Author: News Room

WhatsApp users are getting some new customization features — for a price. According to WABetaInfo, Meta is rolling out a WhatsApp Plus subscription to “a limited number of users,” offering several cosmetic and quality of life perks, including exclusive stickers, different app themes, custom app icons, premium ringtones, the ability to pin up to 20 chats, and the ability to apply custom settings in bulk to lists of chats.A screenshot from WABetaInfo shows the subscription’s monthly price as €2.49, or just under $3, similar to Snapchat Plus, which costs $3.99 per month and includes similar perks. WhatsApp Plus is currently…

Music streaming service Deezer says close to half of all daily uploads are not created by musicians, but are AI-generated with the intent of defrauding the music industry. The Spotify and Apple Music rival says 44% of all tracks being added derive from a large language model. That equates to 75,000 uploads of valueless slop per day and two million pieces of data produced at great environmental cost every month. The Paris-based company produced a report saying despite the onslaught from this utterly pointless endeavour, consumption only makes up between 1-3% of the total streams. Thankfully. Deezer says it detects…

La-Z-Boy announced a new AudioLuxe furniture line with recliners and sofas upgraded with built-in sound systems that deliver “crystal clear tones and deep bass vibrations.” The company is partnering with Klipsch for the speakers integrated into each piece’s headrest and the subwoofer hidden in the base. The furniture can be used as part of a larger surround sound setup or wirelessly connected to smartphones and tablets to enhance your evening doomscrolling.Specifics like pricing or configuration options haven’t been announced yet, but after introducing its AudioLuxe line at a trade show this week, La-Z-Boy says the furniture will be available sometime…

Prego, yes the marinara sauce brand made by Campbell’s of Campbell’s soup fame, is a technology brand now. The pasta aisle staple has partnered with a company called StoyCorps to launch the Connection Keeper – a $20 puck that sits in the middle of the dinner table and records conversations. The device is being marketed as both a Mother’s Day gift (in the US, that’s it’s in May) and a segue into screen-free week. The partnership said the simple recording device will preserve the laughter, stories and “cherished moments that happen naturally over a meal and saves those recordings to…

The new Sonos Era 100 SL keeps costs down by dropping the mics, but if you’d rather keep hands-free voice controls, picking up a refurbished, non-SL model is the way to go. Thankfully, Sonos is taking up to 25 percent off a range of refurbished gear through April 24th, dropping the price of the Sonos Era 100 to $134 with a one-year warranty. That’s $85 cheaper than buying a new model, and still $55 less than the mic-less SL. If you want bigger, more immersive sound, the Era 300 is also available for $329, which is $150 less than buying…

The forthcoming screen-free wearable from Google will be called the Google Fitbit Air, according to reports over the weekend. The Whoop-style wristband that was teased by Google in a promo spot with NBA star Steph Curry earlier this month will still carry the Fitbit brand name, 9to5Google‘s sources say. However, on the software side, Google is about to take centre stage. Once the device launches, the current Fitbit Premium health tracking service will be known as Google Health. Furthermore, the AI-driven personal health coach, which is currently in public beta, will be called the Google Health Coach. Indeed, it appears…

An autonomous scarlet robot named “Lightning” finished a 13-mile race in Beijing on Sunday in just 50 minutes and 26 seconds, less than half the time of last year’s fastest robot, which took two hours and 40 minutes. As Reuters reports, Du Xiaodi, one of the engineers who developed Lightning at smartphone company Honor, said the robot “was in development for a year, fitted with legs 90 to 95 cm (35 to 37 inches) long to mimic elite human runners and liquid cooling technology used in its smartphones.”Lightning not only won the half-marathon, beating all 12,000 human runners, but also…

Birdfy has announced a new version of its camera-equipped metal feeder with an upgraded camera to make you feel even closer to nature while staring at your phone from the sofa. The Birdfy Feeder Metal 2 has a similar design to the original, using metal panels that animals like squirrels can’t chew through to access its 1.8-liter stockpile of seeds. But it now features a 4K wide-angle camera — a big upgrade from the 1080P camera on the original — for capturing and streaming higher-res video.The Birdfy Feeder Metal 2 (4K) is launching today for $269.99. You’ll need to pay…

Today, I’m talking with Melanie Perkins, founder and CEO of Canva, a popular online design tool.I always enjoy talking with Melanie. She was last on the show a couple of years ago, just as the AI revolution was coming to the worlds of art and design. At the time, Canva had escaped a lot of the criticism being leveled at its competitors for adding AI tools. Melanie attributed that both to how much Canva users love the product and also the huge inroads it was making into the business world. Canva is a tool that empowers non-designers to design, and…

Marc Newson is one of the most important designers alive. The Australian created the Apple Watch alongside Jony Ive in 2014. Now he’s back doing what he does best – making beautiful, precise mechanical objects, with three new clocks for Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre. The standout piece, for me, is the Memovox Travel Clock, and it’s the most accessible clock here. It’s a perfect titanium sphere, 69mm across and just 18mm thick – small enough to sit in the palm of your hand. It looks so clean and elegant, exactly what a mechanical clock from Apple would look like. The clock…

Huawei has launched its passport-style foldable in China, ahead of similar devices said to be coming from Apple and Samsung. That makes the Pura X Max the first wide foldable phone that’s actually available to buy, with today’s launch now giving us the full specifications and price after its design was unveiled by Huawei last week.There are two versions of the Pura X Max, both of which are available to preorder starting today. The standard version starts at 10999 yuan (about $1,613) for 12GB of memory and 256GB of storage, or 11,999 yuan (about $1,800) for 512GB of storage. The…

As if there weren’t already enough devices listening in on everything being said in your home, Prego, the pasta and pizza sauce brand, is releasing a device designed to record everything said around the dinner table for posterity. The Connection Keeper, which looks like an oversized pasta jar lid, was created in collaboration with StoryCorps, the nonprofit organization focused on preserving the stories of Americans in a collection housed at the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. There’s no AI, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth, but you can optionally upload recordings to StoryCorps’ website to make them easier to share with family.Prego…