Frog saliva can be like water, then honey, then water again

Frogs, among their other amphibious relatives, are popular, or notorious, for their rapid tongues that can seem to catch and hold on to any unwitting victim. But if you think its secret weapon is its tongue, you’d only be half right. Working secretly and almost invisibly is the frog’s reversible saliva. “Reversible” because it can switch from watery fluid to … Continue reading

Buy GoPro Karma Drone Once Again Starting Today

gopro-karma
GoPro launched its much-awaited Karma drone last year but the company had to recall the drone prior to the lucrative holiday shopping season because some units just fell out of the sky. It decided to recall each and every unit to fix the problem and hopefully have its first drone back out on the market by the new year. If you’ve been meaning to pick one up, rejoice, because you can now buy GoPro Karma drone once again starting today.

GoPro hinted last month that it would say more about the Karma drone’s return by February. Instead of saying something about it, the company has decided to offer it once again for customers on the first day of February.

You can buy GoPro Karma drone starting today from the company’s online store as well as select retailers. Customers in places other than the United States will have to wait as GoPro says that its drone will be available later this spring in other markets.

The company says that it spent thousands of hours testing the Karma drone after making several improvements to ensure that it doesn’t suffer the same failure again. It needed a change in the battery clasp mechanism to fix the problem that caused many Karma drones to lose power mid-air.

If you expected the company to offer a discount on the Karma drone because of all the time it has made prospective customers wait, you’d be wrong, because it’s still selling the drone for its original retail price.

Buy GoPro Karma Drone Once Again Starting Today , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

EU Roaming Charges Will End By June 2017

europe-flag
The European Union has been talking about abolishing mobile roaming charges between the member states for a long time now and it’s likely to go ahead with the move by mid-June. The European Comission, parliament, and representatives of the 28 member states have come to an agreement on wholesale roaming charges that will make life easier for mobile users moving freely across Europe.

“This was the last piece of the puzzle. As of 15 June, Europeans will be able to travel in the EU without roaming charges,” said Andrus Ansip, the European Commission’s VP for the Digital Single Market.

Just one formality remains now which involves the European Parliament and Council to vote on the agreement. Given that an agreement has been reached, there won’t be any surprises during the vote. The European Commission is calling this move “roam-like-at-home” and has set June 15th as the date it goes into service.

A fact sheet has been released today which details the fair use policy as well as wholesale roaming caps on voice calls, text messages, and mobile data. It does mention that those who exceed their contract limits while roaming will not have to pay additional charges higher than the wholesale caps.

The European Commission is going to review the situation by the end of 2019 to ascertain whether this move has achieved the desired results or if some changes have to be made in order to achieve the intended result.

EU Roaming Charges Will End By June 2017 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Microsoft Edge browser’s upcoming features teased

Microsoft desperately needs to make people forget about its ugly past in the web browser market. That’s why it’s putting its marketing engine hard at work to promote the hell out of the new and fancy Microsoft Edge web browser. If you do ignore compatibility with sites that still need the ancient Internet Explorer, Edge does offer a more modern … Continue reading

Google Super Bowl 51 Ad Will Cost $5 Million

google-home-09
Great advertisements have become a part of the Super Bowl experience over the years so there’s always a lot of excitement to see which products companies will try to hawk during the game and in what manner will they try to capture viewers’ attention. As you can probably imagine, an ad spot during the Super Bowl costs quite a lot, a 30-second spot goes for $5 million and Google is going to spend that much money to promote Google Home.

On the surface, Google Home might look like just another connected speaker but it can do much more than that as it’s powered by Google Assistant. It’s a “Made by Google” product that highlights the company’s ability to make great hardware on its own.

The Google Super Bowl 51 ad comes after the company’s absence from the big game in 2016. Google hasn’t disclosed the details about its ad spot so we’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out just how effectively it’s going to use that $5 million ad spot to promote Google Home.

Rival Amazon aired an ad for its artificial intelligence assistant Alexa during last year’s Super Bowl. It already has a dominant position in this market as Google arrived with its product later, so now it’s going to put its resources to good use to try and get as many people as possible to pick up Google Home.

Google Super Bowl 51 Ad Will Cost $5 Million , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Backblaze reveals its 2016 hard drive failure rate list

In this day and age of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, hard drive failure almost seems like a thing of the past. Especially since these devices don’t actually use that kind of storage technology. But for gamers, multimedia workers, and backup storage companies, the reliability of the hard drive can make or break their livelihood. That is why every year since … Continue reading

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 Story Mode Confirmed

star wars battlefront ships
Star Wars: Battlefront was greeted with high expectations at launch in 2015 but many fans were not happy with the fact that developer DICE decided to make it a multiplayer-only title. Some didn’t even like the multiplayer gameplay and found the game lacking in more areas than one. Publisher EA appears to have heard feedback from fans and made amends. The company confirmed during its recent earnings report that Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is going to have a proper story mode.

Another interesting revelation in the earnings release was the DICE will not be taking the lead on this project. It’s going to share the development duties with Criterion and Motive Studios. Criterion previously helped out in developing some of the vehicles in Battlefront as well as the PSVR mission that was released in December.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is not going to be focused on the story of the original trilogy. It’s going to span across multiple eras of the Star Wars universe. EA has promised that there will be countless new characters in the game and that it’s going to have more depth and progression in the multiplayer modes.

Despite revealing some key details about the next Star Wars title, EA is yet to confirm when Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is going to be released. Perhaps it might divulge that information at the E3 2017 gaming convention this summer.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 Story Mode Confirmed , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Boston Dynamics’ Handle is a two-legged robot with wheels

Boston Dynamics is a name well-known in the Robotics field for its self-balancing, self-correcting robot “dogs” that don’t look anything like dogs. It is also well-known for robots that, in all honesty, look more like post-apocalyptic nightmares. While parent company X (of Alphabet) has cut loose its robot dogs, that doesn’t mean the company has given up on its dreams, … Continue reading

Apple Pay Transactions Jumped 500% Last Year

apple-pay-japan_inline-02
Apple’s fiscal 2017 first quarter earnings exceeded expectations as the company posted record revenue of $78.4 billion. The iPhone remains Apple’s cash cow as the company shipped 78.3 million iPhones in the previous quarter compared to 74.8 million in the same quarter a year ago. The iPhone isn’t the only thing that saw an increase in Q1 FY17, Apple CEO Tim Cook later revealed in the earnings call that Apple Pay transactions jumped 500 percent during this period.

CEO Tim Cook revealed during the earnings call that Apple Pay users have tripled over the past year and that the mobile payments service saw its transactions grow 500 percent year-over-year in Q1 FY2017.

Apple has worked hard over the past year to expand the service to additional markets as a result of which Apple Pay is now accepted in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, China, New Zealand, Russia, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Singapore, and Taiwan.

More than two million small businesses are now accepting invoice payments through Apple Pay on the Web. The company also revealed that Comcast, one of the biggest providers of internet and TV services in the United States, is going to allow customers to pay bills using Apple Pay on the Web.

We can expect Apple Pay to make its way to additional markets across the globe throughout 2017.

Apple Pay Transactions Jumped 500% Last Year , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Smartphone shipments top 1.5b in 2016 with Apple leading in Q4

It appears that 2016 was a pretty good year for the smartphone industry, at least according to new data from Strategy Analytics. The analytics firm announced that smartphone shipments managed to hit an impressive 1.49 billion last year. That’s a new record for the industry, and it represents a 3% year-over-year rise in total smartphone shipments from 2015. Quarter 4 … Continue reading