Philips Hue adds E14 white and colour ambiance candle bulbs

Philips Hue is continuing its dominance in smart lights and connected home products with smaller E14 candle bulbs for smaller lamps. These will be ideal for smaller lamps or bedside table lamps. These colour ambiance or white bulbs fit in nicely in Philips Hue households or offices who may have the larger lamps and bridge but are still stuck with traditional E14 bulbs on smaller lamps.

Philips says that the addition of the E14 fitting means that Hue is now compatible with 80% of light fixtures worldwide.

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Google Play Music now offers options for playback quality of songs

Google updates its Play Music streaming app with new playback quality options over Wi-Fi and for downloaded tracks. You can now choose between low, normal, high, and always high. Before you could only adjust playback quality for streaming when you were using mobile data. It doesn’t say, though, what bitrate these options correspond to. But if you seek the highest quality the app offers, then you at least have the choice to do so now. The update comes to both iOS and Android versions of the app.

Source: Engadget

Classic Disney NES games are getting HD remakes for other platforms

Six Nintendo Entertainment System games based on Disney characters are getting a second lease on life. Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, DuckTales and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (plus sequels for the last two) will be remastered in HD and bundled into a US$20 collection. Developer Digital Eclipse will be bringing The Disney Afternoon Collection to the PC, Sony PlayStation 4, and Xbox One starting April 18^th.

The games will get visual improvements alongside two modes: Boss Rush (which lets you fight bosses one after another) and Time Attack. A rewind feature will also be introduced as well as an in-game museum for Disney fans.

Source: Mashable

Netflix takes away star ratings, replaces this with thumbs up and down system

Netflix says it “feels very yesterday” so the star rating system is out. In its place we get the more straightforward thumbs up or down system. Todd Yellin, vice president of product innovation at Netflix, told journalists at the company’s Los Gatos headquarters that they “want to move to a system where it’s really clear." It seems this works better for them.

The streaming service beta tested this feature with hundreds of thousands of new users from around the world last year and found that over 200 percent more ratings were logged using the thumb system than the star ratings. This new system is expected to roll out to users in the coming weeks. Aside from this Netflix plans to introduce percent matching, which uses an algorithm to show a percentage below the title of how likely you’ll enjoy watching a specific show or movie. Yellin likens it to dating site matches with potential partners based on interests or earlier activity.

Source: The Verge