Apple May Be Killing iPhoto, But It Sounds Like The New Photo App Will Be A Lot More Powerful

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-will-upgrade-photos-for-os-x-2014-7

Last week, Apple announced it would halt development on two of the company’s signature photography applications, Aperture and iPhoto, instead shifting its focus to the new Photos app introduced at WWDC last month.

For those worried the Photos app might not be robust enough to handle the needs of professional users, Ars Technica’s Sam Machkovech learned from an Apple representative that the new Photos app will include “professional-grade features such as image search, editing, effects, and most notably, third-party extensibility.”

Here’s the full statement from Apple:

With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture. When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X.

You read that correctly: Though Photos may eventually introduce some great features for professional and casual photographers alike, Photos for the Mac won’t be available when OS X Yosemite ships this fall. It will instead release at some point in 2015.

However, the inclusion of third-party extensibility in the new Photos app will be a nice touch. 

For those uninitiated, Apple introduced “extensibility,” or app extensions, at its WWDC keynote last month, which is Apple’s way of letting applications talk to each other and even project software elements into other ! apps whi le still maintaining a highly secure environment. 

In the case of Photos, this means app developers will soon be able to build sharing options within the Photos app to link to their own applications. For example, this could let users apply photo-filters from third party apps that aren’t available in the new Photos app.

The new Photos app will offer plenty of tools to keep your photos looking beautiful and organized, and it’s all tied together with a search engine that lets you explore your photos based on the date or time the photo was taken, its location, or by albums or favorites. You can also drag and drop your photos to customize the order in which they’re displayed, and all of your changes will immediately auto-sync across all your devices.

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Google snatches up streaming service Songza

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/01/google-buys-songza/

Google has just purchased music streaming service Songza and, while the exact terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed, it reportedly involves what financial experts refer to as "a boat load of money." Apple boosted its streaming music presence by picking up Beats. So it only makes sense that Google would have to fire back with an acquisition of its own. Like Beats, Songza relies pretty heavily on actual human curation to build playlists. The newest member of the Mountain View family uses contextual data about you to decide the best playlist for you at any given time. These lists are put together by DJs, musicians and music critics rather than some algorithm that looks at meta data like genre or BPM. These lists can get you pumped for a work out or just get you through a slow work day, but what they're not is a Pandora style infinite radio station.

For now, the service will continue as normal, but expect to see it curated lists and powerful data stores brought to bear on Play Music and YouTube. See, Songza knows not just what people listen to, but when they listen to it, what the weather is like and where they are. Imagine this coming together with the rest of Google's contextually-driven services. You could wake up one morning and Google Now will have already selected a playlist for you from All Access. Seeing as how it was a rainy Monday morning and you had along commute ahead of you, Google decided a set of tunes hand picked by Morrissey would perfectly match your mood.

Filed under: Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: Google, Songza

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drag2share: Swatch's robot-made wristwear offers classic Swiss time at a tiny price

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/01/swatch-sistem51/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

For many watch lovers, Swiss mechanical movement is the gold standard. However, it's also staggeringly expensive -- it's all too common to spend several hundred (if not several thousand) dollars just to see "Genève" on your wrist. That's what makes the US launch of Swatch's Sistem51 so special. While the watch still behaves like a conventional Swiss automatic with visible mechanisms, it's built using a fully robotic process that gets rid of the elaborate hand-crafting that drives up the price. As a result, you'll only pay $150 for the privilege, or about as much as an ordinary quartz timekeeper.

The Sistem51's transparent, brightly-hued look isn't for everyone; you probably wont wear it to a high-brow social function. However, it does have a few technical advantages over some pricier watches. There's a 90-hour power reserve to keep it ticking when idle, and the sealed body should keep out the dust or moisture that could lead to a costly repair. Just be ready to make a pilgrimage if you want one as soon as possible. The Sistem51 is only available at Swatch's Times Square store in New York as we write this, and the West coast will have to sit tight until the July 8th launch in San Francisco. It may take considerably more time to reach other parts of the country. If you've already been waiting ages to brag about owning a watch with Swiss mechanicals, though, it won't hurt to hold out for a little while longer.

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drag2share - drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

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drag2share: Google's trippy Cube experiment lets you play DJ with six videos at once

source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/02/googles-cube-experiment-presets/?utm_source=Feed_Classic_Full&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Engadget&?ncid=rss_full

If you're bored with regular music videos, there's now something a little more interactive from Google called The Cube. It sprang from the Creative Labs division, which has done similar experiments in the past. As shown in the embed below, you can manipulate the box by grabbing it with a mouse or finger and revealing different videos on each face, along with different parts of the music mix. As you move between several bizarre scenarios -- like a psychedelic face and a woman on the phone in a bath -- the music also mixes in rhythmic sync. Google cooked up the idea at a conference earlier, and hopes to demo more projects on it in the future. It works on a computer or recent Android handset with the latest version of Chrome. After trying it ourselves on a Nexus 5 with Chromecast, we'd recommend sitting down first, though.

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drag2share - drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)

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Yahoo's New App Is About To Make Your Android Phone A Whole Better

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/android-launcher-review-2014-7

In early 2014, Marissa Mayer declared that she would usher a "mobile first" mindset into Yahoo.

That influence has made itself present through Yahoo's recent acquisitions and the apps it's released over the past few months — including Aviate. 

Yahoo's Aviate launcher for Android, which the company acquired in January for an undisclosed price, just officially exited the beta phase days ago. This means it's in the Google Play Store and ready for full-time use. 

A launcher is an app for Android phones that replaces your phone's lock screen — or the hub from which you launch apps.

Aviate is a slick Android launcher that seeks to not only add additional features to your home screen, but also provide contextually aware information.

Aviate claims that it will cater certain information depending on the time of day and where you are. After spending some time with Yahoo's new launcher, here are some first impressions I came away with.

What It Does

Like most Android launches, Aviate is focused on presenting your favorite apps and content in a more accessible and cleaner package.

When you set up Aviate, you'll be asked to select the apps you use the most as well as your favorite app categories.

This tells Aviate which apps to include at the bottom of your new home screen and how to organize your other apps.

The home screen itself looks clean, tight, and organized. By default, Android offers up a ton of different home screens for storing your favorite widgets and apps.

Aviate eliminates the need for excessive home screens, and presents similar information in a menu-based format that I find to be more neat and efficient. 

The look and feel of Aviate maintains the flat yet colorful design language we've seen in other apps from Yahoo, such as Yahoo Weather and Yahoo News Digest.  

It's a nice change from the cluttered user interface you'll find on certain Android phones.

How It Works

Aviate displays a ton of information, but neatly tucks most of it away behind menus that can be accessed with a quick swipe.

The standard Aviate home screen displays the time stamp at the top sandwiched in between an icon that looks like a rising sun and an app menu icon. That rising sun icon is the symbol for Aviate's Today space, which I'll explain in further detail below. 

A photo of your choosing takes up most of the screen, and the apps you use most frequently are listed in rows at the bottom.

Remember those app categories you chose earlier?

Swiping to the left reveals what Aviate calls Collections, which sorts apps into the genres you chose during the setup process.

If you want to view all of your apps, tapping the app grid icon will break them down in alphabetical order. It looks more like the app menu in Windows Phone than Android.

Swiping to the right presents daily information that Aviate thinks is relevant to you.

By default, the Today tab is shown when you swipe to the right, but you can change this by tapping the menu icon. Aviate calls these "spaces."

The Today space, for example, includes options like setting your phone to "Do Not Disturb," setting an alarm, or finding directions to work. The Listening space provides a music players and lists all of your music apps. Most spaces access your calendar to pull up events happening throughout the day too. 

You can also add widgets to any of these spaces to further customize the information displayed. 

Aviate uses these spaces to display contextually relevant information throughout the day. 

Conclusion

Aviate is an attractive yet simple home screen replacement for Android phones. It's ideal for those who want a less cluttered interface but are still seeking the same access to widgets and apps you'd get from multiple home screens. Like Yahoo's other apps, the interface is simple, clean, and colorful. 

SEE ALSO: The Most Important New Features Coming To Your Android Phone That Google Didn't Tell You About

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