Apple Opens Everyone Can Code initiative to students globally

Apple today announced the global expansion of its Everyone Can Code initiative to more than 20 colleges and universities outside of the US. These schools will now offer the App Development with Swift Curriculum, a full-year course designed by Apple engineers and educators to teach coding and app design to students of all levels and backgrounds. Now hundreds of thousands of students from around the world gain the opportunity to become proficient in the Swift programming language and build the fundamental skills they need to pursue careers in the booming app economy. 

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As interest for Pokemon Go wanes, Niantic looks to bring AR-enabled Harry Potter game

Niantic took mobile users by storm with Pokemon GO which brought the first real example of AR (augmented reality) to the masses. While that game became one of the biggest and most downloaded titles, interest from the general publick has been waning for some time now and the company is looking for the next big hit.

What's bigger the the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? 

"We're incredibly excited to announce this next step in the evolution of AR mobile entertainment. With Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, players that have been dreaming of becoming real life Wizards will finally get the chance to experience J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World. Players will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities to discover & fight legendary beasts and team up with others to take down powerful enemies." Death eaters, Dementors, legendary wizards and witches are all going to be served up in muggle neighbourhoods as Niantic blends magic and high technology. The game is coming 2018.

Twitter’s 280 character limit upgrade now live for all users

What your timeline could possibly look like now with longer tweets

Watch out world, tweets are about to get longer. Or will they? Well, the option is there now officially. Twitter announced after its “successful” trial run in September, the update from 140 characters to 280 is now live for all users around the world—except for those that tweet in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, though. The change is said to be the company’s response to feedback it’s been getting to users. You should be able to tweet longer now or check if your app is the latest version.

The move though comes at a time when the service continues to be under fire for everything from the harassment users experience on its platform, to how it let propaganda that illegally influenced the US’s 2016 presidential election, and then there’s the tirade of said US President. The release of the 280 character update is said to be a diversion of sorts against the larger issues the platform faces, at least according to Kelley Heider, a crisis communications expert at SSPR, a public relations firm that often works with tech companies. "They change their narrative in the news cycle by responding to user feedback," she told CNET

IFTTT decentralizes Google Drive service, splits actions into Docs, Sheets, and Drive

IFTTT (or If This Then That) is an automation platform that works across a variety of services over the internet. You can use it to do things like save Instagram photos to your Google Drive, have it cross-post social media posts on various platforms, turn on the lights at home when it detects you’re in the area, and so much more. A new update coming to the platform though relates more to Google Drive. IFTTT is splitting up its Google Drive “applet” into the more specific Google apps, namely Drive, Sheets, and Docs.

This time, any applet that deals with spreadsheets will become linked to the Sheets channel, same goes for Docs and any created or uploaded document. Meanwhile, any applet that makes use of the file upload action will remain part of Drive. IFTTT is setting up these new services now and warns its users their might be some service interruptions on November 9. Some of you might already see the two new channels and have your applets migrated there.

Source: Android Police