TechBooky

Back in June, at the Xbox E3 2018 press conference, Xbox head Phil Spencer reported that cloud engineers were building a game streaming network that would be proficient at streaming console-grade games on any compatible device. Microsoft has been implying at such a service for a long while, however on Monday, the software giant announced officially that it was launching Project xCloud, thereby allowing us a sneak peek into what such a service would like from next year. As Microsoft states, there are billions of gamers everywhere throughout the world, yet not every one of them possess or are even keen on owning gaming consoles. The best way to reach whatever number individuals as could be expected under the circumstances is to enable them to play games more flexibly on devices such as the PC, tablet and even the phone.  With that in mind, Microsoft has assembled custom devices called "blades" utilizing the parts inside Xbox One consoles and has started introducing those blade...

Google has updated its Google Maps with new features designed for commuters, which provide a greater degree of information, —along with integrated in-app music controls, to make travel more enjoyable. “Today, we’re rolling out new features on Google Maps to help you take control of your daily commute— enabling you to plan ahead, prepare for the inevitable disruptions, and possibly avoid them altogether,” Google Maps group product manager Ramesh Nagarajan writes . “Oh, and we’ll also help you have a bit of fun along the way.” Here’s what’s new; Commute tab The new Commute tab provides personalised live traffic and transit information, warnings when your commute will be longer than usual, and reports about traffic and accidents. And as before, Maps will tell you about alternative routes proactively when there are problems. Support for mixed-mode commutes . Also, for those who have mixed-mode commutes such as a drive, walk and rid...

Spotify users! You can now go on downloading more music and podcasts for offline listening. As Rolling Stone first reported, the music streaming service has raised the song limit for offline downloads, which is good news for anyone who complained about the previous limit of 3,333 songs per device , on up to three devices, for a total of 9,999. Now, Premium subscribers can download up to 10,000 songs per device , on up to five devices, and listen to them without an internet connection. That adds up to 50,000 offline songs across your devices. With this new limit, you should definitely have enough listening material to get through your morning subway commute. That isn’t the only limit that Spotify has raised either. Users can now download songs on up to five devices, up from the previous limit of three. This means that if you were so inclined and had the devices necessary to do so, you could technically download up to 50,000 songs, although you’d need to do a fair amount of d...

Twitter radio, sounds nice huh!! For years, Twitter has offered at least some form of live video, but what if you can"t or don"t want to put your face on camera? You no longer have to point followers to some other app else to hear your thoughts—The iOS versions of both the main Twitter app and Periscope now support audio-only live broadcasts, giving you the chance to reel in listeners without having to make yourself presentable or draw attention to your presence. You can track audience stats like you can with video, as well. When updating Periscope to the latest version, the live streaming video app now allows users to create audio-only broadcasts. The latest version description reads: “Ever want to just talk with your audience on Periscope? In this update you can go live with audio only, so your viewers can hear (but not see) you. To try out an audio-only broadcast, tap on the new microphone icon on the broadcast setup screen. You can select this option before you start yo...

If you"ve ever been in a situation where, for some reason, you couldn"t make use of your streaming service subscription for an extended period of time and you had to pay for another.  Here is the good news— YouTube TV"s announced a new feature which allows customers to pause their subscription at any time and resume it later when they"re ready to use it again. According to the services help page . YouTube TV Help wrote in a post : "You can cancel or pause your YouTube TV membership at any time. When you cancel or pause your membership, you"ll still have access to YouTube TV until the end of your payment period," "When your paused state ends, you will automatically be charged at your normal monthly price for a new month of service, and that date becomes your new billing date," the post added. During the pause period, neither the user nor the shared members would have access to YouTube TV and no new programme would be recorded. However, the pr...

It beats Apple Music yet again. Spotify is still the largest streaming music service around but it"s no longer the only major player on the field. Apple Music is gaining significant ground, although there"s still a sizeable distance between the two companies" user base. Three months earlier, the Swedish company had reported 75 million paying subscribers during its first earning report . Fast forward to now the company unveiled the figure , on the high end of its forecasts, as it released its earnings for the quarter to June. It added 8 million paid subscribers during its second quarter to get to 83 million premium users. With 180 million ad-supported active monthly users. The growth in paid subscriber comes mostly from European subscribers, whose account were 37 percent of the company active monthly user base, against 31 percent in North America, slowed during the second quarter due to the introduction of new GDPR privacy rules in Europe. Latin America remained a growth ...

Over the years, users have been faced with a confusing situation of either clearing their cache and been faced with consequences of clearing the cache alongside clearing all their music downloads. The good news is that Spotify app now lets you clear your cache without affecting your downloaded songs. The new feature will allow Spotify to notify users that downloads aren’t being deleted when you delete your cache, which could provide additional peace of mind. After all, who wants to be stuck without music? The update has already quietly rolled out over the past few weeks to Android users, as spotted by Android Police . How it works If you use Spotify app quite often, you might have noticed that the storage space of your computer or the mobile device is dropping rapidly. That"s simply because whenever you are streaming a song from Spotify, it will save the track onto your device so that if you ever play that song in the future, Spotify will play it from the cache directly, without h...

When you’re watching a crucial sports live online or on TV, the last thing you want is for the screen to go blank for no reason—But that’s precisely what happened, as the screen went blank for users using YouTube TV to watch the live stream of the semi-final match between England and Croatia. Keen to make up for the outage, YouTube has decided to offer subscribers at least a week’s worth of free service. It also said that at least some of those who complained directly to customer service were told they would receive a month’s worth of credit. The One week of free YouTube TV amounts to $10, under the current $40-per-month pricing for new customers. Customers who signed up before March 13, 2018, on the original $35 monthly plan are grandfathered in on that price. YouTube TV earned a "good" rating in April 2017 review; It offers "several compelling features" like an unlimited cloud DVR but noted it was missing several major cable channels at launch, including ...

Microsoft may soon extend its Movies & TV app beyond the Windows 10 hub. “Microsoft is building these apps to give consumers more of a reason to buy content in the Microsoft Store”.  According to a report by Windows Central . “Lots of people buy digital movies and TV content, and Microsoft has a huge store that a lot of people seemingly ignore or don’t know about because there is no mobile companion app for their phone,” the report added. Last June, Microsoft shut down its Groove Music service after announcing a partnership with the music streaming platform Spotify . The company requested its customers to transfer everything they had saved, downloaded and playlists they had created on Groove to Spotify, media reported. But the company did not touch the “Movies & TV” app then. The Microsoft Store has an impressive collection of films and TV shows available to buy, including many that aren"t available via streaming services, but until...

After dealing with demonetisation problems for close to two years. YouTube creators will finally get paid for their content. At its annual VidCon gathering in Anaheim, California, the site announced an alternative payment method for channel memberships and a merchandising feature. Channel Memberships is a rebrand of Subscriptions, a feature that had been tested by select creators for a while. Channels with over 100,000 subscribers will get access to Memberships for $4.99 per month. Creators will have a unique badges for their profiles, custom emoji, members-only posts, exclusive livestreams and videos, and other perks. While channels with fewer than 100,000 subscribers will be disappointed to miss this opportunity, YouTube says it hopes to make more Memberships available to more people in the coming months. Merchandise is exactly what it sounds like—merchandise that creators can customise and feature on a digital "shelf" on their YouTube channel. The company partnered with T...

Twitter, more than any other social media company, faces a unique challenge even after more than a decade of existence: It still doesn"t know how to explain it"s functionality to its new users. But 12 years after launch, the company is finally making a statement that can be heard. It has recently shifted its marketing strategy to a top notch and user growth is on the rise once again. Oh yeah, it"s also profitable for the first time in a long time. Keith Coleman, Twitter’s vice president of product, said in the blog post : “We’ve been working to change how you discover all the information around news, events, and stories, and today, we’re sharing a few steps forward,” also added “It’ll be easier to find and follow the big events and stories you care about in your timeline, Notifications and Explore. Also, there’s a new look and feel for Moments showing everything you’d want to see.” The company shared that it"s working on change...

Are you still using Microsoft’s Groove Music app on your iOS or Android device? Prepare to say farewell. Following the retirement of Groove Music"s streaming service earlier this year, Microsoft is preparing to kill off its apps for Android and iOS. As first spotted by Microsoft watcher Richard Hay on Twitter, Microsoft has quietly announced that the Groove apps for iOS and Android will be retired on December 1, 2018. After that date, the apps will no longer function. According to a report from Microsoft support page which reads: “Your personal music files will still be available on OneDrive. You can access OneDrive online or through the OneDrive app on any supported device. To keep playing your music and playlists in Groove, use the Windows 10 Groove Music apps on PC, Xbox, or Windows Phone. The company also added that Starting from today June 1st, users will no longer be able to access MP3 or audio files stored on Microsoft’s Onedrive via the Groove Music app. Howe...

Game lovers are in for a treat. ESPN and Riot games has signed a  multi-year agreement to stream esports competitions on the ESPN+ app. ESPN+ will kick off its coverage in June 16 — just in time for the North American League of Legends Championship Series Summer Split. Ten teams will go against each other twice each season, with 18 matches for each, and one match per day. The matches will stream live on ESPN+ on Saturday and Sunday. Following this, the summer finals will be held in Sept. 8-9 at Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif. Three teams will qualify for the League of Legends World Championship in South Korea. That competition will put 24 teams from 14 regional leagues up against each other later in the fall. However, ESPN+ won’t have exclusive rights to the “League of Legends” programming, which will continue to be distributed on Amazon-owned Twitch and other platforms. Here is how it all started: In 2016, Riot Games (publisher of multiplayer battle-arena ...

More than half a billion videos on YouTube will, from today, carry credits covering songwriter, label and publisher data – and it just keeps getting better.  The Google platform has just announced that it is adding ‘credits and music discovery information’ to both premium music videos and – for the first time ever – to fan-uploaded content that features recorded music. Users will be able to access the credits when they click the ‘Show More’ button under each video. The credits will affect the presentation of millions of songs, and that details of other tracks will be continually added to YouTube as part of an evolving process. This drop-down area of the show more will include artist, songwriter, publisher and label information, in addition to a link to the Official Artist Channel and official music video if available. YouTube said in a blog that the move would “provide greater recognition and exposure to the people who contribute ...

On stage today at Radio City Music Hall, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki made a revelation: the service gets 1.8 billion logged-in viewers every month. And people who aren"t logged in are not even included-- which means the actual number of people watching YouTube is way higher than we think. Last June, the service had 1.5 billion logged-in watchers. On TVs alone, people are now watching 150 million hours of YouTube every day. The latest figures are yet another sign that YouTube"s reach is staggering, something that Wojcicki wanted to make crystal clear for the audience of advertisers and potential partners at its annual BrandCast event. The CEO announced the milestone at YouTube’s Brandcast presentation to advertisers, alongside some of the year’s most noteworthy successes — like Beyoncé’s record-setting 41 million livestream views at Coachella and the “Despacito” music video passing 5 billion views last month. The company previously announced that i...

Spotify"s first earnings report as a public company hit the wrong note for investors. The first earnings report as a public company which was released by the company , contains an updated insight on how many people are using the music service. In all, Spotify has 170 million monthly active users and 75 million paid subscribers. That latter total is up from the 71 million marker where Spotify ended Q4. By contrast, Apple Music recently crossed 40 million subscribers . There are now 99 million people listening to Spotify through its ad-supporter free tier. Spotify’s revenue (€1.14 billion) was in line with expectations. It"s operating loss for the quarter fell to 41 million euros, or about $49 million, down from 139 million euros in the same period a year earlier. The streaming music service with its 75 million paying subscribers and A trimmed losses in the first three months of the year, but the outcome wasn"t enough to impress investors. As Shares fell 7% in afterhours t...

Apple Music is growing way faster than  Spotify in the US, adding five percent to its subscriber base each month, as compared to Spotify"s two percent growth . Now Apple"s streaming service has hit a new milestone: 40 million subscribers, which was first reported by variety .  Adding to the milestone mark hit, the smartphone maker also confirmed that it’s long-time Apple executive Oliver Schusser will take over as Vice President of Apple Music and International Content. Oliver Schusser has worked at the company for 14 years, but mostly in Europe. Schusser will report directly to Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue, and will be in charge of managing Apple Music, as well as running Apple services like the App Store and iTunes outside of the US. Schusser has previously led launches of Apple services including the App Store, iTunes Store, and iBooks for international markets, as well as managed label, studio, and publisher relations for Apple outside the US. This makes him ...

ESPN is a U.S.-based global cable and satellite sports television channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture owned by The Walt Disney Company and Hearst Communications.it has televises many passes and pitches over the course of its thousands of hours of game-day coverage. Now the Walt Disney-backed sports-media giant is making a big throw of its own. ESPN, a sports media giant made its plan known that it will launching its new streaming service, which it"s calling "ESPN+", on Thursday, April 12. The service will be integrated into a "re-imagined" version of the ESPN app, and include thousands of live sporting events, original shows and films, exclusive studio programs, and a back catalogue of on-demand content. ESPN+ streaming service will cost subscribers $4.99 per month ($49.99 per year), and out-of-market packages for both MLB.TV and NHL.TV will be available during respective seasons for an additional $24.99 per month. The company shaded more light about i...

Today, there are lots of movie streaming apps and services to choose from and this dilemma makes it really hard to choose which apps to use when you want to watch a movie or TV show. Worry less, instead of using separate apps to see what movies and TV shows that are available, why not just use the Google Play Movies & TV App which allows android device users to stream any movie or TV show of their choice from any streaming App. With the updated Google Play Movies and TV services, you can now find out if certain movies or TV shows are available on a streaming service, not just through Google. For example, if you search for ‘This is Us’, you will see that you can buy it through Play Movies & TV and stream it through the NBC and Hulu apps. From there, you can tap it to take you to the ‘buy screen’ or to the app of your choice. Interestingly, you can also stream the content to your TV through Google Cast. Google proposed to support over a dozen streaming and ...