Boxee co-founder Idan Cohen’s most recent stint may have been in the smart TV space — but now he wants to build a box that’ll help you grow some lettuce outside your home. That might seem weird, but after many dinners spent feeding guests with vegetables grown from his roof, he and his team are now launching a smart planter called GROW. Initially starting as a hobby to… Read More
Now, thanks to iOS 11 and the Notes app (and a bit of help from the camera), you don’t need a document scanner anymore. The ability to scan any document with your mobile is an everyday need, invaluable if you want to go paperless to save receipts, index business cards, or just take quick screenshots of book covers for the record. How to Use the iOS 11 Document Scanner You probably have a document scanner app installed in your iPhone or iPad. Choose to uninstall it in favor of Apple’s own. Here’s how to scan a document or a business card with the new...
Read the full article: How to Scan Documents With Notes in iOS 11
With new operating system versions, some features inevitably end up on the cutting room floor. Windows users became outraged when they learned that the classic Microsoft Paint will be deprecated in the upcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. While Paint hasn’t even seen an update since Windows 7, people started scrambling for alternatives and cursing Microsoft for removing their favorite crappy image editing program. But Microsoft said that it will deprecate Paint in the new update, not remove it. Did you know there’s a difference? Removal of a feature means that it’s completely gone with no official method to restore...
Read the full article: Deprecated vs. Removed: What’s the Difference?
A potentially pivotal document in the legal fight between Uber and Waymo, the self-driving car company that was originally part of Google, has been released. It is a report (embedded at the bottom of this post) commissioned by Uber from cybersecurity firm Stroz Friedberg last year as part of its due diligence before acquiring Otto, a self-driving truck startup founded by former Google employees. Read More
While it’s probably wise to turn off all notifications when giving a presentation with your computer, there are other reasons why you might want to disable certain desktop alerts. For example, if one particular app is excessive with its notifications, you can turn off alerts for that specific app. Go to Settings > Notifications and Actions. Scroll down to Get notifications from these senders or Show notifications from these apps. You can selectively toggle on and off any apps that offer notifications in the Windows 10 Action Center. If you’re doing a presentation and want to just turn off all notifications for a limited...
Read the full article: How to Selectively Disable App Notifications in Windows 10
There are lots of ways to make your PowerPoint slideshow pop out of the screen. You can use fancy transitions, customize the size of your slides, add personalized media clips, and a whole lot more. You can also add music to your show. You can use one song or multiple songs, depending on the effect you want to achieve. But how do you add music to a slideshow in PowerPoint? It’s not as complicated as it sounds! How to Add Music to Slideshows The first step is to make sure you have an appropriate song saved on your computer. PowerPoint does...
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Egyptians would be proud of us today. The world has come full circle on hieroglyphics as we now regularly express ourselves in little drawings. Emojis are a useful and convenient way to communicate. But they can also be a little strange. This isn’t about if you know the correct meanings of emojis. It’s about the extraordinary things some people do with this pictorial language. From shortening links to creating art, there is a wonderfully weird side to emojis you need to check out. 1. Emojify: An Emoji-Based URL Shortener URL shorteners are an excellent way to reduce long web page...
Read the full article: 5 Strange Ways to Use Emojis
Truphone, a mobile company based out of London that made a name for itself through low-cost international mobile voice and data plans, is taking a very big step forward in a strategy to catapult itself into the future of communications: the company has picked up a massive £255 million ($339 million), funding that it will use to retire its debt and double down on providing data connectivity… Read More
Snapchat plans to launch a new augmented reality art platform featuring pop artist Jeff Koons. It will allow art to be pinned to specific locations in augmented reality. Snapchat will solicit sign-ups from artists who want their art added to the platform. Today a strange “art.snapchat.com” URL featuring a countdown to 3PM eastern time Tuesday over a photo of Central Park and… Read More
A strange “art.snapchat.com” URL featuring a countdown to 3PM eastern time Tuesday over a photo of Central Park and New York’s skyline has appeared. When TechCrunch asked Snapchat about it, a company spokesperson told us “ we’re excited to share more soon”. Whether it’s a new creative feature, a platform for artistic user generated content, or… Read More
Facebook today handed over to congressional investigators 3,000 ads that were bought by a Russian company to influence U.S. politics. “Many appear to exploit racial and social divisions and exploit ugly stereotypes. We find this interference deeply offensive,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote this morning. Read More
In the early hours of the morning as reports were coming in about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, some of the largest web sites in the world were distributing unverified claims about the attack. Google, which was running reports from 4chan in some of its search queries as a top story, explained to us what went wrong… and how it enabled some false information from one of the… Read More
Most people may know Android as a mobile operating system, but it has taken over set-top boxes as well. For streaming purposes, Android TV boxes abound. These home media streamers provide an Android ecosystem for entertainment needs. Find out which option is the best Android TV box on the planet! What Is an Android TV Box? An Android TV box is, simply put, a set-top box which runs an Android operating system (OS). Primarily, these are used for streaming media from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, and even home server software such as Plex. However, Android boxes function as gaming...
Read the full article: Best Android TV Box on the Planet for All Budgets
A friend of mine wakes up every morning and reports every single instance of crass, homophobic, and racist behavior she sees on Twitter. She sees it as her duty, an ordering of things in an unordered stream. Her efforts are quixotic at best because when she wakes up and rubs the sleep out of her eyes the firehose still rages. Why does she have to do this? Because of Twitter’s success… Read More
Letting an algorithm cull links from the sewer of internet commentary, and then distributing that to millions of people, is a losing game. It’s another sign of how Facebook and the rest continue to abdicate responsibility. Read More
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today’s episode was especially fun, coming during what we might call “IPO Week” for obvious reasons. Happily, the whole crew was around the table to chew over the latest: Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself — Alex Wilhelm. We… Read More
File Versioning is an overlooked feature of macOS. It is a feature that uses the restorative powers of Time Machine to recover older versions of your documents. Versioned file systems are nothing new, but many still don’t realise their Mac can do this. With the arrival of Apple’s new file system APFS, versioning is becoming even more ingrained within the system. It’s a pro-level feature that might get you out of trouble in a pinch. Here’s how to use it (and disable it if you really want to). Autosave and File Versioning: Lion’s Highlights OS X Lion was a love...
Read the full article: A Beginner’s Guide to Mac File Versioning
Google’s Pixel 2 launch event is only a couple of days away, but the hype cycle is in high gear – and a new leak has me even more excited to see what Google officially unveils on Wednesday. Serial (and mostly accurate) leaker Evan Blass has posted images he says depict the Google Pixel 2 XL viewed from the front, including a display with minimal bezels that matches up with rumors… Read More
Google’s Pixel 2 launch event is only a couple of days away, but the hype cycle is in high gear – and a new leak has me even more excited to see what Google officially unveils on Wednesday. Serial (and mostly accurate) leaker Evan Blass has posted images he says depict the Google Pixel 2 XL viewed from the front, including a display with minimal bezels that matches up with rumors… Read More
About a year ago we reported that Bumble would soon launch BumbleBizz – a swipe-based networking tool that is designed to help people make professional connections. And now the feature is finally rolling out today to users in the US, UK, Germany, France and Canada. Essentially BumbleBizz will use the same types of parameters that regular Bumble does – your location, network,… Read More
