Category: Articles

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Waze Unveils Ride Sharing Service “RideWith” in Limited BETA

Fullscreen capture 762015 10536 PMServices like Lyft and Uber have been disrupting the market for traditional taxi and town car service in a number of cities, thanks to lower prices and timely notifications through apps.

Today Waze took the wraps off of their solution for ride sharing named “RideWith”.  Focused on reducing business commuter traffic, RideWith seeks to pair up drivers and riders who are already traveling in the same direction at the same times. It’s a 21st century version of the bulletin board a company might use for coordinating an employee carpool.

This is not a spur of the moment service, as Waze recommends passengers book a trip at least a day in advance, and the app will help calculate and pay drivers for fuel costs per ride. As Google now owns Waze, it’s no surprise that the service is launching first on Android, with iOS “coming soon”.

If you were hoping to try this out, you might have a bit of a wait. RideWith is currently in very limited BETA, only servicing Israel at the time this article was posted. You can pull up more info and an FAQ by heading to the RideWith website.

Is this the solution for alleviating traffic congestion during rush hour? Leave a comment below.

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Microsoft Rebrands ‘XBox Music’, Now ‘Groove Music’

microsoft groove musicGoogle and Apple recently made some noise about their streaming radio offerings, and now it’s Microsoft’s turn. While their core XBox Music Pass service wont be changing radically, it will be getting a Windows 10 face lift, with some more intuitive controls, better integration with OneDrive for storing your music collection in the cloud, and eventually an updated app will be released for iOS and Android devices.

Plus it’ll get a new name, moving forward as “Groove”. You can catch the full details and pricing below, or sign up now by installing the Windows 10 Insider Preview.

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Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure Has Twitter Melt Down, Calls Out T-Mobile CEO John Legere Publicly

Oof. Even if you’re right, calling out someone publicly might not be the best way to win hearts and minds.

We’ve covered the war of words often fought between fourth place carrier Sprint and third place carrier T-Mobile. Usually reserved for press releases, those digs can be a fun way to shake up otherwise dry industry news. It’s rare though that the public face of a company takes the gloves off on a platform like Twitter.

Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure, after responding to a somewhat snotty question about T-Mobile’s yearly phone upgrades, decided he needed to call out Lil Magenta’s CEO directly over what he considers to be a deceptive pricing scheme.

sprint ceo twitter meltdownIt is super frustrating when there’s a market perception of a product or service which isn’t quite, though we don’t often see figures like these lose their cool. T-Mobile set the standard for making headlines by calling out Verizon and AT&T. Could this be a new era of tough talk for Sprint?

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Youtube Rolling Out 60 FPS Playback on Android & iOS Apps

Smoother streaming video is coming to phones and tablets near you!

We’ve had 60 frame per second video on the desktop version of Youtube for some time now, and this improvement is finally making its way to mobile devices through the Youtube app. High frame rate video looks almost unnaturally smooth and fluid, and we’ve been producing most of our reviews on this channel in 60FPS for the last year. It’s a great way to show off gadgets.

We can expect that this move is also coming in advance of Youtube Gaming, where having a 60fps stream is very beneficial for showing off in game footage.

Now while watching on a mobile device, hit your menu, go to your quality settings, and you should see options for 720p60 and 1080p60. Hit one of those and feed your eyeballs some prettier video. If you’re not sure which video to check out first, might we recommend our new review of the Galaxy S6 Active?

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Youtube Teases Ten New Tools for Creators Coming Soon

youtube creator featuresYoutube is detailing some new features and optimizations coming to their video streaming service, focused on improving the experience for creators. Google has been aggressively experimenting with the platform adding 360 degree video, improving comment ranking, and recently announcing a game streaming app to compete with Twitch.

Even for folks who only watch Youtube videos, detailing these changes and improvements now will give people a glimpse on how they’ll be able to keep up with their favorite producers.

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Sprint Removes Video Streaming Limit on ALL IN Unlimited Plans

sprintlogo491_hero_lowThe times they are a changing.

We’ve gone years with “Unlimited” plans which have restrictions on data usage or speed throttling based. In light of recent concerns facing AT&T and T-Mobile unlimited plans, Sprint reacted quickly to customer complaints regarding their new All In plan, which offers unlimited talk, text, and web for $80 a month.

The issue? A video streaming throttle of 600Kbps. With more consumers streaming high quality video, watching Youtube and Netflix, or broadcasting with apps like Periscope, it makes sense why the nation’s fourth place carrier would want to put some limit on the bandwidth people might use. However, we’re all a bit more sensitive about what the word “unlimited” means. We’ll have to see how Sprint might manage potential network congestion issues moving forward…

You can read Sprint’s brief press release below.

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Please Don’t Do This – Conspiracy Nut Tears Out NFC Antenna on Samsung Phone

nfc radio antenna samsung batteryWe’re all a little on edge about what our phones can do, how they store our information, and how other people might be able to access things like our location. It’s easy to get a little freaked out by technology you don’t understand.

Case in point, Nick Browne posted this video on Facebook, as he was concerned about something strange attached to the battery of his Samsung phone. (Language in video might be a bit NSFW)


Remember, every time you shoot video in portrait, God kills an orphan girl’s kitten…

That is a strange looking antenna to be found on a battery, but what Nick has torn off here is his NFC antenna. That’s the radio you can use for things like “tap and share” or “tap and pay”. It’s kind of odd that Samsung builds it into the battery, but it likely discourages folks from buying third party batteries that don’t include the antenna as it’ll disable the NFC function on their phones.

And let’s be honest here, while Nick seems to have some issues with race relations, if someone really wants to hack your phone, and steal your photos, they certainly don’t need to install an antenna on your battery to do it.

It does look a little strange, but we can learn from Nick here not to freak out and start tearing pieces off of our gadgets if they’re things we don’t understand. Thankfully for Nick, to restore NFC on his Samsung, all he needs to do is buy a new battery, and NOT tear off the label again…

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Apple Responds to Taylor Swift, Will Pay Artists During Free Music Streaming Promotion

taylor swiftIn a Tumblr post over the weekend, Taylor Swift voiced her disapproval of Apple’s streaming music promotion. It’s a great deal for consumers, as they will receive three free months of Apple Music, Cupertino’s competitor to services like Google Play All Access and Spotify. However, the tech giant initially refused to pay out royalties to artists on the streams played during that free promo.

Apple wanted to make their new service popular on the backs of musicians, with a service which will likely cut into album sales, and for the privilege of “Apple Music Exposure” and lower album sales, they weren’t going to pay musicians a dime.

In response to this policy Swift wrote:

This is not about me. Thankfully I am on my fifth album and can support myself, my band, crew, and entire management team by playing live shows. This is about the new artist or band that has just released their first single and will not be paid for its success. This is about the young songwriter who just got his or her first cut and thought that the royalties from that would get them out of debt. This is about the producer who works tirelessly to innovate and create, just like the innovators and creators at Apple are pioneering in their field…but will not get paid for a quarter of a year’s worth of plays on his or her songs.

Thankfully she’s high enough profile, that this blog post made a lot of noise. This morning Apple Vice President of Internet Software and Services Eddie Cue posted this on Twitter:

It was the right play on Apple’s part as they’re way late to the streaming music game, and we’ve seen how other newcomers like Tidal have fared when hit with bad press. As they’re currently sitting on a war chest of over a hundred billion dollars, there never should have been any debate as to whether they would pay artists the pittance they receive for streams. Happily they’re on the correct track now.

I can honestly say I never thought I would ever side with Taylor Swift on a technology debate, but I’m sure many artists today are happy for her involvement.

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