Instagram and National Arts Centre collaborate to celebrate #Empty spaces

Toured the NAC for #EmptyNAC #Roadto2017 today. First of several shots to come of this amazing building. #CNAvide #routevers2017

A photo posted by Jason Fournier (@jasonfournier) on Nov 18, 2015 at 7:16am PST

 Instagram and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa hosted the first official Canadian #Empty event – inviting some of the capital’s best Instagrammers to capture beautiful snapshots and video of the space before it opened to the public. The new Minister of Heritage, Mélanie Joly, was on hand to welcome attendees.

Millions of people around the world use Instagram every day to highlight local arts and culture. As part of the Road to 2017 – Canada’s 150^th anniversary – Instagram will be collaborating with centennial institutions across the country on something called #Empty events. The goal of these events is to bring people together and celebrate the beauty of Canada through the lenses of art, culture and photography.

The #Empty trend was started in 2013 by American Instagrammer Dave Krugman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The idea is to give Instagrammers a rare opportunity to experience a cultural institution when it’s empty, either before or after-hours. 

Google tests out app streaming on Android

Sometimes you just want to try out an app to see if it’s worth spending time or money (or both) on. Google’s now taking advantage the world outside of mobile webpage search with its new experiment. Google Search is introducing app streaming on Android devices. Search results for sites like Chimani and HotelTonight will give you access to streamed versions of their mobile apps without having to download the app to your phone. But Google cautions you need good Wi-Fi connection for this.

Google’s reasoning is sometimes the searches you do have answers that are within apps. Google already has over 100 billion deep links into apps in their index such as those from Facebook, Airbnb, Instagram, and Pinterest. And according to them, 40 percent of what people search surface content within apps. Before this, they’ve only been able to show those that match web content. Now, they hope to give you access to “app-first” content as you use Search. Google’s working with a handful of partners at the moment but they hope to expand this.

Source: Google | Via: Engadget

Volvo gives you back your commuting time with new concept

Create mode

Volvo’s new concept car has been named after the average number of time an American spends in the car to drive to work. While 26 minutes might be on the dot for you or slightly more or less than that, what Concept 26 has in mind is to give you back some of your time.

Shown at the LA Auto Show, Volvo’s take on the autonomous driving trend isn’t like the steering wheel-less Google concept car hopes to bring into the future. What Volvo wants is still give you access to manual controls, since their research showed that car customers still want a steering wheel on the autonomous car. Volvo’s research also showed that people will use autonomous drive when they drive to and from work and while stuck in traffic. And at this time you probably won’t have someone else in your car, so no need to swivel seats to face your companion. The company also claims people aren’t too keen on riding backwards anyway.

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Google Photos update helps free up your storage space

It’s sometimes frustrating to own an Android device that has 8GB or even 16GB of storage and you find yourself having to rearrange or delete apps just to have more space on your phone. It’s even more troublesome when said device doesn’t have expandable storage. Google Photos is hoping to ease your troubles a bit with its latest update for Android. It’ll let you store your media files online to free up space on your device. All you have to do is select the “Free up space” option under Settings and this will delete local copies of the files from your device, as long as they’ve been backed up already.

The app will also be able to alert you when you’re running low on storage space. It even makes it easier for you to delete backed up photos you don’t want, including those older than 30 days. Google’s John Elstone says you also now have the ability to downgrade photos from Original quality to High quality—the former is the full resolution of your shot, while the latter is a compressed version of your photo. The update is said to be coming to iOS soon, too.

Source: Google’s John Elstone + Google Photos’ Google+ | Via: Android Community | Download: Google Play Store