Google provides help with more health conditions than ever before
Turning to the internet for medical advice is something of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides access to a wealth of information previously only available to medical students, making it easy to look up symptoms and see what they might mean. On the other, hypochondriacs can very easy self-diagnose every condition under the sun.
But there's no denying that it can certainly be helpful to be able to find out a little more about different conditions from the comfort of your phone or computer. Today Google announces a swathe of updates that it hopes will help people to be better informed in terms of understanding symptoms and treatments, and conveying what they are experiencing to a doctor.
You're probably about to notice a lot more ads in Gmail
On the same day that Google unveiled its new logo, the company also slipped out some other news that didn't get quite as much attention. Considering the news means that Gmail users are likely to be inundated with more ads than ever before, it's hardly surprising that Google wasn't shouting from the rooftops, but that's what's happening.
Native Gmail ads are now rolling out to AdWords users, giving companies a new way to gain a presence in potential customers' inboxes. This is not spam. This is not a new way to start an email-based ad campaign. It's actual AdWord-triggered ads at the top of inboxes.
How mobile can improve capture and analysis of retail sales data [Q&A]
Modern organizations collect large amounts of data across multiple platforms, but they can find it hard to extract useful, actionable insights from the raw information.
San Francisco-based Zenput provides real-time data capture and analysis to retail, restaurant and consumer goods companies to help them centralize operations and support more informed decision-making. How much difference can this technology make to businesses? We talked to Zenput CEO Vladik Rikhter to find out.
Apple's iPhones and iPads will work better with Cisco enterprise networks
Apple and Cisco have, through a joint statement, announced a partnership which will see Apple’s apps and devices become more productive in enterprise networks.
The goal of the partnership is to optimize Cisco’s networks for iOS devices and apps and integrate the iPhone with Cisco enterprise environments. That will create a "fast lane" for iOS business users, Apple has said in a press release.
PayPal.Me lets you receive online payments through a custom URL
PayPal has long been a quick and easy way to send and receive money online; with the launch of PayPal.Me, things just got even simpler. This is a new platform which provides PayPal customers with their own personalized URL (such as paypal.me/markwilson) as an alternative to sending out invoices. PayPal is pushing this as a way to call in your debts, but it's far more versatile than that.
The next time someone needs to send you money, you can simply direct them to your page -- or you can include the link on social networks, your website, in emails, via SMS, and so on. Any payments that are made in this way are covered by the same PayPal Buyer Protection policies as before. Anyone visiting your PayPal.Me page is able to choose the amount of money they want to send you, but you can also customize the URL you share to make a request for a specific amount.
The common user experience mistakes on mobile
Since the infamous mobilegeddon -- the latest update from Google that means websites are now penalized for failing to be mobile friendly -- many businesses have been rushing to improve the experience of their mobile website for their users, and avoid being penalized in SERPS (search engine results page).
With a lot of information out there about all of the things you can be doing to make a user’s journey better, what about the things that you really should be avoiding? Below are the top five things NOT to do when it comes to UX on mobile:
Why mobile matters for online shoppers
There are currently an estimated 1.91 billion smartphone users worldwide, and 82 percent of them use their mobile devices to shop. As consumers are five times more likely to abandon shopping if the site isn’t optimized this means embracing mobile is crucial for businesses.
Online shopping portal DirectBuy has produced an infographic looking at how the world is moving towards a mobile shopping environment.
How to: Enable OK Google on the LG G4
The LG G4 is making quite a splash and being advertised seemingly everywhere. There's good reason for that as I previously explained in my review. Overall it's a nice phone, but there are a few things you need to know before getting underway with it.
One is that OK Google is not enabled by default, you'll need to do so yourself. It isn't intuitive, either. But the good news is that it isn't hard once you know how to do it. Here are some simple steps to get you going.
TeleSign and Telefόnica team up to cut mobile fraud
Mobile identity specialist TeleSign has announced an agreement with Spanish telecoms giant Telefόnica -- the company behind O2 in the UK and Germany -- to deliver a suite of services to address account security and fraud prevention for enterprises and service providers.
The partnership will use TeleSign's products and infrastructure, along with Telefόnica's consent-based insights, to increase account security, reduce fraud, and improve customer experience for consumers. At the same time it will help to manage costs for service providers across financial services, e-commerce, cloud and social media.
LG Rolly Keyboard is a folding keyboard for your tablet or smartphone
However much on-screen keyboards improve, they're no replacement for a good, old-fashioned keyboard. Traveling with a tablet, it might not be convenient to lug about a full-sized wireless keyboard but LG thinks its Rolly Keyboard could be the answer.
As the name suggests, this is a portable keyboard that 'rolls' up for easier transportation -- well, it rolls up into a square stick rather than a round roll, but you get the idea. Also known as the KBB-700, the Rolly Keyboard features almost full-sized keys, and can be paired with two devices via Bluetooth.
Some people are fine with using a phone in church, but not walking down the street
The thing with a mobile phone is, thanks to the fact it is mobile, it can be used -- just about - anywhere. But just because something is possible, it doesn’t mean that it should be done. PewResearch conducted a survey into phone etiquette, and the findings show that people are somewhat divided about where and when it is OK to use a phone.
Some of the results are not exactly surprising. A huge majority of those questioned were not cool with the idea of using a phone in a movie theater or during a meeting (95 and 94 percent respectively). But there are also some interesting quirks in attitudes to mobiles -- 4 percent of people, for instance, see no problem with using a cellphone in the middle of a church service.
Samsung is giving away paid apps and magazine subscriptions with Note 5 and S6 Edge+
The retail price of the Galaxy Note 5 starts at around $740 (off-contract) and $250 (2-year contract). Similarly, the Samsung Galaxy Edge+ will set you back by at least $820 (sans contract) and $300 (2-year contract). If that seems like a lot of money to you for the said devices, Samsung is offering an interesting set of goodies -- called Galaxy Gifts -- to offset the otherwise a bit pricey label.
The company is giving away a package of premium apps and subscriptions consisting of paid games including Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Driver Speedboat Paradise, PES Club Manager, and Empire: Four Kingdoms. You also get paid apps like Art Rage, Komoot, and Sketch Book for no extra charge. Worth pointing out that some of these are already free via the Play Store, and the company is taking care of in-app purchases, in such cases.
Opera Max can now compress Netflix and YouTube videos, lowering data consumption
Video streaming is one of the quickest ways to max out a data plan. This is especially true for high-definition videos, which are the commonplace on websites like Netflix and YouTube and, understandably, the obvious quality choice for many mobile viewers. Since not everyone can afford or have the option to use an unlimited data plan, we often have to sacrifice how much content we watch to not pass the traffic limit.
However, an update to Opera Max for Android promises to let us watch more videos without sacrificing much in terms of quality. The app can achieve such results through compression, and the feature is now enabled for Netflix and YouTube.
How connectivity affects hardware design [Infographic]
Connectivity has changed dramatically over the last 30 years or so, as devices have become smaller and more powerful and we as a species have become more mobile.
To chart this change, Bluepost Digital has created an infographic of the devices we used to know and love, starting all the way back in the 1980s. At this time, Floppy Disks were used to store files, computer screens were introduced by IBM and an external CD ROM drive cost around $1,000 (£6420.
Half of all Internet users are on Facebook
Approximately half of the world’s online population accesses Facebook on a monthly basis, the social media giant has reported.
By the end of Q2 2015, 1.49 billion people accessed the website at least once in a month, up 13 percent from the same period last year and representing half of the estimated global online population of 3 billion, Facebook said.
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