After the runaway success of Pokémon Go, Niantic’s next AR smartphone game based on a Nintendo property will try to be a little calmer. Today, the two companies are launching Pikmin Bloom on iOS and Android, based on an offbeat series of games for Nintendo consoles. Whereas Pokémon Go asked players to round up the game’s eponymous monsters at real-world hotspots, Pikmin Bloom is a more passive affair, in which players can grow plant-like Pikmin creatures whenever they go
Oura Health is announcing the third generation of its sleep tracking ring. In its latest iteration, the Oura Ring goes far beyond basic features, such as tracking sleep and counting steps, which were emphasized in previous models. According to CEO Harpreet Singh Rai, that was the long-term plan all all along. “We‘re focused on health—we always have been,” he says. That focus has been evident in the flurry of academic research Oura has been conducting over the past yea
If you’re like most people, you probably use at least a handful of Google services every day—maybe without even thinking about it. But while the company has plenty of high-profile offerings, there are still more Google goodies that are unknown, undermarketed, or underappreciated. Here are some to check out. Family Link If you’ve got kids in the house, sometimes it’s nice to set some ground rules. Google’s Family Link app lets you do just that, by
While playing around with the new Watch Series 7 that Apple loaned me, I stumbled on a surprising feature. You can now interact with the device in a whole new way—using hand gestures. Apple presents this as an “accessibility” feature for people who have trouble using the Watch’s buttons, for which it will surely be useful. But it’s hard to miss the future possibilities in using your hands—as opposed to your fingertips or voice—to communicate with
Despite the boom of the so-called influencer economy over the past decade-plus, creators who make their living posting content on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more are continuing to face now-familiar challenges: the perils of building a business on the back of an ever-changing algorithm determined by Big Tech companies; the grueling reality of having to post multiple pieces of content a day; and, ultimately, for many, the meager financial reward. Indeed, for every TikTok star that is raking
When Apple revealed that its new MacBook Pros have an iPhone-like camera notch along the top of the screen, the initial reactions were pretty funny. But now that those MacBooks are shipping, the response from early adopters is both amusing and useful. Consider, for instance, a new app called TopNotch, which makes the entire menu bar black so the notch no longer stands out. It’s just a cosmetic improvement, but a welcome one. It also works just as well with notchless MacBooks if you prefer
Thanks to the pandemic, QR codes have popped up on ad posters, restaurant tables, and billboards around the world, inviting people to scan them in order to view menus and marketing information without having to type a web address into their phones. But clicking QR codes too hastily can risk bringing malware to your smartphone, cautions Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). “If someone just walked up to you on a street
Delayed three times since spring of 2020, No Time to Die—the 25th James Bond movie—finally premiered in London earlier this month, taking in $119 million in its international debut. It marked not only the return of the movie theater experience to much of the world, but also a glimpse at the future role of technology in facilitating global entertainment distribution. From merchandise to receiving financing through crypto- and blockchain-based production, studios can better cate
With the launch of iOS 15, Apple’s Safari browser just got a lot more useful. Now, you can install extensions in Safari for the iPhone and iPad, letting you tweak the browser in all kinds of interesting ways. Some extensions can help you save money while you shop, some introduce powerful new shortcuts, and others simply make the web less distracting and more pleasant. While Safari isn’t the only mobile browser with extension support—Firefox on Android is another notable exam