Wednesday
May042022

Anchor co-founder Michael Mignano resigns from Spotify

Photo by elnaz asadi on Unsplash

Spotify's podcasting tech chief and Anchor co-founder Michael Mignano will leave the company by the end of June. Spotify confirmed that he submitted his resignation last week, making him the latest high-profile departure from Spotify's podcasting business. He follows after the head of studios and video Courtney Holt and Gimlet Media director Lydia Polgreen left. Holt was the one who cut blockbuster deals with Joe Rogan and the Obamas.

Mignano co-founded Anchor in 2015, which Spotify bought in 2019 for over US$150 million. The streaming service brought in Mignano to head its podcast tech division. As The Verge pointed out, Anchor hasn't produced any big stars. Still, it has become one of the most-used podcast hosting platforms, with one out of four new podcast episodes done through Anchor (according to Livewire Labs).

Tuesday
May032022

'Fornite' brings back 'Star Wars' items for a limited time

Source: Epic Games

Since it's almost May the Fourth, Fortnite decided to bring back its old Star Wars-themed items tomorrow until May 17. Every non-Battle Pass Star Wars Outfit that has been in the Item Shop will make a return. The Lightsabers will be back, and so will the E-11 Blaster Rifle. There will be new Star Wars Quests for those who want to go through Stormtrooper training. When you complete five of the quests, you'll earn an Empire Banner.

You can check out everything coming to the game this next two weeks over here.

Monday
May022022

Amazon finally adds epub support to the Kindle

Photo by Rishikesh Sreehari on Unsplash

It's taken so long (like 15 years), but Amazon's Kindle will finally support the widely-used epub format on its e-reader by the end of the year. It will allow the Send to Kindle function to convert epub files into a file format that can be opened on the Kindle. This news will be widely welcomed by Kindle users who have had to grapple with manually converting their ebook library just so it can work on a Kindle device.

This update means that Kindle will lose support for the MOBI format. This older French file format served as Amazon's proprietary ebook format, which it got when it acquired Mobipocket in 2005. The company then rebranded that to AZW. Those old files will still be accessible on your Kindle, but there won't be any new ebooks in that format.

Source

Monday
May022022

Google Pixel 6's weak notifications vibration gets fixed in May Pixel update

Photo by Thai Nguyen on Unsplash

The latest update for Google Pixel devices includes an update that fixes the weaker vibration levels felt on the Pixel 6. The Verge's Richard Lawler reports that he has noticed the vibrations to be stronger after installing the update. If that isn't something you want, you can lower its intensity in the settings. 

Other fixes that come with this update include fixing the display's sudden wake-up without interaction and a problem that crashes the launcher. The update also brings security fixes from the Pixel 3a to the Pixel 6.