MobileNews

Google’s dialer app for Pixels can now be installed on some other Android phones

Google has made several of its apps from Pixel smartphones available widely in the Play Store for other Android users, but its phone/dialer app hasn’t been one of them historically. Now, some Android phones have been able to download the dialer app from the Play Store. Spotted by XDA-Developers, a handful of devices have been able to install the Google Phone app this past week. Previously, the…
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GamingNews

Gaming industry TV ad spend is rising — blame Tom Nook

Even with much of the U.S. economy shutting down due to the coronavirus pandemic, the gaming sector upped its advertising outlay for television to an estimated $17.3 million in March—$5.3 million more than February’s spend. As we’ve previously mentioned, gaming could…
GamingNews

Gaming acquisitions and investments continued in Q1 despite coronavirus

More than $700 million was invested in game startups in the first quarter, though that amount is down from the year-earlier period, according to data collected by Sergei Evdokimov, investment associate at Mail.ru Games Ventures. It was a big dip, but it’s not bad for a quarter with so much turmoil. In an email to GamesBeat, Evdokimov said we shouldn’t panic about it because lots of game…
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MobileNews

Highlights is a PDF reader for researchers, now on iPhone, iPad, and Mac as a universal purchase

Apple last month officially rolled out support for universal app purchases between iPhone, iPad, and Mac. One of the latest apps to take advantage of this functionality is Highlights, a powerful research-focused PDF reader. Highlights has been available on the Mac for years, but alongside Apple’s support for cross-platform universal purchases, the app is also now available on iPhone and iPad for…
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AI & RoboticsNews

ProBeat: Microsoft Teams video calls and the ethics of invisible AI

Microsoft Teams is getting a bunch of new features this year. Robert Aichner, Microsoft Teams group program manager, recently told us how Microsoft is building the most interesting one: real-time noise suppression, which uses machine learning to filter out background noise during calls. Because the feature isn’t final, we also had a secondary discussion about the user experience. It’s one…
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