What’s new
Twitter will remove the blue verification badge from accounts that don’t follow its guidelines
The company has paused the public submission for the verification for the blue verified badge of an account and have introduced new guidelines for the program. The company had earlier mentioned the misuse of the blue badge in a tweet which says that ‘Verification was meant to authenticate identity & voice but it is interpreted as an endorsement or an indicator of importance’. The tweet also said that ‘We have created this confusion and need to resolve it’.
You can read more here.
HTC and Google confirm that plans for a wireless Daydream VR headset have been cancelled
HTC has officially cancelled the standalone virtual reality headset the company was set to build with Google. HTC instead introduced a separate device for the Chinese market that will be powered by a newly-announced mobile VR platform called Wave. A Google spokesperson says plans are still in place for a Lenovo Daydream standalone headset.
More info are available here.
New products
Huawei Honor V10
The Honor V10 will have a Kirin 970 processor, a 6-inch display and a 4,000mAh battery. It will come with Android 8.0 Oreo OS and will be launched on November 28.
More info here.
Fossil Q Control
The smartwatch has a full touchscreen display, Android Wear 2.0 and a heart rate sensor. It comes with water-resistance of up to a depth of 50 meters and has a price of $275.
More info here.
You might want to know about this
Google Maps will get a redesign
The company said in a blog post that it has updated driving, navigation, transit and explore maps to better highlight information that the company thinks will be most relevant. Google also said that maps would get an updated color scheme with new icons added to more easily identify places like a church, cafe, museum or hospital not just by their symbol, but also with a corresponding color to make it even easier to identify.
You can read more here.
Duolingo will add a Chinese language course
The language learning app has provided Spanish and German since it was in private beta back in 2011, but didn’t add Asian languages until recently, Japanese was added in May and Korean in September. The company said that a Chinese course was one of the most requested language courses in the service’s history.
More info can be found here.
Fun stuff
Somnox is a robotic pillow that ‘breathes‘
Somnox aims to improve sleep by breathing regulation and audio sounds. Julian Jagtenberg, one of the Netherlands-based founders of Somnox said they wanted to solve the problem of sleep deprivation. The team also plans to incorporate artificial intelligence features into the robot so that it will be able to gather data and use this to predict when you may have trouble sleeping, and take steps to help.
You can read more here.
