Weekly Blog Post

For this week's short blog post, I covered a small issue that I came across with my EOS M that has an interesting effect on the image. Check it out with the button below!

SFX Video!

This is a YT Short I made across the past week! Enjoy!

You can download that FREE SFX here.

News!

Here is everything that happened in the photo & tech world this past week!

- Old concepts for Android 12 show a vastly different and better looking lock screen but we didn't ever get it. It is hard to know why they scrapped the ideas, who knows... maybe it is still on its way in Android 13! 👀

- Google is rolling out betas for an MMS texting replacement/alternative using Google Photos. It basically uses link sharing instead of MMS sending to help bridge the gap between IOS and Android users getting very bad quality photos between each other. It probably doesn't change too much in conversations with other Android users.

- Both Snapchat and Facebook (Instagram) are putting basically all effort into short form content Snapchat Spotlight, Instagram Reels, etc. The newest development is stories now being on basically every major platform with Snapchat being the OG stories platform.

- Chrome OS is rolling out a new quick settings area. It looks a lot like Windows 11's, but they both look like how Android quick settings looked pre-android12.

- Amazon increased its Prime membership to $139 per year from the prior $119

- Google Stadia, despite widely being known as the most advanced cloud gaming platform, seems to be struggling. They may be shifting focus to experimental game "previewing" (not sure what to call it) instead.

- Two popular apps were taken down by Google Dev Support Teams and are coming back since there wasn't a solid reason for them to be taken down. One of them may have been bringing up old beef with the app due to using a logo that wad too similar to GBoard.

- The new Q8n-4k from Zoom is now available in stores for $399. It is of course attractive for the audio with video that is "okay". Zoom really strives with audio tech, and you'll see in the video today that I use a Zoom H1n for SFX.

- Snap, owner company of Snapchat, brought reports of its first EVER profitable quarter.

- Google changed their logo and it has brought some MINDBLOWING changes... Okay, who am I kidding, they just removed the dropshaddow, changed the tint of the colours and made the logo adapt to different OS's themes and I do notice a slight difference on the windows taskbar.

- Discord is testing moderation tools that bring up "hot topics" to servers for people to talk about.

- YouTube music is beginning to really get close to Spotify in many regards and Android Central ran a poll finding out that more readers were using YouTube music. I am listening to music on YouTube music right now, but gen z (me) are reported to be using YT Music more than Spotify.

- Mozilla Fox shutdown... their VR Browser. If you haven't heard of it, you aren't alone. Ahead of its time, Mozilla came out with this VR browser years ago, but never really saw success.

- Twitter rolls out the first form of negative creator feedback (apart from comments) in the form of downvotes. Poor Reddit, everyone copies them 😂.

- A camera that can be swallowed like a pill has been used to perform colonoscopies for over 2000 patients in Scotland (I wish I could have done that 😂).

- YoY growth suggests Google may have exaggerated sales records, with new reports saying it may have just been "moderate".

- I just noticed as I was working... Microsoft seemed to fix a bug that I had where the widgets on your monitor came up on your main screen. Now if you swipe right on a monitor (touchscreen) it will come up on the monitor.

- Contradictory to my earlier report of Stadia, Google is still working for now on Stadia with a commitment to add over 100 games to the service in the next year...

- GoPro is expanding its camera line-up for 2022! My speculation is that it will look more like Insta360's line-up soon.

- Major issues with MacOS and Fujifilm cameras has sprung and it is pretty bad.

- The 2022 Beijing Olympics seems to be poorly designed with people spotting open doors for hackers... maybe wait a bit before downloading the app.

- Google Duo now has 5 Billion installations with help from its installation on basically all new Android phones. I find it shocking that reports still point at Google Duo being replaced with a new feature-packed Google Meet. Despite that, it long outlasted its sibling app Allo which was shut down in 2019 as Duo surpassed its 1 Billion milestone.

- For the launch of the S22 on Feb 9, Samsung showed an incredible video of their 3d billboards.

- For February, the Pixel 6 & 6 Pro relieved the update at the same time as other phones and reportable fixed a lot of problems that people were having, unfortunately not all.

- Reports say that Wifi 6e is mostly going to be skipped in place of Wifi 7. They are developing Wifi so quickly! 🤯

- Google released its final Pixel 3 update 3 months after Google guaranteed updates through.

- Warner Bros is being sued for the release of Matrix Ressurections on HBO coinciding with in Theatre release. I would have thought this wouldn't happen since I have known for a while that there were rules against this. I don't see how they overlooked this.

- Google gave S22 users new Google Duo features with the launch of the phone!

- Canon took down a major counterfeit battery company!

- Panasonic and OM (Olympus) are releasing cameras in the next month!

- Google released an intriguing camera app with a developer preview of Android 13, yes... ANDROID 13 🤯. It is called the camera obfuscator which seems to remove photo traceability...

- CTL released budget Chromebooks compelling for schools.

- Samsung will likely be releasing a folding screen Galaxy Laptop soon. It will likely be similar to the 2021 Lenovo tablet/laptop.

- PicsArt is releasing their photo editing tools in API for others to use!

That is all for this week! Thanks for reading! 

-Digital Wonders & Smiles