Category: Entertainment

5 hidden Google gems you aren’t using—yet

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For a tool most of us use every day to find stuff on the web, Google has more than a few helpful tricks up its sleeve that aren’t super apparent unless you know where to look. Here are a few I’ve found recently that have saved me countless clicks, spared me visits to garishly designed apps, and generally made things a little less complicated. Order up some food There are enough food-ordering services out there that you might starve before flipping through them all to find something you want. Instead, just navigate to orderfood.google.com , and you’ll be presented with a map of nearby restaurants that offer pickup and delivery. Google pulls in listings from popular apps and services and lets you browse by category if you’re in the mood for a particular style of food. Once you’re ready to order, you can do so via a clean, easy, very Google-like interface instead of being shuttled off to a third-party app or site Read More …

How WarnerMedia just killed the Hollywood way of doing business

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“It’s holy shit time.”   So proclaimed one Hollywood manager just minutes after WarnerMedia announced on December 3 that it will be releasing its entire 2021 slate of movies on HBO Max, the company’s fledgling streaming platform. The lineup of films, which includes major tentpole releases such as Suicide Squad 2 , Godzilla vs. Kong , Dune, and The Matrix 4 , will simultaneously be released in theaters.   The move marks the most significant milestone yet in the streaming-versus-theatrical debate that has been roiling for years now, growing more agitated and desperate in recent months due to COVID-19, which has all but decimated the theatrical moviegoing business. Yet even as COVID-19 has shuttered movie theaters around the world and caused movie studios to make historically unheard-of decisions—for instance, moving would-be theatrical films such as Hamilton and Mulan over to their streaming services (both of those were released on Disney Plus) or selling off otherwise worthy films to Netflix or another tech giant (such as Enola Holmes and Greyhound, which bowed on Netflix and Apple TV Plus respectively)—studios have nonetheless clung mightily to the belief that when it comes to big-budget films, there is simply no upside in releasing them on streaming. The reason? The box-office revenue for those films is simply too vast to justify a streaming release. This explains why, up until now, studios have been feverishly punting their most valuable gems into 2021 and beyond, praying that by the time their movies are set to debut in theaters, we’ll all be vaccinated and chomping on popcorn in close proximity to other humans again. (With Mulan , which cost a reported $200 million to make, Disney tried to insulate itself by charging subscribers $30 to see the movie during its first month in release.) But WarnerMedia’s move throws down the gauntlet on what has largely been an almost academic debate. One year from now, there will be actual data showing just how much money the company made or lost on its audacious bet. It won’t be a matter of hypotheticals; there will be actual numbers showing how movies like The Matrix 4 fared on streaming, at least in terms of how many new subscribers it attracted to HBO Max in the quarter it was released, if not actual viewing metrics. Nor is this a toe-dipping experiment, as the company has teed up for this Christmas with Wonder Woman 1984 , the first tentpole to be sacrificed to a combined HBO Max and theatrical release, a move prompted by the most recent surge in COVID-19 cases. This is a company going all in. Granted, WarnerMedia is being very clear that this is a one-year thing, driven wholly by the pandemic and (not that its executives are saying this) what was learned from the disastrous rollout of Tenet in theaters back on Labor Day weekend. But putting all of its planned 2021 movies on HBO Max at the same time as debuting them theatrically remains the biggest, most declarative statement yet in terms of the future of streaming.   As for the logistics of how this will work, the movies that WarnerMedia is releasing on HBO Max will be made available to subscribers for 31 days Read More …

These are Apple’s best apps of the year—for a year like no other

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For almost as long as there’s been an App Store, Apple has published a list of the year’s best apps. Once iPhone-centric, it has expanded to cover the iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Mac, and now spans everything from purely practical wares to games and streaming entertainment. Apple’s 2020 list—which it’s unveiling today—includes 15 honorees. Some are natural picks: Zoom, for example, is the iPad app of the year. Others you might not know about yet. (Or at least I didn’t.) The company says that it considers technical innovation, user experience, design, and cultural impact—and that this year, it gravitated toward candidates that helped us get through all the disruptions that have made 2020 a challenge, even for those of us who have been pretty lucky, all things considered. The list, in its entirety: iPhone App of the Year: Wakeout (Andres Canella, U.S.) iPhone Game of the Year: Genshin Impact (miHoYo, China) iPad App of the Year: Zoom (Zoom, U.S.) iPad Game of the Year: Legends of Runeterra (Riot Games, U.S.) Mac App of the Year: Fantastical (Flexibits, U.S.) Mac Game of the Year: Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, U.K./Estonia) Apple TV App of the Year: Disney+ (Disney, U.S.) Apple TV Game of the Year: Dandara Trials of Fear (Raw Fury, Sweden) Apple Watch App of the Year: Endel (Endel, Germany) Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Sneaky Sasquatch (RAC7, Canada) App Trend of the Year: Shine for helping users practice self-care (Shine, U.S.) App Trend of the Year: Explain Everything Whiteboard for helping bring remote classrooms to life (Explain Everything, Poland) App Trend of the Year: Caribu for connecting families to loved ones (Caribu, U.S.) App Trend of the Year: Pokémon Go for reinventing the way we play (Niantic, U.S.) App Trend of the Year: ShareTheMeal for helping users make a difference (United Nations, Germany) When I chatted with a few of the winning developers earlier this week, the most striking thing I learned was that 2020’s major news stories—the world-changing stuff not obviously related to the app business—had an impact on all of their businesses, each in a different way. Read More …

Comcast’s 1.2 TB data cap seems like a ton of data—until you factor in remote work

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The most frequent reaction to last week’s news that Comcast will subject all its residential broadband customers to a 1.2 terabyte monthly data cap has been “How could they?!” Broadband experts consistently say there’s no technical reason to enforce usage limits on wired connections such as cable internet. A less frequent reaction: “How could you?” As in, how could any one person possibly burn through that much data in a month? The threshold that Comcast will start enforcing next year on subscribers in the northeast does, indeed, allow for a lot of online life before getting socked by surcharges of $10 for each extra 50 GB, up to $100 a month. For example, streaming 200 hours of high-definition Netflix (at 3 GB an hour ) would still leave half that 1.2 TB allocation free. Read More …

Why is it so hard to buy a PlayStation 5 right now? ‘Grinch Bots’ are probably to blame

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Phil Nichols, 45, of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, has been very good this year. In a concession to the pandemic, he’s managed his information technology job for the Internal Revenue Service from home and forgone weekly game nights, as well as restaurant and movie outings. To break up the monotony and also distract from his chronic pain, the disabled veteran plays video games. “You get to get out of your bubble, so to speak, and see a whole new world,” he said. So, when Sony released the new PlayStation 5 game console in mid-November, he decided to reward himself with an early Christmas present. But when we spoke, Nichols had been trying for more than a week to buy the console online without success. He blames bots, automated computer programs that people use to buy up in-demand items that they then resell for a profit. They function like ticket scalpers who have expanded into sneakers, toys, and electronics. While the nefarious software plagues e-commerce sites all year long, so-called “Grinch Bots” are especially active over the holidays, snatching up the season’s hottest gifts. When the PlayStation 5 consoles first dropped on November 12, the traffic crashed Walmart’s website . Nichols is sure that bots were beating him to the punch because every time Walmart and other retailers released more consoles, the products were gone in less than five seconds Read More …