Shelly Palmer Digital Living - Daily Radio Report

After two weeks of backlash and internet outrage over some of the Xbox One’s new policies, Microsoft changed course and appeased gamers around the world. After first showing off its new console in May, Microsoft said that the Xbox One would need to be connected to the internet once every 24 hours to play games and would severely limit loaning or selling used games. Last Wednesday, Microsoft reversed its stance in a move some are calling the Xbox One-Eighty, eliminating both of these requirements from its new console. But Microsoft also eliminated some truly future-thinking innovations, like online game sharing and disc-free game swapping. While we lost some of these cool new features, many are calling this a win-win for all parties involved: gamers get to use the Xbox One in the same way they’ve come to love their Xbox 360, and reports say pre-order sales have skyrocketed in the days since the reversal. The Xbox One – now more gamer-friendly – hits store shelves this November for $499.

As of last week, Instagram users can now record, edit and apply filters to videos up to fifteen seconds long. The move was aimed squarely at Vine, Twitter’s micro video-blogging app, which lets you record six second videos. Both apps let you hold your finger on the screen to capture picture and sound. Releasing your finger stops the recording. But Instagram has a few features that Vine doesn’t. Instagram lets you add one of thirteen different filters to your video, just like you can with your photos. Instagram also gives you nine more seconds to create your mini masterpiece. The videos you take can be uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more, and can be viewed on any of those social media sites, as well as in the Instagram app’s main feed. Facebook, which owns Instagram, also announced ‘Cinema,’ a new feature designed to cut down camera shake. Instagram is currently available on both iOS and Android, while Cinema is only on iOS. Update your Instagram app today and get filming!

There may come a day that you’ll get locked out of your Facebook account, whether you forget your password or run into another problem. Facebook recently introduced a feature called ‘Trusted Contacts’ to help you out if you run into this kind of problem. Trusted Contacts lets you pick three to five Facebook friends that you trust enough to give you power to help you re-gain access to your account. If you get locked out, just let one of these chosen people know and Facebook will give them a code and instructions to help get you back into your account. Worried about security? Facebook says to only select the people you’d trust with a key to your house, because you’re really giving them a lot of power. While it wouldn’t be smart to pick five people at random from your friends list, picking close friends or family members will help ensure you never get locked out of your account again. Choose wisely.

Apple unveiled iTunes Radio last week, getting its feet wet in in the music streaming business. If you’ve ever used the Genius feature in iTunes, you’ll be right at home with iTunes Radio. Genius is a really simple music discovery tool that builds automatic playlists and finds new music based on the artists, albums and tracks you like the most. iTunes Radio uses Genius to take your tastes into account and plays tracks that it thinks you’ll like. Much like Pandora, iTunes Radio lets you skip songs you don’t like. If you hear something you love, you’ll be able to buy it from the iTunes Store with a single tap. iTunes Radio is ad-supported and will be available for free to everyone when it launches this fall. Hate ads? People who pay for iTunes Match – which stores all your music in iCloud for $24.99 a year – get an ad-free version of iTunes Radio. Whichever version you go with, remember to check out iTunes Radio when it hits your iDevice this fall.

First announced way back in February, Sony finally unveiled the PlayStation 4, its next-generation console, last week at E3. Priced at $399, it’s $100 less than Microsoft’s Xbox One, which was also shown off last week. The PlayStation 4 will hit store shelves this holiday season and already seems to be a resounding success for gamers. Sony has opted not to limit how you lend, sell or trade-in your games, which has been a major sore spot in gamers’ eyes regarding the Xbox One. The PlayStation 4 also won’t require internet check-ins, which the Xbox One requires on a daily basis. The strange part about all of this is that Sony is winning the next-generation console battle by sticking to the same policies you find on the current systems: the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. What’s the lesson in all of this? The way to win over gamers – and their wallets – is to stick to the status quo. Sony’s PlayStation 4 hits store shelves this holiday season for $399.

After years of waiting, Microsoft Office has finally hit iOS. Available for iPhone, “Office Mobile for Office 365 Subscribers” lets you create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on your phone, just as you would on your computer. The app is free but requires an Office 365 subscription, which costs $100 per year or $10 per month. Office 365 is Microsoft’s newest iteration of its Office suite, which launched earlier this year. An Office 365 subscription gives five computers – Windows or Mac – and five mobile devices access to the Office suite of programs. Want to see if Office on iOS is better than the iWork suite? Try Office 365 for a month and let me know what you think. If you’re waiting for an iPad version of Office, though, don’t hold your breath. A tablet version would leave customers little incentive to pick up a Surface Pro. But for you iPhone users out there with an Office 365 subscription, go grab the app today and become instantly more productive.

After first showing off the Xbox One back in May, Microsoft pulled back the curtain last week during E3 and filled in some more details – and showed off a ton of new games. Available this November for $499, the Xbox One is more than a way to play Halo and Gears of War: it’s also a set-top box that you can watch and record live TV on, a way to Skype with family and friends, and more. It comes loaded with a Blu-ray player, a 500 GB hard drive, and is bundled with a new and improved version of the Kinect, Microsoft’s motion and voice-controlled camera. Hardcore gamers are upset about the Xbox One, though, as it severely limits used games and requires daily internet check-ins. But if you’re looking for one box to rule them all – and replace most of your living room’s entertainment pieces with – look no further than the Xbox One. It’ll hit store shelves sometime in November for $499 and is available for pre-order now.

Long-rumored and highly-anticipated, Apple finally showed off iOS 7 last week at its Worldwide Developers Conference. Featuring a cleaner and simpler interface, iOS 7 borrowed the best parts of Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone and melded it into one clean package. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen now brings up Command Center, which gives you all the controls you want in one place – music playback, screen brightness, Airplane Mode and more. For the first time in iOS history, iOS 7 offers true multi-tasking, which will be available for all apps when the operating system hits your device this fall. iOS 7 also features an improved version of Safari and a re-designed camera system that lets you easily swipe between multiple camera apps, like Instagram. Siri got smarter and more robust, too, and now features more voices – both male and female – as well as support in both French and German. iOS 7 is out for developers right now and will hit your iDevice sometime this fall.

Have you ever wandered through a new city and wanted to learn more about your surroundings? Now you can. Wikimedia, the site behind Wikipedia, recently added a ‘Nearby’ page to its mobile site that suggests articles based on your location. Nearby will let you see a list of articles based on your location and is easily found in the main menu in the mobile web version of Wikipedia. The feature also heavily encourages user contribution. If you want to give back to the Wiki community, Wikimedia said Nearby can show you a map of articles needing images near your location, so that you can take and upload photos to improve the online encyclopedia. Not really the photo type? Wikimedia also said they hope people update the text articles of places around them, too. It’s a win-win: you get information about the places around you, and Wikipedia gets more fully fleshed out. Wherever you go in this connected world, know that Nearby will be, well, nearby.

If you’ve ever wanted to climb Mount Everest but haven’t found the time to make it to Asia, you’re in luck. Microsoft recently teamed up with GlacierWorks to launch an interactive website called Everest: Rivers of Ice, that lets you virtually explore the world’s tallest mountain. All 29,000 feet of the summit is mapped with gigapixel panoramas that are the next-best thing to actually being there. GlacierWorks has spent the better part of the last decade taking 14 expeditions to the Himalayas, and has over 7 terabytes of photos on the site to prove it. The final product is a photo-stitch that measures 120,000 by 31,840 pixels, tallying a mind-boggling 3.8 billion pixels. Microsoft took that photo and ran it through its Rich Interactive Narratives project, bringing Everest into most modern browsers. The site even offers touch controls, like pinch to zoom. Just as Sir Edmund Hillary did for the first time 60 years ago, now you, too, can climb Everest… from the comfort of your bedroom.

One of the fastest-growing areas of tech is the connected home. Whether you’re talking about smart thermostats or iPhone-controlled light bulbs, our homes are more connected than ever before. Yves Behar, founder of Fuseproject and mastermind behind Jawbone, is getting his feet wet in the connected home with the recently unveiled smart door lock August. August uses Bluetooth to pair your front door’s lock to your smartphone, letting you unlock it through a touch of an app. You can grant customized access to others remotely, like giving a nanny access all day or letting a dog walker only be able to get in between 3 and 4 pm. Worried about security? August doesn’t use an internet connection at all, minimizing the risk of hacks, and it tracks all unlocks in an online log. If your phone dies or you leave it inside, August still lets you unlock your front door using a traditional key – but who wants to do that when you can use your phone?

We’re quickly approaching WWDC, Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, which starts on June 10 in San Francisco. Normally, WWDC is a time for Apple to show off its new software and tech for developers. We’ll definitely see iOS 7 next month, with the first major user interface overhaul that the OS has ever seen. Rumor has it that there will be some new hardware shown off, too. But before you rush down to the Apple Store, know that Apple’s not expected to show off any new iPhones or iPads, even though we know they’re coming. Instead, Apple is expected to unveil several new MacBooks alongside a new version of OS X. Like a lot of the MacBook upgrades, these are expected to have only minimal changes, and should begin shipping soon after they’re unveiled. While we may not see the next iDevices we’re going to be using keep your eyes and ears peeled for news from WWDC, as we’ll definitely get to look at the OS those iDevices will be running.

If you love the idea of the Samsung Galaxy S IV but want something smaller, cheaper and worse, listen up. Samsung just announced the Galaxy S IV Mini, which will launch at the Samsung Premiere event later this month in London. The S IV Mini has a 4.3” screen – about the same size as the Galaxy S III and about three-quarters of an inch smaller than the S IV. It has a Super AMOLED display, same as the S IV, but has barely over half the resolution of its big brother. The S IV Mini features a dual-core processor, 1.5 GB of RAM and an 8 MP camera. It only has 8 GB of storage – only 5 of which are free after formatting – but offers expandable storage through a microSD card slot. If you were expecting a smaller version of the Galaxy S IV, this isn’t it: the only similarities are in the TouchWiz software it runs and its name.

Instagram just got a whole lot more social. The Facebook-owned photo app recently added photo tagging on both its iOS and Android versions. Now, when posting a picture, you’re able to tag people or brands in your photos, just like you can on Facebook. Wonder if someone tagged you in a picture? Check out the brand new “Photos Of You” section in your profile. Also like Facebook, Instagram will notify you when people tag you in a picture. You can also make it so that you have to approve a tag before your name is attached to a picture, and you can also un-tag yourself from a picture at any time. Before this update, users @mentioned each other in the picture’s description as a workaround way of tagging people in images, but those tags weren’t collected in any one place. With the Photos Of You section, you’re now able to start building a history of where you’ve been and what you’ve done, one filtered photo at a time.

How many cat videos did you watch on YouTube last month? The video site recently released some stats about its users viewing habits, and the numbers are pretty mind-boggling. Every month, we’re collectively watching more than 6 billion hours of video, which is more than twice as much as we were last May. Those 6 billion hours are shared among YouTube’s one billion unique monthly users, meaning that over 15 percent of the earth’s population is logging in each month to check out the latest viral sensations. These numbers go to prove how massive YouTube has become since it launched eight years ago, way back in February 2005. From movie trailers to TV clips, crazy cats to laughing babies, YouTube has become a juggernaut. And as billions more devices are connected to the internet over the next few years, its prominence will continue to grow. It’s hard to imagine the internet before YouTube began, and it’s anyone’s guess what site we’ll be talking about eight years from now.