Google has revamped its search criteria to make sure sites at the top of its search rankings are mobile friendly. The change went into effect earlier this week, along with other criteria that could dock a site for having hard-to-click links or a lopsided layout that requires too much scrolling. Google announced the new search criteria two months ago to give companies time to improve their mobile performance. The secret algorithm has about 200 factors that determine a site’s ranking. Continue reading Google’s Search Criteria Now Includes ‘Mobile Friendliness’

Apple has hired popular BBC Radio 1 host Zane Lowe to give its streaming service Beats Music a new personality. From the beginning, Beats Music was different from other music streaming services because it featured real humans with knowledge of specific genres to curate the playlists, rather than relying upon an algorithm or its other employees. However, Lowe with his name recognition and experience as a radio host may finally give Beats the star power it needs to appeal to the mainstream. Continue reading Beats Music Gets Star Power with Newly Hired Host Zane Lowe

A team of French and American designers at Catopsys has developed a projector for immersive gaming and video experiences that can be shared by a room full of people. The Immersis is designed to display a 180-degree view of a virtual reality experience. Instead of everyone shutting out the world (and each other) when they put on a VR headset like the Oculus Rift, people can share in a VR experience. The LED projector could encourage developers to make more party games and turn VR into more of a social experience. Continue reading Immersis Projector Aims to Make VR Experience Less Solitary

Disney has secured a patent for a new search engine that will not highlight sites featuring pirated content in the search results. The search engine filters the results based on “authenticity,” so that illicit content will be more difficult to find. Disney and other companies have been unsatisfied with Google’s efforts to hide pirated sites. Disney’s new search technology also goes a step further by making the authentic trademark holder’s page rank higher than product reviews or Wikipedia entries. Continue reading Disney Creates a Search Engine That Filters Pirated Results

Flipboard has grown popular as a personalized digital magazine, allowing users to flip through articles from multiple sources across 30,000 topics. While Flipboard was initially designed for Apple’s iPad, the phone app is now used by 70 percent of its users. Flipboard’s acquisition of Zite has introduced the ability to easily recommend personalized articles in more specific subjects. Now, Flipboard 3.0 is available for tablets and smartphones running iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Continue reading Flipboard Mobile App Focuses on Personalization, Navigation

Facebook, which reaches around 1.3 billion people monthly, currently makes up 20 percent of traffic to news sites. The social media platform provides around 30 percent of U.S. adults with news, acting as the leading news source for many consumers. Facebook, which sees itself as a personalized newspaper, is hoping to lead the change in how readers consume journalism. The company, along with other social media sites, could potentially control the future of certain news sites. Continue reading Social Trend: Facebook Changing the Direction of Journalism?

Google claims that it has taken additional measures to make search results more resistant to piracy. According to a new white paper, Google has changed its search-engine algorithms so the sites with a large number of takedown notices appear lower in search results rankings. The company has also enhanced autocomplete and related search, preventing the inclusion of terms associated with piracy. New advertising products will also promote copyright-friendliness.  Continue reading Google Report Explains Enhancement of Anti-Piracy Efforts

Social network Facebook is making changes to its algorithm that determines what stories show up in its users’ News Feeds. The update will give major news events like the Ferguson riots more priority, so that people can share and discuss these stories as they unfold. Facebook has also been able to convince advertisers to spend on high user engagement. An eMarketer report shows marketers’ digital ad spending share is higher than the share of time people actually spend on Facebook. Continue reading Facebook Updates News Feed to Include More Current Events

A new app from Instagram makes it possible for users to create high-quality time-lapse videos from their iPhones. Amateur photographers simply click a button to start and stop recording, and then use a single slider to adjust the speed of the frames. The new app relies on data from the smartphone’s built-in gyroscope to perform the image processing, making the videos appear less shaky. Hyperlapse is currently available on iOS, while an Android version is being planned. Continue reading Hyperlapse: Produce Time-Lapse Videos with Instagram App

Dropbox has cut the cost of a gigabyte by 90 percent on Dropbox Pro, changing the price from $9.99 for 100 gigabytes to $9.99 for one terabyte of data. Dropbox also claims that the algorithms it uses to sync files across devices are faster and easier than offerings from any other file-sharing services. The reason for the dramatic price reduction rests in Dropbox’s competition, where Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive both offer similar features for lower amounts. Continue reading Dropbox Pro Reduces the Cost of a Gigabyte by 90 Percent

Last week, Yahoo joined Google and Microsoft in the effort to bring more privacy to users of their popular email services. The 110 million unique Yahoo email users will have the option to turn on an encrypted messaging feature. The feature relies on PGP encryption, which stores each user’s encryption key on their personal laptops and devices. Google also announced that encrypted websites will fare better in their search results due to a new feature in its ranking algorithm. Continue reading Tech Giants Tighten Security on Emails with Encryption Option

By analyzing the acoustic properties of songs on Spotify, intern and PhD student Sander Dieleman hopes to advance the streaming service’s recommendation algorithms to aid users in discovering new and lesser known music. Rather than basing recommendations on the choices people with similar tastes make, they would be based on songs the user listens to. This method, which requires deep learning, would then mix more obscure but user relevant songs into the recommendations. Continue reading Spotify Intern Creates System to Improve Recommendations

Baseline Study, an ambitious Google project, plans to determine the fullest picture yet of a healthy human being. Andrew Conrad, a molecular biologist who joined the Google X research arm in 2013, is running the project along with his team of experts. The study will collect the anonymous genetic and molecular information of 175 different people, expanding to thousands more in the future. In the long run, Google X hopes to detect fatal illnesses in their early stages. Continue reading Google’s Baseline Study Aims to Spot Diseases in Early Stages

A new app called Skimo, short for “skim the video,” allows users to skim a 20-minute video in about two minutes, straight from their smartphone or tablet. The Skimo video summarization engine uses an algorithm that analyzes the scenes, shots and frames of videos and summarizes them, letting users catch up on television series in a fraction of the time. The service focuses on the formula that writers and filmmakers use to create a captivating show, focusing on the six crucial scenes from each episode.

Continue reading Skimo App Allows Users to Quickly Catch Up on TV Episodes

Researchers at MIT have developed a method for teaching computers to understand what is happening in video content. The method uses a similar approach to textual analysis, such as natural language processing, by looking at each part of a video to figure out what the whole thing means. The researchers created an algorithm to identify what occurs in individual frames of the video, and then determines what those mean when combined in a certain order. Continue reading Researchers Use Algorithm for Computers to Understand Video