Researchers have developed a new virtual reality experience that enables users to see the world the way it may look to a tiny gremlin-like critter called a tarsier. Though the name may not be familiar to many people, some will know the creature by its bug-eyed appearance, and it's those same eyes you can see through yourself if you have an HTC Viveport.
Users can now delete any Telegram message at all, whatsoever, for both themselves and the user. This messaging app and service has been in service since 2013, and just now they've given their users the ability to delete any message they'd like, at any time, for both themselves and the person to whom they've communicated. This is what Telegram calls "complete control."
Google Maps is one of those little things that have changed the world forever. It has taken navigation that was previously only available via subscription to professional services and made it accessible to all. Part of its success, however, was how it practically crowdsourced gather data that would have statically been impossible for Google to do on its own. In line with that, it seems that Google is adding yet another crowdsourcing feature that would allow almost anyone to add an event for everyone else to see.
Personal tracking apps can useful in the right situations; such as remembering visited locations or keeping tabs on loved ones. But this usefulness is dependent on the app keeping users' data safe and secure. Unfortunately for users of Family Locator, a tracking app for iOS aimed at families, it did neither, leaving a large amount of personal data, including real-time locations, exposed for anyone to find.
Apple will be holding its spring press event on Monday, March 25th, but unlike its usual stage presentations the company won't be focusing on new hardware. Instead, last week we saw staggered announcements for new iPads, iMacs, and AirPods. This frees up Monday's event to reveal something else entirely: a new set of digital services for things like news, video, and possibly even games.
The lengths some people will go through to avoid working a 9-5 job are just incredible. What we're seeing here today is a fraudster campaign perpetrated by an unnamed "Company X" discovered fitting itself in-between ad networks and their final target, the everyday average Android smartphone user. They did it by hiding, and they did it by draining your battery while they hid.
It's becoming more and more a gesture-based technological world, be it on large screens but especially on smartphones. As phablets become the norm, the ability to use our phones with one hand becomes increasingly more difficult, even for simple things like going back and forward through browser history. Fortunately, along with ditching the button-based Android navigation panel, Google has thought of giving Chrome on Android some more gesture-based actions, but you have to find them first before you can enable them.
Facebook has pushed out a Messenger update that makes it easier to keep track of the messages each user is responding to. The new ability essentially brings threaded messages to the chatting app, which in this case means replies that quote and respond directly to a previous message. These direct replies support GIFs, emoji, images, and other media in addition to text.
While it remains mostly unchallenged in the US, Google has been facing tough opposition in Europe. It has fought and lost not a few legal battles with the European Commission, forcing it to change many of its practices and business strategies just for that region. Those changes aren't done yet and the latest might be more of a nuisance rather than an inconvenience. Without going into much detail, Google says that Android users in Europe will be asked which browse and search app they'd like to use, even if the majority of them will probably answer "Google" anyway.
Inbox is going away. The folks at Google responsible for Inbox by Gmail are likely just as bummed about their work's fate as those that made Google Plus. That's the social network Google made, and the Gmail suite of services - a new interface for the email service - that's proved itself less-than-necessary. Google started notifying users via Gmail and Inbox (inside of which there is Gmail) that Inbox is going away on April 2nd.
Google Tasks isn't new. It has been around for as long as Google Calendar was. Until recently, however, it was mostly an obscure feature available only on the Web version of the app. Google has recently given it a makeover and its very own mobile app but it has mostly remained as a simple checklist. Now it's adding yet another critical and long-overdue feature, allows users to set a starting time for a task as well as repeated occurrences.
A study done by independent security software test group AV-Comparatives showed how few mobile malware scanners actually worked. This group was founded around the turn of the millennium as a student project, and continues to this day in its quest to test the testers - judging and grading security applications of all sorts. The good news is that not many of the apps on the Google Play app store are malicious - the bad news is that the majority of "security apps" available to Android can't detect more than 30% of common Android malware samples.