The Verge 2018 tech report card: Headphones

Headphones did not have the most auspicious start to 2018. Back in January, it seemed like a diversity of competing voice assistants, wireless audio protocols, and idiosyncratic control schemes would lead to a fragmented mess of a market. Everyone wanted wireless headphones, and the providers of those devices were keen to establish some sort of a walled-garden effect around their particular product.

The demand for more technologically advanced headphones has only increased over the course of the year, however the threat of user-hostile competition among headphone makers has not materialized. In large part thanks to integrated wireless chips that bundle Bluetooth radios with the necessary voice assistant compatibility for both iOS and...

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Pandora Stories lets artists add commentary to their own playlists

Pandora launched Stories today, a tool that lets artists and creators add voice commentary to their own playlists. The Stories feature merges podcasts with music playlists, and is meant for artists to add context to an album, or for podcasters to experiment with new storytelling formats. The feature is part of Pandora AMP, the streaming service’s free Artist Marketing Platform that helps creators promote their work. To kick off the launch, Pandora’s prepared some Stories by artists like John Legend and Daddy Yankee, who tell listeners their personal stories interspersed between their own songs. There’s also a Stories playlist called Love Songs That Aren’t Really Love Songs , which includes commentary on individual songs like a podcast... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2Xz1oNc

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Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge Instagram is making significant changes to how its system recommends content, with a focus on original content and increased distribution for smaller accounts. The slew of changes were announced by the company in a blog post today. The biggest change deals with aggregators — accounts that download or screenshot other users’ videos and photos and repost them. Sometimes aggregators will credit the original poster by tagging them in the post or caption, but often, content is wholesale ripped off with no acknowledgment, and engagement is siphoned off from the person who created the content in the first place. Instagram clearly has a problem with this and will begin removing reposted content from recommendations across the platform. The... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/ECgcPAU

Experts are furious over the FCC’s rosy picture of broadband access

To hear the Federal Communications Commission tell it, this is a golden age for broadband access in the United States. According to a newly released report from the agency on the digital divide, the gap between rural and urban internet access has “narrowed substantially, and more Americans than ever before have access to high-speed broadband.” Between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017, the number of Americans without broadband access fell from about 26 million to about 21 million, the report found. But experts, and even some commissioners at the FCC, say the report is flawed. The data underlying it, they argue, doesn’t truly capture what broadband looks like in rural America — leaving lawmakers and government officials with a warped... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts http://bit.ly/2HOPCZj

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