Battle for the car: will Google, Apple or Microsoft dominate?

 

The battle for the car between Apple, Google and Microsoft has ignited this year with the launch of Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android-based Open Automotive Alliance.
Car manufacturers are lining up behind their respective technology banners, with each one pledging allegiance to one or another. Some sit across multiple camps, but others are steadfastly pro-Apple or pro-Google, with Microsoft and the others looking like they’ve been left holding mouldy cheese.

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Flipping and Recommending: Flipboard Buys Zite from CNN

The iPad was supposed to usher in a new age of journalism, publishing, and other ways to get news-like content into our grubby little hands and advertising money into the grubby little hands of the publishers. In some small ways it has succeeded, but if there is a new age it looks much like the old players are still trying to find their place. Or at least find a way that they can make the new age profitable. One of the small corners in this new publishing world that has seemed to work is Flipboard. A magazine App that allows you to curate your own content from Twitter, RSS, and increasingly from a number of sources that create magazines to be read in the App. Today Flipboard purchased Zite, another news reading App that had been purchased by CNN in 2011.

Both Apps serve a similar curation purpose, but the purchase of Zite gives Flipboard a future feature it doesn’t have. That is a recommendation engine. Zite allows you to vote a story up or down. Voting a story up means you’ll see more of that kind of story in the future. Voting it down means you’ll see less. Within Flipboard any type of recommending comes from sharing what you read instead of building a feed or feeds that contains articles that particularly interest you by voting up or down, liking or disliking.

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Google updates Gmail app on iPhone: Now sign-in to Maps, YouTube etc through Gmail

Google has released an update for the Gmail app on iPhone which adds some much desired features. The update, which hits the app on iOS 7, will bring pre-fetching of emails, but more importantly acts as a single-point sign-in window to the major Google services available for iOS.

“The app now fully supports background app refresh, which means your Gmail messages will be pre-fetched and synced so they’re right there when you open the app-no more annoying pauses while you wait for your inbox to refresh,” Melissa Dominguez, Software Engineer at Google wrote on the Gmail blog. The pre-fetching feature will only work if background app refresh has been turned on along with notifications for the Gmail app.

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Facebook Messenger For Windows Phone Now Available For Download

After a long wait, Facebook Messenger app is now available for Windows Phone users. Keeping up to its promised made during MWC 2014, Microsoft has launched the app with all the basic features available in Android and iOS versions. Among the various facilities provided by the FB Messenger app, the prominent ones are - Ability to send the new Facebook stickers and your photos privately, Having group conversations and Sharing your location so people know when you're nearby. Just like the online version of Facebook

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Yahoo continues spending spree with data visualisation firm Vizify

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 web customisation tool Vizify.
As part of the deal, Yahoo will shut down Vizify, so the company is no longer accepting new signups or purchases of paid plans. Vizify will issue refunds to plan holders and send instructions to those who have registered domains or created bios for how to regain that domain or get a "snapshot" of their bios that will be available until 1 September.
In a statement on its website, Vizify said its goal was to transform "information that we all consume and create every day into something more beautiful and personal" - which it has done through graphical bios, infographic cards, and videos.

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Chief financial officer Oppenheimer exits Apple after 18 years

Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer will retire at the end of September as CEO Tim Cook brings on a new lieutenant to navigate slowing growth at the iPhone maker.
Luca Maestri, who joined Apple as vice-president of finance and corporate controller a year ago, will succeed Mr Oppenheimer, Apple said on Tuesday.
Oppenheimer was at Apple for 18 years, during which the firm introduced the iPod and iPhone.
He oversaw a surge in Apple’s cash pile to $158.8bn from $5.46bn in 2004, the year he was promoted to chief financial officer, reinstated dividends in 2012 and returned more than $50bn to shareholders. His departure is the biggest change to executive ranks since Mr Cook ousted mobile-software chief Scott Forstall in 2012.
"When Luca was hired a year ago, we saw the writing on the wall," said an analyst at Piper Jaffray, Gene Munster, who has the equivalent of a buy rating for Apple’s stock.
Mr Oppenheimer said in the statement that he planned to spend more time with his family, get more involved at California Polytechnic State University, travel and finish his pilot’s licence.

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Getty Images goes 'free for all' with new embedding rule

World's largest photo service, Getty Images, has reportedly decided to make its content free for public use after acknowledging that its pictures were everywhere with or without the watermark.
Earlier, if users wanted to get any Getty picture without the watermark, they had to pay for it.
However, the photo service has decided to drop the watermark for the bulk of its collection, in exchange for an open-embed program that would require users to add a footer at the bottom of the image with a credit

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