Microsoft opens state of the art facility in Vancouver, promising a $90 million yearly investment

This morning, Microsoft  officially opened the Microsoft Canada Excellence Centre (MCEC) – a new, first-rate facility in the heart of downtown Vancouver that will bring together the best and brightest minds from Canada and around the world. 

The MCEC will allow Microsoft’s presence in Vancouver to grow to more than 750 positions. It will inject $90 million in direct investment in the city annually. Across the province, it will have an estimated economic impact of $180 million each year.

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JayBird's Freedom Wireless bluetooth headphones come to Best Buy Canada

Jaybird, announced Freedom Wireless Bluetooth Buds, its fifth-generation of Freedom is available starting today exclusively at Canadian Best Buy stores and bestbuy.ca.

“This latest generation of Freedom liberates our lives like never before,” said Judd Armstrong, founder and CEO of Jaybird. “These micro-sized tapered buds deliver our best-ever sound while featuring a reduced size that fits all ears, all in a low-profile fit that resonates with everyone. The over-ear fit and elegant metal accents of Freedom bring a fashionable element while also being more rugged than ever, offering the freedom to bring your music anywhere, from mountain to motorcycle, thanks to the buds’ helmet friendly breakthrough form.”

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Bluetooth 5 is coming with 4X range, 2x speed and 800% broadcasting capacity

There's a breakthrough for Bluetooth around the corner which will make our mobile and connected devices grab data much quicker and from much, much farther away with less chance of interference. 

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced that its next release, coming late 2016 to early 2017, will be called Bluetooth 5 and will include significantly increased range, speed, and broadcast messaging capacity. Extending range will deliver robust, reliable Internet of Things (IoT) connections that make full-home and building and outdoor use cases a reality.

Higher speeds will send data faster and optimize responsiveness. Increasing broadcast capacity will propel the next generation of “connectionless” services like beacons and location-relevant information and navigation. These Bluetooth advancements open up more possibilities and enable SIG companies – now at an all-time high of 30,000 member companies – to build an accessible, interoperable IoT.

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Apple won’t really let you delete pre-installed apps

We reported a few days ago that Apple was letting you get rid of some of its native apps. But that isn’t the entire truth. You won’t actually be deleting the apps. According to Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, that what they mean by deleting is removing these apps from your home screen and getting rid of associated user data.  These apps won’t be deleted because they are baked into iOS so the application binary stays there. Federighi clarified these facts at The Talk Show Live hosted by Apple blogger John Gruber. According to Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch’s editor-in-chief, these apps are “part of apples [sic] signed binary” and when you “redownload” they just add the associations back. From our understanding, it’s like hiding apps in Android that you don’t want to use but they’re still there, they’re just not visible to you.  

Source: TechCrunch