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Home-automation company Insteon to add Cortana speech recognition support to apps

Jul16
by on July 16, 2014 at 10:39 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Insider

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More and more companies want us talking to our devices. Apple has Siri, Google has Google Now, Glass and Android Wear, and Microsoft has the Xbox Kinect and its newest Halo-inspired feature, Cortana. Now connected home (or internet of things) company Insteon is adding Cortana support to its Windows phone apps in the next couple of months. With the upcoming update, Windows Phone users can control their lights, thermostats, and other Insteon connected devices with their voice. For example, you can tell your Windows Phone, “Insteon, turn off all the lights.” This eliminates the need to launch an app just to control connected items…

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Microsoft merges developer resources for Windows Store and Windows Phone, adds 21 new payout markets

Jul16
by on July 16, 2014 at 9:29 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider, Mobile

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Microsoft today announced it is merging the online developer resources (education materials, guidance, code samples, and reference documentation) for Windows Store and Windows Phone. At the same time, the company has expanded the number of payout markets by 21. The first piece of news follows when Microsoft merged Windows Store and Windows Phone developer accounts in November 2013 as well as when it rolled out universal Windows apps in April 2014. The company is now taking things further by offering a single Windows Dev Center website at dev.windows.com for all your development needs regarding building apps and games across phone,…

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What we can learn from the Yo API

Jul16
by on July 16, 2014 at 9:06 pm
Posted In: Analysis and Opinion, Around the Web, Design & Dev

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Arnaud Breton is a full-stack developer at Mention with a specific focus on the front-end side and user experience. This post originally appeared on Arnaud’s Medium. On Friday afternoon, we had some fun with the Yo API. We wanted to build a program to trigger actions whenever someone sent us a Yo. We started Yo’ed, a hub entirely written with Golang (a language we love a lot here at Mention), which triggers actions when someone Yo’ed an account. From this basic idea, I actually spent a large part of my weekend writing a distributed version, and I had a lot of fun connecting the Yo…

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The power of live content: World Cup 2014 social media winners and losers

Jul16
by on July 16, 2014 at 8:20 pm
Posted In: Analysis and Opinion, Around the Web, Shareables, Social Media

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Sarah Groarke is the managing director of sports content and marketing specialists Snack Media, a fan engagement and content marketing agency. It’s official. The 2014 World Cup has become social media’s biggest ever sporting event, with a staggering 35.6 million tweets about the game sent during the Brazil vs. Germany match alone.  Sports coverage is evolving all the time and seems to move at a faster rate every year that goes by. Smart phone ownership and usage, plus the popularity of social platforms, has created a huge new playing field where anyone can have a voice. The fact that 72.4 percent of…

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Google Wallet gets gift cards, requesting money, sending it from your debit card for free, and Spanish support

Jul16
by on July 16, 2014 at 8:11 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Mobile

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Google today updated its Google Wallet app for Android and iOS with new features, including gift cards, requesting money, sending money, and Spanish support. You can download the new version now directly from Google Play and Apple’s App Store. First off, in addition to support for loyalty cards and offers, the app now lets you manage your gift cards and redeem them in stores. Adding cards to Google Wallet is as simple as snapping a picture of them or typing in the card info (gift cards received electronically can be saved by tapping “Save to Google”), and using them merely…

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