Apple launches Apps et jeux en français on the Canadian App Store

Apple has added 'Apps et jeux en français' to tis Canadian App Store to highlight Canadian-made apps and content with specific curated lists of apps that best represent this genre of Canadian contant. 

Some of the collections featured this week include:

• Apps créées au Québec (Apps Made in Quebec) 
• Préparez la rentrée (Get Ready for School) including apps for teachers and older students (productivity, organization, note taking etc.)
• De nouveaux lieux à explorer (Go Somewhere New): collections of apps  including Explore Western Canada, Explore Eastern Canada, Explore Atlantic Canada, as well as excellent apps to help plan your trips to new places (including Airbnb, Packing Pro, KAYAK, Turo, and more)
• Apps et jeux pour la longue fin de semaine (Apps and Games for the Long Weekend)
• Jeux créés à Montréal (Games Created in Montreal)

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Singapore starts testing autonomous taxis on its roads

A few self-driving Mitsubishi i-MiEV and Renault Zoe are shuttling around a few dozen Singaporeans for free with this new trial run by a company called nuTonomy. The company, which spun off from MIT in 2013 has offices in Massachusetts and Singapore, is testing out its autonomous vehicle technology in a 2.5-square-mile residential area called “One-North” with an end goal of lessening traffic congestion in the city state. The taxis are equipped with six Lidar sets and two cameras to help it keep track of obstacles, lanes, and traffic light changes. There is also an engineer onboard to help make sure everything stays safe.

The company hopes to open the trials to thousands of users in the coming months and launch as early as 2018. What they are testing and gathering now is data related to “software system performance, vehicle routing efficiency, the vehicle booking process, and the overall passenger experience.” A bug has been noted by an Associated Press reporter who noticed that the safety driver had to hit the brakes when a parked vehicle moved suddenly into an oncoming lane.

Source: Engadget

BMW introduces new camera surveillance tech

Perhaps to help keep watch of your car when it’s parked in relatively sketchy places or to help you park the car while you’re outside of it, BMW is developing new camera surveillance technology for its vehicles. The German automaker sent out a photo showing off a user making use of the Remote View 3D from a smartphone. But they didn’t really release other information on it. What it has also given us though is a quick peek at the upcoming BMW 5 Series. This tech makes use of multiple cameras expected to come to the new BMW 5 and possibly more of BMW’s automobiles.

And while we don’t know much about it yet, it might be able to work like the Cadillac CT6’s camera, which makes use of different vehicle sensors to turn the car into a dashcam that’ll be able to record what happens when the vehicle is disturbed.

Source: CNET

Are two new Nokia smartphones on their way?

The Nokia XL is one of the few Android-power devices the company was able to put out

Spotted on mobile benchmarking tool Geekbench are two Nokia devices that could’ve possibly made it out of Nokia’s stable had they continued on making phones for Microsoft. And while people may speculate that these could be new Android-powered devices from Nokia, which is now being licensed to HMD Global Oy (for mobile devices), the specs are too old to warrant a new release. The first one is the Nokia 5320. It runs on Android 4.4 KitKat, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset, and 2GB of RAM. The second one is the unusual Nokia RM-1490 that runs on an AMD A8-5545 APU quad-core chip, Android 4.2, and 2GB of RAM. We haven’t seen an Android device run on AMD before. And GSMArena is speculating this could’ve been a laptop.

But while we might not be getting these, there are Nokia devices in the works. According to Nokia executive Mike Wang there will be three to four Nokia-branded mobile devices (encompassing smartphones and tablets) running on Android that will come out in the fourth quarter of this year. The announcement might be made before the year ends with a launch date set for early next year, depending on how testing and development goes.