Periscope brings 360-degree broadcasting to all users

Periscope is democratizing 360-degree livestreaming on its service. Previously, the feature was only available to a few users. Now, anyone who broadcasts from the Insta360 Nano on the iPhone or through the Producer app can do so. For those on Android, the Producer software is needed to do a 360 broadcast. Given you already have a Ricoh Theta S or Orah 4i. If you have all of these, then enjoy streaming!

Source: Engadget

Google Allo gets new Assistant button

Google Allo has started to roll out a new feature to give you quicker access to Google Assistant. The app now gets a quick access button and Google plans to roll this out to all users. What this does is it makes it easier to share information within your chat windows. All you need to do is tap on the Google Assistant button and you and the people you’re chatting with can see the answers. Other new features expected to come to Allo in future updates include a new “quick selfie” feature, backup and restore, and the ability to add stickers to photos.

Source: 9to5Google

Latest Pebble update decouples the smartwatches from online servers

With Fitbit’s acquisition of Pebble, one of the biggest concerns was whether Pebble watches would still work in the future, especially since its smartwatches software is mostly cloud-based. To help address that, Pebble released an update that’ll decouple the wearables’ dependence on cloud services. This means when Pebble’s servers shut down, users will still be able to side load apps and new firmware to the smartwatches. Of course this doesn’t address yet questions about how messaging, weather, and dictation features (which are all cloud-based) will work moving forward. But at the very least, the smartwatches can work even when Pebble gets fully absorbed into Fitbit.

Source: The Verge

This wireless mouse also works as a scanner

Now here’s a nifty combo: a mouse that doubles as a scanner. The Zcan Wireless Scanner Mouse looks just like any other wireless mouse out there. It ups the ante though with a built-in scanner that can read documents simply by swiping on them. The Zcan Wireless Scanner Mouse’s accompanying software can then digitize the text and even translate on the fly. It supports 199 OCR languages and can even scan tables, spreadsheets, and offers direct editing of each individual cell in Microsoft Excel. It comes with an A4 Scan Pad to help you scan things like receipts, photos, business cards, and other scraps of paper. A pretty handy gadget that goes for US$148.90 on Amazon.

Source: BGR