Five Important Features of Android Oreo

Until now, the Oreo was a favorite among the cookie treats. This fondness is set to transpire into the smartphone segment as well, with the introduction of the Android 8.0, the latest release of the platform that is smarter, faster and more powerful than ever. The latest update from Google comes with a host of new features that will make using your phone faster and more delightful than ever. Plus, it’s got stronger security protections and speed improvements that keep you safe and moving at lightspeed.

Here are five features that give Android Oreo a cut above the rest. Picture in Picture: With Android Oreo’s picture-in-picture feature, users can see two apps at once, thus catering to the multi-taskers. Notification Dots: With Android Oreo, notification dots let users tap to see what’s new in their apps like important ones that feature on the home screen and then take action on that notification quickly.

Strong battery and security life: Android Oreo is more secure with Google Play Protect built in, security status front and center in settings, and tighter app install controls. It also helps minimize unintentional overuse of battery from apps in the background; these limits keep your battery going longer.

Blazing Speed: With Android Oreo, users can get started on tasks more quickly than ever with a faster boot speed (up to twice as fast on Pixel). Once powered up, Auto fill on Android Oreo remember things like logins to quickly get users signed into their favorite apps. Plus, support for Android Instant Apps means new apps can be fired up with no installation needed.

Extraordinary images: Android Oreo brings along a team of fully redesigned emojis, with a superhero segment as well. While the Pixel and Nexus 5X/6P have begun career testing of the Android Open Source Project (ASOP), Pixel C and Nexus Player are also expected to enter the bandwagon. By the end of this year, hardware makers including Essential, General Mobile, HMD Global Home of Nokia Phones, Huawei, HTC, Kyocera, LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp and Sony are scheduled to launch or upgrade devices to Android 8.0 Oreo. Any devices enrolled in Android Beta Program will also receive this final version.

What is Wayback Machine?

Governments all over the world have, from time to time, strong armed telecom operators to block a number of websites, search engines and social media platforms. The Chinese government has restricted access to Google and Facebook while Twitter is blocked in Iran. Various Torrent and Porn sites were red-flagged by Department of Telecommunications in August 2015 and were subsequently blocked by Internet service providers.

In what is believed to be another case of internet censorship, DoT has reportedly asked ISPs to block an online archive called Wayback Machine, also known as archive-it.org, to prevent piracy of recently released Bollywood movies “Lipstick under My Burkha” and “Jab Harry Met Sejal.” The non-profit organization which runs Wayback Machine, two recent orders by Madras High Court were behind the block. The court orders identified a list of websites which includes Wayback Machine to be blocked for hosting a pirated copy of the two Hindi movies. However, it appears that the ban is yet to be enforced by all ISPs. 

Wayback Machine or archive-it.org is an online library of webpages, ebooks, videos, audio, games and software. It was founded by a non-profit organization called Internet Archive in 2006. As of now, it has 15 petabytes of data in the form of 273 billion webpages from over 361 million websites. It was developed to preserve digital content for research, educational purposes, and for the general public to access previous versions of an important website where a webpage which may have been changed or deleted by the publisher. 

The webpages can be archived by any users by typing the website URL and browsing to specific page they want to be saved. The right to archive videos or other content is available only to partner organizations and paid subscribers. The website has tie-ups for content with over 400 organizations in 16 countries and it includes university libraries, state archives, historical societies, NGOs and museums. 

Blocking it will affect researchers or students who rely on the vast library of research work available on it. It is also a valuable tool for activists who want to archive articles, circulars, or government documents so they will remain available forever, even if the source webpage or link to it has been taken down.

Nine YouTube hidden features

YouTube is normally the first choice for a majority of users when it comes to viewing or sharing videos. Google is always adding features to the service to improve functionality and performance. Here is what you can do to get the best YouTube.

It’s easy to make an animated GIF from a portion of YouTube video. Open the YouTube video of your choice and in the address bar of the browser, add the words ‘gif’ before YouTube (it should be gifyoutube.com). The site will redirect you to another page where you can select up to a 15 second clip from the video to convert to GIF. Once you have selected the animation time, a new page will give you the option to add, text effects and stickers. Once done, you can download the GIF to your computer.

You can share a video with playback starting at a set time. When sharing, look out for the “Start at” box. Check it and enter time. Or you can just add ‘?t=2m10s’ to the end of a short URL (for playback starting at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, in this example).

Karaoke YouTube is a great Karaoke companion. There are loads of music videos that come embedded with lyrics as subtitles. To use it as a Karaoke machine, you can connect your phone or laptop to your TV and use a mixer to attach external speakers and a microphone. If the lyrics are not present or not good, get a free browser extension called YouTube Lyrics – it will show you lyrics right next to the video. Change Caption styles if you enable subtitles closed caption on a video, you can press B on the keyboard to cycle through different colors and styles for better visibility.

YouTube has a full screen TV mode available if you want to watch videos from a distance. Just type http:www.youtube.comtv in the browser to launch the TV mode. TV mode can easily be controlled using your keyboard and has a dark theme so that it’s easy on the eyes in a dim room. You can browse through various categories as well as search for videos.

Many videos have background music. Head to http:www.mooma.sh, and then you can identify the background track using MooMa search function. Copy and paste the YouTube video link on MooMa and it will scan through its database of millions of songs to identify the song in less than a minute.

Magic Actions is one of the most feature rich browser extensions for YouTube. Once you added the extension, it opens a settings page where you can enable a lot of handy features including volume control using your mouse scroll wheel, force HD or 4k video playback, hide ads, bypass country restrictions, enable cinema mode as well as a speed booster for faster video loading.

While the desktop browser version does not offer an option of saving videos for offline play back, the YouTube app for iOS and Android has this option. For any video, you want to save for offline viewing, simply tap on the button that says ‘Add to offline’ and the video will be downloaded and saved to the My Videos section of the YouTube app. These can be viewed later without Internet connectivity.

Playing a 360 degree on YouTube is simple. Given the availability of cheap VR headsets, it’s only natural for YouTube to offer 360-degree video. To upload 360 degree video you first need to download and install the 360 video metadata app from http:www.github.comgooglespatial-mediareleases. In the app, open the 360 degree from your computer and check the box that says Spherical.