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Best smart bulbs and lights 2020: Philips Hue, Ikea, Osram bulbs and more

(Pocket-lint) – Having a smart home isn’t just about clever appliances or smartphone-controlled heating, you can also get clever lights too. That doesn’t just mean smartphone control, but can also sort you out with all kinds of other great features.

The best smart alarm clocks 2020: Wake up in style

You switch lights on or off everyday and they can play an essential part in creating an ambience in a room. Some smart lighting solutions enable you to recreate the colours within a particular image, while other solutions just mean you don’t need to get up off the sofa to turn the lights off.

Best of all, these smart bulbs will almost always be a big upgrade on your old bulbs in terms of energy efficiency. They’re generally LED, meaning they use less energy to run, but scheduling also makes sure that you can turn them off when you’re not around, or geo-gate them to only be on if you’re at home.

Here are some of the best smart lighting options to consider.

Our pick of the best smart lighting

Philips

Philips Hue

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Philips Hue is probably the most well known when it comes to smart lighting and for good reason with numerous features and various bulbs, lamps and other lights, such as strips, available. The wireless system allows you to use your smartphone to not only switch the LED bulbs on and off, but pick the colour and brightness you want, as well as recreate colours within a specific image, like a sunset you uploaded to Instagram or a painting on your wall.

You can program specific times, for example waking everyone in the house up at 7am every day with bright lights and the Hue system also has a party mode for flashing in time with your music. Philips Hue is compatible with the IFTTT service, as well as Apple’s HomeKit, Google’s Assistant and Amazon Alexa, meaning you can create recipes to take your smart lighting to a different level or control them with your voice

Philips Hue complete system review: A shining light in the smart home

Hive

Hive Active Light

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Hive, perhaps best known for its smart heating system, offers three bulbs in its smart lighting range. The Hive range isn’t as feature rich as the likes of Philips Hue but you’ll still be able to control your lights from your smartphone whether home or away, schedule them and change the colour to create your perfect ambience, assuming you buy the Colour Changing bulb.

There aren’t any strips or lamps available with Hive, like there are with Philips Hue, but Hive does offer both a GU10 and E14 candle bulb, as well as B22 bayonet, on top of the standard E27 bulb. The GU10, E14 and B22 bulbs aren’t currently available in a colour changing option but they do come in white dimmable and cool to warm white options. The Hive Active lights are also compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant so if you have an Amazon Echo device, or Google Home home device, you can control your lights with your voice too.

Hive review: The British Gas system that’s the hub of all things

Osram

Osram Lightify

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Osram’s Lightify is one of the closest to Philips Hue in terms of bulb type availability. Its wireless system offers not only standard screw and bayonet bulbs, but GU10s, LED strips and garden spotlights too, all of which can be controlled through the Lightify smartphone app.

There aren’t quite as many features as there are with Philips Hue, but you’ll still get remote access to your lights, scheduling functionality, ambience creation and scene creation. You won’t be able to sync your lights to your music or a film as yet, but the Osram Lightify system is cheaper than Hue, there is a good range of bulbs and it is compatible with most smart home platforms.

Osram Lightify review: Lights out for Philips Hue?

Ikea

Ikea Home Smart

View offer on Ikea.com

Are there any pies Ikea doesn’t have a finger in? The Swedish furniture giant offers numerous options when it comes to smart lighting, at Ikea prices, making smart lighting more accessible than it has been in the past and the system is excellent. There are numerous plug-and-play kits available, from standard white dimmable options, to colour adjustable options where users can switch between warm white and bright white.

Unlike Philips Hue and Osram Lightify, Ikea offers only one coloured bulb option at the moment, but there are several bulb fittings available if you’re after a white colour spectrum, including GU10s, along with light panels with wireless control. Ikea’s smart lights are said to last for 25,000 hours and along with smartphone control via the app, there is also a remote control and dimmer control. The Home Smart (previously called Trådfri) lights are also compatible with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant, which you’ll need to pair them up with if you want to control them away from home.

Ikea Trdfri review: Affordable smart lights and plugs

Sengled

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Sengled Wi-Fi Classic is one of the only smart lighting options that doesn’t require an additional hub in the UK – at least for many of its products anyway. Instead, the Wi-Fi Classic, Sengled Boost and Sengled Colour Plus bulbs can be taken straight out of their packaging, screwed in and connected directly to your router through the one of the dedicated Sengled apps.

The Wi-Fi Classic option is the cheapest, offering white dimmable light, while the Sengled Colour Plus is a coloured bulb with a built-in speaker and the Senged Boost is a white dimmable light with WLAN boosting capabilities. There is also a Sengled Element range, though this requires a hub. Features including scheduling, dimming and smartphone control from anywhere are available across the Sengled range. The Sengled Wi-Fi Classic bulbs are also compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, allowing for voice control with a compatible device.

Pocket-lint

Tapo

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For those who want simplicity over all else, Tapo offers a really nice solution in the form of its smart bulbs, which don’t require a bridge or hub of any sort.

They’ll connect to your Wi-Fi and work nicely with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, and the most affordable version has dimming to let you set the mood. It’s not as sophisticated a system as the likes of Philips Hue, but it’s a superb option if you want your first smart bulb.

Tapo Smart Wi-Fi Light Bulb review: Simple smart lighting

Belkin

Belkin WeMo Smart LED lighting

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Belkin offers all sorts of WeMo connected devices and included within the range is the WeMo Smart LED bulb and the WeMo Light Switch, both of which allow lighting control from an iPhone or Android device. The WeMo Smart LED Bulb replaces your existing bulbs enabling you to control, schedule and fully dim them from anywhere using the WeMo Link, Wi-Fi and the WeMo app. It’s worth mentioning that like most of IKEA smart lights, the WeMo bulbs only offer variants of white light rather than millions of colour options.

The WeMo bulbs can be controlled independently or in groups and the WeMo Link can handle up to 50 bulbs. The WeMo LED bulbs offer compatibility with IFTTT, meaning you can create various recipes like the Hue system and they are also compatible with Google Assistant for voice control. There is also a WeMo Light Switch that is designed to replace a standard light switch in your home and allow you to turn your normal lights on and off from anywhere using a smartphone.

LIFX

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Originating on Kickstarter, LIFX is an LED light bulb that can be controlled using a smartphone app but like Sengled, it doesn’t require an additional hub. From the LIFX app, you can turn your lights on or off, adjust brightness, change the colour, and even create a light show to go with your music.

Like many of the smart light solutions available, LIFX also offers a wake-up feature, allowing you to wake up naturally each morning with automatically increasing light, or drift off with slowly dimming lights. The company also offers LIFX PLUS bulbs which have the additional advantage of a night vision settings, and like Philips Hue and Osram Lightify, there are LED strips available too.

Lightwave

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Lightwave is not just about lighting, it’s about controlling your entire home whether that be heating, electricity or lighting. It’s a clever system that requires you to swap your sockets and switches for Lightwave units that offer push-buttons and LED indicators, rather than changing out your bulbs like others on this list.

Once you have installed the system, you use the switches and plugs as normal but you get the additional functionality of being able to remotely control and monitor your lighting, power and energy usage from an internet-enabled device. The Lightwave app will let you to set routines based on your usual daily activities, as well as remotely control things.

Nanoleaf

Nanoleaf light panels

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Nanoleaf is a fully-customisable smart lighting system featuring wall-mounted triangular lighting panels that snap together with simple connectors to create whatever shape you can imagine. The starter pack is expandable with extra panels that can be bought and combined to create bigger and bolder designs in future too.

Nanoleaf light panels are app-controlled (iOS and Android) and the system is compatible with most smart home platforms, including Google, Amazon and Apple, allowing for voice control. Like other smart lighting options, Nanoleaf can be programmed to turn on and off at specific hours, and switch light scenes. The Nanoleaf starter pack also includes a Rhythm Module, which transforms the light panels into a dancing light show that reacts to surrounding sound.

Nanoleaf

Nanoleaf Canvas

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Nanoleaf Canvas are fully-customisable six-inch squares that can be connected together and installed anywhere in your home, walls or ceilings, using the included 3M stickers. The lights can be expanded with multiple panels, up to a total of 500 squares, meaning you can fill entire walls with colourful lighting if you so wish.

The panels are touch-sensitive and can be controlled in a variety of ways with gestures, voice commands via a personal assistant or from your phone. Nanoleaf Canvas can also be installed in a multitude of patterns and customised to your own personal taste and the lights can react to the sound in the room – syncing to music or just providing a brilliant light show in your living room.

Pocket-lint

Cololight Smart LED Panels

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If you are interested in customisable smart lighting panels that allow you to create your own patterns and shapes, but don’t like the idea of mounting them on your walls then these lights may be the answer.

This kit contains six hexagonal light panels that can be connected together in various different shapes. They’re then mounted on the hefty stone base that sits nicely on your desk, mantelpiece or windowsill. You can then choose from a variety of different shades, scenes and lighting options from within the app with ease.

The highlights to Cololight’s smart LED panels is they’re not only customisable in the way you connect them, they’re also expandable. So you can purchase additional panels to create larger designs. You’re not restricted to a single design either as you can easily remove the linking modules and create an entirely new look in a matter of seconds.

These lights also react to sound so can be used to create an awesome little light show with to go along with your music as well.

For the price, this is a nifty little smart lighting system that’s a cool addition to the home.

Writing by Britta O’Boyle.

heise offer: Mac & i extra with 13 workshops on SEO, social media and more now in stores

Mac & i extra workshops winter 2020 / 2021 is now also available in well-stocked magazine stores – and of course still in the Heise Shop, either on paper or as a PDF.

In 13 Workshops show professionals how it’s done: Learn from bestselling author Cay Rademacher how to write a good crime novel. Let the SEO expert Niels Dahnke reveal to you what you have to do to make a website move up in the Google search hits. Read Alexandra-Katharina Kütemeyer’s tips on how to gain followers on Facebook, Instagram & Co and set up successful campaigns.

Monika Gause, Lecturer for image processing and computer graphics, using the example of logos and business cards, explains what is important when designing with Affinity Designer. The photographer Markus Linden describes how you can manage and improve your image collection with Luminar 4 and the architect Daniel Busch uses a cute wooden baby cradle to demonstrate that you can even use a free program like Autodesk’s Fusion 360 can model professional 3D workpieces. The font expert Antje Dohmann gives tips for the skilful use of typography, the website professional Daniel Berger makes WordPress users advanced and Richard Kurz helps with tinkering with microcontrollers. Raimar Heber, Art Director at the German Press Agency, gives an insight into what makes good infographics. Michael Malzahn, who specializes in professional information management, shows how to set up a paperless office with the Mac program Devonthink.

A first look in Mac & i extra workshops (12 Pictures) Three makers from the film industry – Udo Flohr, director, Patrick Jacobshagen, executive producer, and Sven Pape, editor in Hollywood – describe how to produce your own feature film. Last but not least, you will learn from Xojo evangelist Ulrich Boguhn how to write a cross-platform app.

Most of the programs used in the articles are available for free or very cheaply and run under macOS as under Windows.

Mac & i subscribers have already received Mac & i extra workshops. You can also read the booklet in your browser, purchase it as a PDF or in the Mac & i apps prepared for reading on iPhone and iPad, Android devices and Kindle Fire. Plus subscribers have access to the paper and digital edition, which is enriched with bonus material, interactive reading mode and search function.

The very successful last edition is out of print on paper, but is still available as a PDF. In Mac & i workshops 2019 bestselling author Andreas Eschbach reveals how to write a novel. A rheology professional shows what makes a good presentation. It is also about vlogging on Youtube, blogging with WordPress, teamwork on the internet, project management, DTP and layout, slide shows with iMovie, creating your own grooves with Ableton Live, 3D modeling with Blender, programming games in Unity and editing images Affinity Photo.

(se)

Motorola presents two new smartphones: here are moto g 5G and moto g9 Power! All specifications and prices

Two new smartphones from the Motorola family: we are talking about moto g9 Power but also about moto g 5G that are positioned in the mid-range but which from their own possess absolutely noteworthy characteristics. Here’s what they are and how much they will cost.

by Bruno Mucciarelli published 05 November 2020 , at 11: 01 in the Telephony channel

Motorola

Two smartphones to capture the attention of band users media. Motorola continues in its progression and after presenting the flagships Moto Edge and Edge + decides to enrich its catalog by proposing today moto g 5G but also moto g9 Power , which as we will see have interesting technical specifications in some respects.

moto g9 Power

Let’s start from the most interesting for technical specifications that is the new moto g9 Power which, already from the name, can make understand its main feature: a battery of well 6. 0 mAh for an immense duration that the company estimates in even 60 hours. It is the longest-lived battery made by Motorola in a smartphone and this will allow you to have an instrument in your hands practically free from daily recharges. Mobility will therefore be its strong point with video calls on the agenda, especially in these times of pandemic, but without the risk of having to worry about the charge.

Clearly this will not be the only prerogative of a device with more than interesting features. moto g9 Power in fact for the first time on this range it adds a sensor to very high resolution from 64 MP which offers so much clarity and color accuracy in your shots. Quad Pixel technology ensures that every photo is crisp and bright no matter what setting you choose thanks to 4 times higher sensitivity. Motorola in this tries to give a Pro aspect to the images taken thanks to the 2MP depth sensor and to that Macro always from 2MP which together will allow you to capture the small details that otherwise would not be able to have without a dedicated Macro Vision and a Depth sensor. There is also a camera from 16 MP with Quad Pixel technology for selfies that always allows shots worthy of Instagram.

Important for dimensions and not only is the 6.8 “Max Vision HD display, which offers an engaging experience thanks to the absence of important frames. The beating heart instead of the smartphone is a Snapdragon 662 which is here supported by 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of integrated storage space. In this case, however, Motorola tries to achieve maximum performance by optimizing software with hardware at best. That’s why it offers an Android 10 at its maximum expression stock with the introduction of only a few customizations such as those of the camera application which has been redesigned and now puts the most used functions at your fingertips at the bottom of the screen, making it make it easier and more intuitive to take photos in the best possible way. There is also a dedicated button for the Google Assistant that helps you find answers quickly and do things just by using your voice.

The new Motorola moto g9 Power will be available in Europe at a suggested retail price of 199, 99 ??.

moto g 5G

And there is also the new one moto g 5G that Motorola decides to renew, taking it to a higher level especially as regards the 5G network faster than the moment. In this case, the smartphone has real potential because it leverages the company’s years of experience in the mid-range by creating a powerful new device to stand out in this segment. There is ultra-fast 5G connection, there is a powerful battery and there is also great photographic technology that certainly will not go unnoticed. The new moto g 5G is a powerful new device in the moto g family that offers new generation features while maintaining that ” family fealing ” that many still seek.

From his moto g 5G he breaks expectations for the mid-range setting a new standard for camera, battery and display at a very affordable price. The smarpthone features artificial intelligence-based performance optimized for the most intense activities. It owns a new generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 750 G 5G processor that allows you to experience speed incredible on the new 5G network for navigation, downloads but also games.

Then there is a respectable photographic sector with a triple camera system. Here moto g 5G has so much imaging technology on board with a main sensor from 48 MP with Quad Pixel technology that helps the user in shooting even in low light conditions. There is also the 8MP ultra-wide lens that allows you to reach large scenes even up to 188 degrees. And then there is also a camera dedicated 2MP Macro Vision that allows shots 5 times closer to the subject than a normal lens. Let’s not forget also the main selfie camera from 16 MP with a large size of 2.0 μm with Quad Pixel technology.

The moto g 5G is powered by a 5 battery. 00 0 mAh which will allow this Motorola to keep the smartphone active for over two days on a single charge. At the hardware level, as mentioned, there is the Snapdragon 750 G which improves the energy efficiency to allow connections at 5G speeds without worrying about draining the battery. Moreover refill is available from 20 W TurboPower which allows you to obtain 10 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

In terms of display moto g 5G has a 6.7-inch MaxVision Full HD capable of supporting HDR 01 and that really makes an impression for vivid, true colors with enhanced brightness and a unique aspect ratio from 20: 9 for a secure grip in the hand. For performance we also have 6GB of RAM in addition to 128 GB of integrated memory with the possibility of expand it up to 1TB using the microSD card slot.

Motorola tries to achieve maximum performance by optimizing the software with the hardware. That’s why it proposes an Android 10 at the most its stock expression with the introduction of only a few customizations such as those of the camera application which has been redesigned and now puts the most used functions at your fingertips at the bottom of the screen, making it easier and more intuitive to take photos in the best possible way. There is also a dedicated button for the Google Assistant that helps you find answers quickly and do things simply by using your voice.

Moto g 5G will be available at a recommended price of 299, 99 ??.

Turkey imposes fines on Facebook, Twitter and Co.

After the entry into force of a new law for stricter regulation of social media in Turkey, measures have been initiated against providers such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Periscope, YouTube and TikTok, according to official information. A fine of 10 million Turkish lira (about one million euros) was imposed on the platforms, said the deputy minister for transport and infrastructure, Ömer Fatih Sayan, on Twitter on Wednesday With. The reason for the punishment is that no local representatives for Turkey have been appointed within the given period. The providers could not initially be reached for confirmation.

The Turkish parliament passed a law in July that makes social media more strictly controlled . Providers with more than a million Turkish users per day must open branches in Turkey with a Turkish citizen as their representative. Representation by a legal person is also possible. If no representative is registered, penalties are imposed. In addition to the imposition of fines, pages can be rendered virtually unusable. The law also obliges platforms to respond to requests to delete or block certain content within 48 hours.

Turkish media are for the most part under direct or indirect control of the government, and control over content on the Internet has been strengthened again and again. Ankara regularly takes action against users for content on the Internet that is critical of the government.

(axk)

heise offer: Mac & i extra: 13 workshops on SEO, social media, WordPress tuning and more

One day before sales start in stores, there are Mac & i extra workshops winter 2020 / 2021 in the Heise Shop – either on paper or as PDF.

In 12 workshops, professionals show how it’s done: Learn from Best-selling author Cay Rademacher on how to write a good crime novel. Let the SEO expert Niels Dahnke reveal to you what you have to do to make a website move up in the Google search hits. Read Alexandra-Katharina Kütemeyer’s tips on how to gain followers on Facebook, Instagram & Co and set up successful campaigns.

Monika Gause, lecturer for image processing and computer graphics, using the example of logos and business cards, explains what is important when designing with Affinity Designer. The photographer Markus Linden describes how you can manage and improve your image collection with Luminar 4 and the architect Daniel Busch uses a cute wooden baby cradle to demonstrate that you can even use a free program like Autodesk’s Fusion 360 can model professional 3D workpieces. The font expert Antje Dohmann gives tips for the skilful use of typography, the website professional Daniel Berger makes WordPress users advanced and Richard Kurz helps with tinkering with microcontrollers.

Dr. Raimar Heber, Art Director at the German Press Agency, gives an insight into what makes good infographics. Michael Malzahn, who specializes in professional information management, shows how to set up a paperless office with the Mac program Devonthink.

A first look at Mac & i extra workshops (12 pictures) Three makers from the film industry – Udo Flohr, director, Patrick Jacobshagen, executive producer, and Sven Pape, cutter in Hollywood – describe how to make your own Feature film produced. Last but not least, you will learn from Xojo Evangelist Ulrich Boguhn how to write a cross-platform app.

Most of the programs used in the articles are free or very cheap to get and run under macOS as under Windows.

Mac & i extra workshops comes to well-stocked newsagents on November 5th. Mac & i subscribers have already received it.

You can now read the booklet in your browser, as a PDF or prepared for reading on iPhone and iPad, Android devices and Kindle Fire in the Purchase Mac & i apps. Plus subscribers have access to the paper and digital edition, which is enriched with bonus material, interactive reading mode and search function.

The very successful last edition is out of print on paper, but is still available as a PDF. In Mac & i workshops 2019 bestselling author Andreas Eschbach reveals how to write a novel. A rheology professional shows what makes a good presentation. It is also about vlogging on Youtube, blogging with WordPress, teamwork on the internet, project management, DTP and layout, slide shows with iMovie, creating your own grooves with Ableton Live, 3D modeling with Blender, programming games in Unity and editing images Affinity Photo.

(se)

WhatsApp introduces disappearing messages, new storage management tool

WhatsApp is pushing a bunch of new features to its service in order to make it more competitive with the likes of Instagram Direct, Slack, and Telegram. The company has announced the arrival of “Disappearing Messages” that will allow users to send each other texts and media that will vanish after 7 days.

Also, there is going to be an improved storage management tool that will allow more detailed control over what is stored in the phone and what is deleted, with filters for size or age.

The Disappearing Messages can only be enabled for a particular chat. You have to tap the contact’s name and then find the feature, and then just tap On/Off. Once enabled, it will automatically delete the messages from the chat thread but might remain in the phone storage if the back-up option is also enabled and managed to pick the message that was intended to be deleted.

The feature will arrive both to Android and iOS but the update is gradual – some users might be getting it, others might have to wait a little bit more.

The redesigned storage management tool will be available in the “Manage storage” submenu in Settings/Storage and Data. Currently, WhatsApp collects all the media in a single folder and visualizes it all at one place, but in the future items that have been forwarded many times will appear in one place, and another is for files larger than 5MB.

That way users will have a better idea what exactly takes so much room and will be able to manage their storage, especially in countries and regions where affordable smartphones with less internal memory are desired and sold.

Source 1 • Source 2

Corona infodemia: Social media most used source of information in the pandemic

“Fake news spreads faster and easier than this virus, and it’s just as dangerous.” Researchers at Heilbronn University have now backed up this statement by WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from mid-February 2020. By analyzing sent them have made, they identified that information about the coronavirus are mostly shared from sources in social media.

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It is hardly surprising that most tweets on the subject of coronavirus share tweets. In second place we refer to Youtube, followed by Instagram, Paper.li, Facebook and Linkedin. The first source that is not a social medium is the British newspaper The Guardian on.

The most widespread category among the top 50 was “mainstream or local news”, counted the researchers at the GECKO Institute for Medicine, Computer Science and Economics at the HHN. For the category “Government and Public Health Care” found among the top 50 with the Centers for Disease Control and -prevention (CDC) of the USA and the WHO two channels of information.

The specialist magazine Nature is ranked 116 the most widespread scientific publication; it appeared in 6043 tweets. “What is interesting about this is that original scientific sources are rarely shared directly. This underlines the importance of the media in communicating complex issues in a language that is easy to understand for the general public,” says GECKO employee Monika Pobiruchin. It is important that new scientific knowledge is continuously gained and that the origin and seriousness of information on the subject of Covid – 19 must be observed.

Most frequent hashtags For the study, which was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the researchers used the Twitter Streaming API to collect tweets from February 9th, which were linked to the 16 prevailing hashtags on the topic. They were evaluated using Java software that filtered out duplicate tweets and retweets, extracted the text of the tweets, the metadata and profile information and stored them in a PostgreSQL database. The data was statistically evaluated using the R software on an Ubuntu computer. The Heilbronn researchers used the methods and categories that the social medicine specialist Gunther Eysenbach 2009 had used on the occasion of the H1N1 pandemic .

The most common hashtag was #coronavirus, followed by #covid 19 and #COVID – 19. 000, 8 million of the examined tweets were in English, 3 million in Spanish . German-language tweets were around 2009. 000. Almost twice as many tweets were in Italian. “It is noteworthy that the population in the north of Italy received information on Covid early on, at the end of February – 19 has spread more on Twitter “, explains the Heilbronn researcher Martin Wiesner. “In the following weeks, this effect was also clearly noticeable in other European countries.”

Origin of the tweets on the subject of coronavirus collected at seven-day intervals between February 9 and 11. April 2020.

(Source: GECKO Institute for Medicine, Computer Science and Economics at the HHN) Tweets with geographical coordinates were under-analyzed and shown and animated in a seven-day interval on a map of Europe. It can be seen that at the beginning of the study period there were frequent Covid tweets in densely populated regions in the UK, Benelux and Italy, with geolocation data available for one million, or 4.4 percent, of the tweets n that their results are probably not transferable to other social media platforms such as Facebook or Reddit. The relatively sparse data situation for Eastern Europe could be due to the fact that Twitter is used little or cautiously there.

(anw)

It’s Halloween, so here are some mischievous skeletons

Everyone focuses on what’s blowing up on TikTok, but here’s something that’s been getting a bit of attention over on Byte: some playful little skeletons.

Over the past month, designer Andre Zimmermann has been posting short looping clips of meddlesome skeletons getting into low-stakes hijinks, like running off with food from a table or knocking a plant off a ledge. “They sort of became these jerks,” Zimmermann said. “Like a cat.”

They’re the furthest thing from spooky, but their mischievous antics feel a bit more comforting during what’s already a high-stress Halloween.

My favorite of Zimmermann’s not-quite-spooky animations shows a humanoid collection of skulls dancing to a looping disco track. To make it, Zimmermann said he imported a motion-capture file of someone dancing, then set the skulls to follow their movements. “It’s just a man basically with skulls stuck to him,” Zimmermann said.

Zimmermann has only been working with 3D art for three years. He started making icons and customizations for Android home screens, then moved on to illustrations and animations. His projects all come together in his free time after work and take a day or two each.

The quick turnarounds are intentional, Zimmermann said, because it’s too easy for any given post to go unnoticed on social platforms. “Putting a lot of time into these long hard complex works doesn’t really pay off,” he said. He’d like to build up an audience — recently, he had some success on Instagram, where one of his skeleton posts got 1.6 million views. On Byte, the view count is far lower, but the animations have been surfacing as part of the app’s “Spooky Season” section.

One element of Zimmermann’s animations that really pulls them together is the music. That selection actually comes last in the process, he said. Once the video is exported, he looks around to see what fits and what will loop properly, since he wants the clips to seem endless.

“The length has to fit,” he said. “And getting that right away is not really something you can plan.”

Vergecast: this week’s Section 230 hearing and the season of weird gadgets

This week on The Verge’s flagship podcast, The Vergecast: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) yells at Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, gadget makers are going to QVC, and it is weird phone season once again.

Hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk to Verge senior reporter Adi Robertson about the latest congressional hearing with the big tech CEOs — this time about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Dorsey attended the hearing over video in front of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Adi explains what everyone had to say.

In the second half of the show, Ashley Carman stops by to talk about the newest episode of her video series In the Making, which is about how live shopping channels like QVC and HSN are now a new frontier for gadget companies marketing and selling their products.

And of course, The Vergecast had to fit in some smartphone talk. The wave of weird phone design has come back, and it does not disappoint. Reviews for the LG Wing and the new Motorola Razr are out, and for some reason, there is a Yahoo phone.

This whole week of news is captured on this episode of The Vergecast, so listen here or in your preferred podcast player to hear it all.

Stories from this week:

San Francisco and Oakland phase out Verily COVID-19 testing sites

White House officials considered Elon Musk for coronavirus ad campaign

We need to rebuild America’s pandemic-fighting agencies

Streaming was part of the future — now it’s the only future

Lime’s CEO on the future of scooters: ‘COVID has turned from a headwind into a tailwind’

Mark Zuckerberg just told Congress to upend the internet

The latest Section 230 hearing showed that Republicans want to make the internet smaller

The Right’s Regulator in Chief

Gadget makers’ biggest risk could be a huge reward

Influencers’ next frontier: their own live shopping channels

Everyone on Instagram will soon be able to go live for four hours

Facebook will test shopping from Reels later this year

Motorola Razr 2020 review: 5G folding flip phone feels fine

LG Wing review: learning to fly, failing to soar

Verizon’s Yahoo zombie appears again as a purple phone

First iPhone 12 mini hands-on video shows just how tiny it is

Mophie’s new wirelessly charging battery pack clips onto the back of your phone

T-Mobile expands its faster midband 5G network, nearly doubling its coverage

Microsoft Surface Pro X (2020) review: ARM gets more muscle

Amazon Echo Dot (2020) review: have a ball

T-Mobile expands into live internet TV with new TVision streaming service

PS5 in photos: our first look at Sony’s next-gen console

PS5 vs. Xbox Series X: the next-gen consoles in photos

Astro’s Playroom is the perfect showcase for the PS5’s wild DualSense controller

Control is coming to the Nintendo Switch today, but you can only stream it from the cloud

Vizio and LG’s next-gen-ready OLED TVs are up to $500 off at Best Buy

Meet the 24-year-old who’s tracking every broken McDonald’s ice-cream machine in the US

#TGIQF – high-end graphics cards AMD Radeon RX 6000 vs. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000

Nvidia has more or less launched the first models from the GeForce RTX series 3000, AMD the Radeon RX series 6000 revealed. Both chip manufacturers are competing again in the upper class or high-end, where AMD had no graphics cards to offer for years. We take the opportunity for a quiz on both series.

Do you know which gamer graphics card has the most memory soldered? Which top model is more economical? And what nickname has established itself on AMD’s Navi – 21 – GPU? We wish you a lot of fun with the quiz!

The clock is relentless in the fight for the correct answers, but as usual rewards quick decisions with more points. As always, please keep the correct answers to yourself so as not to spoil the fun of other players. But you are welcome to share your score, praise or criticism as usual in the forum or on Twitter and on Facebook at # tgiqf . In addition, it is always worth visiting us on Instagram.

Thanks for all the quiz tips from the community so far! As always, the quiz master is happy to receive an email if you have an idea for a great quiz.

“Thank God It’s Quiz Friday!” Every Friday there is a new quiz from the subjects of IT, technology, entertainment or nerd knowledge:

(mma)

Facebook increases sales through digital change

Facebook’s business is getting a boost because more companies are relying on digital platforms in the Corona crisis. The turnover of the online network, which is mainly achieved with advertising, rose by 22 percent in the past quarter 21, $ 2 billion. The bottom line was a profit of $ 7 85 billion dollars – an increase of 29 percent. Contributed to this was a tax credit of well 900 million dollars in research and development spending.

Small and medium-sized businesses make up a large proportion of Facebook advertisers. Many of them – such as cafes or restaurants – have been hit hard by the pandemic. As a result, it was feared that they would cut their advertising spending. At the same time, there was an advertising boycott of large customers in July in protest against hate speech on the platform.

The fact that Facebook is still recording solid growth is also due to the fact that small and medium-sized companies increasingly go online in search of new business opportunities during the crisis. Facebook’s advertising business was driven by this accelerated change from traditional to online trading, stressed CFO Dave Wehner. Facebook quickly developed a trading platform. Sheryl Sandberg, the top manager responsible for the operational business, cited a family company that otherwise sold soaps from its own production at weekly markets. In the pandemic, she is now using Facebook as a platform and has expanded her business.

Facebook builds on the argument that the online network plays a role worth protecting for the economy during the crisis. Against this background, Facebook criticized, among other things, Apple’s plans for privacy on the iPhone, in which the users of each app should allow tracking for advertising purposes. This could prevent Facebook from collecting data on a user across different apps and thus personalizing the advertising more precisely. He was concerned that such restrictions or EU data protection plans “could have a significant negative impact on small businesses and the economic recovery in 2021 or beyond “, said founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg.

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30 Millions more users The number of daily active Facebook User increased within three months 30 million to around 1, 82 billions. However, the number of users in the USA and Canada were “slightly down” compared to the second quarter, according to Facebook. In the second quarter, the number of users initially rose sharply due to the effects of the corona pandemic. Now they are falling again in the third quarter, explains Facebook. For the fourth quarter, Facebook expects further slight decreases in user numbers in the US home market and Canada.

At least one app from the group – such as Instagram and WhatsApp – access 2 every day, 54 Billion users back.

The share price of the Facebook share traded on the NASDAQ rose by around 1.5 percent to as a reaction to the quarterly figures. , 61 dollars back.

( with material from dpa) / (olb)

heise + | Buy limited products successfully online

Limited available articles are often sold out faster than you can click. With a few tips and prep, you’ll bag them up quick enough.

(Image: Thorsten Hübner)

Buy limited products successfully online What is gone is gone Pay quickly More tips & tricks Inventory Conclusion Article in c’t 23 / 2020 read When independent music labels or clothing and sports shoe manufacturers are strictly limited Selling rte items on the internet is called a drop. Artists and manufacturers generally communicate the time of a drop via social media such as Instagram. You should make a note of the date and time – that is the first requirement that you have the slightest chance of getting an item.

The clothing and skateboard brand Supreme is a drop veteran. Their drops always start every Thursday at 12 clock on the website of the New York shop. The jackets, sweaters and shoes are often sold out after a few seconds. The artificial shortage arouses desires and drives strange flowers: nonsense articles once offered by the manufacturer such as bricks and fire extinguishers printed with the Supreme logo can be found at moon prices of 1000 Euros on eBay again. Something like this should not be supported under any circumstances and simply ignored the overpriced articles.

These examples may seem strange, but one must not neglect the psychological pull of drops with limited articles: Faster, than you think you can get into a vortex and the must-have-it-feeling takes over. Don’t let that overwhelm you and make rational purchasing decisions. Furthermore, if you can’t resist and buy items at completely inflated prices, the debt trap is not far away. Do not underestimate this type of shopping addiction!

Access to all contents of heise + exclusive tests, advice & background: independent, critically well-founded c’t, iX, Technology Review, Mac & i, Make, c’t read photography directly in the browser register once – read on all devices – can be canceled monthly first month free, thereafter monthly 9, 95 € Weekly newsletter with personal reading recommendations from the editor-in-chief Start FREE month Now FREE- Start month heise + already subscribed?

Sign in and read Register now and read the article immediately More information about heise + Buy limited products successfully online What is gone is gone Pay quickly More tips & tricks Inventory Conclusion Article in c’t 23 / 2020 read

Windows 10, towards the elimination of Internet Explorer with the redirect on Edge. All the details

A new step towards the definitive abandonment of Internet Explorer, with more than a thousand sites (at least initially) that will be launched through the more modern (and supported) Edge based on Chromium

of Nino Grasso published on 28 October 2020 , at 15: 43 in the Operating Systems channel
Microsoft Windows

Like it or not, Windows users have had to progressively move away from Internet Explorer, web browser that has become legendary more for its negative characteristics than for its qualities. Microsoft has released a first version of Edge, its replacement, in a modern key (perhaps too much), and then retraces its steps with a new variant based on Chromium.

from Windows 10 20 H2 this version is now native to the operating system, and the permanent abandonment of Internet Explorer now seems to be a priority for Microsoft. After rolling out an update to install the new Chromium-based Edge on as many systems as possible, Microsoft plans to force over a thousand websites to run on Edge .

Specifically, as reported by ZDNet, starting next month if you try to access an “incompatible” website with Internet Explorer, the system will perform a redirect forcing the site to be played on the new Edge browser. The source also recorded a video showing how the novelty will operate on Windows 10.

In the list of sites that will be automatically launched on Edge you can read many names, and not just of websites unknown to most. Among these we find Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, various Google services, and again Microsoft Teams and several websites related to home banking systems and other large-scale brands. According to a Microsoft FAQ page the news will be distributed on Microsoft Edge version 87 , which is scheduled to debut next time 19 November.

A major change is also the fact that Edge will retrieve browsing data from Internet Explorer, unless you uncheck the option on first run which will be shown in the warning screen (photo below).

The elimination of Internet Explorer is a essential move for Microsoft , since for very long years the browser has been one of the biggest nightmares for web developers. To date, the old program for surfing the internet does not even account for 5% of traffic, so the cessation of its activities should not be frustrating for the vast majority of users. Those few who still use IE, however, know that the browser is running out of hours.

Microsoft Internet Explorer users may be surprised when they get redirected to Edge next month

Microsoft has been slowly weaning users off its legacy Internet Explorer browser for a very long time, recently going so far as to use a forced Windows update to install its new Chromium Edge browser on your Windows PC. But next month, Microsoft’s planning to force your computer to automatically launch some 1,156 websites in Edge, too — if you try to launch an “incompatible” site in IE.

That’s the report from ZDNet, which also recorded a video showing how it works:

There’s a lot of big-name sites on the automatically-launch-in-Edge list, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, a number of Google products, Microsoft Teams, and quite a few banks and other big brands.

According to a Microsoft FAQ, the change will roll out in Microsoft Edge version 87, which is set to arrive the week of November 19th, and that Edge will automatically try to migrate your browsing data from IE unless you uncheck a box (see the image below).

Given that older versions of Internet Explorer have been the bane of web developers for a very long time, and given that even generous estimates suggest Internet Explorer counts for no more than 5 percent of today’s web traffic, this isn’t a particularly frustrating move. I personally haven’t touched IE in years, and I’m happy to hear it might become less of a security risk.

But I also understand that some people still use the browser, and those people might be confused when their computer suddenly launches Edge instead. This post is for them.

TikTok: A 15-second video is scaring users. What it is and why

On TikTok comes a short video that it’s terrorizing users as soon as they look at it. It is a video created ad hoc by the author who has the ability to keep the viewer glued to the point of scaring him at the end. A video that is literally going around the world.

by Bruno Mucciarelli published 24 October 2020 , at 15: 31 in the web channel

TikTok

The period is Halloween and the video that we are about to propose certainly suits the period. A short video that a user created and published on TikTok and that in a very short time went viral for that terrifying being of his almost with a horror movie. Clearly we do not want to spoil what happens but know that it is nothing real even if the blow to the heart is undoubtedly assured.

TikTok: a social network of emerging actors and directors?

In the short video in fact we see a young man in a room who keeps turning the corridor lights off and on again. But what intrigues the video is the presence of a figure in the distance that appears as soon as the light is turned off by the young man. There is also a woman sitting a little further on on a bed and just this does nothing but indicate to the man that figure asking him to turn on the light again and observe the mysterious figure. For the first few seconds in the video it is a turning on and off of the light but after a few attempts here comes a sudden scream and the figure in the distance does nothing but run towards the camera lens, scaring the viewer.

A particular video that, as often happens in these situations, immediately went viral. Previously only on the TikTok platform during the past months of May although in that case it had not particularly impressed as views. Later, however, in the last period it has returned very much in fashion and has totaled the beauty of more than millions of views.

And it’s back in fashion again the fact of how TikTok manages to create highly viral videos much more than what happens with Facebook, Instagram or even other platforms. On the Chinese video aggregator the opposite occurs with a strong predisposition on the part of users who study videos in detail as if they were films. Some with work even days, others instead simpler and faster but certainly effective. A success, that of TikTok, which has the merit of allowing users to truly make videos of all kinds with an ease of sharing that few other platforms get. And Instagram, aka Zuckerberg, tries to get back under

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