Swarm has evolved a lot since it was spun out of the main Foursquare app a couple of years ago. The game side of it is more fun than ever, even if it doesn’t appeal to everyone. Now the app has learned some new tricks that should appeal to people who don’t see the point of mayors … | Continue reading
This week, Twitter turns 10. Over the next few days we’ll be exploring how far the microblogging service has come, the challenges it faces going forward and some of its key moments along the way. One of the most palpable sore spots in the dynamic between San Francisco and the tec … | Continue reading
The Information today published a profile on Nest CEO Tony Fadell, but swiftly mentioned in the piece are reports of Google building its own Amazon Echo competitor. “Nest asked to be included in a secret Google project to create a competitor to Amazon’s Echo, a voice-controlled p … | Continue reading
Welcome to the brand spanking new TNW site. Well, it’s not all that new. We still have awesome posts from awesome writers about awesome things, but we’ve made a few changes that we hope will make the experience of exploring content a lot more enjoyable. But before we get into wha … | Continue reading
Sony’s $500 PlayStation VR launch bundle was made available to pre-order less than 48-hours ago on Amazon and it’s already sold out. No need to panic just yet though, because Amazon has confirmed that it will be making a second batch of the bundles available to order today from 2 … | Continue reading
European lawmakers are considering a Europe-wide “Google tax” requiring search engines to pay publishers for linking to and using “snippets” of their work. Trouble is, the idea has already been tried in Spain and Google simply closed its News service in the country, leading to a … | Continue reading
Well, this sucks. A Texas-based demolition company is blaming Google Maps for providing the wrong address for the house it was supposed to tear down, which instead led them to destroy a nearby family home. Demolition workers were supposed to knock down a tordano-ravaged home on 7 … | Continue reading
Microsoft has been touting the importance of its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) – apps that can be easily made to run on any form factor from desktop to phone – since Windows 10 was announced. So it’s a little odd that Skype, one of its biggest properties, is still using a deci … | Continue reading
Atlassian has added a few features to BitBucket, which now lets developers search for code snippets and use modifiers to narrow the results. Developers maintaining large codebases often have multiple repos with an ungodly amount of code. Via the early access program, Bitbucket us … | Continue reading
For years, independent game companies – and some of the bigger players – have used game engines to help bring their ideas to life. Unreal Engine (UE) and CryEngine have been used by the likes of Tom Clancy’s franchise and Crysis respectively. However, there is only one engine tha … | Continue reading
Whenever I’m on a long flight, no matter how many books I bring or movies I watch, I always end up staring out the window or trying to force myself to sleep out of pure boredom. Well, Flyover Country is a new app for iOS and Android that wants to help ease the boredom of long fli … | Continue reading
A JavaScript dev named Azer Koçulu has been having a branding issue with chat app Kik – he’d created a project of the same name in the JS store NPM. This week, conversations broke down and in true open-source fashion, it’s all playing out in public. According to Koçulu: “After I … | Continue reading
In this series of blog posts, I’ve enjoyed shedding some light onto how we approach marketing at The Next Web through Web analytics, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), social media and more. This piece focuses on what data we use from Google Sea … | Continue reading
HoverDock for iPhone: $27.95 Just Mobile introduced a new HoverDock iPhone Dock at CES, delivering a perfectly minimalist answer to our charging needs. With a modern design and a sturdy, steady presentation, it’s the ideal display charging dock. Now 20 percent off with TNW Deals. … | Continue reading
Your app’s success is contingent on a combination of factors, but I feel as you probably do as well, that the overall mobile user experience (UX) tops them all. The apps that stand out in the market are those that deliver great UX. Now, there are a countless number of elements th … | Continue reading
You probably know Line as a messaging app that’s wildly popular in Asia. It also handles things like paying your bills, booking tickets and hailing cabs. Now, it also wants to be a mobile operator. The company announced today its intent to launch Line Mobile in Japan. It won’t ex … | Continue reading
Tay, Microsoft’s AI chatbot on Twitter had to be pulled down within hours of launch after it suddenly started making racist comments. As we reported yesterday, it was aimed at 18-24 year-olds and was hailed as, “AI fam from the internet that’s got zero chill”. hellooooooo wrld! … | Continue reading
Mark Josphephson is the CEO of Bitly. Catch his talk at TNW Europe in Amsterdam this May alongside 130 other top-flight speakers. The year was 2011. Bitly was at a crossroads. Over the previous three years, we had developed the internet’s definitive link shortening tool, shorte … | Continue reading
Music video app Vevo is personalizing streams and adding connections to Spotify, Twitter and YouTube so you can follow bands or artists you like with ease. The personalization begins with the onboarding process. When you sign up for Vevo, it will now ask you which music genres yo … | Continue reading
We’re pretty certain Apple is going to start putting some serious money into exclusive, showbiz-focused video content in a bid to tempt people to its paid Music service with the promise of big names and big-budget production. The company gave us a first taste of it with ‘The 1989 … | Continue reading
How does your city sound? That’s a question a group of researchers are trying to answer with a new project called Chatty Maps. The site, which features aerial views of London, Barcelona, Madrid, New York and Boston mines Flickr for geo-located tags that feature words that can be … | Continue reading
If you’re building an Android app and want to ensure it’s easy for anyone to use — include people with visual, physical or age-related limitations — Google’s got just the thing. Its new Accessibility Scanner, available for free and compatible with Android devices running Marshmal … | Continue reading
Apple has begun accepting pre-orders for its new 4-inch iPhone SE and 9.7-inch iPad Pro online in 12 countries. Both devices are now available in Apple’s Web stores for customers in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, … | Continue reading
Two months since Sony announced it was merging its PlayStation division firms into a single entity, its gaming arm has formed ForwardWorks, a new company that will focus on developing mobile games. Set to begin operations on April 1 — the same day as the recently named firm Sony … | Continue reading
50-year-old Chinese national Su Bin faces five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for his involvement in a plot to steal information pertaining to fighter jets intended for use by US military forces. Bin, a businessman involved in the aviation and aerospace sector, worked with t … | Continue reading
Apple Pay may be coming to Websites before the year is out, according to a new report from Re/Code. Sources claim Apple is already discussing Apple Pay for the Web with potential partners, and that it could be limited to the Safari browser on newer iPhones with Touch ID hardware. … | Continue reading
Creating content on the Web can be tedious, but Adobe thinks it’s cracked the code. A new Adobe Labs project is not only trying to help us stay creative, but also building content for multiple delivery mediums. First, Smart Authority monitors your text input, then pulls in relate … | Continue reading
It looks like livestreaming is becoming a thing again. In the wake of Twitter’s desire to build out Periscope and Facebook’s eagerness to push Live Videos to the masses, it seems Google does not want to be left behind. According to a report from VentureBeat, which cited a source, … | Continue reading
Living in Mexico, I indulge in my fair share of tacos. What I haven’t done — at least not yet — is share one with Danny Trejo. That changes today. Thanks to Ganglebot Films, Danny Trejo’s appropriately-named LA-based taqueria, Trejo’s Tacos, and the man himself — now we can all i … | Continue reading
After an uber-successful theater run, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ is just two short weeks away from Blu-ray and DVD release on April 5. But, as usual, waiting is hard, and pirating is… well… not. Pirates are off to an early start by downloading the film an estimated 250,000 ti … | Continue reading
Google had plenty to announce for eager developers at its GCP Next event in San Francisco, but perhaps the most interesting was the company’s decision to create a brand new API around its speech recognition technology. Called — what else — the Google Cloud Speech API, developers … | Continue reading
Nintendo has been incredibly tight-lipped about its upcoming console, codenamed NX, so naturally, we gamers are analyzing any tidbit of information to death. Needless to say, alleged leaks of a prototype controller are driving the internet crazy. A redditor by the name of perkele … | Continue reading
Pebble is laying off 25 percent of its workforce and will focus on the health and fitness aspects of its wearable, CEO Eric Migicovsky tells Tech Insider. Though Pebble is a Kickstarter darling, and has raised over $26 million in additional funding over the past eight months, Mig … | Continue reading
There’s a battle waging in India as two ridesharing titans — Uber and the local Ola — clash over who gets to reign supreme. But in a lawsuit filed in the High Court of Delhi and detailed by Bloomberg, Uber claims that Ola used shady, underhanded tactics. Specifically, Uber says t … | Continue reading
Clamoring for a new MacBook? Apple’s OS X Server app may have tipped the company’s hat, as reference to an early 2016 MacBook was spotted in the ‘supported devices’ log. OS X Server is often used for managing multiple machines, where an administrator can create ‘images’ to be cop … | Continue reading
Getting your mobile game to the top of the app charts isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s the simplest ones that become an instant hit. For that reason, creators often use a free-to-play model, allowing users to play a good chunk of the game before having to pay for access to additional l … | Continue reading
According to Deloitte’s 10th annual Digital Democracy Survey, Americans are in love with binge-watching their favorite television shows. The survey says that 70 percent of those surveyed are watching TV shows in binge format, as God intended. In this case “binge” means five or mo … | Continue reading
Last week, Google gave rideshare services their own Google Maps tab on Android. That same feature has now arrived on iOS. If you live in the US, it doesn’t change that much; the tab will currently just show taxi times from Uber. Elsewhere though, you’ll have additional options: 9 … | Continue reading
Beirut might not be the first place that springs to mind when thinking about ground-breaking technology, but the fact is that Lebanese talent has actually played a pivotal role in many of this century’s most important innovations. With a diaspora estimated at around 14 million, a … | Continue reading
Backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 titles was one of Microsoft’s biggest updates for the Xbox One announced at E3 of last year, but it came with a caveat: you couldn’t actually buy the games from the Xbox One itself. But earlier this month, Microsoft started to sell 360 titles … | Continue reading
It’s not everyday you could end up getting matched with Donald Trump on Tinder – but it’s now more likely than ever as the dating platform wades into the US presidential race in the only way it knows how. Starting today, Tinder is offering to help you decide which candidate is fo … | Continue reading
The average worker loses 8.5 days of work annually because they can’t catch a decent night’s sleep. That’s probably because your phone is sending you push notifications from all the different services and social networks you’re part of. As a result, we’re suffering at work with l … | Continue reading
ThinkUp, a social media insights service co-founded by Anil Dash, is officially looking for a buyer. In a Medium post, Dash says its current subscriber base does not cover the cost of running the service, and wants to work directly with a company to help offer interesting analysi … | Continue reading
According to a new report from The Information, Apple is actually working on six projects regarding cloud storage, including Project McQueen. McQueen is believed to be Apple’s data storage initiative, with seperate projects for servers, networking equipment and security. From The … | Continue reading
Gliffy, a popular online diagram and flowchart Web app, experienced every startup’s worst nightmare this week when a member of its team accidentally deleted the company’s entire production database. The issue started when Gliffy’s team found an issue in one of its backup systems … | Continue reading
Microsoft is bringing back the chatbot, but with a new twist: this one talks like a teenager. The company today launched ‘Tay,’ a chatbot that tries its best to trick you into thinking you’re talking to an 18-24 year old girl. And she succeeds! Well, kind of. MS mostly gets the t … | Continue reading
Todoist, one of the most popular task apps, has revamped its Android app after overhauling the iOS version a month last month. Todoist 9 is bringing a handful of neat features and a new look to the app, which will make it even more powerful for Android users. Tablet users will be … | Continue reading
If you’re determined to make the next great app for Apple’s legendary iOS platform, you’ve found the course to get you there. The fundamentals of iOS 9 and Swift 2 are now available at a fantastically low cost to developers and aspiring programmers. For just $19.99 from iDB Deals … | Continue reading