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Where's Waldo, you ask? Somewhere inside Google Maps, apparently.
English artist Martin Handford's creation is living in Google Maps for the next week, as part of Google's annual April Fool's Day celebration. You can check it out now in your browser or on Android/iOS devices.
All you have to do to play is open Google Maps and tap or click on the little Waldo graphic that appears on the edge of your screen. You'll then be taken to another section of the map and prompted to start the game.
Clicking the button opens up one of Handford's classic illustrations, containing not only Waldo but also his friends: Wenda, Woof, Wizard Whitebeard, and Odlaw, the evil mirrorverse Waldo. Once you spot and tap/click Waldo, you're able to move along to the next "level" or keep looking for his pals. Read more...
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Tesla has confirmed that yes, Autopilot was active when a Model X was the at the center of a fatal crash last week.
A new post filed to the auto maker's blog on Friday confirmed this key detail. The March 23 crash, which occurred when the Model X struck a highway barrier, left the driver dead.
SEE ALSO: Tesla recalls 123,000 Model S vehicles
"In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum," Tesla's blog post reads.
The driver's hands were not detected on the wheel during the six seconds prior to the crash, though the vehicle had issued one audio "hands-on" warning and multiple dashboard warnings earlier in the drive. Read more...
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It didn't take long for Instagram Stories to take off.
Instagram's hottest new feature has become exponentially popular since its inception in August 2016, much to the detriment of competitors like Snapchat. In August, the company said that Stories have driven users younger than 25 to use the app upwards of 32 minutes a day on average. In September, the app as a whole announced it had 800 million monthly active users, 500 million of those who return each day. In comparison, Snapchat boasted 173 million daily active users as of August.
Not only that, but ever since Instagram launched the feature, it's been continuously building on top of it, adding incredibly popular features like Boomerang and Superzoom. Read more...
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Huawei has finally done it. With the MateBook X Pro company has created a laptop that's a shameless copy of Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro, but that's easy to forgive because it's just so damn good. It's better than the original in numerous ways, and lags behind only when it comes to certain details.
I've spent roughly 10 days with the MateBook X Pro, mostly using it as my main work machine, and this is the first time in ages that I seriously considered permanently moving back into the realm of Windows laptops.
I'm not taking the easy route when comparing Huawei's new laptop with the 13-inch MacBook Pro (which happens to be my primary work laptop). Besides the similarities in the name and the fact that Huawei itself constantly compared the two during the device's launch in Barcelona, it's just very obvious that Huawei had one goal in mind: Build a device that's exactly like Apple's pro-grade laptop, only better. Read more...
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I held out for as long as I could.
I transferred music files to flash drives, deleted massive photo files, and purged outdated email newsletters clogging my storage. Every email from Groupon went into the trash and was permanently deleted. No more chances to go back and "soak up savings." I was on top of it. The trash button became my friend; archiving the enemy. This is what using Google's free email service in 2018 looked like for me.
But I couldn't win — a red banner above my Gmail inbox threatened to cut off my inbound emails and I was tired of constantly deleting everything. The whole point of my personal email was to have a record of everything. I might have a newsletter addiction, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to use my email archive. Read more...
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One of life's greatest joys is turning on the "Out of Office" feature for your work email. Peace out, coworkers!
But before you pack those bags to escape, you'll want to pick up these travel essentials to make your trip a bit easier. You'll have plenty of time to stress out once you're back. It'll be Monday again soon enough.
Wouldn't it be nice to engage in meaningful conversations with locals in foreign countries rather than just pointing at things? With uTalk Language Education, you can pick up a new language at your own pace, on your own time, and on any device. Choose six of over 130 languages, and the app will yield real, practical vocabulary that you can use in a variety of human situations. Unlike other language courses, uTalk lets you learn from native voice artists who actually know their stuff. It even lets you track your progress through a slew of speaking games. Read more...
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My iPhone isn't even two years old, and it's already dying.
That's the upshot of Apple's new "Battery Health" feature, introduced in iOS 11.3 Thursday. Though the device assures me it's operating at "peak performance," it also indicates that the battery can only hold 93 percent of the charge it once did.
So it goes. Every battery degrades over time, and there's not a lot Apple can do about that. In fact, this new feature is a step in the right direction: it's a sort of mea culpa after the tech giant was caught slowing down old devices without user consent, supposedly to combat unexpected shutdowns. The more information users have to counteract — or at least anticipate — the negative effects of iPhone aging, the better. Read more...
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It ain't an iPhone, but a new Android Go device will get you online for $80.
The ZTE Tempo Go phone just launched in the United States, delivering a pared down version of Google's mobile operating system at a low price. It has a 5-inch screen, some pretty weak cameras, and — yes! — a headphone jack.
Let's also reiterate: It costs $80.
Of course, the phone isn't meant to be powerful. It runs Oreo Go, a version of Android for "entry-level" phones. And Google does mean entry-level. Inexpensive Android Go devices are intended to help the absurdly powerful tech corporation make inroads in growing markets like India, where just over 22 percent of the population used smartphones last year compared to 69 percent in the United States, according to one analysis. (Note that surveys from Pew indicate that 77 percent of Americans now own smartphones; there's a bit of wiggle room to these statistics.) Read more...
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It's been a bad month in crypto-city.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is trading at $7,076 — a 7% decrease in the last 24 hours and a 34.6% decrease on a monthly basis. The second largest coin, Ethereum, is being absolutely pummeled, having dropped 5% to $398 in the last 24 hours, and losing more than half of its value (55.1%) since March 1. And none of the other major cryptocurrencies fared much better.
A part of this price drop can be explained by an onslaught of bad news, mostly having to do with increased regulatory scrutiny of ICOs (initial coin offerings) and cryptocurrency trading in most of the world's markets. The fact that Facebook, Google and Twitter all banned cryptocurrency-related ads on their platforms didn't help. Other recent news, including a rumor of a new mining chip being built for Ethereum (which could make it more centralized) as well as an important, bearish technical indicator called the "death cross" happening on Bitcoin's charts, have certainly contributed. Read more...
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There are only three things you need to know about Apple's new 9.7-inch iPad:
Of the three, Apple Pencil support is the most noteworthy, and it's not hard to see why
Previously, if you wanted to draw or handwrite digital notes with the precision of Apple Pencil, you needed to fork over at least $650 for the 10.5-inch iPad Pro and shell out another $100 for the stylus.
Now, $430 gets you both a powerful iPad and Apple Pencil. Compared to the $500 Apple used to charge for just an entry-level 9.7-inch iPad alone, it's pretty clear the combo is a hell of a value. Read more...
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Another day, another crisis for the social network.
Facebook employees are reportedly up in arms over a BuzzFeed report detailing a leaked "growth at any cost" memo from Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, a vice president at the social network, that was originally published in 2016. Comments from Facebook employees published by the Verge late Thursday suggest a growing sense of frustration and paranoia within the company, particularly in regards to leaked information.
"Thinking adversarially, if I wanted info from Facebook, the easiest path would be to get people hired into low-level employee or contract roles," one employee posted, according to the site's report. Read more...
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Snapchat just added an Easter-themed surprise to Snap Maps.
The company's adding a Pokémon Go-style augmented reality Easter egg hunt game to its app for the upcoming holiday.
Starting Friday, Snapchat users can hunt for augmented reality eggs using Snap Maps and compete with their friends for points. The concept is similar to Pokémon Go and other AR games in that Snapchat users will have to physically travel to different locations in order to retrieve the in-game eggs.
You'll get points for the eggs you find and you can compete with friends for the top score (your points will only be visible to friends who can see you in Snap Maps already). The game will be live through the Easter weekend in the U.S and Canada. Read more...
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A federal appeals court delivered a huge legal blow to Google on Tuesday, but developers are the ones who could end up paying the price.
Google and Oracle have been fighting a war in court since 2012 about whether Google stole Oracle's intellectual property when it adopted Java naming protocols for Android app developers. And after much back and forth, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in Oracle's favor.
The case, however, is more than a battle of technology titans. The most recent ruling overturns decades of precedent about the spirit of innovation that up to this point has governed computer science: an environment in which developers build upon and improve others' work, and write compatible programs designed to adapt to multiple ecosystems and the latest technology. In short, developers could be afraid to innovate because of a ruling by a judge in a court that doesn't usually rule on consumer technology copyright law. Read more...
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Let's be real here for a second. You only clicked on this page because you want the new Samsung Galaxy S9+. We can't blame you, Samsung really pulled all the stops with this bad boy.
Although there isn't much of an upgrade on the design front, almost everything else is brand spanking new — from the enhanced camera and all-improved stereo speakers to the faster chip and new operating system. As Mashable's Raymond Wong put it, "at long last, Samsung gets it exactly right."
The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ boast a slew of features that just might put the iPhone to shame. It has upgraded speakers that are 1.4x louder than its predecessor, a 12-megapixel back camera with not one, but *two* apertures, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with a nifty Selfie Focus feature, and a smarter Bixby assistantBixby Vision can recognize food and inform you of its calorie content, plus it can also serve as a mini tour guide with its ability to identify places and tell you more about them. Oh, and the S9 still has a headphone jack, which counts for something. It also doesn't have any annoying screen notches. Read more...
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"Technology is exposing us, not changing us.”
Gary Vaynerchuk is on a mission to spread his can-do message through his use of digital media. The entrepreneur, who's CEO and co-founder of the digital agency Vayner Media, has something of a cult following online and IRL. Millions tune into his Instagram stories daily to learn from his positive and no-nonsense approach to life and success. This is the place where Gary Vee (as he's known) has plenty to say about personal responsibility and not blaming others when things go wrong.
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Gary Vaynerchuk and his agency Vayner Media are already known for dominating and owning social media. But now they're turning their attentions to Voice AI. We caught up with Gary to talk about the massive opportunities and challenges that a future of talking to machines presents. Here's the conversation in full:
Can we establish your views on how revolutionary Voice AI is and is going to be in our day to day lives
It’s going to be one of the core pillars of our interaction. I would say in a decade it’s going to rival the cell phone as we know it today. Ultimately because of how much time we spend the cell phone will continue to be the primary, but I genuinely believe that voice AI enabled devices and infrastructure is going to become as crucial as the cell phone in the way we interact with technology. Read more...
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Before you know it, the bitter winds will be drifting away and you'll be trying to buy an air conditioner off Craigslist. But as we say goodbye to winter, we must also say goodbye to some of the best deals from everyone's favorite neighborhood Mashable Shop.
These discounted learning bundles, top-rated earphones, and travel essentials won't be available come April 1st. Seriously. Gone forever. That gives you exactly two days to take advantage of these items — and you can even take an additional 10% when you enter the code MADMARCH10 at checkout. Happy shopping, people! Read more...
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