Frank Ocean drops new album as an Apple Music-exclusive for the next two weeks

Fans of Frank Ocean have been waiting for this day to come. Now, if you’re an Apple Music user, you’ll get a chance to listen to Blond there. The album is spelled out as Blonde on Apple’s music streaming service and it’ll be an exclusive on Apple Music and iTunes for two weeks. The 17-track album features Ocean’s collaboration with some big names in music including Beyoncé, Pharrell, Kanye West, Tyler The Creator, James Blake, Andre 3000, Jamie xx, and Rick Rubin, to name a few.

The album was formerly known as Boys Don’t Cry and was set for an August 5^th release but when a The New York Times report detailed the release, Ocean and his team pushed back the release because they supposedly lost the element of surprise with the leak. It might be a better deal for the fans, though, because aside from Blond, Ocean also released a visual album called Endless and a new music video for Nikes, which is the first track off of Blond.

Source: The Verge

Wikipedia co-founder gets his Twitter account hacked

OurMine, a hacking group, adds another high-profile social media breach to its list. This time they take over the Twitter account of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. On Saturday, a tweet on Wales’ account showed up saying “RIP Jimmy Wales, 1966 – 2016,” which caused people to speculate if something did happen to him. Minutes later though, another tweet shows up saying “I confirm that Wikipedia is all lies, OurMine is the true.” The tweet included a link showing the group’s logo as well as an ad for social media security services. Wales’ bio has also even been changed to read “hacked by OurMine.”

Some of the other prominent figures OurMine has hacked include some of the heads of the biggest internet/tech companies including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. It seems Wales has gotten back access to his account and tweets about three hours ago: “I'm (obviously) OK, and tweeting back to normal.”

Source: Mashable

Apple Stores are now just Apple stores

Take special notice of the capitalization. Apple Stores will no longer be called Apple Stores. Instead, these “community hubs” will simply go by Apple *insert store’s location*. For example, the newly opened Apple store in World Trade Center is now just Apple World Trade Center. The tech company is looking to reframe the idea of its stores just being a place to purchase Apple products and accessories. There will be things like 6K video screens, greenery, and even the dismantling of Genius Bar setups in some stores to put in more seats. This change is spearheaded by Apple’s Senior VP for retail Angela Ahrendts. She was quoted saying at the unveiling of Apple Union Square, “The store becomes one with the community.”

Some of the other changes you can expect in Apple’s stores will include a more boutique feel to them with seasonal displays that will showcase various products. This time, they’re showing off iPhone photography accessory. It goes to show Apple is looking to sell you a lifestyle instead of just products.

Source: The Verge

Google to end support for Chrome apps on all platforms outside Chrome OS

Screencap: Ubergizmo

In the coming months and year, Google will slowly be phasing out support for Chrome apps on other platforms outside of its own Chrome OS platform. This means, Windows, Mac, and Linux users will lose access to them. By the second half of 2017, these apps won’t show up on the Chrome Web Store. Newly-published apps coming out at the latter part of this year will only be available on Chrome OS. By early 2018, users can no longer load these apps. What will be remaining there are the extensions and themes.

And while it seems like a big deal, it would seem only a small number of users are using Chrome apps. According to Google, “Today, approximately 1 percent of users on Windows, Mac, and Linux actively use Chrome packaged apps, and most hosted apps are already implemented as regular web apps.” And with the advancements in open web, Google feels like there isn’t a real need for these apps. Google is encouraging developers to migrate their Chrome apps to the web or help out Google with new APIs to fill in gaps left by the Chrome apps.