Technology

Microsoft has been teasing its vision for the future of Teams meetings recently, and it’s now committing to making parts of it a reality this year. Front row is the official name for the new Microsoft Teams layout, which includes methods designed to bridge the hybrid work gap between those physically present in a meeting and remote participants. “Visually, this new layout moves the video gallery to the bottom of the screen so in-room participants can see remote colleagues face to face across a horizontal plane–similar to if they were in the same room,” explains Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365. Front row is designed to improve hybrid work.Image: Microsoft Microsoft will be using its new Fluid components to power this layout, with things like agenda, tasks, and notes all collaborative a...

SoftBank has announced a Leica-branded phone for the Japanese market. Leica has lent its name to phone camera systems before, but this Leitz Phone 1 is the first time the Leica brand and iconic red dot has taken precedence on a smartphone. The camera system is of course going to be paramount for a device like this, and the hardware here is certainly unusual. There’s a single 20-megapixel 1-inch sensor — the biggest in any phone — with a 19mm-equivalent f/1.9 ultrawide lens, meaning other focal lengths need to use digital zoom. If that sounds familiar, well, Sharp announced the exact same thing a month ago. The Aquos R6 has the same Leica-branded camera system — though the Leitz Phone 1 makes it look a lot bigger — and other specs like its 120Hz Pro IGZO OLED screen are also a match. Bundle...

OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has announced a “new journey” for the company including a plan to “further integrate our organization with Oppo.” Lau made the announcement by way of a post on OnePlus’ forums, saying “we’re at a turning point for the future of OnePlus” and “we must adapt as a team and a brand.” It sounds like a dramatic move for OnePlus, the company Lau started with Carl Pei after ostensibly leaving Oppo in 2013. OnePlus made its name with rebellious marketing and hype-driven online retail strategies, portraying itself as a smarter alternative to bigger smartphone brands. It was always clear that OnePlus had ties to Oppo But it remained a private company with ownership tied up in Oppo and the shadowy BBK Electronics empire, and it was clear from OnePlus’ phones that there were still a...

Zens’ new battery pack has a wireless charger on both sides, allowing you to charge two Qi-compatible devices simultaneously in what can only be described as a “charging sandwich.” The Dual Powerbank was announced alongside a trio of other battery packs including the Magnetic Single Powerbank, the Single Powerbank with Stand (which can itself be wirelessly charged, as well as wirelessly charge other devices), and the 10,000 mAh Powerbank with Stand. Although you could theoretically use it to charge two Qi-compatible phones, the intended use case appears to be charging an iPhone along with an accessory like a pair of AirPods. That’s because one side of the battery pack includes a MagSafe connection, which should keep it centered on iPhone 12 devices featuring the embedded magnets. However, ...

Imagine that, over the past year, Facebook had managed to acquire the battle royale game Fortnite, the kid-focused game creation engine Roblox, and the best-selling game of 2020, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. For many reasons, such a spree of acquisitions would never happen. One of the biggest is that antitrust scrutiny has made it increasingly difficult for Facebook to acquire anything that resembles a social network. It was more than a year ago that the company bought the moribund GIF search engine Giphy, which had few prospects for success as a standalone company; the United Kingdom’s competition watchdog has so far blocked the deal from closing, warning the acquisition would somehow harm Facebook’s competitors. And yet if you look at the virtual reality landscape, Facebook has made...

A Long March rocket blasted off from China’s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center today, carrying three astronauts to China’s new space station. The launch marks China’s first crewed mission in five years. The launch of the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft took place at 9:22AM local time on Thursday morning. The three astronauts, Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo, will be the first three people to board China’s space station, Tianhe. They will stay on Tianhe for three months, bringing the space station online. The core module of Tianhe, which contains the crew’s living quarters, was launched in April 2021. This first crewed mission is part of eleven planned missions during the space station’s construction phase — two more modules and several more cargo and crewed missions need to be completed bef...

Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.

EV startup Workhorse has filed an official protest after losing the bid to make the United States Postal Service’s next-generation mail vehicle in February, a contract that could ultimately be worth some $6 billion. The USPS instead gave that contract to defense contractor Oshkosh. The Ohio-based company filed a bid protest in the US Court of Federal Claims on Wednesday. The complaint is currently sealed, though a judge could ultimately rule to make some parts of it public, as Workhorse also filed a redacted version of the complaint that could be made public. The bid protest kicks off a high-profile court fight over the contract for the next-generation mail truck, and could have an impact on how and when those vehicles switch over to electric power — something President Biden has said he w...

On February 4th, 2014, Microsoft found its new CEO in the cloud — Azure boss Satya Nadella took the top job, Steve Ballmer retired, and Bill Gates stepped down as chairman. Now, after growing Microsoft to become one of the most valuable companies in the world yet again, Nadella has now been unanimously elected chairman of the Microsoft board. It’s the first time in two decades that Microsoft’s chairman will also be its CEO, after Bill Gates originally stepped down as CEO in 2000 (Gates left the Microsoft board entirely in 2020), and it’s a testament to how much Nadella is now trusted to lead the company forward. When Gates stepped down as chairman in 2014, the board elected independent chairman John Thompson, who’d previously been CEO and chairman of Symantec and who’ll remain an independe...

Amazon has decided it would really like to attract more developers to its Android and Fire OS app store, so it’s following in the the footsteps of Apple (and Google) by announcing a new “Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Program” that takes less money out of developer’s pockets (via AFTVNews). But where Apple and Google reduce their cut of a developer’s first $1 million in revenue from 30 percent down to 15 percent, Amazon’s formula has a slight tweak: it’ll take a higher 20 percent of revenue, but give developers an additional 10 percent in “AWS promotional credits.” The idea is that if your app is using Amazon’s popular AWS cloud services anyhow, it’ll be equivalent to you keeping 90 percent of the money. And if you happen to be using a competitor’s cloud services, maybe Amazon ...