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The Nexus family is treated like Android royalty and is among the very first devices to get updated to a new software version. That’s great, except the Nexus 7 tablets with mobile data did not get the princely treatment they deserve and their update was delayed.

This affected both the original Nexus 7 and the Nexus 7 (2013). No more though, Google released the factory images for Android 5.0.2 Lollipop for both devices. Read more »

Google Now gets deep integration with third-party applications

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An update to Google Now brought deep integration with third-party apps to the already mighty personal assistant. Initially, there will be 40 apps available as as a source of Google Now cards.

Those 40 new apps include popular titles such as The Guardian, Pandora, Lyft, Shazam, The Economist, and Ebay among others. Read more »

Vine Kids launches for iOS, it’s exactly what it seems

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Today the folks behind Vine, the app that lets you create six second looping videos, have announced a new venture. It’s called Vine Kids, and, like its name implies, it’s basically a special version of Vine, created just for kids.

Apparently a lot of kids were already into using the ‘normal’ Vine app, so the company thought a specialized offering for them would be an instant hit. Read more »

Microsoft launches Office for Android, Outlook for iOS and Android, updates OneDrive

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Under its new leadership, Microsoft has embraced other Mobile platforms and Office for Android is officially available starting today (having gone through a preview stage). Also, it’s bringing Outlook to Android and iOS and updating the OneDrive apps to handle photos better.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint for Android tablets offer an “unmistakably Office experience”, which means the Ribbon UI. Read more »

Rolling Stone archive will be freely available on Google Play Newsstand

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The legendary pop culture magazine – Rolling Stone has announced that it will open most of its huge archive for free public access on Google Play Newsstand. Articles span over almost fifty years and every single issue since 1967 will have its place in the digital edition. According to fastcompany.com three to four big stories per magazine will be available digitally for free including every single cover story ever published.

This is a huge deal for both parties and is a part of a strategic advertising program. Google apparently purchased “seven figures” worth of Rolling Stone advertising as part of this deal. Never the less the exclusive availability should really boost Google Play Newsstand’s popularity on both Android and iOS. The magazine is also sure to reel in some new fans and recapture the love of current ones. Read more »

Windows 10 will bring FLAC support on phones and small tablets

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Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems Group at Microsoft has been busy on Twitter answering a lot of questions around the future of Windows 10. Ever since last week’s event, when Microsoft showcased a lot of exciting details about the future of its popular OS and the tech world users have been impatient to receive answers to a few pressing question, mostly regarding Windows 10 on mobile devices.

The smoke was already clear around legacy app support on smaller devices and today Joe has shared another much anticipated piece of information – namely that Windows 10 on mobile devices will have native FLAC support. Read more »

Octa-core Windows 10 phones expected to arrive soon

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January 21 marked an important milestone for Microsoft as the Windows 10 Next chapter event took place and revealed an amazing amount of new information concerning the future of the popular OS on both desktop and portable devices. One of the things that became abundantly clear is that us tech giant is really making progress and investing in its new One Windows philosophy.

Windows 10 on smartphones and tablets will essentially share the core of the full distribution and more importantly will support a uniform app ecosystem that allows the same applications to be used seamlessly across the entire range of Windows 10-powered devices. This is all very exciting, but even though Microsoft cleared the smoke around a lot of aspects of the new OS there are still some pressing questions of availability and future devices. As we have already reported, the new OS will surely be available for the Microsoft Lumia 435, 735 and 930 and if Microsoft keeps its word, most other current Lumia devices as well. This is an admirable decision, but we can’t help that the Microsoft mobile family is severely lacking on flagship models lately. Luckily this might change pretty soon. Read more »

Paper by Facebook for iOS updated with improved Camera Roll and photo sharing

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Just a few months after adding support for the larger displays of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Facebook has updated its Paper app for iOS to version 1.2.5, bringing improvements to Camera Roll and photo sharing, as well as faster performance.

Photos and videos are now organized by the date they were taken, making it easy for you to find what you’re looking for while selecting media to share. In addition, the updated app also introduces the ability to share photos from the new Favorites album introduced in iOS 8. Read more »