Google Maps on iOS now lets you make pit stops along your driving route

Google is finally updating its Maps iOS app with one of the services most useful features.

Google Maps on iOS will now allow you to add extra stops along your route without leaving the directions to your final destination. The feature first launched on Google Maps' Android app in October and is beginning to roll out to the iOS app on Monday.

Once the feature is live, you'll see a magnifying glass icon in the upper-right hand corner of the app, which allows you to browse restaurants, gas stations and other points of interests along your route. Select a place you want to stop at and Maps will redirect you to that location — and then automatically gets you back on the road to your final destination.

In addition to the nearby restaurants and businesses, you can also manually search for a specific place to stop at or search for a location with voice commands. Search results also display ratings and how long the detour will take. If the stop is very close to your route, for example, it may say "quick detour"; if it's farther away, it will list how many extra minutes the stop will take.

The feature is beginning to roll out now to all the countries where Google Maps supports navigation.

Source : Mashable.

Samsung's Android flagships get February security update

Samsung has begun rolling out Android’s February security update for all of its recent flagships. The release is currently reaching unlocked units in most markets, and should be available to those branded by carriers soon.

The updates are available for the Galaxy S5, Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy Note 4, and Galaxy Note 5, according to SamMobile — and they’re currently rolling out in markets throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas.

This is the same security update that Google rolled out to its own Nexus smartphones at the beginning of the month, and it’s a pretty significant one as far as security updates go, fixing ten security loopholes and seven major vulnerabilities.

“There’s also a dedicated patch for the faulty Qualcomm Wi-Fi drivers and a repair for a critical error that could have allowed remote access to a device by way of a simple text message,” adds SamMobile.

If you own one of the handsets listed above and it is unlocked, it is recommended that you install this update as soon as you can. You should get a notification when it’s available, but you can search for it manually from the software update section in the Settings app.

If your handset is carrier branded, keep your eyes peeled for the update’s arrival soon.

Source : Technobuffalo.

Pinterest hits 100 million users, proving the addiction is real

Pinterest reached 100 million monthly active users, the company announced in a blog post on Wednesday, a big milestone for the visual bookmarking treasure chest.

In March, the company was valued at $11 billion, which put it right behind Snapchat — but ahead of Dropbox and Airbnb — at the time.

Additionally, 70% of those 100 million monthly active users aren't just on Pinterest for the pins; they're saving links or clicking through to learn more. The number of Pinterest searches also grown 81% in the last year, according to the company.

People are also adding 24 million fashion pins daily, according to the company.

Pinterest has become a place for users to rack up ideas on what they want to buy — or build — next, and advertisers have been helping with that. In January, the company introduced Promoted Pins to users' home feeds. They work just like regular pins, but businesses pay for them to show up.

The company also rolled out Buyable Pins in June, which let users buy products directly within the Pinterest app.

Despite Pinterest's growth, it still lags behind its social networking counterparts. Its user base is one-third the size of both Instagram and Twitter, according to New York Times [Source : Mashable].

Facebook Will let You Buy Products from Retailers Pages

You'll soon be able to buy a lot more stuff on Facebook. The social network is testing a shopping experience that allows users to buy items directly from business' Facebook pages. The new shopping feature, first reported by BuzzFeed, will allow retailers to turn their Facebook pages into mini storefronts outside of their main websites.

Facebook confirmed the new shopping features to Mashable Wednesday, saying it's currently being tested among a small number of users and a handful of retail and e-commerce companies.

On mobile, the shopping features will appear in a new "shopping" section on the page, as pictured in the mockup image, below, while on desktop the shopping section will appear as a separate tab on the page in the same area where the Timeline, About, Photos and other tabs are currently located.

In the shopping section, companies will show off products in a format that appears to be similar to the way photos are laid out. If you want to buy one of the products, the retailers will be able to choose whether the actual transaction will take place within Facebook or whether you'll be redirected to the company's website.

For those that choose to keep the shopping experience inside Facebook, the checkout process will be very similar to the one already in place on Facebook ads that use the buy button.

Facebook spokesperson Mike Manning said it's too early to offer a timeline for when it will expand more broadly to include more retailers or be surfaced to more users. He declined to name the businesses participating in the initial test, but noted there are a range of different-sized retailers and e-commerce companies currently involved.

The news comes as other social platforms are looking to increase engagement — and, eventually, revenue — with native shopping experiences. Pinterest rolled out buyable pins earlier this year, and Google announced Wednesday it would be experimenting with a "buy" button in its search results.

Meanwhile Facebook has been increasingly experimenting with payments and shopping features. The company added peer-to-peer payments in Messenger earlier this year, and rolled out a business version of Facebook Messenger that allows customers to interact with businesses, including retailers. Recent reports have suggested the social network is also in the midst of testing a shopping assistant feature for Messenger.

It doesn't sound like Facebook plans to make money directly off shopping transactions for now, but all these new shopping and payment-related features fall in line with the company's larger goal of keeping users in its apps and website as long as possible [Source : Mashable].

Twitter Accused of Eavesdropping on direct messages in New lawsuit

Sending direct messages are a way for Twitter users to communicate out of the public eye, but a new lawsuit alleges those communications are not really so private.

A class action suit, brought in federal court in San Francisco by Wilford Raney, claims that Twitter "surreptitiously eavesdrops" on users' direct messages without consent via its algorithms, and benefits from the surveillance.

This undisclosed surveillance, the suit alleges, takes place when a user writes a direct message and includes a hyperlink.

Using a New York Times link as an example, the suit says that Twitter’s algorithms identify hyperlinks and replace them with its own custom links, so that the person clicking on the link travels through Twitter’s analytics servers before reaching the destination website.

"For example, Twitter changes links like "www.nytimes.com" to links like "http:/t.co/CL2SKBxr1s" (while still displaying the text "www.nytimes.com" to its users). Should someone click on this new link (http:/t.co/CL2SKBxr1s), they would first be taken to Twitter’s "t.co" website and then forwarded to the original "www.nytimes.com" website."

In its privacy policy, Twitter discloses that it may keep track of how users interact with links, so it will be interesting to see if the courts consider this sufficient to cover its bases. "We do this to help improve our Services, to provide more relevant advertising, and to be able to share aggregate click statistics such as how many times a particular link was clicked on," Twitter writes.

The suit alleges the company benefits from replacing user hyperlinks with its own, as it allows the platform to track links for advertisers. "In the example given, the New York Times would identify Twitter as the source of internet traffic, whereas without replacing the link the source would be anonymous. The end result is that Twitter can negotiate better advertising rates," it explains.

The suit calls for Twitter to stop intercepting, reading and altering direct messages without user consent. It also seeks redress and statutory damages under the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California privacy law.

Twitter is not the only technology company that's had to deal with accusations of message scanning.

In 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google had stopped scanning student Gmail accounts to serve them ads after being hit with a lawsuit from a group of California students. The suit alleged the company's monitoring of Gmail violated federal and state privacy laws [Source : Mashable].

Google Hangouts Gets Its Own Site, Just Like Facebook Messenger

Everyone wants to be free and standalone. Remember when Facebook Messenger got its own site that maybe people use but we’re not sure because they don’t talk about it? Google Hangouts wanted some of that action, too. Starting today you can go to Google Hangouts to make a phone call or ping a friend.

Interestingly enough, the product hasn’t broken away from the Google domain yet. It doesn’t even own Hangouts.com. Domain names aren’t a strong suit of Google.

Yes, this is also part of the breaking away that Google+ services are going through, joining the Photos product in all of its “standalone” glory. I use Hangouts in Gmail on the desktop, but I might switch over. Having a big old call button is actually kind of handy.

This is also, of course, a massive branding exercise for Google. It wants to build powerful brands to compete with other micro-products coming out of Facebook, Microsoft and Snapchat. Google has Photos and Hangouts, Facebook has Instagram and Messenger and Snapchat is coming on strong with Stories [Source : TechCrunch].

Google Delays its Modular Smartphone Until 2016

Google's modular smartphone project has been delayed. In a series of tweets Monday, the company confirmed the initial market pilot for Project Ara, which was slated to begin in Puerto Rico later this year, will instead be delayed until 2016.

Project Ara began in Google's secretive Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group. The aim is to create an Android-based smartphone platform where nearly every piece of hardware, including the battery, processor and camera, is a separate piece of the handset that can be replaced or customized without upgrading to a completely new device.

Google said the latest plan is to bring its modular smartphones to a "few locations" in the mainland United States for the initial rollout, but did not elaborate on the cause of the delay or the change of location. a spokesperson for Project Ara confirmed the delay to Mashable, but declined to provide additional details around the updated timeline.

The news comes less than a week after the company confirmed it would "re-route" the planned Puerto Rico pilot to a new location, though the company promised the modular smartphones would eventually make its way to the U.S. territory. Google previously said it chose Puerto Rico as a test ground for the experimental phones due to the island's "incredibly diverse" population, which is divided almost equally between smartphone users and more basic feature phone users.

The company had planned to make handsets available through the territory's two largest carriers, with a variety of devices sold via food truck-like storefronts. It's not yet clear how or where Google plans to distribute Project Ara devices during the mainland U.S rollout, but the company says more details about the changes will be coming soon [Source : Mashables].

BlackBerry Deleted A Tweet That it Accidentally Sent From an iPhone

Someone on BlackBerry's social media team just made an embarrassing mistake. A tweet from the company's Twitter account on Tuesday included a small detail at the bottom of the screenshot, revealing it was sent via iPhone. Clearly, even some BlackBerry employees use Apple products.

The tweet, which was first spotted and screenshotted by The Verge, has since been deleted.

This isn't the first time that a BlackBerry representative accidentally gave the iPhone an inadvertent stamp of approval. Alicia Keys, who was once BlackBerry's "Global Creative Director," ignited a mild social media scandal in 2013 when she tweeted from an iPhone instead of a BlackBerry.

Hours later, Keys dubiously blamed the situation on being hacked. She is no longer working with the company. The smartphone manufacturer, which has floundered in recent years amid stiff competition (mostly notably, Apple), is in the throes of an attempted comeback. It recently launched a throwback device called the BlackBerry Classic, tried to catch eyes with "unconventional" devices and even has a hand in the development of a self-destructing phone [Mashable].

The Features That Would Actually Improve the iPhone 6

Apple lovers will finally get their hands on the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on Friday, and the reviews have been glowing. But if you preordered one or plan on waiting in massive lines, you should know: There are a few things missing from the new devices.

CollegeHumor took note of the new features, or lack thereof, and made this bittersweet parody expressing how everybody feels about the new phones (you know, the things nobody actually wants to admit).

Apple lovers will finally get their hands on the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on Friday, and the reviews have been glowing. But if you preordered one or plan on waiting in massive lines, you should know: There are a few things missing from the new devices.

CollegeHumor took note of the new features, or lack thereof, and made this bittersweet parody expressing how everybody feels about the new phones [Mashable]