Winamp 6 for mobile to launch in 2019

Winamp, the MP3 player of the late 1990s, will get a new version and aggregation features in 2019.

Possibly one of the most recognizable icons of the late 1990s’ computing era, Winamp became the go-to program for playing MP3 from a personal computer. The music player became a constant in the ever changing and growing PC platform and reached a user base of 60 million by 2001.


Because of its reputation and loyal community of users, Radionomy, the company that bought Winamp in 2014, continued development of the music player and confirmed an all-new version 6 mobile app to come out in 2019, reports TechCrunch


Winamp 6 will work as a neutral one-player-for-all where users can listen to their personal music collection while also plugging in to streaming services like Audible, Google Music library, Podcasts and Spotify playlists.

“What I see today is you have to jump from one player to another player or aggregator if you want to listen to a radio station, to a podcast player if you want to listen to a podcast — this, to me, is not the final experience,” said Radionomy CEO Alexandre Saboundjian.

Originally developed by the company Nullsoft, development continued for the desktop version of Winamp until it reached Winamp 5.5 in 2007. After this, updates stopped until Winamp 5.666 came out in 2013 and was billed as the last update from Nullsoft/AOL.

Meanwhile, a mobile version of Winamp came out in 2010 for Android. A year later, Winamp for Mac OS called Winamp for Mac Sync Beta was released.

On Sept. 16, 2018, a Winamp 5.8 version was leaked online. The leaked beta version bore the build date of Oct. 26, 2016. An official version is expected to come out by Oct. 18 which won’t be much different from the leaked beta version. It will still have all the fixes to allow the app to function properly in Windows 10.

Until Winamp 6 comes out in 2019 with its promised features, loyal fans may check on the website’s trademark Llama periodically for updates. Alfred Bayle/JB

source: technology.inquirer.net

Video is paying off big time for Facebook

When Facebook decided to make video a priority on its platform, Mark Zuckerberg saw it as a big step for the company. Based on the most recent quarterly earnings call, it looks like the company is really raking it in, thanks to video.

Apart from increasing engagement from users through video comments, Facebook’s Marketplace has become a popular outlet for  video ads. The company’s average revenue per user has increased 49.1 percent in the US and Canada, reports Tech Crunch.

Zuckerberg had this to say about the effect of video regarding viewer engagement: “What is enabling video to become huge right now is that fundamentally the mobile networks are getting to a point where a large enough number of people around the world can have a good experience watching a video. If you go back a few years and you tried to load a video in News Feed it might have to buffer for 30 seconds before you watched it, which wasn’t a good enough experience for that to be the primary way that people shared. But now you can — it loads instantly. You can take a video and upload it without having to take five minutes to do that.”

Sharper cameras, bigger screen, better video-making tools also supplement increased user engagement. They allow amateur creators to share their work on the mobile platform.

Facebook is currently adding video filters and effects, selfie masks and overlaid graphics (similar to Snapchat), among others, thanks to its acquisition of AR lens startup MSQRD.

Apart from big-brand video ads, Facebook is also bringing in small businesses into the video format. COO Sheryl Sandberg explains that current smartphone technology allows these businesses to shoot their own video and effectively advertise themselves without the need for a costly production crew.

To increase effectivity, Facebook is also doing some deep research into AI to try to figure out what is in the content that people and advertisers post, then how to get said content to the target audience.

“When we think about video ads and what platform they run on, we really believe that over time the dollars will shift with eyeballs and our goal is to be the best dollar and the best minute people spend measured across channels,” Sanderberg says.

Facebook has done well to ride the changing times and has managed to stay above its competitors. With its kind of planning and foresight, it would appear that the status quo won’t be shifting any time soon.  Alfred Bayle

source: technology.inquirer.net

YouTube establishes own social network through the Community

It was previously known that YouTube planned to add a social network feature to its core service. The company has finally made it official with its announcement of the YouTube Community.

The new feature is said to allow creators to better engage their audience through text, GIFs and images, among others. The goal is to keep creators from moving to competing platforms by providing them more tools to connect with the audience apart from video content, reports TechCrunch.

Apparently YouTube had been testing the new service for the past months with several creators to get their feedback. The service is now being launched in public beta with the group of early testers.

The new feature can be accessed by way of the Community on a creator’s channel. From here the creators can share images, test posts and other contents that would allow them to build their community of followers within YouTube itself.

Essentially, the Community page is a kind of mini-social network inside the channel’s page. But for the time being, the Community feature will remain in testing and YouTube will be listening to feedback regarding features and functionality. Alfred Bayle

source: technology.inquirer.net

Nintendo to launch mini-NES console with 30 classic games

Gamers of the ’90s will experience a sudden rush of nostalgia, as gaming giant Nintendo announced it’s bringing back the iconic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)—in a much smaller form.

The NES classic edition will retain its retro design and serve as a “mini-replica” of the original gaming platform, according to TechCrunch.

Apart from its compact feature, the popular console will come with 30 built-in games including classics like Super Mario Bros. 1, 2 and 3, The Legend Of Zelda, Punch Out, Final Fantasy, Donkey Kong and Bubble Bobble.

The console will be able to connect to a TV via an HDMI cable. It will also include a controller designed to work just like the original rectangular NES gamepad. The new controller is compatible with a Wii Remote, and can be used to play virtual console games on a Wii or Wii U.

In addition to HDMI support and minimal cartridges, the returning mini-console will also feature multiple suspend points for users, which will make password security a lot easier.

Nintendo will roll out the NES Classic Edition on Nov. 11. It will be priced at $59.99 (P2,812.96).  Khristian Ibarrola

Refer to the complete list of available pre-installed games below:

    Balloon Fight
    Bubble Bobble
    Castlevania
    Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
    Donkey Kong
    Donkey Kong Jr.
    Double Dragon II: The Revenge
    Dr. Mario
    Excitebike
    Final Fantasy
    Galaga
    Ghosts’N Goblins
    Gradius
    Ice Climber
    Kid Icarus
    Kirby’s Adventure
    Mario Bros.
    Mega Man 2
    Metroid
    Ninja Gaiden
    Pac-Man
    Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
    StarTropics
    Super C
    Super Mario Bros.
    Super Mario Bros. 2
    Super Mario Bros. 3
    Tecmo Bowl
    The Legend of Zelda
    Zelda II: The Adventure of Link


source: technology.inquirer.net

Snapchat hackers post phone numbers of 4.6M users online

PARIS—Hackers broke into Snapchat, the hugely popular mobile app, accessing the phone numbers and usernames of 4.6 million users and publishing them online, tech news website TechCrunch has announced.

The numbers were partially masked when they were briefly published on SnapchatDB.info, and the unidentified hackers told TechCrunch they had done this “to convince the messaging app to beef up its security.”

Snapchat, which allows people to send smartphone photos or video snippets timed to self-destruct 10 seconds or less after being opened, has become hugely popular among teenagers who are easing away from Facebook.

But Australian firm Gibson Security warned last week that glitches in the application could be exploited by hackers.

“Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue,” the hackers said in a statement, published on TechCrunch late Wednesday.

“It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does.

“You wouldn’t want to eat at a restaurant that spends millions on decoration, but barely anything on cleanliness.”

Created by students at Stanford University in 2011, Snapchat reportedly rejected a $3 billion takeover offer from Facebook last year.

source: technology.inquirer.net