Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Facebook adds usage dashboards. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1 2018 By Anthony Ha

Facebook launches new dashboards that show you how much time you're wasting, Google may be planning its return to China and Samsung announces a new convertible tablet. Here's your Daily Crunch for August 1, 2018.

1. Facebook and Instagram now show how many minutes you use them

Facebook is launching new dashboards for digital wellbeing, telling users the number of minutes they've spent in each app for each day of the past week, and their average across the week.

While this could be a step in the right direction, it also seems likely to be ignored by most users in its current form, since the dashboards are kind of hidden away, they don't distinguish between active and passive usage (a.k.a. zombie feed scrolling) and they don't have a direct mechanism to make you use the apps less.

2. Google is reportedly planning a censorship-friendly search service for China

Google yanked its search service from China in 2010 in the face of pressure over censorship, but now The Information reports that it has developed a censored version that could launch in the country in six to nine months.

3. Snapchat launches its first speech recognition lenses

The company says it's rolling out a series of lenses that will animate when users speak simple, English words like "hi," "love," "yes," "no," and "wow." For example, saying "hi" in the new lens will launch an animation that surrounds you with a flock of birds.

4. Huawei overtakes Apple in smartphone shipments

Chinese smartphone giant Huawei is now the second biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world according to new reports from IDC and Canalys. (Samsung is still number one.)

5. Samsung thinks the Galaxy Tab S4 can replace your laptop

Speaking of Samsung, the Tab S4 represents the company's most aggressive approach to the convertible tablet category yet. Samsung appears fairly confident that it will fulfill the need for both a laptop and a tablet, at least for some of you.

6. Bird's electric scooters are going international

The scooter craze is moving beyond the United States.

7. Apple Pay is finally coming to CVS and 7-Eleven, and will soon expand to Germany

Longtime Apple Pay holdout CVS will finally be adding support for Apple's mobile payments platform this fall, as will 7-Eleven, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.

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