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.

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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Lenovo LaVie Z 360 Review – World’s Lightest Touchscreen Ultrabook

After reviewing the LaVie Z laptop, my biggest complaint was how used to a touchscreen I’ve become on Windows laptops and convertibles. Thankfully there is a touchscreen version, and today we’re going to take a look at Lenovo’s LaVie Z 360!

Shop the LaVie Z 360 on Amazon
LaVie Z Speaker Test
Non-Touchscreen LaVie Z Review

#SGGQA 01: Rugged Smartphones, USB Audio, and SomeGadgetGuy Viewer Comments & Questions!

Fielding over 200 comments a day can be rough, but happily my subscribers ask some great questions and get into some fun discussions. Once a week I’ll be digging up a few comments to chat about live on the air, and now I’m converting them into a weekly podcast. Join us for a casual chat about the top stories in tech!

This week we’re chatting USB Audio on Android, Rugged Smartphones, the Lenovo Yoga 3 for students, and  my collection of gadget speaker tests.

Download This Week’s #SGGQA as an audio podcast.
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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?

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?

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.

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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