The week kicked off with news that rocked the blogging world: Internet giant Yahoo! was set to acquire the beloved Tumblr. We took a look at the Tumblr sites we can't help but reblog and got a little giddy about the unveiling of the Xbox One. Time to catch up with the rest of the week's tech highlights!
Rumor has it that a new operating system may be on its way for iDevices. The tech media circuit is dubbing the upgrade iOS 7 — not iOS 6.2 — which means the changes to Apple's mobile platform might be major.
And thank goodness for that. The infrastructure of iOS has, for the most part, gone unchanged since the platform was launched over five years ago.
Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is just two and a half weeks away, and we're expecting some big announcements from the keynote. But before Tim Cook takes the stage to announce what's next in iOS and OS X, here's what we think we know about the latest iOS update for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch still under wraps.
Read the rest of the iOS 7 rumors after the break.
Pinterest, everyone's favorite online pinboard, is home to some of the most exquisite visual treats on the web — and the photo-sharing site recently introduced a new feature, rich pins, that'll offer pinners much more than just a pretty picture.
Certain types of pins from selected sites will now show more information. Clicking on a recipe pin will show you the thumbnail, ingredients, cook time, and serving size. A movie pin will show the film's director, actors, Rotten Tomatoes score, release year, and rating. Products, like clothes and accessories, show the most recent price, shop, and whether or not that model is in stock. If you're a blogger or content creator, you can add meta tags to your website so that images pinned from your site will include more details.
Do you, as a pinner, find the rich pins helpful? Click through some examples of recipes, movies, and products, then tell us what you think.
Rich pins are just one of the site's many new additions in recent months. Pinterest redesigned their stream and pin pages not too long ago.
Get up close with Pinterest's new rich pins after the break.
The best thing about tablets is that they're light, portable, and their battery lasts significantly longer than laptops. HP's new 20-inch Envy Rove (twice as big as an iPad) is an all-in-one Windows 8 touchscreen PC that defies all the normal benefits of a mobile device — so we're left wondering: why would we need one?
The HP Envy Rove has about three hours of battery life and weighs a hefty 12 pounds. It's not exactly a handheld device, which is why there's a hinged stand that holds the tablet upright. Although the Envy Rove isn't the most mobile of mobile devices, that extra screen real estate could make a huge difference for watching a movie, presenting a slideshow, or playing multiplayer games.
What the giant touchscreen lacks in portability, it makes up for in performance. The Envy Rove comes with built-in Beats Audio with a subwoofer sound system, 10-point touch, Intel's next-generation processor, 1TB hard drive, a mouse, and a keyboard. The Envy Rove puts the emphasis on gaming, and comes with Monopoly, Fingertapps' Jigsaw Wars Puzzle, Fingertapps Musical Instruments, and Disney Fairies preloaded.
It's probably more accurate to think of the HP Envy, due on shelves in July for under $1,000, as more of an ultraportable desktop-tablet hybrid, rather than just a tablet. We've seen laptop-tablet hybrids gain popularity in the world of mobile computing, so perhaps giant touchscreen PCs will have a similar fate.
We want to know what you think: is a giant tablet the new gadget your digital life is missing?
On Tuesday, Microsoft revealed the next-generation Xbox console, the Xbox One. Don Mattrick, Xbox president, called the new system the "ultimate all-in-one entertainment system." Rather than the gaming console as yet one more input into the living room's media center, the Xbox One is designed to be the hub of entertainment, no longer requiring users to switch between modes to play games or watch live TV.
Turn on Xbox One by saying "Xbox On," and continue to use voice commands that are updated to work with more conversational speech, gestures, or scroll with the revamped controller to quickly move between game mode, Internet, music, Blu-ray DVDs, and live TV. To make the gesture and speech interface natural, each One console comes with a Kinect sensor, redesigned to pair with the new Xbox home screen, similar in appearance to Windows 8.
Pricing and availability will be announced later this year. Sign up for a preorder notification and, for a limited time, get $10 in online store credit. Read on for more about the One's multitasking features, fast hardware, and the first ever Xbox live TV series based on the Halo games.
At a press event today in New York City, Yahoo! made a big announcement for Flickr. And we mean big: the photo sharing site is getting a full makeover and offering one terabyte of storage to every user (that's well over 500,000 photos) — completely free.
Flickr isn't only making space for more photos, it's putting them front and center, too. The new activity feed, which Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer called "heart-stoppingly beautiful," fills your screen with recent uploads from your friends, yourself, and popular communities. The photostream was designed in a similar vein with large, high-res photos stacked on top of each other and a sweeping customizable cover photo.
Mobile is also getting some love. The new user interface is coming to the Flickr Android app, which features full-screen browsing and the same large thumbnail photostream as the website.
Yahoo! is really working its exclamation point as of late — in addition to the Flickr news, the company officially announced it was acquiring Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion and moving its headquarters to Times Square in New York City.
