Jaque Silva/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images If you’re a college student with a school email address, Perplexity is offering you a free month of its Perplexity Pro AI tool — and you have the chance to earn an entire year for free. The company says from Sept. 3 to Sept. 15 college students with an […] More
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETGoogle is rolling out ChromeOS 128 to all supported Chromebooks, introducing new features and several quality-of-life changes. One of the more notable updates is Snap Groups, which behaves very similarly to Snap Layouts on Windows 11. It lets users pair two separate windows on ChromeOS together for a split-screen view. These windows can be individually resized, moved together as a group, or split apart at any time.Also: The best Chromebook for students: Expert testedSecond, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is being implemented into the Camera app. With OCR, Chromebooks can “see” text from a piece of paper in front of the lens. The feature also supports searching for words in images, reading documents out loud, and more. Everything in OCR is made possible through the power of machine learning. More
Roku Roku just announced a new feature called “Backdrops,” which transforms your TV into a canvas. Like on the popular Frame TV from Samsung and other alternatives, this free feature will showcase artwork and photography while the set is not actively showing content. Roku says the catalog will include thousands of curated works, including famous classics, […] More
This city of the future hosts OpenInfra Summit Asia. sjvn/ZDNETSuwon, South Korea: Quite discreetly, the OpenInfra Foundation and the open-source projects it promotes (such as OpenStack, and the Kata Containers, virtual machines (VM) as containers) are changing the world. That became clear to everyone who attended OpenInfra Summit Asia. OpenStack has long been the top telecom cloud service. You’ll never see it as a user, but OpenStack oversees your connection and services almost every time you use 5G on your smartphone with almost every carrier. Also: Google’s Gems are a gentle introduction to AI prompt engineeringOpenStack is expanding well beyond the telecoms now, though. The cloud operating system has seen a resurgence in interest and adoption over the past year. Mark Collier, OpenStack’s COO told me in an interview, “We’ve just seen this huge kind of resurgence of interest, and more people coming out, talking publicly about what they’re doing with OpenStack.”Several factors drive this renewed enthusiasm.First, companies are switching from public hyper-clouds, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud, to private clouds. As Younghold Han, Hyundai’s VP of car cloud, said in an interview, “There are several reasons why we are using an OpenStack private cloud, hCloud. First, there’s data security. Let’s remember that a few weeks ago, Azure had a major security failure. We want to control our security. And finally, there’s cost. So before Hyundai, I worked in Samsung’s mobile business unit. We launched multiple services for our users that ran on AWS, and you cannot imagine how the costs grew exponentially. So we built out our private cloud.”The savings can be considerable. Collier said, “We had one user tell us it was 90% cheaper to build and operate their own OpenStack cloud. Of course, not everyone’s going to get that big of a savings, but it can be big.” Also: The best cloud hosting services for 2024Samsung and Hyundai aren’t the only ones moving to private clouds. Michael Dell, Dell CEO, quoted Barclay’s CIO Survey 2024: “83% of enterprises plan to move workloads back to private cloud from public cloud.” More
InstagramOne of Instagram’s most popular features is getting another upgrade, and it includes restrictions to keep trolls away. On Tuesday, Instagram introduced “Story Comments, ” enabling users to leave comments on their friends’ stories for others to see.Instagram Stories allows users to share glimpses of their everyday lives and interests. Similar to Snapchat, in Stories, you can share photos, videos, or posts with all your followers or your Close Friends list, and after 24 hours, it disappears. Also: Over 2 million new users flocked to Bluesky last week – here’s whyInitially, you could only interact with a friend’s Instagram story by sending them an emoji reaction or a private direct message. This new feature enables users to start conversations under stories in a public forum style, but it does have some limitations. Instagram explains in this video that only people who follow you can see story comments, and only mutuals (people who follow the poster and those who the poster follows back) can leave a comment under a story post. Comments will disappear with the stories after 24 hours. If you prefer to disable the comments feature, you can do that on a story-by-story basis. More
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETOver the past several months, we’ve had the opportunity to try out several Copilot+ PCs and have liked every single one in one way or another. These laptops run on new AI-powered hardware, resulting in improved performance and battery longevity than older Windows machines. We haven’t encountered one that we’d consider disappointing.Also: Your next laptop may be powered by this Intel AI chip, and the benefits are mind-blowingImagine our delight when multiple tech companies announced new Copilot+ laptops at IFA 2024 in Berlin. Some of them are manufacturers expanding their Copilot+ offerings, while others are brand new to the scene. So far, about 20 models have been unveiled. There were so many that I might have even miscounted there. For the sake of brevity, the five below are the most interesting of the bunch. More
Jason Hiner/ZDNETApple will soon release the iPhone 16 series — with all the AI glamour in tow. Just recently, Apple confirmed that its next hardware event will happen on September 9 at 10 a.m. PT. This year’s title is “It’s Glowtime,” playing to the vibrant and colorful animations that appear when you use the latest AI features on iOS 18, like Siri. Alongside the new iPhones, Apple is expected to announce a new Apple Watch, two pairs of AirPods, and possibly more.Also: I used my iPhone 15 Pro without a case for a year. Here’s how it looks todayAlthough the iPhone will capture most of the spotlight, and WWDC was only months ago, Apple may also share more about its latest software including iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, WatchOS 11, VisionOS 2, and MacOS Sequoia.How can I watch the Apple event?The iPhone 16 event takes place at Apple Park in Cupertino, California, with in-person attendance reserved for staff, partners, and members of the media. However, you can always catch the livestream on Apple’s website or the company’s YouTube channel if you want to tune in.During the event, expect Apple to showcase further Apple Intelligence, its in-house AI features, and how it’ll interact with its smartphones, wearables, and other devices. At the time of writing, the bulk of Apple’s AI tools have already been made known to the public, with the iPhone 16 slated to support tools like an emoji generator, enhanced photo editing, suggested text and email responses, and more. More
The iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ is a two-in-one vacuum and mop with a retractable mop head. It will vacuum and mop until it reaches a carpet or rug. At that point, it will lift its retractable mop head to sit on top of the robot and only vacuum on carpeted surfaces. Once it reaches a flooring surface that needs mopping, it’ll drop its mop head back down behind it and begin the two-in-one cleaning once again. As the name implies, the Combo j9+ uses the same technology as the j9+, so you can rest assured you’re getting an intelligent and capable robot. The retractable arm technology is impressive — we ran this in the dark, during the day, in weird shadows, and all kinds of other scenarios, and it never mopped over carpet or rugs. It’s truly an intelligent machine.Review: iRobot Roomba Combo j9+The improvements made to the Combo j9+ from its predecessor were major ones and ones that make this such a desirable robot. My absolute favorite feature is how quiet it is self-emptying. To date, it may be the quietest self-emptying robot we’ve tested. The next best feature is also related to Clean Base: the robot’s ability to automatically refill the cleaning solution. These features make this Combo machine attractive if you need a reliable two-in-one robot vacuum from iRobot.A reliable, quality two-in-one machine will change your life, and the Combo j9+ falls into that category. One Amazon customer said, “This Roomba Combo has improved my life. I’m a happier, less stressed person because I have a Roomba Angel who whisks away dirt, dust, and paw prints so I can focus on other things.”iRobot Roomba Combo j9+ features: Price: $999 | Vacuums and mops simultaneously | Guarantees to avoid pet accidents | Auto-Retract mopping system | Four-stage cleaning system More
