Slingshot, Facebook’s answer to the very popular Snapchat, has today added a couple of new features. On both its iOS and Android apps, you now have a brand new Explore view.

This surfaces “funny, inspiring and creative people from across the globe”. It’s basically a list of popular people who are active on Slingshot. And you can immediately follow those who you consider to be interesting. Read more »

Samsung has decided to create its own hands-on videos for the recently announced Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge. These include an ‘official unboxing’, in which the Korean company reveals the packaging of the handsets.

The new boxes can be seen in the image above, and they’re certainly simple and understated. Samsung’s ‘official hands-on’ videos each focus on one aspect of the two new smartphones. Read more »

Sony introduced a nicely designed Sony BSP60 Smart Bluetooth Speaker at the MWC expo a few days ago. It looks quite futuristic and offers a plethora of functions.

When the speaker is fully opened, it’s reminiscent of a retro style alarm clock. It’s not merely a speaker with a built-in amplifier which just pumps out what you feed to it, though. It’s NFC-enabled and has its own display with 4 capacitive buttons to control volume and sift through its various functions. Read more »

Chrome on Android has really come a long way since its release back in 2014. 22 versions have been created, each one more capable than the previous and Android 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich was the scene, on which everything started.

The team behind Chromium, the open-source project which powers the development of the Chrome browser, has announced that it is leaving behind the software’s original Android 4.0 home, which will no longer be supported after version 42. Read more »

The name “Heartbleed” will ring a bell to almost anyone. It was center stage in a quite significant security crisys in 2014. In its essence, it was a fault that plagued the widely-used TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol, used to protect HTTP connections. That problem was quickly dealt away with by an emergency patch to the OpennSSL cryptography library which contained the vulnerability.

News has come today that researchers have found another vulnerability in the same package, which could, once again, expose a lot of critical and personal data to malicious attacks. Just like Heartbleed, the new exploit, dubbed “FREAK attack” targets the SSL/TLS protocol, widely used for securing online connections. This new exploit, however is not solely limited to servers, but could put browsers at risk as well. Read more »

Google’s social network may not be doing so well, but the company hasn’t given up on connecting people. The latest venture is Google Contacts – an online address book. It’s still in the preview stages but you can try it out today (unless you are a Google Apps user).

Contacts pools together info from your phone’s contact list and your contacts’ Google profiles. Read more »

iOS 8 adoption got off to a slow start – it took three weeks to achieve 40% share. iOS 6 and 7 before took only a week to hit 50%. Now, close to half a year after iOS 8 was unleashed to the public, it has clawed its way up to 75%, Apple says.

Version 8 has already had one minor update (v8.1) with the next one (v8.2) expected in about a week and the one after that (v8.3) already seeding to developers. Read more »

Hackaball is the brain child of a group of entrepreneurs who long to revive more traditional social kid games by giving them a new tech twist. What seems like a simple rubber toy has been carefully designed so that it can compete with all the distraction and allure of modern-day tech.

The goal, of course, is to weave the young generation away from the screen and promote more social outdoor activities, but the toy seems to be equally appealing to adults as well.

The Hackaball is packed full of electronics, including – a set of LED’s, a speaker, gyroscope, accelerometer, vibration motor, rechargeable battery and, of course as small processor with a little bit of memory to make it come alive. Read more »

Glymspe has released a new application today, which is meant to simplify the usage of the location sharing service within vehicles. The new application is essentially an add-on to the main app and provides a new simplified dashboard interface as well as MirrorLink compatibility.

If you are unfamiliar with what Glympse does, it is basically a very user-intuitive location sharing service. It is meant to quickly tell your contacts where you are and when you are arriving all in a very simple manner.

To do so, you just fire up the app, select a contact and a period for active location tracking and simply hit send. The recipient will then receive a link where he or she can track you current whereabouts until the period you specified expires. Read more »

Sources claim that Google is working on iOS support for its Android Wear smartwatch platform, which couldn’t come sooner with the Apple Watch launch.

In the meantime several developers have created their own solutions. Read more »

Xiaomi Mi Pro Action Camera went official just two days ago but it is already in the wishlist of lots of people. The small portable camera, also known in Asia as Xiaomi Yi Action Camera, packs a 16MP Sony Exmor R sensor with F/2.8 aperture and 155-degree wide lens. It is also capable of capturing videos up to 1080@60 fps, 720p@120 fps and 480p@240 fps.

Xiaomi posted quite a few official camera and video samples of the Action Camera and you can now check them out. Read more »

NVIDIA has introduced a new living room entertainment device – SHIELD gaming console at the Game Developers Conference 2015. The SHIELD gaming console boasts of being world’s first Android 4K TV and is powered NVIDIA’s own Tegra X1 mobile chipset. Priced at $199, NVIDIA SHIELD gaming console bundles the SHIELD Controller.

The SHIELD can act as a set-top box and a gaming console in one package – all thanks to the Tegra X1 mobile processor coupled with 256-bit Maxwell GPU and 3 GB RAM. Read more »

Samsung CEO J. K. Shin impressed the audience by stating that engineering is his first language at the on-going Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona, Spain. But the features and improvements of the new Exynos 7 series mobile chipset used in Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge were barely talked about.

While the Exynos 7420 powers both new Galaxy models, the absence of Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 mobile chipset in any of the possible variants actually surprised many. Read more »

Ridesharing company Uber has acquired deCarta, a San Jose-based startup that provides a software platform focusing on location and map services, including in-map search, location APIs, and turn-by-turn navigation. The financial details of the acquisition, which was first reported by Mashable, were not disclosed.

The deal, which will close later this week, will see Uber acquiring the startup’s technology and talent: 30 out of 40 deCarta employees, including its CEO and President Kim Fennell, will remain with the company. The mapping company will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber, although it will still use its own name. Read more »

Last year, when Google announced Android 5.0 Lollipop, one of the key features was full disk encryption that would make it impossible for someone to get data off your device even if they had the device. While this worked in a very specific scenario (it required having a passcode lock on the phone) it was still more secure than before.

Unfortunately, this came with a terrible performance penalty, as noted by AnandTech and Ars Technica in their reports, where the new Nexus 6 with disk encryption was slower than the older Nexus 5 in several tests due to its permanently enabled encryption feature. Read more »