Twitter

Twitter for Android has received a pretty sizable update this evening that includes improvements to photo sharing, as well as realtime news stories at the top of your timeline. New to photo sharing is the ability to easily @ mention people when tweeting a photo. While editing a photo, the app will now remind you to @ mention the people or places that are in your photo.

Also new are realtime stories at the top of your timeline after you pull-to-refresh. This stories aren’t specific to each user, but rather based on the most popular links and headlines shared on Twitter. The app will only show these stories if no new tweets are loaded.

Twitter also touts better login verification and improvements to photo editing. The full change log is below:

Usually-reliable source @evleaks has tweeted a photo of what is said to be LG’s new smart TV running webOS, as LG officially announced the world’s largest 4K OLED TV “incorporating LG’s newest smart TV platform.”

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RapGenius, a popular lyrical website that recently earned $15 million in venture fund capital is now firmly in the sights of Google’s webspam team. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team says his company is investigating RapGenius for attempting to improve its position on search result pages by scamming links. RapGenius, a business highly dependent on search engine traffic could suffer severely if Google decides to take permanent action against the site.

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Perhaps one of the greatest “what could have been” stories in recent (tech) times is definitively the question of what Nokia would be like today had they gone with Android over Windows Phone? There’s little question Nokia’s fortunes might have changed dramatically and as a result, the fortunes of every other Android OEM not named Samsung.

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It’s been a long time coming and even after a brief spout where we thought they would never arrive, Motorola is yet again teasing the wood backing for the Moto X. Advising followers to “Put this DIY project on hold. Trust us” with an image of wood back, we can only hope Motorola has plans to push this out in the next few days.

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The LG G Flex, the curved body and “self-healing” device out of the Korean folks at LG is destined for Sprint. This info comes courtesy of famed Twitter tipster @evleaks who discovered the image and posted it online early this morning.

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Twitter for Android received a major update today bringing yet another user interface update and a handful of feature additions.

Namely, users can now share images over Direct Messages, which is now featured prominently on the bottom tab bar. Previously, users had to rely on third party services for sharing links to images in DMs, but now with native image support images appear inline.

Photo sharing over Direct Message appears to only be supported in the official Twitter apps (iPhone, iPad, Android) and lacks an API, so photos shared over DM currently cannot be composed by third party Twitter clients. The update contains a handful of other features as well (full changelog below):

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has joined Microsoft, Twitter, Apple, Yahoo!, Facebook, and other giants in the tech industry in calling for a reform of the NSA’s surveillance tactics. Earlier this year it was revealed that the National Security Agency was using information from these companies and more to monitor citizens across the nation without warrants.

The companies allegedly involved in the “PRISM” program denied turning over any user data to the government, but a leaked NSA slidedeck (seen above) seemed to imply the opposite.

The new collaborative campaign, called Reform Government Surveillance, cites five driving principles in its drive to curb excessive government spying:

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HTC’s trend of Android update transparency continued yesterday with hints that Android 4.4 KitKat will arrive stateside on the HTC One before the end of January. In response to a customer inquiry, HTC’s @htcusa account responded “In North America, we plan to deliver Kit Kat (including Sense 5.5) to HTC One customers by the end of January.”

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Even as HTC promises that next-year will see the return of lower cost handsets in an attempt to boost their fledgling business, the flagship successor to the One is also on the horizon. A tweet by @evleaks teases the HTC M8 for AT&T “unsurprisingly destined for AT&T, among others.” In a response to a secondary inquiry about a potential Verizon offering, the Twitter tipster responds that all four carriers should see a release by the end of the first quarter next year. Considering that all four national carriers carry the HTC One right now, it’s not inconceivable to think that the same will happen for its successor.

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Twitter is sending out notifications to current members of its Android Experiment Google Group inviting them to take part in a new alpha program. For the moment, the alpha program is only open to members of its current beta group which opened up in August of this year.

Beta users have been using early versions of Twitter since August often receiving buggy versions of an app that changes frequently. The note sent to users invites them to try the Twitter app at the earliest of stages providing “an opportunity to provide direct feedback and collaborate with us via a forum, so you can take a more active role in testing out bugs.”

Twitter highlights that it is only accepting users from inside the beta program: “We’ll be accepting requests to join on a first come, first served basis, and we’re turning first to you and other members of the Android Experiment Program.”

So, Android Twitter app beta testing people’s, have you checked for an invite?

via TheNextWeb

When the clock strikes November 13th, all eyes will be on Motorola and the announcement of their upcoming Moto G. We’ve just learned via Motorola’s Twitter and G+ pages that the device will be launched from Sao Paulo, Brazil. What that might indicate is that it is a mid-range smartphone meant for global emerging markets. Sao Paulo is an unusual venue for a high-profile smartphone launch and we’re hypothesizing that means the specs won’t be blowing anyone away. The tweet from Motorola this morning informed the world of the new launch details and provided a link to a Google+ page where it’s likely more information will be released as the announcement goes down.
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Billed as ‘the lockscreen that learns,’ Cover is an Andoid app that notes which apps you use in which locations, and then puts the apps you’re most likely to need onto your lockscreen.

At home you might get weather, news, traffic and Twitter; at work, calendar, Google drive and LinkedIn; in the car, maps and music … 
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Following leaked images allegedly showing off Android 4.4 and an eight-minute video hands-on with the Nexus 5 and the next version of Android, KitKat has done its part in hyping the chocolate-branded version of Android with a few notable tweets.

The candy bar maker dropped a couple of cryptic tweets yesterday and today, which Pocket-lint believes it has decrypted, hinting at Android 4.4 possibly launching on October 28th.

KitKat tweeted an image early Tuesday morning of an Android made out of the chocolate candy bar with a caption containing a magnifying glass (for Google Search or a sign that it’s meant to be a clue?), and the tweet itself read ‘Everybody dance now!’ This references the song “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory, but their original name was The 28th Street Crew.

The original tweet alone would be quite a stretch for assuming Android 4.4 would debut on October 28th, but roughly 24 hours later KitKat tweeted, “Sometimes you have to look for the signs…”, which clearly explains the nature of the tweets. This time it included KitKat bars arranged to say “THIS IS IT”, the Michael Jackson concert-film released on October 28th as Pocket-lint notes.

Could we see more clues ahead of the anticipated launch of Android 4.4? We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, check out the tweets for yourself below the fold, and let us know what you think:

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Twitter has finally launched a version of its official Android client that is fully-optimized for the larger displays on tablets. The app has a multi-screen view for scrolling through tweets while reading links in an accompanying browser.

The app also brings a new Android home screen widget and illustrating of images that are to be shared via Twitter. Interestingly, the app is launching first on the Samsung 10.1-2014 tablet, with launches on other Android tablets to come in the future.

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Google has apologized for Gmail delivery delays experienced by some users yesterday. Google says that whilst most messages were not affected, 29% of messages were delayed by a couple of seconds, with only 1.5% of messages being critically delayed, by as much as two hours. The issue lasted for about 8 hours, starting at around 5:30 am PST.

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