Kiran Upadhyay

Need a tube of toothpaste, but don’t want to wait? Google wants to drone that to you, the Mountain View-based technology giant announced today. Google follows Amazon in announcing that it is building consumer delivery-facing drone technology. Amazon previously disclosed that it is working to build drones that can deliver small parcels to shoppers. The two companies have differing visions, however. Google’s plan appears slanted towards incredibly quick delivery, perhaps in as little as two minutes, a long profile in The Atlantic indicated. Amazon, instead, is focusing on a timeframe closer to thirty minutes. I must admit I’m skeptical Google can execute a two-minute delivery of anything with a drone. Item picking, item loading, flight time, and delivery have time requirements that can be reduced through supply chain efficiency and the like, but only so far. Amazon, on the other, has more experience in sourcing a plethora of goods, and getting them shipped, and has a far higher t...

A new mobile application called Tripcast, built by the team that created photo-sharing app Cluster, allows travelers to privately share their photos with their friends back home. The app lets you create a travel journal of sorts, by not only collecting the photos and sharing them, but also plotting them on map, and inviting fellow travelers to build albums with you. This is not the first time the team from Cluster has worked on a secondary project in the photos space – they also previously released a handy tool for designers and developers called Screenshotter, which helps you organize your iPhone screenshots into more usable albums. Like that earlier effort, which was more of a side project, Tripcast also takes the larger idea from Cluster involving mobile photo albums and private sharing, and spins it off into a niche aimed at a particular crowd. On Cluster, users can build collaborative albums of any sort, whereas Tripcast is aimed only at travelers and their friends. Expla...

Facebook is testing an expansion of its search product, introduced last year as “Graph Search,” on mobile devices, according to a report from Bloomberg. The change, which is currently only visible to a smaller subset of Facebook users, allows users to retrieve friends’ old posts via keyword, as well as content from pages they followed. This feature was previously introduced to desktop users a year ago, but without mobile support. However, even the desktop version has yet to arrive for many users, which makes the presence of the mobile tests notable. Last September, Facebook began the rollout of Graph Search for posts and comments to what was then a small subset of U.S. English users. Where before, Facebook search had begun by indexing people, photos, places and interests, the service was now able to search for older posts by keywords, including comments, photo captions, Notes, and check-ins. That way, you could pull up what your friends were saying about any given topic, wheth...

First released in 2011, the Nintendo 3DS has been re-released both as the bigger 3DS XL and as the the cheaper, kid-friendly 2DS. In today’s “Nintendo Direct” video update, Nintendo announced the “New Nintendo 3DS,” an update to the platform that’s somewhere between a minor update and a full-fledged follow-up. The most obvious changes are immediately visible on the outside of the device. The face buttons — A, B, X, and Y — are colored in a pattern similar to those on the classic SNES console. Instead of one button on each shoulder of the device, there are now two. If you look just above the face buttons, there’s now a second analog nub. Looking deeper, Nintendo says that the console will have a faster processor and more RAM. That means the device can offer better visuals than before, letting developers bring over experiences closer to what they offer on Nintendo’s Wii U (the fact that it now offers a control scheme that’s almost exactly the same helps too). Unfortunately, that a...

It always breaks my heart a little when the startups with the most radiant potential hit their troughs of disillusionment and then cash out to a deep-pocketed buyer. This is not because I begrudge the founders of these startups the personal wealth or success that comes with their exits. Indeed, the wallets of everyone involved usually get a lot fatter, and that’s fantastic. But these cash-outs make me sad because when rocketships get picked out of the sky by sharp-eyed acquirers, they rarely achieve the heights that had been in front of them. So it was with Siri, which started its life as an incredible but unusable app for the iPhone 3GS, but could have been the next Google. The Obstacles to Greatness in Siri 1.0 At the time that Apple acquired Siri (less than six months after it launched), the Siri iPhone app wasn’t close to taking off, and it may have seemed to its founders and investors that this situation was not about to improve. This is because when Siri was merely a...

If you're feeling nostalgic for the shows of your childhood, Nick Reboot streams shows like Rocko's Modern Life, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Hey Arnold! 24 hours a day, for free. All you need to do is head to the web site and the stream will start. It will determine where you are and optimize the streaming quality depending on whether you're closer to the East or West ingest server. You can even chat with other streamers while you watch and reminisce about the good ol' days. If you're wondering if this is all legal—it is—and it's actually pretty simple. Nick Reboot is a non-commercial and non-profit website, dedicated to providing a medium for commentary, criticism, educational review, and research of the TV network Nickelodeon during the 90s and early 2000s. By operating under the doctrine of "fair use" codified in section 107 of copyright law, they're able to stream classic Nickelodeon shows as much as they want. The catch is that yo...

Apple has a new patent granted by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider) that describes various control mechanisms that could be used with flexible displays, to replace components such as physical buttons with more durable and resilient alternatives, and to create alternate means for detecting sound output, providing haptic feedback and even performing other tricks like making it easier to open a MacBook lid. The Apple patent describes various ways to use a flexible display for various input methods at length, pointing out ways that you can put flexible display material over actuators to create new buttons on-demand. It also provides methods for overlaying them on existing button features found in the iPhone, like the Home button, effectively providing access to it while still protecting it and providing a continuous surface for the user. Using the flexible display over top of the buttons and switches has another benefit – it allows Apple to potentially extend screen space, making i...

"For thirty-seven years," reads the opening passage in the book, "the gatherings and conventions of our IBM workers have expressed in happy songs the fine spirit of loyal cooperation and good fellowship which has promoted the signal success of our great IBM Corporation in its truly International Service for the betterment of business and benefit to mankind." That’s a hell of a mouthful, but it’s only the opening volley in the war on self-respect and decency that is the 1937 edition of Songs of the IBM, a booklet of corporate ditties first published in 1927 on the order of IBM company founder Thomas Watson, Sr. The 1937 edition of the songbook is a 54-page monument to glassey-eyed corporate inhumanity, with every page overflowing with trite praise to The Company and Its Men. The booklet reads like a terribly parody of a hymnal—one that praises not the traditional Christian trinity but the new corporate triumvirate of IBM the father, Watson the son, and America...

Using customized 3D printing technology, Andrey Rudenko printed a castle in his backyard. It took him two years from conception to completion. The result is incredible: According to Rudenko, building the castle with concrete had some unique issues. Rudenko says that “printing the castle turrets by themselves was a bad idea as they were extremely difficult to lift and place.” I can imagine. What’s next? A “full-scale” house. The castle is large enough to walk around in, but it seems that the builder has bigger plans. Also the next building will likely be built someplace warmer. Why warmer? Concrete sets at only so quick a pace — if you can help it cure, you can probably build more quickly. That and as Rudenko wants to print around the clock on the next building, and do all the printing in-location, getting the concrete up to snuff in terms of load bearing will be critical.

It’s that time again! T-Mobile is prepping to make yet another announcement in their “Uncarrier” series, just a few weeks after the last one. The company has just sent out invites for their seventh “Uncarrier” event, each of which has been intended to shake up some industry practice or another and coax potential customers into hopping on the T-Mo train by fixing some pain point. This next event will happen on September 10th at 1PM pacific. All we know so far: the event’s tagline is “This time it’s personal”, and the event itself is taking place in one of T-Mobile’s own stores (as opposed to something like a theater or concert venue, where these things normally take place.) These events are getting a bit hard to keep track of at this point, so here’s the “Uncarrier” history so far: Uncarrier 1: T-Mobile launches its 4G LTE network, ditches annual service contracts Uncarrier 2: T-Mobile expands their upgrade program to allow customers to upgrade their phones twice a year Unc...

Most cell phone owners around the world only have to worry about a single carrier technology called the Global System for Mobile Communications, or GSM for short. As its name implies, this standard was developed for, and has been adopted by, almost the entire globe as the way to communicate via cellular calls. But not everyone has jumped on the GSM train. An alternative cellular standard known as Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, is used by many carriers around the world. It is most popular in the United States and Russia, but it’s also used in some Asian and African countries, often alongside competing GSM carriers. Here’s what cell phone users stuck on choosing between them should know before purchasing a phone. GSM vs. CDMA: What’s Better? This the first question many potential owners ask, and it makes sense, but in this case there’s no easy answer to that question. GSM and CDMA are different ways to accomplish the same goal, and the fact that extremely popular network...

For PC gamers, there are two points with which they interact with their games – the mouse and the keyboard. Because of this, hardcore PC gamers tend to be pretty picky with the hardware they use. Mad Catz is hoping to have the gaming keyboard for gamers, no matter their preferences, with the $300 S.T.R.I.K.E. 7. It’s modular, and can be adjusted to suit the needs of the different players. It even comes with a touchscreen that can perform all kinds of cool actions that make interacting with the PC more enjoyable. Of course, the modular features and the screen are unique touches, but in the end, the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 needs to deliver the comfort and performance gamers expect from a top-of-the-line gaming keyboard. Does it? Is the screen just a gimmick? Is it worth the effort to tweak the layout? All these questions and more are what we are going to take a look at in this review.

Google is closing the loop on bringing support for natively editing Microsoft Office files to all of productivity apps today. The company’s iOS apps for Docs and Sheets are getting a couple of minor new features and design updates today, but most importantly, these apps will now also be able to natively open, edit and save files from Microsoft’s Office suite. After launching the original standalone apps for Google Docs and Sheets on iOS a few months ago, it was only a matter of time before Google would also free its PowerPoint competitor Slides from the Google Drive app. Today is that day. Google Slides is now available as a standalone app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Just like the Docs and Sheets apps and their counterparts on Android (the standalone Slides app launched there two months ago), the new Slides app will feature some aspects of Google’s new Material Design user interface language and all the Microsoft Office conversion goodness the company acquired when i...

Unless you've been living in a sensory-deprivation chamber for the past few weeks, you've heard of the "ice bucket challenge" being shown off on all types of social media. People get buckets of ice water dumped on them in order to encourage donations to the ALS Association, the foundation that supports research and care for those living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a muscle disease that's also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It's impossible to know exactly what makes something like the ice bucket challenge go viral. Whatever the case may be, the sensation been an incredible benefit for the ALS Association. Yesterday, the group said it has raised $94.3 million since July 29, compared to just $2.7 million during the same time period last year. That's nearly 35 times as much money. It's great news for a worthy charity, but the cause has led to an unfortunate legal move. The ALS Association has filed an application with the US Patent and...

Apple has sent out invites to a special event it’s holding on September 9, where we will almost certainly get our first official look at the next iPhone. The invites follow a previous report from Re/code pegging Tuesday, September 9 as the date, and the event’s timing is consistent with the launch of the iPhone dating back to to the iPhone 4S, when Apple began releasing new versions of its smartphone in the fall instead of in the early summer. The event will almost definitely see the introduction of one, if not two new iPhone models. Scuttlebutt is that we’ll see at least a 4.7-inch iOS-powered smartphone and maybe one larger 5.5 inch model introduced by Apple at the event. Though only one might launch a few weeks after, with the larger version shipping later. Apple has been reportedly gearing up to provide sapphire-based displays in at least some of these devices, which could offer benefits in terms of durability and resistance to scratches and shattering. This event is a b...

Just about every Mac you’d see in operation nowadays has a 64-bit CPU tucked inside. Apple started making the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit nearly a decade ago, after all. And yet, Chrome has always stubbornly insisted on running at 32-bit on OS X. That’ll change soon. Two days after declaring the Windows’ version of 64-Bit Chrome as “stable”, Google has just published the first beta build of 64-Bit Chrome for Mac. (The only way to get 64-bit support before this was to run Canary, the ultra-early adopter build of Chrome that comes with explicit warnings that it’ll probably crash constantly. It’s not even guaranteed to launch.) As with most things that come to Chrome, 64-Bit support will be limited to users on the Beta channel at first. So it’s still not part of the standard build of Chrome that most people use, but it’s at least available in a form that isn’t likely to break on the regular. So what’s the advantage of going 64-bit? To be honest, most users probably won’t notice...

WiFi is everywhere and, for most readers, that it includes your home. While desktop computers still frequently use Ethernet, the majority of laptops, tablets and smartphones use WiFi; indeed, the latter two often can’t connect to anything but a wireless network, be it your home router or a carrier’s cellular data. In an ideal world, this reliance on WiFi would be only an advantage, but in truth the technology isn’t perfect. Though more reliable than ever, many homes and businesses still struggle with “blind spots” with low or no coverage. Here’s how to find – and eliminate – these wireless dead zones. Setting Up A WiFi Analyzer Before you resolve any problems with your WiFi network’s coverage you need to determine where they exist. If you’re reading this article because you want to resolve a blind spot you already know about, you might be able to skip this step, but gathering more detailed information on the size and severity of the WiFi dead zone can be useful. A WiFi analyze...

Smart home automation startup Zuli has just raised $1.65 million in venture funding following a successful Kickstarter campaign. The company has created the Zuli Smartplug, a connected outlet that plugs into your existing ones and gains Bluetooth LE powers. A single outlet provides basic smart features, including in-home control of lights and appliances plugged into them, but when you get three or more Zuli smartplugs together, the magic really starts to happen. Three or more Zuli smartplugs in a single home form a “Bluetooth mesh” network that lets each determine a user’s location within the home, identifying when they move from one room to another and adjusting settings accordingly. You can program the Zuli app to then turn on your TV and stereo when you walk into a living room, for instance, and to turn off the lights in your kitchen when you leave. This new seed round adds to the $175,000 the company raised during its crowdfunding campaign, and should help with the startup a...

VentureBeat has confirmed with Facebook that this was not an acquisition, but it has hired the team behind audio production company WaveGroup Sound. The headline has been changed to reflect this. Original story with more background below. Facebook has made an interesting acquisition, having picked up WaveGroup Sound, an audio production company headquartered in Burlingame, Calif., that specializes in sound for games, and that produced tracks for the Guitar Hero series, as well as Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution titles. It also makes sounds for many startups, hardware devices and mobile apps. The team that formed WaveGroup has now become the full-time in-house sound design team for Facebook, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. They’ve also already worked for FB plenty as a contractor, creating the in-app sounds for apps like Messenger, SlingShot and Instagram Bolt according to an announcement confirming the news posted to Facebook. WaveGroup’s last project for a cl...

If Disney isn’t already the most magical place on earth, it soon will be. The mega-amusement park has filed three patents to use drones within the park, first spotted by MarketWatch. Within the patents, Disney lists a few different use cases for the drones. The first is that they could carry marionette-version Disney characters, with patent drawings showing something similar to inflatable floats in a parade, but suspended by drones instead of helium. The second use case is as a replacement for fireworks, wherein the drones would become lit-up substitutes for a regular fireworks show. Disney is calling them “flixels”, a play on fireworks and pixels. In the third patent, Disney describes carrying around large aerial projection screens. According to the patent, many UAVs would fly together as a fleet carrying projection screens, again for the purpose of a show. Disney explains within the patents that drones could provide a significant improvement to its entertainment offerings,...

Cotap, a startup founded by former Yammer executives Jim Patterson and Zack Parker that launched last year with the premise of becoming a “WhatsApp for the workplace“, is today unveiling a new build of its product, and a wider remit. Cotap is going beyond mobile messaging and moving into file sharing, with integrations with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive; adding web and desktop apps (native to Mac first) to use Cotap when you are not on a smartphone or tablet; and releasing updated mobile apps for iOS and Android. The moves come as the company passes 10,000 business customers — although it is not specifying what that translates into in terms of individual, active users just yet, says Patterson, who is Cotap’s CEO. The aim is to hit one million users, which has yet to happen. As a bit of background on Cotap, current customers typically range from between 50 and 100 employees and include businesses like Philz Coffee and the Hyatt chain of hotels. And, as we’ve ...

Back in July, Twitter launched a really nifty analytics dashboard. A bit like Google Analytics for tweets, it allows you to gauge the performance of each and every tweet you sent. How many people saw it? How many of those actually clicked your links? There was one catch, though: it was only open to advertisers and verified users. No longer! Now you too can obsess way too hard over the performance of every tweet you send! Hurray! News of the change comes from Twitter front end engineer Ian Chan: and this page lurking in Twitter’s support base confirms it: the dashboard should now be open to every account that has been open for at least 14 days, isn’t restricted/protected/suspended, and (curiously) that primarily tweets in English, French, Japanese, or Spanish. You can find the newly unlocked analytics dashboard right here.

In today’s cloud storage wars, most companies are defined by the amount of space their users get for the least amount of money. With new pricing and updates to its Pro offering, Dropbox is hoping to show that it can compete on price while also providing greater value to paying users through a number of new features they probably won’t find on other services. Many Dropbox users start out as Basic users, but the company increasingly has been trying to get customers to upgrade and pay for storage. In 2011, the company launched Dropbox for Business, which has seen a fair amount of success in the years since. Dropbox says that it’s used within 4 million companies and 97 percent of Fortune 500 businesses, although not all of those companies are paying customers. While enterprise customers can be a lucrative business, Dropbox sees a huge opportunity to get its Basic users to upgrade and pay for file storage through Dropbox Pro. Until today, those so-called “prosumers” were paying $10 a...

Whenever a social network grows up, it attracts brands who want to interact with fans and expand their reach through connections with influencers. And when that happens, it becomes imperative to know how well they’re performing, which means rolling out analytics so some mid-level social media manager can build a strategy around increasing engagement. Pinterest is the latest social network to go down this well-worn path. It’s got the brands on board, it’s got a group of brand-focused Pinterest For Business tools, and now it’s got a new analytics dashboard to help those brands better understand how fans are interacting with their content on Pinterest. At a very high level, the dashboard is designed to provide a quick view into a business’ overall reach on Pinterest. They will be able to at a glance see the number of impressions and views their content got on the platform, as well as how those numbers have trended over time. In addition, it provides businesses with insights into wh...

Social media is not living up to its promise of being an online outlet for discussion that mirrors our communications and conversations that take place in the offline world. In fact, people are less willing to discuss important issues on social media, than they are in real life, a new report from Pew Research Center has found. It may seem like an obvious conclusion: of course, people are more hesitant to speak up with a contrary opinion when all their friends, family or colleagues feel differently. But there’s been little research that quantifies just how unwilling people are to take a potentially unpopular stance on outlets like Facebook and Twitter. Pew refers to the this tendency to keep opinions to yourself, when you believe they’re not widely shared, as the “spiral of silence” – a term coined in the mid-70’s by a researcher studying the nature of public opinion. “Some social media creators and supporters have hoped that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter mig...

Science educators have recognized that teaching science as a large compendium of facts, without reference to the scientific process and theories that bind them together, simply leads to uninterested and uninformed students. So it's a bit mind-boggling to discover that an Ohio state legislator is attempting to block educators from teaching anything about the scientific process. And for good measure, the bill's sponsor threw politics and creationism into the mix. The bill, currently under consideration by the Ohio Assembly, is intended to revoke a previous approval of the Common Core educational standards, which target math and literacy. However, the bill's language also includes sections devoted to science and social studies. And the science one is a real winner: The standards in science shall be based in core existing disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics; incorporate grade-level mathematics and be referenced to the mathematics standards; focus on academic a...

If you’re tired of headlines declaring that “you’ll never believe what happened next!”, it looks like Facebook feels your pain. The company said in a blog post today that it’s trying to cut back on “click-baiting headlines”, which it defines as “a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see.” Handwringing about clickbait is nothing new (my favorite variation on that handwringing is The Onion’s recently launched ClickHole website), but Facebook’s worry is that these headlines could “drown out content from friends and Pages that people really care about.” But how do you distinguish between deceptive, clickbait headlines and those that are just, y’know, effective? Facebook team members won’t be making the call themselves, but rather relying on user behavior to suggest whether they got any value out of the story. So the company says it will be looking at things like the time spent reading an article (before r...

After months of rumors suggesting that Google was prepped to snatch up Twitch, word broke this morning that Amazon had crashed the party and was about to acquire Twitch themselves. Sure enough, the Amazon/Twitch deal is done. Our sources had previously suggested that the deal would close at nearly $1 billion dollars. We’re digging on the final price right this second, but are still hearing that it was very close to $1b. Update: Amazon confirms that the final price was $970M in cash This news might come as a surprise to many. While the earliest reports of Google’s talks all seemed to contradict each other, later reporting labeled as “confirmation” of the deal paired with silence on Google/Twitch’s end lead much of the Internet to believe the deal was sealed. When Twitch made some controversial changes to their platform policies a few weeks back, many a commenter pinned the blame on Google’s influence. Twitch’s confirmation of the Amazon acquistion is here.: Letter from the ...

From its meager beginnings as a student search engine project called BackRub at Stanford University, to the powerhouse search engine that is both a noun and a verb in one, Google’s path has been one of growth and constant adaptation with the times. Examining the path of that history provides some interesting insights into what the world’s most popular search engine will probably look like in 10 years. Why 10 years? Because 10 years encompasses nearly the entire lifetime of Google, from the moment of its first major algorithm update in 2003 called “Boston”. In 10 years, the search engine will probably look nothing like it does today, but it will serve a multitude of needs in everyday life well beyond those that exist on the family computer. The History of Google Search In 1995, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin first met and started collaborating on the search engine that would eventually become Google – then called BackRub – it’s doubtful they could have ever imagined the size a...

Lenovo, the maker of some very successful laptops, has finally come out with their own Chromebook!  Best of all, you aren’t going to drop a fortune on it, and it even comes with a touchscreen! Sounds perfect, right? Well, quite possibly. But in order to find out for sure, we put it through its paces and gave it a thorough inspection of all the included hardware. So is the N20P a great Chromebook to buy, or did Lenovo fall short with this one? At the end of this review, you’ll be able to enter our giveaway to win this Lenovo Chromebook! About The Lenovo IdeaPad N20P The 11.6-inch Lenovo IdeaPad N20P is Lenovo’s first attempt at the Chromebook market. The computer manufacturer is best known for its line of ThinkPad laptops, which have focused primarily on functionality, performance, and longevity over flashy looks. It has gained quite a solid following because of this, and I’m sure Lenovo hopes to gain some faithful Chromebook supporters with this device. With the Chromeboo...