Thursday, December 17, 2015
Google spending $1M to make sure Drive doesn't get hacked
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
New Chromecast purchase gives you $20 credit on Google Play Store
As people surmised, Google is putting a little more effort to promote and market their new Chromecasts, especially this Christmas season. We have new video ads that try to tempt you to get one (or two), a pretty good package deal for both the 2nd gen Chromecast and the Chromecast Audio, and now, Google is offering $20 in credit which you can use to buy stuff you can stream using your dongle.
While getting the Chromecast for just $35 is already a nice enough proposition (if you’re thinking of trying this whole casting and streaming thing), Google wants to sweeten the deal by giving everyone who buys a new Chromecast or Chromecast Audio $20 worth of credit on the Google Play Store. This doesn’t sound much, but it will allow you to buy a couple of movies, TV shows, and even apps, which you can then cast onto your bigger screen using the Chromecast.
You can actually use your GPS credit for things that cannot be casted like ebooks, magazines, etc. As long as what you’re buying is found at the Play Store and as long as your credit doesn’t run out, then you’re good to go. So it’s a good bonus for you, especially if you don’t like spending any money on digital purchases.
This $20 credit is on top of another ongoing deal they have, which is paying just $55 to get two Chromecasts (either the same kind or one of each). This will save you %15, plus you get $20 worth of stuff from GPS. The $20 credit for new purchases will run until January 2, 2016.
SOURCE: Google
Monday, December 14, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Friday, November 27, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Doctor asks OEMs to add “bed mode” to devices
You’ve seen articles and studies saying that reading your smartphone or tablet before going to bed is bad for your health. And yet of course, we keep doing it. To add to that, makers of these gadgets keep creating bigger and brighter screens that are only worsening the situation. A doctor who was part of one such study has suggested that OEMs should add a “bed mode” for their devices to help people have better sleeping patterns again.
Professor Paul Gringas was part of a published study that analyzed the light emitted by devices and this was published in Frontiers in Pubic Health. Their conclusion was that these bigger and brighter devices emit more blue light and have higher levels of contrast, which messes with our body clock and keeps us awake until it’s way past our bedtime. Gringas is calling on manufacturers to be more responsible in the devices they create by having an automatic “bedtime mode”.
"There is converging data to say if you are in front of one of these devices at night-time it could prevent you falling asleep by an extra hour,” Gringas told the BBC. And while there are apps already that reduce blue-green light emissions during bedtime, there should be a manufacturer-led option in the smartphone or tablet.
He believes the key is in automating it so that user will have no choice.
But of course it will still be an optional thing, so the challenge would be to get users to turn that automated feature on. Knowing how much we’re attached to our devices, that will probably be a fat chance.
SOURCE: BBC
