Amazon’s game video streaming service, Twitch, is going to feel a whole lot more like a social network in the coming months. It’s launching a beta of a new Friends list feature that lets you add up to 500 contacts from the network and send them private messages, a.k.a. Whispers, … | Continue reading
After unlocking an iPhone discovered in connection with the San Bernardino terror attacks without Apple’s assistance last month, the FBI has managed to crack a second device – this time, it was an iPhone 5S used by a drug dealer in New York. However, unlike the San Bernardino inc … | Continue reading
The LG G5 is the most exciting smartphone in a long time. Instead of just the expected metal redesign and bumped up specs, LG chose to actually do something daring: try to reinvent the smartphone. It was the first phone from a major manufacturer to feature two different rear faci … | Continue reading
When Apple introduced a smaller iPad Pro, we knew it would either be the best iPad Apple could make, or some oddity that had no home in the tablet ecosystem. It’s essentially a mixture of the Air 2 and 12.9-inch Pro, which could either confuse or delight — or maybe both. Hardware … | Continue reading
Dan McComas, the former second-in-command at Reddit — and vocal critic of its more inflammatory groups — wants to build a better Reddit, one that focuses on “healthy, positive communities.” McComas, as you may remember, was let go — along with Victoria Taylor — in a controversial … | Continue reading
Amazon Echo is getting a nice new feature: you can now add events to your Google calendar. All you have to do is say something like ‘Alexa, add ‘camping with Nate’ to my Calendar for 9am this Saturday’ and she’d put it right in your calendar so you don’t forget we’re going campin … | Continue reading
AT&T is the latest ISP jumping on the bandwagon to offer internet packages that could be more affordable for low-income households. The move is actually a condition of AT&T’s merger with DirecTV last July. In the move the FCC called on AT&T to provide discounted standalone (non-b … | Continue reading
Remember the news from earlier this week that a pesky drone hit an airplane in flight near London’s Heathrow airport? Yeah, so that may not be the case at all. According to Transport Minister Robert Goodwill, authorities have yet to confirm it was a drone at all. He claims local … | Continue reading
Last year, long-standing studio audio equipment manufacturer Blue put its first set of headphones up for sale, and now a smaller, lighter version of the cans are available to buy. With an asking price of $250, the Lola are in direct competition with the more fashion-oriented Beat … | Continue reading
Imagine a tech world where the ‘us vs them’ mentality wasn’t a thing. While Apple and Samsung are still sniping at one another, the more mature Microsoft and Google have seemingly put their differences aside. In a joint statement to Recode, the two tech giants revealed they have … | Continue reading
Ah, welcome welcome. I see you enjoyed last week’s edition and are back for more. Well we won’t disappoint. For the uninitiated (go back and start at post one, please) the team at TNW has made a New Year’s Resolution to read a bit more. So every week, a select number of our team … | Continue reading
After news broke that legendary musician Prince has passed, many tech companies were quick to pay respect to the late artist. Today, Google’s tribute comes in the form of a Google Doodle – with a simple purple font and a rain animation. Snapchat also put this virtual purple rain … | Continue reading
Windows Ink is arguably the biggest feature coming to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update this summer, but it was sadly missing from the first preview released two weeks ago. Fret no more, stylus fans; today’s build 14382 introduces many new inking features, as well as surprisingly … | Continue reading
While Tor is often often associated with illegitimate activity due to its focus on anonymity, many people use it to simply have a bit more privacy from potential hackers and snooping governments. In fact, we now know at least a million use Tor specifically to connect to Facebook. … | Continue reading
Earlier this year at Mobile World Congress 2016, Google showcased a demo of a robot that uses selfies to readily draw artsy sketches of your face with a stunning accuracy in a matter of minutes. And while this might seem impressive, Google’s robot is neither the first, nor the on … | Continue reading
We live in an age of premium access, where the best entertainment and secure digital privacy generally costs an arm and a leg. But necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and new services are on the rise to allow the motivated web surfer to bypass geoblocks and pay-gat … | Continue reading
‘Game of Thrones’ returns to HBO this weekend, and in honor of the occasion Spotify has set up a micro-site for you to match your music taste with a character from the show. To get started, all you have to do is sign in with your Spotify account and wait as the site processes you … | Continue reading
How often in a day do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling on Facebook when you could be doing something more productive, like work or sleeping? What exactly is it that we are all so enthralled by? Or is it just a habit we can’t seem to break. Some research even suggests that F … | Continue reading
While users in the US have been able to add suggested business locations to a tweet since Twitter did a deal with Foursquare last year, people in (most) other countries have still had to share their favorite spots the old-fashioned way on the social network. Now, however, people … | Continue reading
I’ve spent the past year meeting with product designers at some of the world’s most innovative and beloved companies — Airbnb, Coursera, Etsy, Facebook, Google, Pinterest — while making the Design Disruptors documentary to understand how these brilliant minds and their companies … | Continue reading
April 23 marks 400 years since the death of William Shakespeare and just three days later is the 452nd anniversary of his birth. The prolific wordsmith produced nearly 40 plays and over 150 sonnets, poems and verses in his 52 years. So to celebrate his life, the 21st century is … | Continue reading
Talk of bots is everywhere since Facebook and Microsoft both recently announced they’d be putting more emphasis on seeing what parts of the businesses will be best served by the automated ‘assistants.’ They might still only be in their infantile stages (read: they mostly suck rig … | Continue reading
Google made headlines earlier this year when its AlphaGo AI defeated world champion Lee Se-Dol in the ancient board game Go. But a group of researchers want to push the boundaries and see how a computer might fare in a first-person shooter deathmatch. The 2016 Computational Intel … | Continue reading
We want to offer our favourite entrepreneurs and pioneers a platform to share the visions and insights that will shape our future, which is why, each week, we’ll present you with an exclusive episode of Imagineers. Produced in partnership with the City of Amsterdam, each episode … | Continue reading
With the advent and proliferation of “growth hacking”, many products are launching with hopes of leveraging data, A/B tests, and viral loops to manufacture a hockey stick growth curve. It’s easy to think you can growth hack your way into an overnight success, but in practice it r … | Continue reading
There is no questioning that Uber has changed the traditional taxi industry for the better in a lot of ways. However, its alignment with fraud and questionable safety standards is something the company is still working to iron out. One of the regions where fraud is particularly r … | Continue reading
Since its inception, Uber has maintained that the drivers on its platform are freelancers and not employees of the company. That helps the company keep costs low, because it doesn’t have to pay monthly salaries or benefits. But maintaining the ‘independent contractor’ status of i … | Continue reading
Although I’ve moved away from using Evernote as my daily writing app, it’s still the best tool I know of to store and organize important information, so it’s easily searchable and accessible. Today, Evernote’s Windows app has got a major overhaul with a beautiful new interface an … | Continue reading
A report today suggests that infighting at Apple is beginning to drive employees to leave as Apple’s upper management, and two development teams, tries to figure out just what to do with iCloud. Multiple sources claim that Apple is working on its own internal cloud infrastructure … | Continue reading
Turns out a Prince tribute wasn’t the only new feature Snapchat had in store today: an update is rolling out to iOS users allowing them to face swap with any photo in their camera roll. Now when you enter the masking features – long press on a face during the capture process – yo … | Continue reading
Legendary singer Prince passed away earlier today, and pretty much everyone who loves music is mourning. Snapchat is joining in with its own tribute: a filter that adds purple rain droplets to your face, or whatever you’re snapping photos of. It’s a reference, of course, to ‘Purp … | Continue reading
If you’re a subscriber to Google’s cellular network Project Fi, a new update on the Play Store should help you better manage your data. According to an update log shared by a Googler on Reddit, the Project Fi app (version I.2.1) will come with a new widget that lets you view curr … | Continue reading
There’s a lot to be nostalgic about with MTV – remember when they played music videos? If you missed some of MTV’s classic programmings, the network has announced that it’s reviving one of its most popular, ‘MTV Cribs,’ via Snapchat. When it was on the air between 2000 to 2011, ‘ … | Continue reading
FBI Director James Comey today revealed that the FBI spent more than a million dollars to crack Syed Farook’s iPhone. After nearly a month, the agency has found nothing. The phone, which was the linchpin in the recent Apple and FBI showdown in front of congress, was believed to h … | Continue reading
In June of last year, Facebook announced that it would start showing more content that mattered to you by factoring in the time you spent viewing a post — whether you actually clicked through to linked content, or not. Today, Facebook is building on this mission to bring more int … | Continue reading
If you haven’t heard today’s bad news, music icon Prince has passed away today at age 57. While details are still forthcoming, it didn’t take long for Prince’s official Twitter account to subtly mourn the legendary artist’s passing. Prince’s previous avatar featured the artist we … | Continue reading
Swarm is again letting you go ‘off the grid’ for check-ins, which is about as counterintuitive as it gets for a social service. With the feature (literally called ‘off the grid check-ins,’ and something that was available before Swarm was branched off from Foursquare), users can … | Continue reading
Are you one of those people who gets really into the Olympics every time they’re on? Rooting for your country from the couch in sports you didn’t know were real sports? Or you know, you could be a genuine sports fan? Well, either way, to help get you in the mood and rally some su … | Continue reading
The big old US Merriam-Webster Unabridged just welcomed 1,400 new words and phrases into its ranks, as well as adding 700 additional new meanings to existing terms. Seven of them caught our eye and although they aren’t all that new, the folks at the dictionary office say they’ve … | Continue reading
At an event in New York today, Acer announced announced a series of new Windows 10-powered devices. First up is its own take on the 2-in-1 Windows laptop, the Switch Alpha 12. The Surface-clone device uses full fledged Intel Core i processors, which it’s able to do thanks to some … | Continue reading
Airtime, the service that let you converse with random other users, is back — as a video chat room. Originally, Airtime wanted to capture the magic that brought its two founders — Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning — together to form Napster. They met happenstance in IRC, and the resu … | Continue reading
It might have only been last month (hint, it was) that Google announced the Android N Developer Preview for Nexus devices, but the company has been working with Sony to make it available to Xperia Z3 owners now too. While that leaves most of a billion users without the ability to … | Continue reading
Despite countless headlines about companies and governments being hacked, it seems some businesses just haven’t quite gotten around to putting even the most basic security into place. The Bangladesh Bank at the center of an attempted $950 million cyber fraud was using network swi … | Continue reading
Since its launch, Nintendo’s social app Miitomo has amassed over four million users and will probably gain a few more when items from the hugely popular game Splatoon land next week. Nintendo has revealed that the headwear, clothing and more from Splatoon will be made available i … | Continue reading
At its press event in New York, Acer today announced the Chromebook 14 for Work, a new laptop designed to withstand your clumsiness if you’re the type who drops and spills stuff on your devices frequently. The Chromebook is designed with a metal body that can handle drops from up … | Continue reading
Every startup has a story to tell. From the conception of an idea, to the first lines of code, early hires, and preliminary funding rounds – every company has a unique narrative. But there are always shared experiences. Processes, tactics, and habits that shape the experience of … | Continue reading
The UK government will ask Parliament to grant it new powers that would allow people found guilty of copyright infringement to face up to 10 years in jail. That would put the maximum sentence on a par with ‘possession of firearm with intent to cause fear of violence’ and ‘adminis … | Continue reading
Spotify has just been revealed as the official Billboard chart’s exclusive streaming partner for 2016, meaning it will power all music playback for the 75 different top record lists compiled each week by the magazine. The pair are also bringing out three new charts that are power … | Continue reading