Apple Music launches on June 30th 2015, a streaming music service entering an already crowded market. Can Apple make use of its huge iTunes user base and become a success?

We expect Apple Music to be a good listening experience, as Beats Music on which it is based already is. It's pricing and features puts it on a par with existing streaming services, and Apple is clearly pushing expert and artist curation as its unique selling point

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Many artists already connect with fans via social media: Facebook pages, Twitter and Tumblr. Will these artists be willing to do the same in Apple Music? This will hinge on whether Apple really does let artists connect in an unfiltered and unedited way, but this seems a little unlikely, as Apple always aims to be a family friendly place. Browse artist's Tumblr accounts for a few minutes and you'll quickly find things that are at the very least not safe for work!

Another reason to be a little skeptical is the description of Connect: artist profile pages, with feeds of content they have shared. The first thing that popped into my head was 'MySpace', which tried the same artist curation trick when it was relaunched in 2013, a relaunch that was not a big success. In 2010 Apple launched Ping for iTunes, which was an attempt to combine social networking and recommendations, allowing you to follow artists. It was closed two years later, having failed to ignite users' interest.

Spotify seems to have the social part right - having a community of your friends in the service works really well. You can see what friends listen to, share and collaborate on playlists. While Apple Music aims to get you closer to artists, Spotify is a personal and social experience.

I am sure Apple Music will be popular, if nothing else because 800 million people already have iTunes accounts, and signing up will be extremely convenient for all of them. But I can't see it immediately stealing from Spotify, which many people already love, and have established connections and ties.

We like to think about winners and losers, but the reality is that there is space for more than one streaming music service, and Apple Music looks poised to be a major player. It can exist without beating Spotify, as Spotify can continue to exist even if Apple Music builds a bigger user base.

 

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First up, for music fans, we have UpNext. This extension helps you to find any song you want from either SoundCloud or YouTube’s vast catalogs, and plays them in the background while you work. With a good range of search filters – including what is popular on Reddit – hunting down the track you want should be simple.

Now if you are reading this among dozens of open tabs, have you considered that they are all quietly consuming resources and slowing down your machine? Well, they are – and The Great Suspend is here to help. This little tool will completely pause any inactive tabs, preventing them from placing strain on your system's resources while you work.

If opening a new Chrome tab feels a little mundane then you need Momentum - the extension that fills empty tabs with a plethora of information, from inspirational messages to the current weather. The only problem is you can add so much stuff that, by the time you are done reading it, you might have forgotten the reason you opened the tab.

For everyone tired of filling in online forms, user names, and passwords, the extension you need Dashlane (Windows|Mac) – a password manager that automatically fills in forms and logs you into services. Just install it, enter all of your information, and Dashline completely automates this dull process.

Finally, for everyone who likes to use all of the web’s worldwide fun, there is the Google Translate (iOS|Android) extension. All you have to do is let it know your native language then, whenever you select a foreign word, it will automatically display its translation.

There are 1000s more extensions for Chrome, but these are the five we think are best - if you disagree let us know in the comments. We will be back in seven days with the top five Windows 10 exclusive apps. See you then.

 

 

Don’t cross the streams was the famous line from the movie Ghostbusters. But that’s exactly what Urban Airship is trying to help marketers do.

In September of this year the Portland Oregon based company introduced what it called Urban Airship Connect, which seeks to enable in-app user data to be distributed to any tool or system (e.g., CRM) in an organization. The idea is to take mobile data and in-app user interactions and make them available across channels. That enables mobile data to be used to optimize marketing or retargeting campaigns in, for example, email or social media.

 

Connect offers “one click integration” with a wide range of existing “business systems,” including Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and Amazon Web Services among a wide range of others.

Today the company is introducing a companion product, Urban AirshipInsight. Insight offers a real-time view of mobile users to enable marketers and brands to better understand audience in-app behavior. The practical objective of Urban Airship Insight is to answer real questions and help marketers zero in on specific audience segments:

 

Urban Airship began as one of many push notifications enablers. However it has grown beyond that beginning to become a broader audience engagement and analytics platform.

With mobile now the primary platform for many users and apps becoming a critical component of most brands’ marketing efforts, these kinds of tools and data insights are important to understand user behavior, reduce churn and gain a more holistic view of customers.

According to an audience survey by Localytics most mobile users will try an app a little over four times before uninstalling if they’re not sufficiently engaged. That survey also found that people use roughly 18 apps per month. However an earlier comScore report said that users engage with 25 apps per month but spend roughly 80 percent of their time with three favorite apps.

The South Korean mobile phone maker may try to better compete with its low-cost rivals on price, judging by a China-based analyst's prediction

You might be able to get Samsung's next Galaxy S smartphone for less.

The company could price the Galaxy S7 around 10 percent lower than its Galaxy S6, according to China-based analyst Pan Jiutang as reported Monday by the Times of India.

That wouldn't be unprecedented thinking for Samsung. In July, the South Korea-based electronics giant said it would adjust the price of its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge to spur sales.

A lower price tag on its flagship phone could give Samsung a much-needed boost in the smartphone arena. The company has been struggling for months with weaker sales and declining market share amid competition from Apple on the high end and from Chinese vendors, such as Xiaomi and Huawei, on the lower end.

Assuming Pan's prediction is accurate, a price drop would make Samsung's next flagship phone cheaper than rival phones from Apple and other Android vendors. Lower prices could give Samsung an edge in markets like India where the iPhone 6S is priced out of reach for many consumers.

Samsung did get a bump in the third quarter of the year, saying it a "significant increase" in smartphone sales. Shipments rose for the Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the midrange Galaxy A and J series. But the price adjustment of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge and higher shipments of midlevel and low-end smartphones caused overall revenue to rise only slightly and profit to decrease.

Lowering the price on its flagship phone is a tricky move. The strategy could boost sales but simultaneously cause a decline in Samsung's profit margins.

Another rumor suggests that Samsung may push up the launch date for its Galaxy S7 to January to compete with Apple in the high-end market. The company had already completed the design for the S7 at the end of September and is currently getting the components it needs to enter production, South Korea's Electronic Times said on October 20, citing "many people in [smartphone] parts industries."

A January launch would be unusual as Samsung traditionally unveils its latest Galaxy S phone at major tech events. The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge debuted in March at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

By Chris Hoffman
 http://www.ehow.com
How important are keyboard shortcuts? Can’t you simply use a mouse for everything? Shortcuts are called that for a reason — they save time. And since most people seem completely unaware of most of the best time-saving shortcuts on the PC, I’ve rounded up the best ones for you today.

Ctrl+F for Find

Let’s start with one of the most useful keyboard shortcuts of all: Ctrl+F. A few of you out there are now rolling your eyes, but you shouldn’t be — a Google employee has data showing 90 percent of people never use the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut.


Press Ctrl+F in almost any application — your Web browser, for example — and you can start typing to find text in the page or document. Yes, most of the people appear to simply skim webpages to find what they’re looking for just as they would on a paper document, rather than using the far more efficient search.

Ctrl-F is for more than just browsers, though. I’ve even seen it work in applications that don’t expose a “Find” option in their menus — it’s like a secret keyboard shortcut that can get you straight to an application’s search function, whether it appears to have one. (Mac users use the Command key instead of the Ctrl key.)


Basic Navigation

Alt+Tab should be a pretty well known keyboard shortcut by now, but did you know that you can use Ctrl+Tab to cycle between open tabs in your browser? Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycles in reverse. This is basically an Alt+Tab for Web browsers or other applications with tab-based interfaces.


Speaking of browser tabs, you can press Ctrl+T to quickly open a new one — this focuses the address bar, so you can immediately start typing a search or web address. To focus the address bar on your current tab, press Ctrl+L. To close the current tab, press Ctrl+W. (Mac users use Command instead of Ctrl for most of these shortcuts, although Ctrl+Tab is the same on a Mac.)

Copy, Cut, and Paste Text

Don’t forget that Ctrl+C for copy, Ctrl+X for Cut, and Ctrl+V for Paste are critical shortcuts for working with selected text. It’s much faster to select some text with your mouse, press Ctrl+X, click somewhere in a document, and then press Ctrl+V than it is to click the Cut and Paste menus with your mouse.

These are also considered fairly basic keyboard shortcuts, but I’ve seen people use Microsoft Office entirely with the mouse, using the keyboard only to type words and reaching for the mouse whenever they wanted to copy or paste text. That just takes longer.


Many useful keyboard shortcuts make it easier to work with text — another one is Ctrl+Z, which is “undo.” It undoes the last change, allowing you to quickly revert a change without reaching for the mouse.


Quickly Move Between Words

The arrow keys allow you to move the cursor around a field of text — that’s Desktop Computing 101. But did you know that the Ctrl key can speed this up dramatically? For example, you can hold Ctrl and tap the left arrow once to go to the beginning of the previous word. Tap it multiple times to quickly move back from word to word, or tap the forward key to go to the next word.

This allows you to move your cursor much more quickly, so you don’t need to hold down the arrow key, wait for the cursor to scroll through all the digits, and try to release it at the correct time. Ctrl works similarly with the Up and Down arrow keys, quickly moving your cursor from paragraph to paragraph.


Select Text

Hold the Shift key while using other arrow keys to select text. For example, you can hold Shift and press the left arrow three times to select the previous three characters. Or, you can press Shift+Ctrl+Left to quickly select the previous word, tapping the left arrow to select more words. This also works with the up and down arrow keys, allowing you to select multiple lines quickly.

Once you have text selected, you can copy or cut it with the keyboard shortcuts above. With these shortcuts, you can write and edit a document or email directly from your keyboard, keeping your hands on your keyboard for maximum typing speed — no need to move a hand over to the mouse. And, while we’re at it, Ctrl+A will select all the text in the current document or text field.

This isn’t a complete list — far from it. If you want to do something, there’s a good chance the software you use includes a keyboard shortcut for doing it. Look up the keyboard shortcuts that will benefit you most so you can save time and get things done faster!

Photo Credits: Andrew_Writer on Flickr, Google, Loenid Mamchenkov on Flickr

Most of us have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. Sure, it’s an easy way to keep in touch with family and friends, but it’s also a major time drain and privacy killer.

There is more to Facebook than status updates, photos and comments. Here are five little-known Facebook chills and thrills.

“How did you know I was here?” The answer: It was on your Facebook page.

Facebook is built around sharing. You share thoughts, photos, videos and news, and now you can share your location, too, with Nearby Friends. When turned on, it alerts you when friends are nearby.

Nearby Friends, available in the Android and Apple Facebook apps, is currently available in select areas. To check if you have it, open your Facebook app, tap the icon with the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner for Android users – it’s on the lower right for Apple fans – select Nearby Friends and finally, Turn On.

From here you can choose who can see your location (Note: Some versions require you to click the gear icon in the upper-right corner). By default, it's set to Friends, and thankfully you can't set it to Everyone. You can, however, choose a list of friends, like Family or a custom list you've created. Click here to learn how to create custom lists of friends and family.

You can share your location temporarily with someone. In Nearby Friends, find a friend on the list and tap the arrow icon next to his or her name. Select how long you'd like to share your location.

Facebook is part of a major advertising network. It shares your Facebook profile information with other companies and, in return, gets their information about you. That allows the companies to better target you with relevant ads. It also means they're building a detailed profile of your likes, dislikes and online browsing habits.

You can stop this tracking by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance, which is the network Facebook uses, and opting out. Click here for the instructions and more details on how opting out works.

You will also need to opt out of targeted ads on your smartphone or tablet. Click here to learn how to find the right settings.

When you send text messages or emails, you can include those cute little smiley faces, called emojis or emoticons. So why can't you put emojis in Facebook posts?

Facebook actually has more than 400 emoticons in its library – if you know how to create them.

These go way beyond just the smileys and hearts. There are emojis for professions, body parts, food, animals, flowers, weather, buildings, vehicles, holidays, directions and more. Sites like this one have assembled your emoticons options into a single page, so you can find, copy and paste the perfect image to match what you want to say.

You can also send fun emoticons and stickers to your friends through Facebook chat or comments. In the chat or comment window, click or tap the smiley face icon. You'll see some default emoticons and stickers you can choose from. If you want to expand your options, there's a sticker store where you can download additional sticker packs. Just click the blue “plus” sign in the upper right corner of the sticker window.

Bonus: Stickers are fun, but they can quickly start cluttering up your News Feed if everyone uses them. Hide them with this extension for Chrome and Firefox.

If you use Facebook messages, you've probably noticed the "seen at" text that appears when you open one. This tells the person who sent the message that you've looked at it. For the person sending the message, it's a nice way to know that you've seen it, and when you saw it.

On the other hand, if you don't respond to the message right away, it looks like you're ignoring the sender. Of course, you could shoot off a quick response like "I'll get back to you later," or something similar, but should you have to?

If you use Facebook in the Chrome browser, there's an extension called Facebook Unseen that will keep Facebook from knowing when you read a message. On Android and Apple, you can try the Facebook Messenger replacement apps Privy Chat or Unread.

Privacy is important, and Facebook hasn't always been good about helping you out in that area. That's why its Privacy Checkup tool was such a welcome surprise. But a lot of people don't know it exists.

To find it, open Facebook, click the “lock” icon in the upper-right corner and select Privacy Checkup. Facebook will help you set who can see your posts, manage the apps you have installed and let you choose the visibility of your personal information.

It's a good start, but if you want to lock down every single privacy detail, be sure to read my step-by-step guide to lock down your Facebook profile.

New York: TV networks are trying a new tactic to understand what shows and commercials people like to watch: read their minds. Comcast Corp's NBCUniversal and Viacom Inc are each opening labs where they will study TV viewers in mock living rooms filled with infrared cameras tracking their biometrics - such things as eye movements and facial reactions made while hooked up to skin sensors and heart monitors.
Viacom's lab, which is being built in New York, will include electroencephalogrammes (EEGs) to monitor peoples' brain waves while watching television. And ratings firm Nielsen Holdings , which just bought neuroscience firm Innerscope Research earlier this year, is adding facial coding and biometrics to its labs,
 

which currently conduct eye tracking and perform EEGs. Networks have tried for years to find out what viewers think, but their technology is still mostly based on surveys and asking watchers to turn dials about what they like and don't. The new biometric data avoids questions, tapping straight into physical response.
"The problem is that when you ask someone how they respond to things, they sometimes think about it or they overthink it," said Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development at NBCU. "This is the closest to what's going on inside your brain." As more viewers fast-forward through ads, and advertisers increasingly shift their budgets away from TV in favour of digital ads, networks see neuroscience and biometrics as a way for them to target ads better and improve relations with advertisers.


The experience of The Ad Council, a New York-based organisation that creates ad campaigns for non-profits and government agencies, shows how using biometrics could help boost response from viewers. It has worked with Nielsen Neuroscience to test some of its ads. In testing one ad, for The Shelter Pet Project, which promotes the adoption of pets from local animal shelters, viewers were engaged by watching a mixed-breed dog playing with the screen and reaching out to viewers. But the parts of viewers' brains triggering memory weren't firing when the message about contacting Shelterpetproject.org appeared on the screen, said Patty Goldman, research director with Ad Council.


So Ad Council tweaked the ad to add audio encouraging viewers to visit the site. While it's not known how much the change affected the results of the ad, the Ad Council did have success with the entire campaign, seeing average monthly visitors to the Web site increase to 174,000 from 74,000 within the first three months of the campaign. NBCUniversal, which opened its lab in Orlando, Florida, in September, wants to be able to tell which scenes elicit the strongest emotional response from viewers, and then use those scenes in its promotional ads, said Wurtzel.
Viacom is examining different kinds of viewer focus and ultimately wants to find the best time for a commercial, so that, for example, if a scene elicits a response from expectant mothers it can plug in a diaper ad; if the scene makes people hungry, it's time to run an ad for food. Viacom, whose offerings include Nickelodeon and MTV, has been working to improve the ratings of many of its top networks, which have been in decline. The concern is that the new process, which at $30,000 to $100,000 per study costs about twice as much as normal focus groups, may not improve sales.


"Just because their brain cells are lighting up during a commercial, doesn't necessarily mean they are going to buy the product, they may simply find the commercial engaging," said Beth Rockwood, senior vice president, market resources and advertising sales research at Discovery Communications, which is looking into possibly doing more with neuroscience research. Hershey Co has been using neuroscience and biometric research for several years, and still is unsure what conclusions it can draw regarding their effectiveness. "I don't think anyone is comfortable saying that this is going to translate into more sales," said Andy Smith, director of consumer insights at Hershey.
He said he agrees that the research can win points with advertisers, a crucial advantage in TV's war with the Internet. "If I can get more growth by spending less, we benefit," Smith said.
MIND READING


Every week in the Time Warner centre in New York City about 200 people are paid to come to be watched watching television, movies or playing on computers in Time Warner Inc's three-year old Medialab. Participants get paid anywhere from $10 for a 10-minute study to $1,000 for a full day.
Cameras which track their eyes and record their facial expression line the front of a fake living room. Clip-on sensors on their fingers pump a micro-electric current to track sweat. Belts track heart rates and next year, the lab will add EEGs.
Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting System, a pioneer in biometrics, with Innerscope Research tested a U.S. Navy ad that depicted an aircraft carrier. Using eye tracking technology, Turner was able to see that viewers with devices in their hands looked up at the sound of the helicopters in the middle of the ad. There also was a spike in the heart rates and skin sensors in the moments following the sound, showing that they had the strongest emotional response to the ad during those seconds, said Howard Shimmel, chief research officer at Turner.
"The eye tracking showed that they looked back up, but the biometrics showed that they were engaged," said Dr. Carl Marci, chief neuroscientist at Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience. "Eye tracking is not an emotional measure, it's an attention measure and even people focus on something, their brain may not be responding to it."
However, viewers looked back down at their devices after the sound. Turner's response to advertisers: announce your brands, don't just show them.
Networks also need to worry about toeing the line between being engaging and making consumers feel used.
"I think that we should all feel a little paranoid and a little manipulated by all of this," Poltrack said. "This is a trust and if we do it right, we provide information and content that is valued."

If keeping your smartphone charged is a challenge in everyday life, it's even worse when you're traveling. Long days in transit or out exploring a new city will make that battery icon start flashing before you know it, especially when you're relying on your phone for navigation, entertainment and more.

Even worse, you've often only got limited time to get some juice in it – a short layover, coffee break in a café or quick return to the hotel room to freshen up – before you're out of reach of a charging cable for another few hours.

Here are five hacks for getting more charge in your phone when you're short on time.

Always charge from a wall socket rather than a laptop when you're in a hurry. All else being equal, it takes longer – in some cases, an extra hour or more – to charge a smartphone over USB than from the wall.

Speaking of good wall to USB adapters, be sure to use one that can put out as much power as your smartphone can handle. For example, the iPhone 6 ships with a 1 amp power adapter – but it can actually handle the 2.1amp charger from an iPad just fine, and will charge much faster if you use one. By contrast, if you use an old 0.5 amp USB adapter you've got lying around, your phone might not even charge at all.

You can't damage your phone by doing this – the number on the adapter is a maximum rating, but it will only send as much power as your device actually requests.

Certain portable battery packs can charge much faster than the smartphone or tablet you'll be connecting them to.

Just plug the battery into the wall while you're waiting to board or taking a shower, then slip it into your pocket and charge your phone up once you're on the move again.

All of those useful features on your smartphone chew up battery life, but the wi-fi and (especially) cellular radios are one of the biggest power hogs of all. To make sure you get as much juice as possible into your phone in a hurry, put it in flight mode while you're charging. If you're waiting for a call or text, at least turn off mobile data and wi-fi to save a little battery.

The only thing that kills your battery faster than cell data is that big, bright screen – so stop looking at it while you're charging the phone! Every little bit helps, and continually turning on the display to check the battery percentage is only going to make matters worse. 

http://news.sky.com

 

The officer stopped the prototype vehicle in Mountain View, California, on Thursday as it travelled 24mph in a 35mph zone, causing a back-up of traffic.

The police department said in a blog post: "As the officer approached the slow moving car he realised it was a Google Autonomous Vehicle.

"The officer stopped the car and made contact with the operators to learn more about how the car was choosing speeds along certain roadways and to educate the operators about impeding traffic."

The Google Self-Driving Car Project responded that the prototype vehicles had a maximum speed of 25mph for "safety reasons".

"We want them to feel friendly and approachable, rather than zooming scarily through neighbourhood streets," it said in a blog post.

Google added: "After 1.2 million miles of autonomous driving (that's the human equivalent of 90 years of driving experience), we're proud to say we've never been ticketed!"

The technology giant's driverless vehicles are currently being tested on the streets of Mountain View and Austin, Texas, it says.

The model pulled over by the traffic officer was one of Google's new prototype vehicles purpose-built to be fully autonomous.

The company says there are "safety drivers" on board all test vehicles.

Google plans to make these cars available to the public by 2020.

 

 New Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool

by Barry Schwartz

www.seroundtable.com

by Barry Schwartz

www.seroundtable.com

If you launch your tablet and go over to Google and do a search, you will see a brand new interface for the search results. In the past, the tablet interface looks more like the smartphone interface, but now, it has its very own user interface.

 Here are some screen shots (which look pretty wild today because of the Google Doodle that is live today.

Check out this local result!

It is so different than before, that is is hard to even document.

Some users are even seeing that Google is showing mobile-friendly labels on the tablet results, but I do not see that myself. Here is what @scottkrager noticed:

I asked Google for a comment yesterday, but they are still trying to get back to me.

Forum discussion at Google+.

Update: A Google spokesperson told us, "this week we began rolling out a new tablet Search results page, bringing the best of Google Search to tablets."