Hasta La Gadget!

How does one take down a rogue drone flying in restricted areas without actually having to shoot it down? Over in Japan, this involves the use of drones equipped with nets to catch other drones, while in the Netherlands, they have opted to go with something more “organic” by deploying eagles trained to catch drones.

However it seems that about a year since the program’s announcement, the Dutch police have decided to retire the program. While it does sound like a rather interesting program, given that animals have mind of their own, one of the problems with the program is that sometimes the eagles don’t always do what they’re told.

This in turn raised the question that if these are problems that they’re already experiencing in tests, how would they fare in real-life situations in which it could potentially be more chaotic? There is also the issue of cost, where training raising these eagles from young do not come cheap.

Like we said, it did sound like an interesting program, especially when you compare it against the other more hi-tech solutions out there, not to mention it was more “natural” so to speak, but we guess it looks like the experiment proved to be a failure in the end.

Dutch Police To Retire Drone-Catching Eagles Program , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Some of you guys might recall that very early on in Facebook’s life, there existed a “poke” feature, which basically lets you “poke” your friends to get their attention. That person in return can poke you back, and this would basically go back and forth until one person gets sick of it. We’re not sure if it served a bigger purpose, but Facebook wants to bring it back.

Note that the feature has never really gone away, but it isn’t quite as obvious, but that’s what Facebook wants to change. In the screenshot to the right, you can see that Facebook is now making the poking feature considerably more obvious in its placement and location. However it seems that the poke is just the start of things.

According to TNW, they have discovered that Facebook is also testing out other methods of getting a user’s attention through the form of greetings. Just like how the “Like” button expanded to cover a range of emotions, the poke feature will also be expanding into various forms of greetings, such as hugging, winking, high-fiving, and so on.

Facebook has got a bunch of new Reaction buttons for ‘Greetings’ pic.twitter.com/FMiH7e0m5B

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 6, 2017

Like we said, we’re not sure what the poke was trying to accomplish back then, so it is unclear what these greetings will accomplish either. However back in the day, Facebook explained, “When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.”

Image credit – TechCrunch

Facebook Is Trying To Bring Back The ‘Poke’ Feature , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Verizon subscribers have long had the perk of live NFL mobile game streaming, but that will change next year. Verizon and the National Football League have announced a new deal that will bring live game streaming to any carrier in the US starting in 2018, including the Super Bowl. Streaming access will be available via Yahoo and Yahoo Sports in … Continue reading

When it comes to gaming performance, one particular name tends to stand out from the rest of the crowd: Razer. Razer has always sought to deliver nothing but the very best when it comes to products for gamers, knowing that this can be a very, very fussy and particular group of people who tend to blame their tools whenever a loss is on the cards. Why not minimize the possibilities of such excuses by obtaining the latest gaming grade router? Razer has worked with networking partner Ignition Design Labs, where the latter are the ones behind the award-winning Portal Wi-Fi router, to roll out a new Portal router that has been specially created just for gaming purposes. In other words, the two companies have collaborated in order to bring about an optimization of features as well as performances rolled into a single device.

Razer figured out that device connectivity is a major area that requires improvement for gamers, where a sub-par router is often the culprit when it comes to lag, screen tearing and buffering whenever one would like to enjoy live-streamed content. The mesh-capable Portal Wi-Fi routers will do its bit to prevent such setbacks from happening through the implementation of key technologies. Both high bandwidth gaming and streaming applications would not be too much of a trouble for the Portal router.

The Portal router will be available worldwide from the first quarter of 2018 onward, with an asking price of $149.99 apiece. It boasts of patented congestion-busting technologies which will always enable the fastest speeds and lowest latency in order to deliver the best gaming experiences. With FastLanes Simultaneous Multi-Channel DFS technology, your devices will be able to operate in exclusive radar-protected channels by avoiding unreliable and slow Wi-Fi during peak hours. Anyone who would like to make sure their game is right at the top would do well to check out the Portal router from Razer.

Press Release
[ Razer offers gaming grade Wi-Fi for the home copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The other day it was rumored that Apple could be looking to acquire music recognition service Shazam. As it turns out the rumors were true because Apple has since confirmed the acquisition to the folks at 9to5Mac. As expected they did not dive into the details of the acquisition, save for saying that they have “exciting plans” in store.

In a statement released to 9to5Mac confirming the acquisition, “We are thrilled that Shazam and its talented team will be joining Apple. Since the launch of the App Store, Shazam has consistently ranked as one of the most popular apps for iOS. Today, it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, across multiple platforms. Apple Music and Shazam are a natural fit, sharing a passion for music discovery and delivering great music experiences to our users. We have exciting plans in store, and we look forward to combining with Shazam upon approval of today’s agreement.”

We should point out that Apple and Shazam have had a working relationship prior to this, where Apple baked Shazam’s functionality into Siri, thus allowing users to ask Siri to identify songs instead of having to launch the app. Shazam’s functionality also evolved over the years, where it was later able to recognize TV shows and movies too.

It is unclear what Apple plans to do with Shazam, and whether or not there are plans to keep the app around or sunset it. From what we can tell based on previous Apple acquisitions, the company usually ends up killing off the app and service, like when they acquired Workflow and Beats Music.

Apple Confirms Acquisition Of Music Recognition Service Shazam , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.