Couple’s relationship survives messaging each other exclusively through emoji for a month
Emoji have become an incredibly popular way to add more color to our written communications but is there any way you could survive using them exclusively on your favorite messaging app? WNYC this week posted an interview with its own NewTechCity senior producer Alex Goldmark, who took up a challenge this summer to communicate with his girlfriend on their smartphones using only the emoji available on the WeChat messaging app for a full month. Although the couple found it challenging to communicate complicated ideas and requests to one another, they found that using emoji worked perfectly well from expressing their feelings.
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Here’s one way Apple could make up for the iPhone 6’s reportedly skimpy battery
Apple made all of our lives easier when it introduced the Lightning cable back in 2012. Two years later, the company might be looking to shake things up again by building a Lightning cable with a reversible connector on both ends.
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WATCH OUT T-MOBILE: New Sprint CEO says ‘very disruptive’ new pricing plans coming next week
Is Sprint finally ready to stop being the wireless industry’s whipping boy? LightReading reports that new Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure has pledged that Sprint will unveil some “very disruptive” new prices and plans next week, which will hopefully finally get T-Mobile CEO John Legere to shut his trap about Sprint’s godawful “Framily” campaign (OK, we don’t really expect that to happen, but still…).
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Human skeletons come to life in these amazing X-ray GIFs
As doctors transition into the digital age, they are finding new ways to communicate with their patients. One project, commissioned by Dr. Noah Weiss, had designer Cameron Drake take raw X-ray video footage and create GIFs that the doctor could use on his website. If you visit Weiss Orthopaedics online, you will see a drop-down menu labeled “Hurt?” There are five different options: shoulder, elbow, wrist & hand, knee and foot & ankle. Each page contains an enormous X-ray GIF of the body part in motion.
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The most secure version of BBM ever is coming to iOS and Android this year
BlackBerry wants its super-secure mobile messaging service to be available for any business users, no matter what platform they use. In an interview with The Hindustan Times, BlackBerry exec Sunil Lalwani revealed that BlackBerry has plans to start offering BBM Protected on both iOS and Android devices by the end of this year and that businesses will be able subscribe to it for an annual fee of $30 per device.
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All of the Moto X+1’s specs just leaked ahead of next month’s announcement
Motorola will finally unveil its next-generation flagship smartphone during an event in Chicago on September 4th. The handset, which is regularly referred to as the “Moto X+1,” will face the steepest imaginable competition following its debut; Samsung is widely expected to unveil its new Galaxy Note 4 one day prior to Motorola’s event, and Apple will take the wraps off of the completely redesigned iPhone 6 just five days after the X+1 debuts.
For Android fans interested in the new Motorola flagship phone, however, it looks like they may be in for a treat.
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How to stop iPhone apps from tracking your location without you knowing
Last week, The Wall Street Journal confirmed an earlier report shedding light on the fact that Foursquare’s iPhone app is constantly tracking users’ locations even when the app is completely closed. “Starting today, users who download or update the Foursquare app will automatically let the company track their GPS coordinates any time their phone is powered on,” the report noted. “Foursquare previously required users to give the app permission to turn on location-tracking. Now users must change a setting within the app to opt out.”
Opting out in the Foursquare app solves your problem there, but any other iPhone apps can potentially track your location without your knowledge while it’s closed. Luckily, stopping them from tracking you couldn’t be simpler.
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Watch Bill Gates take the funniest ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ so far
It’s always fun when people in positions of power are willing to step down to make a fool of themselves for a good cause. That’s what Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg and Phil Schiller did earlier this week by dumping a bucket of freezing cold water onto their heads for the ALS awareness campaign, challenging their friends to do the same. One of the three people included in Zuckerberg’s list was Bill Gates, and he didn’t disappoint.
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Candy Crush Saga may finally have peaked… but you’ll hate what replaces it even more
Good news, Candy Crush haters: King’s flagship game may have finally peaked and is trending downward in value. The bad news: You’ll probably hate the next smash-hit mobile game even more. Business Insider points us to a new research note released by Deutsche Bank this week that downgraded King because the company’s top game has seemingly lost its mojo to Kim Kardashian’s godawful game, called Kim Kardashian Hollywood.
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The NSA wants to eliminate malware once and for all, no matter the cost
Well over a year after the Snowden leaks changed the way we think of security in the United States, the man still has plenty of information left to reveal. In an exhaustive interview with Wired’s James Bamford, Snowden discussed the NSA’s development of a new cyberwarfare program codenamed MonsterMind which could automatically seek out patterns that indicate a looming cyberattack and stop them at the source.
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