Main Blog!

On the main blog this week, I wrote about using a $20 camera! I had taken the photos back in November and wanted to share them! Enjoy!

News!

Let's look at the photo & tech news from this week!

- The truth has been unveiled, Sony and Motorola's "1-inch sensors" considered the biggest sensors on any smartphone aren't actual one inch. There is an incredibly complex reason why, but it comes down to an issue with sensor measurements.

- Snapchat has released important updates to help stop strangers getting accounts of those under 18.

-Google is launching the next Chromecast with Google TV and it is aiming for a lower price point. It is believed that it is a replacement for the final Chromecast (pre-Google TV) which was the Chromecast Ultra. This will likely provide 1080p (instead of the 4k from the first) with other slight compromises. It will compete in the market where Roku and Firesticks often sell!

- Google is getting sued over Ads for the Pixel 4... yeah, two generations ago. Anyway, it is over the quote from one ad saying "I've been taking studio-like photos of everything" and the thought that Google paid DJ's to say that in the Ad. I read this article a few times and have come to the same conclusion. Every single company pays people for ads and pays them to say things. There is no doubt that these DJ's were paid, because it is an ad. No one will do an ad like this for free. I also want to say that them saying "studio-like" is important. To a non-photographer, this might be a thought that you have of the Google Pixel photos. It is a valid and carefully worded part of the ad, it is worded in a way that I think the $24 million lawsuit will go in Googles side.

- Twitter is releasing Twitter Communities on Android and Web. It isn't coming to IOS until later.

-Rumours of the DJI Mini 3 are emerging!

- Rumours of the Pixel 6a hint towards a May launch, which returns to Google's original "a" phone: the Pixel 3a.

- Google is doing a much needed redesign of Google Search on Android. It will likely eventually come to IOS, but right now it is only in Android betas. The new design is awesome and really modernizes search on mobile. I do not know if this will come to the computer browser or not.

- The Google Play store now has a dedicated "offers" tab for apps/games on sale! This was moved from the "premium apps" section.

- The chip shortage hit Canon in a massive way. Canon shut down the final factory in China and one of the most advanced Canon factories across the world! It is due to the chip shortage and the decline in camera production following peaks in 2008 and 2011.

- SlashGear found the real voice behind the new Google Assistant. The voice of the original assistant from 5 or 6 years ago is known, but the new one is way more robotic than the last one. It is believed to be Antonia Flynn. Unfortunately, only two well known voice changes occurred but, with lack of information, there may have been other voices.

- Google Cameos shut down, the app that had celebrities answer questions from the web! This was a super unique idea and worked for 50-100k users but never become popular universally. 

- Huge ways started on Wednesday due to Discord going down for its 300 million users. For me, I had a discord logo and message about the API Outage when opening the app. The API is a core part of the app and is responsible for sending messages. After a few hours, discord got half the users back online and an hour or two later had all users back. It was a massive outage but discord hasn't revealed why the outage occurred.

- The Self Driving Car administration has been renamed the Autonomous Car Administration. 

- Dish, a company building a 5g network launched their first phone!

- Microsoft has made the decision to finally launch the rest of Windows 11 despite the updates being scheduled for later this year! It is rolling out now!

- The Huawei p50 launched internationally at $1400! Yikes, that is a lot! I would guess this is because of the issues the US has put up over the ban and having to get the phones approved through different (more expensive) methods than standard phone companies.

- New software is out allowing the Mavic 2 to fly autonomously.

- Google's controversial FLoC API was abandoned and is releasing instead as a less controversial API called Google Topics.A very interesting choice, but there was controversy over FLoC, so it makes sense.

- Did Google's camera framework fail in Android... well, maybe. Google made a phenomenal Camera2 API, but app developers won't use it. There is a pretty big mess around the API and even Google isn't using it. Samsung and Motorola are, but the damage was done. Moment pulled out of Android and it is really unfortunate since there is a system in place.

- Bugs in Google Drive caused certain numbers in file names to "violate terms of service". It is actually pretty funny.

- Zoom announced the Zoom F3 audio recorder that practically eliminates peak audio with it's 32bit power!

Well, that is it for this week! See you next week and have a wonderful week!

-Digital Wonders & Smiles