National Geographic and the Oculus Quest get ready to bring you on an Antarctic adventure

Not all of us will be able to go to the Antarctic in our lifetimes, but you can do so virtually. National Geographic is all set to launch a 30-minute Antarctic adventure experience for the Oculus Quest. Coming out this spring, the experience will be coming to the National Geographic Explore VR app. You will be tasked to find a lost penguin colony in the Antarctic. It’ll start off as a kayak ride through frigid water, and then you need to climb up an ice sheet to look for the missing birds. You’ll be able to set up camp and experience what it’s like trying to survive in that kind of tough environment with the use of Oculus Touch controllers. This is the first of many other adventures coming to the app. The National Geographic Partners Immersive Experiences team has been working with Oculus and VR/AR studio Force Field on Explore VR for the past nine months.

Source: Engadget

Intel to bow out of smartphone-modem business

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With Apple and Qualcomm working out its differences and settling their lawsuits, Intel is effectively out of the picture. And now that it isn’t developing its 5G chipsets, it seems the company wants out of its smartphone-modem business as well. Apple was considering buying part of Intel’s modem ventures, but that deal was stopped short when Apple and Qualcomm signed a multi-year chipset-supply deal. That doesn’t mean the company hasn’t expressed interest in buying this segment from Intel. According to The Wall Street Journal, a few other companies are looking at buying said business. Goldman Sachs is helping Intel facilitate negotiations. The deal is most likely worth a few billion dollars, but it’s in its early stages for now. The company is reportedly losing around US$1 billion annually because of its modem business, so the sale could include staff, patents, and modem designs across multiple technology generaitons.

You can watch select Tribeca Film Festival talks live on Facebook

While you may not be at the Tribeca Film Festival, you do have a chance to check out some talks happening at the event. You can stream conversations from the likes of Ali Wong, Tiffany Haddish, Michael J. Fox, through the festival’s Facebook page. The festival is running through May 5^th and you can check out the full schedule of the live-streamed talks through this link.

Google bans app developer with over 600 million downloads over ad fraud

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This isn’t the first time Google has banned an app developer from its marketplace, but it’s probably one of its biggest yet. The tech giant banned Android developer DO Global after it discovered that it was committing ad fraud. A Buzzfeed report found at least six of the company’s apps have a code that made it seem like a user was clicking on an advertisement even if they weren’t using the apps. These even had generic names like Selfie Camera and Total Cleaner, which obscured the fact that they were owned by DO Global. And that violated Play Store policy.

Almost half of its over 100 apps have been removed from the Play Store. DO Global, which is partly owned by Chinese tech firm Baidu, has already racked up over 600 million downloads in the Play Store. The developer has also been taken out of Google’s AdMob network, which cuts off their access to Google’s mobile advertising service.

Source: Engadget