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advertisement advertisement advertisement Google is now taking pre-orders for Stadia, the game streaming service that’s supposed to compete with the likes of Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation consoles. The service will launch in a limited capacity this November, followed by a broader rollout in 2020. advertisement advertisement Unlike traditional game consoles and gaming PCs, which come with powerful (and pricey) graphics processors, Stadia will use cloud servers to process the games, and will stream them to all kinds of computing devices, starting with laptops and desktops (via the Chrome browser), Google’s Pixel 3 and 3A phones, and Google’s Chromecast Ultra streaming TV dongle. Still, Google Stadia’s launch games, pricing, and strategy don’t look drastically different from previous cloud gaming efforts, which have either failed or floundered because the experience isn’t really better–or … [Read more...] about If Google’s Stadia streaming service changes gaming, it’ll take a while

advertisement advertisement advertisement When businesses are choosing a form app, there seems to be a perception that Google Forms is too simple. This is unfortunate because it’s a pretty robust tool—if you know how to find all the options. advertisement advertisement Here are a bunch of settings that make Google Forms much more powerful. Go ahead and make a new form, and then click the gear icon in the top-right corner. We’ll go over a few of the best features hidden inside that icon, then move on to a few other things you should know about. Make sure everyone only submits one entry By default, Google Forms don’t collect email addresses. This is useful because people can respond anonymously and because people don’t need a Google account to fill out your form. The downside: you can’t confirm who provided which answers, and people could in theory submit the form multiple times. You can prevent this in the General tab of … [Read more...] about 6 Google Forms settings you need to start using to be more productive

advertisement advertisement advertisement Since 2015, Neal Mohan has been chief product officer of YouTube, making him the executive with overall responsibility for its user experience. advertisement advertisement More than ever, though, looking at YouTube as one thing with a single experience defies the reality of Mohan’s job. After all, there are several YouTubes: the one where the world goes to watch user-uploaded videos, of course, but also offshoots such as YouTube TV and YouTube Kids . Even if you’re just talking about YouTube in its most classic form, there are two distinct experiences—one for the folks who do all that watching, and one for the people who create the videos. The bottom line: YouTube isn’t one thing, any more than its parent company, Google, is just a search engine. I recently spoke with Mohan about YouTube’s product plans for the rest of the year. The most striking thing about them is their sheer … [Read more...] about After a year like no other, YouTube is previewing what’s next

advertisement advertisement advertisement When a group of Redditors rallied together to buy up beleaguered GameStop and AMC stocks, they sent each company soaring against all market expectations. AMC in particular was able to wipe away $700 million in debt, rescuing the movie chain from certain bankruptcy. While many of the other gains may be short-lived, there’s no doubt history was made in a meme-fueled collective investment maneuver that will be studied and debated for years to come. advertisement advertisement And at least some of the credit, or criticism, belongs to Robinhood, the free day-trading app that helped fuel the frenzy, soared to a top spot in the App Store, and launched a funding round toward a $30 billion valuation even as it became a villain to much of the internet for stopping trades on the two stocks that propelled the app to the top. But Robinhood didn’t luck into this viral moment; Robinhood was designed to allow new users … [Read more...] about How Robinhood turns stock trading into a game that it always wins

advertisement advertisement advertisement There’s a new internet threat in town and browser makers are rushing to keep it from invading their users’ privacy. The latest to join the fray: Mozilla, which recently rolled out an update for its Firefox browser for combating the rise of what’s today colloquially referred to as supercookies. advertisement advertisement So what’s a supercookie? We’re all familiar with web cookies. They’re tiny little pieces of information that websites deposit in your browser to know it’s you the next time you visit them. You can opt out of them, block them, and wipe them off your computer. But what if you had no control over them and advertisers could track you across the web despite your browser’s built-in protections? That’s a supercookie. As consumers have caught on to cookies’ role in online tracking, advertisers have scrambled for alternate technologies to circumvent safeguards and sneak … [Read more...] about Browsers are rushing to stop shadowy ‘supercookies’ that spy on your activity