Mike Beasley

YouTube has acquired a startup called Directr according to a post on the company’s website, as noted by the Wall Street Journal. Directr is a startup that makes two iOS apps for video creation—one focused on everyday users, and the other designed with small business marketing videos in mind.

The company says that for now, “everything you love about Directr is staying the same.” Directr’s current employees, however, will be joining the YouTube video ads team. Neither party has said how much the buyout cost yet, but Directr has confirmed that despite the change of ownership, it will continue to offer its current apps, which will now be available for free.

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Sprint’s plans to buy out the U.S. arm of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom came to an end today, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to the Journal, Sprint’s leadership was concerned that it would be too difficult to get United States regulators to agree to the merger.

The announcement is not yet official, but is said to be planned for Wednesday. If the merger had succeeded, the two companies would have united under the Sprint banner, possibly abandoning all of the “un-carrier” moves made by T-Mobile in recent years, including free one-week iPhone test drives on the network and unlimited music streaming on a variety of services.

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Google is no stranger to anti-trust lawsuits—especially when it comes to the popularity of its Android platform and the first-party app installation requirements to which it holds third-party handset makers—but European anti-trust regulators are preparing to bring a case against the search giant over that very issue.

It’s already been established in previous cases that in order to use the latest version of Android on their handsets, manufacturers must agree to also install a set of Google-branded apps, such as YouTube and Gmail. The European anti-trust regulators argue that this is an abuse of Google’s 80% marketshare that should be stopped.

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Facebook has announced today that it will no longer allow messaging in its main mobile application later this week. Instead, any users who wish to take advantage of the company’s messaging platform will have to do so through the standalone Facebook Messenger app.

Earlier this year the comapany started informing some European users of the upcoming move to the separate app, but this is the first time a solid timetable has been set for the transition. For users who already have the Messenger app installed, nothing will change. Once the change goes into effect, the “Messages” tab in the Facebook client will simply link to the Messenger app rather than an inbox view.

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Google is planning to collect data from 175 participants in a new study to attempt to create a statistical standard for what is considered a healthy person, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The data collected in this study, called Project Baseline, will presumably be used at some point in the future to monitor technology users for any signs of potential medical issues and alert them.

In the study, which will eventually be expanded to thousands of participants, Google X’s Dr. Andrew Conrad and a team of as many as 100 scientists in varying fields will collect anonymous molecular and genetic data in order to determine the idea traits of a healthy individual. These samples will come in the form of tissue, tears, urine, and more which will be collected this summer.

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Hillary Clinton stopped by Google today for one of the company’s “Fireside Chats” with Eric Schmidt to promote her new book, “Hard Choices.” In the one-hour talk, you can hear Clinton discuss a variety of topics ranging from international conflict to domestic wiretapping by the National Security Administration.

At one point she even (briefly) jumps into one of the most contentious debates of our time: synchronous vs. asynchronous programming models.

You can find the full video of Clinton and Schmidt’s discussion, including the Q&A section from the audience, below:

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Twitter has announced that an upcoming update to its mobile clients will allow users to go back and review their entire direct message history. Currently the app only provides a limited look back, but that restriction will be removed in a new version that will also make deleting messages more reliable across its web and mobile platforms.

[tweet https://twitter.com/Support/status/490260546818543618 align=’center’]

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LG has announced a new mid-tier smartphone dubbed the G3 Beat, which features a 5.0-inch display, a 1.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU, 8 GB of bulit-in storage, an 8 MP rear camera with laser auto-focus, and a 1.3 MP front-facing camera.

The phone runs Android 4.4.2 and is compatible with the standard 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and LTE connections commonly found in mid-range devices. Of course, LG’s Smart Keyboard is also present, along with other LG staples like QuickMemo+ and Gesture Shot.

Black, silver, and gold versions of G3 Beat will go on sale in the South Korean market on July 18th, followed by a rollout in the Commonwealth of Independent States and Europe. There’s no word yet on when this specific model will reach North America, though according to My LG Phones, a device by the same name was just approved by the U.S. FCC.

The Scribd Android app has been updated with several design tweaks and functionality improvements today that make browsing and reading even easier. The new version includes a redesigned book view with descriptions and the ability to read user reviews. Browsing between books is now seamless, and an updated library manager allows you to download books to your phone or add them to collections.

You can grab the Scribd update for free on the Google Play Store. The change log is below:

• A redesigned book page that includes in-depth descriptions, reader reviews, and related books
• Seamless book-to-book browsing
• Streamlined management of your Library – tap the new “+” sign on books to instantly save them to your device, add them to your library, or add them to a collection

Verizon has finally announced the release date for its variant of the LG G3. According to a listing on the carrier’s website (via Android Central), you’ll be able to get the upcoming smartphone on July 17th, although you can pre-order it right now. That puts the release two days behind T-Mobile’s launch and one day behind AT&T.

The phone will run for $99 on a two-year contract, which comes in at $100 less than AT&T’s price. Getting the phone on Verizon’s EDGE plan will cost $29.99 a month for 20 months, which matches AT&T’s offer. T-Mobile also recently began accepting pre-orders on it’s own plan, which requires no money down and spreads the cost of the phone over 24 monthly payments of $24.95.

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LG today revealed a new line of OLED display panels that are flexible, rollable, and even transparent. The flexible version sports a resolution of 1200 X 810, and LG says it can produce televisions with this type of display at sizes of up to 50 inches in the future. The panel can be rolled up without affecting its performance at all.

The transparent panel, on the other hand, features 30% transmittance, an improvement over previous models which could only reach around 10%. While you probably won’t want to watch TV on something like this, it’s still quite the technical achievement. The company says it is “confident” that by 2017 it can produce both of these types of displays in ultra HD resolution at sizes of 60 inches or larger (with a transmittance of 40% in the case of the transparent model).

Keep reading for more photos and the full press release

Before selling a used smartphone, most users take the time to erase personal data contained on the devices to prevent anything from falling into the hands of strangers. Most smartphones come with an option for doing this built right into the operating system, but a newly-discovered flaw in how Android handles the process could allow anyone to recover your personal information, including text messages, social media data, and a lot more.

How much more, exactly? According to researchers at security software maker Avast who purchased 20 smartphones from eBay, they were able to recover over 40,000 photos, 750 emails and text messages, and even a completed loan application. A few hundred contact entries were also pulled from the phones, and the original owners of four of the devices were found using the recovered information. That’s not even the worst part…

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Google has been ordered by the South Korean government to revise its Play Store refund policy, the Korea Herald reports. The company’s current policy requires users to submit a request for a refund within 15 minutes of the purchase. Once that time has passed, refunds can still be requested, but must be reviewed manually by a Google employee.

The practice was ruled “unfair” by the Fair Trade Commission after numerous requests from the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice. Google told the Fair Trade Commission that it would create a new, automated refund system for the Korean Play Store, but had no plans to roll this system out to the rest of the world.

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Earlier today members of the press started noticing that certain news articles were being removed from Google’s search results due to the company’s recent move to allow takedown requests following a UK court’s ruling that its citizens have the “right to be forgotten.” As various news sources played off the situation by re-running stories (and putting their subjects back in the limelight), Google has responded by restoring many of the missing links.

It’s possible the removals were unintentional anyway. Regarding the criteria for removal, the company originally stated:

When evaluating your request, we will look at whether the results include outdated information about you, as well as whether there’s a public interest in the information—for example, information about financial scams, professional malpractice, criminal convictions, or public conduct of government officials.

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