W e have seen BlackBerry concept designs before, but this concept may take away our need for BBM emoticons, forever.

This Empathy pairs with a biometric ring to send the users emotional data to the crystal like device. The concept device was designed by Kiki Tang and Daniel Yoon for a RIM(Research In Motion) sponsored project at the Art Center College of Design. A BlackBerry-sponsored design competition has produced the Empathy, a concept device that lets you see your contacts' emotional state.

RIM is a serious company that makes serious smartphones. But a BlackBerry-sponsored design competition has produced a concept device that looks nuttier than squirrel droppings: the Blackberry Empathy. The Empathy is an angular phone that looks absolutely stunning -- and a tad bonkers. Its front is home to an OLED touchscreen that's transparent when not in use, and opaque at other times. It wouldn't be a proper BlackBerry without a physical keyboard, but the Empathy's is located on its back.

Touching the screen anywhere reveals a tabbed control wheel that lets you access your most commonly used features, like email, SMS, contacts, music and the camera. You pull a tab to access the desired feature.

In a nutty sci-fi twist, the phone connects to a bio-metric ring which is worn by the user. This ring collects emotional data, by examining the wearer's heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and skin secretions. This emotional data is made visible to your contacts, so they'll know whether they should leave you alone until you're feeling less fragile, or whether they can go right ahead and pop that balloon next to your ear. You can also see the emotional state of your contacts who are wearing a ring.

We don't think we'll be seeing the Empathy anytime soon, however, Mood rings seem like they're a long way from becoming reality, and you'd also need to know enough people who wear these rings to make this key feature of the Empathy worthwhile. As for the design, it looks smashing but it's not exactly pocket-friendly.

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A mechatronics engineering student from Germany has invented a “mobile airbag” that automatically comes into action when you drop your mobile phone, and hence protecting it from any kind of damage or harm.

Phillip Frenzel, a 25-year-old master’s student at Aalen University in Germany, came up with his idea after breaking his phone by throwing the jacket containing it over a banister. The impact caused the electronics inside the phone to break.

From then on, Frenzel began looking into developing a system to prevent dropped phones from breaking. Though we have huge stocks of big and bulky protective cases for smartphones available in the market but this guy(Frenzel) wanted something smaller and more advanced.


After four years of research and thinking, Frenzel created a “mobile airbag” that unfolds from the corners of a relatively-thin case when sensors detect that it’s in free fall.





When the phone is under free fall the dampers are pushed into their “airbag” position automatically with metal springs, and they help absorb the impact of the fall to protect a device’s screen and inner components. After being deployed, the dampers can be pushed back into the case, allowing it to be completely reusable.

Frenzel names his invention as AD Case i.e Active Damping Case.

Also See:  Top Earphones Under a Budget of Rs 1000/-

The German Mechatronics Society was so impressed by Frenzel’s invention that it awarded him its national Mechatronics Prize for 2018. Frenzel has also since registered for a patent to protect his creation. He’s reportedly planning to commercialize the case starting with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

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I nstagram has launched a lite version of its app in Mexico and will be launching it in several other countries, later this year. But if you are an impatient human being just like me and want to download the app right now itself, then my friend you have come to the right place.

Well, there are many websites who have shown various methods on how to bypass the country restriction and download the Instagram Lite app instantly.

But! Guess what??

I have already done all those hectic task and I am directly presenting to you all the direct download link of the app. 

Also See:  Top Earphones Under a Budget of Rs 1000/-


You just need to click on the Download Instagram Lite Apk button below and that's it. 

I n addition to Merchandise, community groups and Premieres. Speaking at VidCon 2018, Youtube's Chief Product Officer announced they'll be rolling out three new features: the first, being paid memberships available to channels with over 100k subscribers. Memberships are $4.99 per month and viewers will receive access to special badges, emojis, exclusive streams, and a community post section.

This comes as fellow technology giant Facebook announced a new subscription feature for Group Admins, letting them charge up to $30 per month for their subscribers to access exclusive posts in sub-groups kind of like a virtual VIP room.

So it's clear that the big social community platforms are getting serious about keeping their creators on-side and helping them make money.

Also See Best Android Apps to Track Mobile Number Location 

Youtube creators will get to keep 70% of the profits that come from the membership, which give creators another revenue stream, other than ads.

The second feature is a merchandise shelf that allows users to sell their swag underneath every video. Up to now, creators had to link to their personal storefronts in the description of every video. Now they have a section on their channel where they can show off prices and pictures of each item.


Youtube is partnering with Teespring (who will be taking a cut of the revenue), allowing creators to sell hoodies . t-shirts, pillows, hats and more.

Effectively, the way this works is that there’s a flat price per item sold that goes back to Teespring,but the creator can mark up the item to whatever price they want, then keep the upside.

In addition to memberships and merchandise, YouTube announced “Premieres,” which lets creators build hype for upcoming videos,with dedicated landing pages that go live at a certain time.

Once the video is live, viewers can chat with each other in real time, and creators can use Super Chat for the first time on regular YouTube videos.

New on YouTube!

✔️Channel Memberships help Creators build community & earn more money
✔️Merch makes it easier for Creators to sell custom merchandise on their channels
✔️Premieres records pre-recorded content as a live momenthttps://t.co/KN5mahgv62

— YouTube Creators (@YTCreators) June 22, 2018

As Instagram and Facebook continue to roll out new features like Facebook Gaming and IGTV, YouTube is looking for more ways to incentivize creators to stay on their platform, and help generate even more revenue. YouTube says testing out memberships allowed some creators to triple the amount they were earning every month from the platform.

G oogle is pretty much the biggest name in the artificial intelligence market right now, and it would seem we hear more about AI from the company these days than anything else.

One thing it hasn’t advertised widely is its work in the field of healthcare when it comes to AI. As reported by Bloomberg, Google’s AI systems are able to predict with scary accuracy the short-term life expectancy of patients.

According to the video story, A woman with late-stage breast cancer came to a city hospital, with fluids already flooding her lungs. The hospital’s computers read her vital signs and the system estimated a 9.3 percent chance she would die during her stay. However, Google’s new algorithm analyzed a total of 175,639 data points and delivered a more accurate assessment of her death risk: 19.9 percent. As fate would have it, she passed away in a matter of days to prove that the AI had the more accurate reading. As such, Google’s AI was able to predict the death with a higher percentile as opposed to the standard hospital’s computers.

In this case, Google’s AI uses neural networks, which has proven effective in gathering data and then using it to learn and improve analysis. As per the report, Google’s tech can “forecast a host of patient outcomes, including how long people may stay in hospitals, the odds of their readmission and chances they will soon die.” Additionally, Google’s algorithm can retrieve “notes buried in PDFs or scribbled on old charts” to make predictions, and determine “the problems with solving,” Bloomberg wrote. All this could help doctors make better diagnosis.

Google’s system employs essentially the same kind of analysis performed by doctors, but it does so more efficiently and precisely. According to the report, the findings so far is that Google’s system is faster, and more accurate than other techniques.

Eventually, Google states that it would like to take “a slew of new AI tools” that can accurately predict symptoms and disease into clinics.

S teve Jobs once said, "You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out." And it seems his words really stuck out with Raja Vijayaraman, who became the first Indian app designer to win the Apple Design Award at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this year.

"It was a huge surprise for me. Most people always think that we Indians don't design so I never thought I will be getting this sort of award. It was like a distant dream. It took me 3 minutes to get (that) it was happening for real and still I'm sinking into the feeling," Raja shared with India Today Tech, recalling the moment his name was announced on stage at WWDC 2018.

Every year lakhs of engineering students graduate from various engineering colleges in India, including from prestigious ones like IITs and NITs, with the hopes of making a name for themselves in the IT industry and, in rare cases, even the Silicon Valley. But very few make it to the top. And even fewer manage to break the glass ceiling and stand out in the crowd.

Unlike what most people may assume, Rajas story is not that of a typical IIT boy making it big at WWDC. Rather, its the story of a simple guy who fell in love with programming and found his calling in designing apps that were based on Apples platform.

Raja Vijayaraman hails from a small town called Theni in the southern-most state of India. And just like any other small town Indian boy, he wanted to move out of the town to a big city. So after completing his Class XII, he joined a mechanical engineering course in Chennai. "Once I got into mechanical engineering I found out that this was not my cup of tea."



Unlike what most people may assume, Rajas story is not that of a typical IIT boy making it big at WWDC. Rather, its the story of a simple guy who fell in love with programming

Although he wanted to drop out of the course, his father, Vijayaraman, advised him against it."When I told my father that I don't like to continue with mechanical engineering, I want to drop out, he said rather than dropping out you just finish this engineering course and (then) you can do whatever you want," he shared.

So after completing his course in mechanical engineering, Raja took a 3-months animation course and joined the VFX industry where he worked on various movies like Rajnikanth's Robot, European movies and The Flying Machine. Around the same time, he got his first iPhone iPhone 3GS -- that, as he recalls, was radically different from his old Nokia N8. While exploring his iPhone, he got to know about the $99 Apple Developer Program. And that was the beginning of his love affair with app designing.

"I have no friends around me in the programming area so I myself stared learning programming and that's how I went through this app development process," he said.

Raja started working on the Calzy app back in 2013. The first version of the app was released in 2014. Over the course of five years, he has not only perfected the design but also added a host of new functions to it. He started working on the latest version of the app -- Calzy 3 -- in November last year and it seems that all his hard work is now paying off. Calzy 3 managed to impress the Apple bosses with the simplicity and utility of the app and its design.

The idea behind developing the Calzy app was simple -- a calculator with the modern features that people could use in their day-to-day lives. "I needed a calculator, which is so simple that I could use in my day to day life. Calculator was introduced 50 years back. It remains the same how it was introduced 50 years back. I wanted to create a calculator for the times we live in," he said.

Also See Best Android Apps to Track Mobile Number Location 

"On our phone we have so much of memory space so we can have lot of numbers stored. In iOS there are a lot of new technologies like 3D Touch and drag and drop functionality. So I wanted to re-imagine the calculator around these kinds of technologies. That's how new version of calculator was made," he shared while talking about how he came up with the idea of designing the Calzy app.

It was five-year long journey for him. And Raja credits his parents, his wife and his friends for supporting him in his long journey. As Raja recalls, things didn't change for him even after his marriage. "My wife is so supportive," he says.

But things weren't as easy for him back as they are now. "This year Calzy app has been doing really well, but for the first version it was difficult," he said, adding that he faced a lot of challenges in the beginning. But things got better eventually.

"In iOS 11 there are a lot of cool features which I incorporated into the app like drag and drop feature, partial search feature... So I incorporated those technologies into this new version of Calzy," he added. Today, Rajas app costs Rs 159 on the App Store. But what kept him motivated during this sojourn was his passion for designing and his love for technological innovations.

As far as Calzy 3 is concerned, the app, which is available for download only on iOS, itself is pretty amazing. It is compatible with iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch and it comes with a host of interesting functions. Calzy 3 app can spell out calculation results in 65 different languages and its unique bookmarking function which lets users sort of bookmark their calculations with date and title for future use.

Besides this, the app also comes with an iMessage extension, which allows people to use the messaging service without leaving the app. The app also comes with latest iOS technologies like 3D Touch, Face ID and Drag and Drop and it features "handoff" support to resume calculations on another supported device.

Today, Rajas calculator app costs Rs 159 on the App Store. But what kept him motivated during this sojourn was his passion for designing and his love for technological innovations

When I asked Raja if an Android version of the app was on the cards, his answer was a flat "no".

"No, I just like to be with iOS right now I like the simplicity and the design language and I really love this product. I'm completely in this Apple ecosystem," he said.

In the days to come, Raja will update Calzy 3 to iOS 12. "Of Course, I'll be updating it to iOS 12. Right now I don't have any features set for Calzy but iOS 12 has introduced a lot of new technologies like AR Game, those sort of things so I might do a new app around that AR tech," he says.

He also has a couple of other ideas in the pipeline that he will like to work on in the future. "I can't reveal now. But there are a lot of apps in the pipeline that I will do eventually I'm a one-person company. I mean I do design, development and everything. Since I do everything, it will take some time," he added.v It has been a long journey for Raja from a mechanical engineer to the first Indian Apple Design Award winner. And he credits his passion for app designing to help keep going. "I think that is the most important thing -- doing something that inspires us or motivates us," he says.

T he mokacam snap is the world's smallest 4k camera and unlike any current action camera snap is small enough to wear comfortably and its elegant design is a fit with any fashion statement.

The innovative 180 degrees flip lens allows you to shoot from the best angles and enable so many creative possibilities. It may not always be easy to find the button when you wear a camera but with snap you can turn it on and start filming with just a click of the remote. 

Sale is on

The snap battery life allows for over one and a half hours of continuous video recording which is impressive of a camera for its tiny size. 

What's more? The video can be uploaded to the cloud via the Wi-Fi connection so you can share the story of your life with your friends and family anywhere immediately with the magnet clip quarter inch adapter or waterproof case you will have numerous ways to wear it and explore and with 4k image quality those precious moments of life are yours to remember forever.

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T he Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro is one of the most popular budget smartphones in India right now. The fact that it first launched in India before any other country made it an even sweeter deal for many users. With the success of this Pro device, Xiaomi appears to be already working on a new smartphone with this moniker and could launch it in late-2018. Apart from the Redmi 6 Pro, the existence of the Mi Max 3 and Mi Pad 4 has also been confirmed.

A new report claims that references to all the three devices were found on the Mi China website. This means that these smartphones will launch in China before anywhere else in the world. While the Redmi Note 5 Pro was an India-first device, it seems unlikely that Xiaomi will continue this trend.

Recently, a Xiaomi smartphone with a notched display was leaked on TENNA. While it was initially expected to the Redmi 6 Plus, it now appears to be the Redmi 6 Pro. Xiaomi recently launched the Redmi 6 and 6A while there were no traces of a Redmi 6 Plus being launched in the near future. While the design is plausible, we hope Xiaomi fixes the colour of the bezels and notch and go with a black colour instead.

The Redmi 6 Pro could have a 5.84 inch display with a 2280 x 1080 px resolution. This translates into a 19:9 aspect ratio which is common for smartphones with a notch.

The listing mentions that the device will run on an octa-core 2.0GHz processor which could well be the Snapdragon 660 SoC. The Xiaomi Redmi 6 Pro is expected to be available in three configurations, 2GB RAM/16GB storage, 3GB RAM/32GB storage, and 4GB RAM/64GB storage. Like the Redmi Note 5 Pro, the 6 Pro is also expected to offer expandable storage via microSD card.

On the back of the smartphone will be a dual-camera setup. The listing mentions a 12MP primary sensor and 5MP secondary sensor. This is the exact configuration found on the Redmi Note 5 Pro. Xiaomi would probably improve the quality of the sensors and add a few software features as well. Powering the Redmi 6 Pro will be a 4000 mAh battery. Hopefully, with the 6 Pro, we will see the inclusion of a USB Type C port.



The Mi Max 3 has been in the news for quite a while now. Xiaomi is one of the few companies that still makes phablets. The Mi Max 3 will succeed the Mi Max 2 and is expected to launch in July. Just like the recently launched Mi 8 SE, the Mi Max 3 is expected to run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 chipset. This could be coupled with 6GB of RAM and up to 64GB of onboard storage.

Buy this Quadcopter Now

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 will be one of the few exciting Android-running tablets to launch in 2018. Xiaomi has not given up on tablets yet and the Mi Pad 4 could launch soon as well. Recent leaks suggest the Mi Pad 4 will run on Snapdragon 660 chipset and sport an 18:9 aspect ratio. If true, this will be a headline-grabber as well since no other tablets with this aspect ratio have launched so far.

The list of smartphones that Xiaomi could launch is exciting. At the end of the day, these are leaks and a lot can happen by the time these smartphones are launched.

W hat is Mobile tracking?? We all know about mobile tracking. It is the process of finding any mobile location. Sometimes we want to track mobile number location. But there is no official way to track the location of mobile number. But we are here with a pack of 5 best apps to track mobile number location.

Best Mobile Number Location Tracker Apps

The Mobile tracking can be done in a number of ways :

1. Network-based: When mobile number location is tracked by service provider’s network interface, then we called it tracking of mobile number location by the network.
2. Handset-based: When mobile number location is tracked by a client software, that is installed in the handset, then we can call this type of tracking is Handset-based.
3. Hybrid Positioning System: It is a group of network-based and handset-based technology to track a mobile number location. Sim based: When tracking of number location is done on the basis of SIM number then we call it SIM-based mobile tracking.
4. WiFi-based: WiFi data can also help in tracking a mobile phone number location.

Best Android Apps to Track Mobile Number Location in Android

1. Glympse (Download Now)

S an Francisco: Google has made "App Maker", its low-code tool for building business apps, generally available and open to all developers, after a year and a half since the launch of its beta version.

"Today, we're making App Maker generally available to help you rethink how your teams operate," Geva Rechav, Product Manager, App Maker, wrote in a blog post late on Thursday.

"App Maker is G Suite's low-code application development environment that makes it easy for teams to build custom apps to speed up workflows and make processes better," Rechav added.

Google first launched the App Maker in November, 2016 and made it available through its "Early Adopter Program for G Suite Business" at that time. It was created with the idea of enabling line-of-business teams to create bigger apps, revamp company processes, resolve help desk tickets and more.

The new features include a built-in support for Cloud Structured Query Language (SQL), responsive templates, a drag-and-drop user interface design and declarative data modelling.

It would also come with "Expanded OAuth Whitelisting" controls to let administrators prevent apps from running without their approval. In addition, the app building tool would allow developers access to 40 Google services including Gmail, Google Calendar, Sheets and other data sources, Rechav said.

The App Maker is now available to all G Suite Business and Enterprise customers, as well as G Suite for Education customers.

S amsung has launced a new color variant for its flagship smartphone Galaxy S9+, called the Sunrise Gold Edition which is priced at Rs 68,900. Pre-orders for this variant has already been kicked off today, and it will most likely to be available from 20th June.

Offers & Availability
For online buyers, there’s an option to pre-book the smartphone from the E-commerce giant Flipkart or via Samsung Online Stores as well.It will be going on sale from June 20. As mentioned, this new color variant is priced at Rs 68,900.It will also be available via offline retail stores.

If you are to buy the Galaxy S9+ Sunrise Gold Edition, Samsung will be offering a one-time screen replacement. Additionally, buyers will also be entitled to a Rs 9,000 cashback offer if the payment is made via Paytm Mall or ICICI credit cards.

Specifications & Features
The new Sunrise Gold Edition joins the existing color options including Midnight Black, Coral Blue, and Lilac Purple. Samsung Galaxy S9+ Sunrise Gold Edition is said to be available in 128GB inbuilt storage variant only and is also the company’s first to feature a satin gloss finish. 





Besides the look, everything else including the specifications stay the same. The smartphone has a 6.2-inch Quad HD + Curved Super AMOLED screen with ‘Infinity Edge’ display and 18:9 aspect ratio. It is powered by Samsung’s own Exynos 9810 processor alongside 6GB RAM.

There is also a dual rear camera setup that includes two 12MP modules out of which one is a telephoto lens and other is a wide-angle lens. This one also comes with an 8MP front snapper. It is backed by a 3500mAh battery and supports fast wireless charging.

Besides the new Samsung Galaxy S9+ Sunrise Gold Edition, the company has also introduced a TV Control widget, which offers ‘a one-of-its-kind unified convergence solution between mobiles and televisions.’ It can be enabled using the SmartThings app, using which people can mirror audio and videos on the nearby TV.

A t the NXT BLD conference held in London, Lenovo has announced the ThinkPad P52 - a 15.6-inch laptop with VR-ready features and high-end specifications.The highlights of the new Lenovo ThinkPad P52 is the 8th Gen Intel Xeon hexa-core processor, a massive amount of storage of up to 6TB and the most attention-grabbing spec is the up to 128GB of RAM, which should be able to help this monster plow through any workload with ease.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P52 features a 15.6-inch 4K/UHD touchscreen display with 100 percent NTSC colour gamut and Adobe RGB coverage and maximum brightness of 400 nits. The 8th gen Intel Xeon hexa-core processor is paired with up to Nvidia Quadro P3200 GPU, the mobile Nvidia workstation GPU designed to support Virtual Reality and work in compact 15-inch display. The laptop supports up to 128GB DDR4 RAM (depends on the combination of ECC vs non-ECC).

Notably, Lenovo this year introduced plenty of ThinkPad laptops including the high-end ThinkPad T480s and ThinkPad X1 Carbon 2018. With the Lenovo ThinkPad P52, the company has added another laptop to its mobile workstation lineup. The ThinkPad P52 features a basic functional design similar to other ThinkPad P series laptops.

The new ThinkPad also includes two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, three USB 3.1 Type-A, one HDMI 2.0, one mini DisplayPort 1.4, headphone jack and an SD card reader. The laptop offers Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet and optional Cat 9 4G LTE under its connectivity suite. It measures a dimension of 14.9×9.9×1.0 in/377x252x25 mm and starts at 2.5kgs. Lenovo hasn't revealed the pricing as of yet, but it plans to make it available later this month.

Lenovo will provide a choice of five operating system options for developing needs: Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home, Ubuntu, or Red Hat Linux. Lenovo Vantage and a trial of Microsoft Office 2016 will be pre-loaded. The ThinkPad P52 comes with an infrared camera for facial recognition in Windows Hello, and an additional 720p webcam as well.

Google's AI based translations

G oogle has rolled out offline downloads for its AI-powered translator. So if you don’t have unlimited data or you have a plan that doesn’t work internationally, you can now download neural machine translation from Google’s Android and iOS apps.

Previously, you could download Google Translate’s offline dictionary on the go. But whether you were figuring your way through a foreign menu or deciphering cool storefronts, you may have discovered that the dictionary’s quite literal translations don’t fully grasp the nuances of a foreign language, even if the language is Spanish or French, which are quite similar to English. The plight doubles when you’re trying to decipher a language with a different alphabet and roots, like Russian or Chinese, where even the AI-based translator makes mistakes.

Google Translate’s offline AI translations will first be available in 59 languages, including English, Arabic, Chinese, German, and Hindi, to name a few. They’ll take about 35MB per language, so they won’t use up too much of your device’s storage. Lower-specced phones should also be able to support the new update, as Google says it wants users in all markets to have access to the feature.

It’s a gradual rollout; about 1 percent of Google Translate users will get the update today. By the 13th, 99 percent of users should get the update, and by the 15th, it should be fully available. No more strange literal dictionary definitions while traveling, for the most part.

Here’s a full list of the 59 available languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Jannada, Korean, Lavtian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh.

G oogle already announced this at I/O 2018, but the new Multiple Actions feature has just started rolling out to Google Home users across the United States. Now, you can stack commands — like asking about your commute, the weather, and telling Assistant to start playing music — by only saying “OK Google” or “Hey Google” once.

It’s great news for frequent users of Assistant on Home speakers or on smartphones. Queries are natural, so instead of asking, “Hey Google, what’s the weather in Paris and what’s the weather in New York,” you can ask a more straightforward, “OK Google, what’s the weather in New York and Paris?”

All of this currently applies to US English only, but Multiple Actions and triple commands are planned for other languages. If you pair this with the fact that you can have three separate commands, plus what are essentially compound questions, using your Google Home, Home Mini, or Home Max experience just improved noticeably. Just keep in mind the feature might not be available immediately; it’s rolling out over the next couple days to users in the US.

A fter continuing to build out its podcasting presence over the past few months, Google finally looks ready to roll out an app dedicated solely to podcasts.

According to a snippet of code spotted by 9to5Google, the latest version of the Google app has a hidden prompt asking users to “Get the Google Podcasts app.” Google built out a full podcast interface several months ago inside the app, which will likely be accessible via a home screen and app launcher shortcut. Longtime Android users might remember that Google used to have an app called Listen, its first attempt at a podcasts player. But the company shut down Listen in 2012. That same year, Apple debuted its own Podcasts app for iOS, which has proven to be hugely popular.

Google has already unveiled similar home screen shortcuts for other services like the Google Assistant or Google Lens in recent months. While these services technically live inside the Google app, the shortcuts turn them into services that essentially work like standalone products. The app should give Android owners a less cumbersome option to listen to podcasts on the go.

Right now, users can track their subscriptions and browse through trending podcasts using the Google search engine on mobile, but slogging through the site can feel unintuitive and clunky. Still, a “surprising” number of users turn to the feature daily, Google’s podcasts product manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen told Pacific Content in April. It looks like the forthcoming app will be an extension of this current service with a similar interface — just spun out so it’s more prominent.

Of course, listeners can also tune in on their phone using Google Play Music or via third-party apps like PocketCasts. For those curious about Google’s podcast project, 9to5Google suspects the app should appear in the Play Store at this link when it goes live, though the release date is still unclear.

G oogle is announcing some changes to the way it handles extensions in its Chrome browser. Starting today, newly published extensions will only be available in the Chrome Web Store. For years, web developers have been able to trigger installations of Chrome extensions from their own websites, or inline installation as Google calls it, but Google is phasing this method out.

“We continue to receive large volumes of complaints from users about unwanted extensions causing their Chrome experience to change unexpectedly,” explains ​James Wagner, Google’s extensions platform product manager. “The majority of these complaints are attributed to confusing or deceptive uses of inline installation on websites.”

While Google has attempted to address these misleading extensions, the Chrome Web Store displays a lot more information about extensions. Google says extensions installed from the Chrome Web Store directly are “significantly less likely” to be uninstalled compared to inline ones. Google is planning to remove inline installation from Chrome for existing extensions starting on September 12th, and Chrome users will be redirected to the Web Store. With Chrome 71 in early December, Google is also planning to remove the inline install API method entirely.

“We’re confident this change will improve transparency for all users about their extension choices in Chrome,” says Wagner. The changes mean that you’ll only be able to install Chrome extensions from the Web Store, and developers will need to update their install buttons to link to the Chrome Web Store page instead. These new changes should also prevent Chrome users from installing extensions they don’t need or simply stop them from being misled into installing an extension.

H MD Global’s updated version of the Nokia 3 — the Nokia 3.1 — is making its way to the US. Preorders are available now for the Android One smartphone at the relatively low price of $169, via Android Central.

Of course, a $169 smartphone won’t give you the same firepower as a pricier flagship, but the updated version doesn’t seem to be a terrible phone for what you’re paying: the updated Nokia 3.1 update offers a 5.2-inch HD display, a 1.5GHz MediaTek octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage, with a 13-megapixels rear shooter and an 8-megapixel wide-angle front-facing camera.

More importantly, the Nokia 3.1 is also an Android One smartphone, which means it runs an untouched version of Android optimized for the lower specs on the phone, and it should get regular security updates for three years.

There’s no word yet on the Nokia 5.1 or 2.1 models, which were announced at the same time as the 3.1, but FCC filings indicate that the other phones might not be too far behind.

F IFA 2018, the biggest football tournament across the globe, is a day away from beginning. Naturally, all sports enthusiasts would want to stay up to date with the latest scores and stats. Apple seems to be encashing on this as its voice assistant Siri now adds support for football in 9 more countries. It is worth mentioning that the Siri support to stay updated with the latest news on FIFA 2018 is already there in India.

The list of new countries includes Brazil, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Malaysia, Turkey, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Israel. This comes in addition to 26 other countries where it is already supported. Users will be able to ask Apple’s virtual assistant about the team rosters, standing, player stats and the latest scores in the matches.

You can also ask questions like:

• When does France play Australia?
• What teams are in group A?
• Who is on the England squad?
• Who won the Argentina-Iceland match?

During the month Apple users will also see football-based apps and games highlighted in the App Store by the editors. Apps like FOX NOW, BBC Sport and games like FIFA Mobile and PES 2018. In Apple Music, there will be playlists for each of the 32 nations that are participating in FIFA 2018. In the Podcasts app, users will see an editorial collection called ‘The Beautiful Game’ to hear about football.

Like Apple, Google too is also giving services from where users can track the latest news on FIFA 2018. Users can search for FIFA 2018 based queries right from the search box. The Assistant will also help users keep track of information. Google News app will have a dedicated World Cup Tracker with a special ‘Spotlight’ feature to provide easy visualisation of match scores. Google Trends page will give an interactive, real-time view of FIFA World Cup searches.