Google turns your Live Photos into GIFs

A new Google app for iOS will turn your shaky Live Photos shot into a looping gif with its new app. Motion Stills combines Live Photos with their own video stabilization technology and their auto-creating gif capabilities to bring you images with moving foreground and backgrounds that are frozen. Think cinemagraphs. Without going into the technical explanation of how their technology works, it’s like Google added a virtual tripod to reduce the shakiness and its algorithm separates the moving objects in the foreground from the background to create the movement. Another thing is it chooses an optimal loop point so it cuts off before any awkward moments after you’ve thought you’ve ended a video but it’s still recording. It does this photo magic on your phone so it won’t even need to be online. But, of course, if you want to share these on social media, you’ll need to be connected.

Source: Engadget

Lenovo Tech World promises innovation and emerging technologies

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

We're two days away from what is expected to be a monumental Lenovo Tech World launch event in San Francisco. Not only are we expected to see the latest devices and technologies from Lenovo, we are also expecting to see a plethora of announcements around Moto, Project Tango as well as AI and VR technologies.

Click to read more ...

Twitter redesigns Android app

Twitter is trying to align with the “best of Android” with its latest refresh of its app. And by aligning, they mean following the Material Design look. One of the new things the app has includes being able to swipe on the top bar to move between Home timeline, Notifications, and Direct Messages more easily. If you use Google’s native apps, Twitter’s new navigation menu will remind you of that. You can access that by swiping the screen from the left to see things like your profile, Highlights, lists, settings, and the Connect tab. Composing a tweet is much easier now as there’s a floating action button for it. The update is rolling out to all users globally so watch out for the update.

Source: Twitter

HTC Vive now shipping, new demo locations announced

HTC's Vive VR can now be purchased through www.vive.com in 24 countries, shipping within 2-3 business days of purchase. In addition to online availability from HTC, individuals can now buy the Vive virtual reality system in 51 Microsoft Stores,  40 GameStop outlets and 10 Micro Center locations. Pre-orders placed through these retailers will be fulfilled beginning this week. 

Vive will also be demoed in 100 retail locations throughout North America. In addition to current retail demo locations, Microsoft Stores will expand from 29 to 51 locations, GameStop will increase demo locations from 10 to 40, and Micro Center will add 5 more locations for a total of 10. The demonstrations are open to the general public to experience room-scale virtual reality first-hand with the variety of content available on Steam^¢ē.  The full list of participating locations is available at www.vive.com. Check here to see my intial impressions of the HTC Vive.