Volvo gives you back your commuting time with new concept

Create mode

Volvo’s new concept car has been named after the average number of time an American spends in the car to drive to work. While 26 minutes might be on the dot for you or slightly more or less than that, what Concept 26 has in mind is to give you back some of your time.

Shown at the LA Auto Show, Volvo’s take on the autonomous driving trend isn’t like the steering wheel-less Google concept car hopes to bring into the future. What Volvo wants is still give you access to manual controls, since their research showed that car customers still want a steering wheel on the autonomous car. Volvo’s research also showed that people will use autonomous drive when they drive to and from work and while stuck in traffic. And at this time you probably won’t have someone else in your car, so no need to swivel seats to face your companion. The company also claims people aren’t too keen on riding backwards anyway.

Click to read more ...

Google Photos update helps free up your storage space

It’s sometimes frustrating to own an Android device that has 8GB or even 16GB of storage and you find yourself having to rearrange or delete apps just to have more space on your phone. It’s even more troublesome when said device doesn’t have expandable storage. Google Photos is hoping to ease your troubles a bit with its latest update for Android. It’ll let you store your media files online to free up space on your device. All you have to do is select the “Free up space” option under Settings and this will delete local copies of the files from your device, as long as they’ve been backed up already.

The app will also be able to alert you when you’re running low on storage space. It even makes it easier for you to delete backed up photos you don’t want, including those older than 30 days. Google’s John Elstone says you also now have the ability to downgrade photos from Original quality to High quality—the former is the full resolution of your shot, while the latter is a compressed version of your photo. The update is said to be coming to iOS soon, too.

Source: Google’s John Elstone + Google Photos’ Google+ | Via: Android Community | Download: Google Play Store

Huawei becomes Ottawa Senators official smartphone provider

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Huawei Canada President Sean Yang hold up Ottawa Senator Jerseys signifying the 2022 Games in Beijing, and the Huawei Sponsorship of the Ottawa Senators in 2015.Chinese tech company Huawei has entered into a partnership with the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club to become their official smartphone supplier. The announcement was made in Beijing where Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson is visiting the company’s Research & Development facilities there. The brand and the club will be working together for the next two seasons. This partnership coincides with the recent launch of the Nexus 6P smarphone, which was released this past week in Bell, TELUS, and Rogers stores across Canada.

The sponsorship also entails rinkboard and in-game advertising as well as option for local sales promotions for Huawei’s smartphones. Huawei will also be working with Ottawa Senators’ Technology in Schools program that helps promote Science, Technology, and Math as education options for post-secondary students. This partnership also complements Huawei’s existing Telecom Seeds for the Future initiative with engineering students at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa.

Instagram tightens rein on third-party apps

Photo courtesy of TechCrunch

After a security issue with third-party app InstaAgent, Instagram looks to be cracking down on its third-party apps and limiting what they can offer Instagram users. The company revised its API policy and isn’t taking any new apps at the moment that want to integrate into its service. Applications will reopen next month but Instagram is limiting functions for third-party apps. These services can still pull from photos you’ve posted yourself but you can’t pull full Instagram feeds once the new restrictions are in place. Existing apps have until June 1^st to comply with the new policies and undergo the new review process.

Source: The Verge