Robotics

Google/ZDNETGoogle has done a pretty good job with accessibility features on Pixel phones for the past few years. With TalkBack, display customizations, Simple View, and more, Google’s flagship phones have come a long way.But the accessibility doesn’t stop there. If you have vision impairments and like to take photos, the Guided Frame feature can help. Also: This hidden Pixel camera feature makes your photos more vibrantThis feature uses voice prompts to help guide the framing of the photo you’re about to take. This feature is part of TalkBack and offers audio and gesture-based guidance to navigate the phone. Guided Frame uses voice prompts and vibration to help you position either the front or rear camera to get the subject properly framed. For example, let’s say you’re taking a selfie. With Guided Frame on, it will give you cues so that your face is properly framed. Once you’re properly framed, your Pixel will say, “Hold,” and then automatically snap the photo (after a 3-second countdown).Guided Frame is a wonderful feature for those who need visual assistance taking photos, and it works exceptionally well. According to Google, Guided Frame can recognize the following:FacesPetsFoodDrinksDocumentsElectronic devicesVehiclesI was able to get Guided Frame to easily recognize faces, pets, and vehicles. With other objects, I found it was a bit more finicky if there were multiple objects in the frame. For example, I attempted to take a photo of my Charlie Brown Christmas Tree and it failed. When taking a shot of a travel mug, I had to clear some of the objects from the frame for it to recognize it. The one object I couldn’t get it to recognize was documents.Let me show you how to use it.How to enable Guided Frame on Pixel What you’ll need: The only thing you’ll need for this is a Pixel phone (version 6 or later). More

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your home theater setup with a high-end OLED screen or pick up a budget-friendly TV for your bedroom, there are tons of high-quality options to choose from. The best TVs you can buy right now offer a great balance between features, screen size, connectivity, and, of course, price. Also: The best Samsung TVsBig brands like Samsung and Sony offer premium models with features like object-tracking sound, OLED panels, and cloud gaming support. And smaller brands like Hisense and TCL offer more mid-range and budget-friendly options that still provide core features like 4K resolution and HDR support to give them great value for the money.What is the best TV right now?At ZDNET, we’ve extensively tested TVs from Samsung, Sony, TCL, and more. Our choice for the best TV overall is the Samsung S95D More

Lance Whitney/ZDNETMeta’s Instagram is prepping the launch of its own video editor. In a Monday post, Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed the details about Edits, a free app that offers a host of tools and settings to help creators spruce up their videos. Now available for preorder, the app is expected to launch for the iPhone on March 13 with an Android release coming soon after that.Based on Mosseri’s description and the App Store page for Edits More

Zhou Yibao on Weibo A new foldable phone is about to hit the market, and it may be as thin as a phone can possibly be. ‘World’s thinnest foldable’ Oppo is billing its upcoming Find N5 (it will likely be the OnePlus Open 2 when it hits the US market) as the world’s thinnest foldable. That title […] More

ZDNETThe idea of querying a remote LLM makes my spine tingle — and not in a good way. When I need to do a spot of research via AI, I opt for a local LLM, such as Ollama.If you haven’t yet installed Ollama, you can read about it my guide on how to install an LLM on MacOS (and why you should). You can also install Ollama on Linux and Windows, and, given that the Firefox extension works on all three platforms, you can be sure that whatever desktop OS you use will work.Also: My 5 favorite web browsers – and what each is ideal forUsing Ollama from within the terminal window is actually quite easy, but it doesn’t give you such obvious access to other features (such as LLM/Prompt selection, image upload, internet search enable/disable, and Settings).The free extension I will point out works on Firefox, Zen Browser (one of my favorites), and others.Let’s get to that extension.How to install the Page Assist extension in FirefoxWhat you’ll need: To make this work, you’ll need Ollama installed and running, as well as the Firefox browser. That’s it. Let’s make some magic. More

Screenshot by Lance Whitney/ZDNETMicrosoft is now automatically rolling out Windows 11 24H2 to all eligible and supported PCs, whether you like it or not.In a recent status update to its Windows 11 24H2 known issues and notifications page, the company announced that it has reached a new stage in the phased rollout of version 24H2. All eligible computers running the Home and Pro editions of Windows 11 23H2 and 22H2 will now gradually receive the 24H2 version.Also: How to upgrade your ‘incompatible’ Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 in 2025If you don’t want to wait for the automatic update to pop up, head to Settings, select Windows Update, and click the button to Check for updates. You should then see an option prompting you to download and install version 24H2.This automatic update applies only to personal computers not managed by IT departments. Even then, individual users can choose to reschedule or postpone the update. But doing so will pause all updates, not just the 24H2 version. Sooner or later, you’ll probably have to accept the update, especially when 23H2 and 22H2 are no longer supported, just like 21H2 and 22H2 reached end of support in October 2024. More

ZDNETTurns out, you really can make a competition out of almost anything.A recent The New York Times piece peeled back the cover on the e-sport you didn’t know you were missing: the Microsoft Excel World Championship.The world’s greatest Excel-erLast month in Las Vegas, 12 men ran through a pro sports-style entrance tunnel at an e-sports arena, took the stage in front of a cheering crowd, sat at desktop computers, perused a seven-page instruction book, and began — furiously pecking away at Excel spreadsheets.Their goal? To win $5,000, an actual championship belt, and the title of world’s greatest Excel-er.Also: How to create a drop-down list in Excel – quickly and easilyThe actual competition involved solving complex puzzles, navigating mazes, and completing themed challenges, some of which required contestants to work on a rotated spreadsheet. The final centered around World of Warcraft, with the contestants designing an Excel spreadsheet to track vital signs for 20 different avatars and progressing through a simulated game. Players with the lowest score were eliminated every five minutes, keeping the action going. More

ZDNETOpen-source  artificial intelligence (AI) has reached another milestone — and the cost differences it represents could shake up the industry.On par with o1On Monday, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek announced the release of R1, the full version of its newest open-source reasoning model, which the company launched in preview in November. The company noted that R1 beats or is on par with OpenAI’s o1 in several math, coding, and reasoning benchmarks.Also: $450 and 19 hours is all it takes to rival OpenAI’s o1-previewSimilar to o1, R1’s reasoning takes more time to answer than other models, but its queries are meant to be more sophisticated and accurate. Alongside the 671-billion-parameter model, DeepSeek also released six smaller “distilled” versions with as few as 1.5 billion parameters, which can be run on a local device.”Pushing the boundaries of **open AI**!” DeepSeek teased in the thread.DeepSeek’s release marks a promising trend in open-source reasoning models. Just over a week ago, UC Berkeley researchers succeeded in creating an open-source model on par with o1-preview. It only took them 19 hours and about $450 in compute costs.Also: OpenAI’s o1 lies more than any major AI model. Why that mattersPricingR1’s pricing structure is similarly poised to give OpenAI a run for its money. API access starts at just $0.14 for a million tokens (about 750,000 words analyzed) — a fraction of the $7.50 OpenAI charges for the equivalent tier. OpenAI is currently offering unlimited access to o1 for $2,400 a year through ChatGPT Pro.That multiple labs are increasingly able to build models with capabilities comparable to OpenAI’s proves competitive AI doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. Both DeepSeek and UC Berkeley making strides in the open-source AI — and releasing their training methods — draws attention to OpenAI’s long-forgotten original mission (though the company’s ironic name persists). More