Shazam celebrates 20th birthday with a special playlist featuring the most Shazamed songs from across the years
The song identification service Shazam was bought by Apple in 2018. But it actually started out back in August 2002, which means it turned 20 years old this week. To celebrate its milestone birthday, Apple Music has shared a 20 Years of Shazam Hits playlist, featuring the most Shazamed tracks from each calendar year from the past two decades.
The company also announced the service has crossed 70 billion total track recognitions to date, detected from clips submitted by its 225 million monthly active users …
Although the company rose to popularity during the App Store gold rush years, the service actually started way before the iPhone. In 2002, Shazam launched in the UK as a phone-in service. Users would call a number and hold up their phone to the music. Shazam would then text them back with the song name and artist.
Shazam launched on day one of the iPhone App Store launch, and was available on Android a few months later. Apple partnered with the company to offer Shazam song recognition through Siri, starting with iOS 8.
Apple acquired the company in 2018, citing shared innovation with Apple Music. Shazam is now integrated directly into Control Center on the iPhone so users don’t even need to download an app, and Apple uses Shazam to power playlist generation and discovery inside of Apple Music.
Drake is the most Shazamed artist of all time, with over 350 million Shazams across his songs. The individual most-Shazamed song is the 2019 smash viral hit Dance Monkey, by Tones And I, which has over 41 million Shazams to date.
From 9to5Mac
Xiaomi NoteBook Pro 120G and Smart TV X Series are coming on August 30
Xiaomi today announced it will introduce the NoteBook Pro 120G laptop in India on August 30. The company hasn’t divulged any specs of the NoteBook Pro 120G, but the poster it shared on social media gives us a glimpse of the laptop.
Xiaomi launched the Mi Notebook Pro in India last year with the 11th Gen Intel CPU and 65W charging, so we expect the NoteBook Pro 120G to support at least 65W charging and have a 12th Gen Intel processor at the helm. However, it’s unclear if “120G” in the laptop’s name refers to a 120Hz screen refresh rate or something else.
The NoteBook Pro 120G will be joined by the Smart TV X Series having a 4K screen resolution, but the Chinese brand hasn’t revealed anything else about it yet. Note that Xiaomi currently has four Smart TV X series TVs in India, but those are a part of the Redmi lineup.
From Gsmarena
Lenovo also introduces Pad Pro (2022) tablet and plenty of IoT devices
Lenovo launched today the Legion Y70 flagship smartphone but that was only one new device in a landslide of announcements. We also saw a Lenovo Pad Pro (2022) tablet with a Dimensity 1300T chipset, as well as several cloud storage servers, wireless earbuds, and even some lifestyle choices like a gaming chair and a suitcase.
The new Pad Pro has an 11.2” OLED screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1536 pixels. It has a DCI-P3 gamut and allegedly 600 nits maximum brightness. It also comes with a 120 Hz screen refresh rate and 360 Hz touch sampling rate. The panel is HDR10+ and Dolby Vision certified.
The whole tablet weighs 480 grams and is just 6.8 mm thin. Lenovo managed to put an 8,200 mAh battery with 30W fast charging support, as well as four speakers in two-by-two configuration on top and bottom (right and left when held horizontally).
There’s also one 13 MP camera on the back and another one with an 8 MP sensor on the front.
From Gsmarena
Lenovo Legion Y70 arrives as the company’s first phone with Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
The Legion Y70 is officially the first Lenovo smartphone with a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. The flagship is part of the Legion gaming family but comes with more straightforward aesthetics without skimping on top-tier performance.
The screen is a 6.67” OLED with a 144 Hz refresh rate and up to 1500 Hz touch sampling rate. There is a single punch hole in the center for the selfie camera and while Lenovo is saying nothing about the fingerprint scanner positioning, we can assume it is embedded in the power key.
Removing the sensor from underneath the screen allowed Lenovo to make the Y70 extremely thin – just 7.99 mm in its base. The company managed to cram “up to 10 layers” of cooling solutions, including several graphite sheets and the biggest VC on the market – 5,047 sq. mm, which is just 0.55 mm thick on its own.
From Gsmarena
Patent Attorney Breaks Down Apple’s Car Patents
The Apple Car has been a tech unicorn for quite some time now, and the speculation has been both exciting and exhausting. As we near Apple’s release of the new iPhone 14 and a long-awaited Apple VR headset, CNET wanted to get some answers from an expert who could help us break down Apple’s car patents to see if any of these ideas could someday hit the road.
Luckily for us, Apple likes to file patents, and there are a number of odd and interesting car-related Apple patents, some of which sound like neat ideas, while others have us a little concerned about the price tag and safety.
From Cnet
Here’s another sign a Fitbit Wear OS smartwatch is coming soon
Back at the Google IO 2022 developer conference in May, we heard that a premium Fitbit smartwatch running Wear OS is indeed on the way – and we just got a pretty big clue that this device is going to be launching sooner rather than later.
The team at XDA Developers has been digging into the latest Google Play Services app for Android, uncovering a mention of the upcoming wearable. If preparation work is being done inside Google’s apps, that suggests the hardware is reasonably close to launching.
We’ve had no official word about when the Fitbit Wear OS smartwatch might see the light of day, but considering it was announced in May, a 2022 appearance looks likely. It could potentially show up alongside the Google Pixel 7 and the Google Pixel 7 Pro – those devices are expected to be getting a grand unveiling in September or October.
From Techradar
Counterpoint: India’s smartwatch market saw record shipments in Q2
The smartwatch market in India saw a record-breaking Q2 with a fourfold increase in shipments compared to the same time last year as per the latest Counterpoint Research report. The increasing demand for smartwatches is driven by strong consumer demand and multiple high-profile launches with brands continuing to grow their online and offline presence. A record one-third of all smartwatches were sold offline. A total of 50 new smartwatch models were launched during the period and half of all sales were in the sub-INR 3,500 ($44) price category.
From Gsmarena
Apple Watch and MacBook production could move to Vietnam
For the past few years, Apple has branched out from China, moving some of its production to other regions like India and Vietnam. Currently, iPads and Airpods are manufactured in Vietnam. While this is a big deal for the country, it looks like the relationship could get deeper. Recently, Apple has had talks with Vietnam, as it might have it manufacture the firm’s Apple Watches and MacBooks.
Although China handles most of Apple’s products, the company has begun shifting its manufacturing to other regions. There are several reasons for this, more recently being COVID-related lockdowns and supply chain issues. While things have yet to be set in stone, Luxshare Precision Industry and Foxconn in Vietnam have started test production of the Apple Watch. It is a highly sophisticated product, with lots of technology crammed into an extremely small space. Because of this, it requires a lot of skill to produce, especially when it is being created by the millions.
According to the source, the shift for MacBook production is taking a little longer, as Apple has run into hiccups trying to set up a production line in Vietnam. These disruptions have reportedly been due to a number of variables, with some being related to the pandemic. While things could easily escalate in Vietnam, one concern is how it will keep things competitive with China in terms of cost. In addition to Apple Watches and MacBooks, it appears that Apple will also test the production of its HomePod speaker in Vietnam as well.
The company first branched out from China with the production of its iPhone in India back in 2017. While the initial order was for the iPhone SE, things accelerated, with Apple also shifting production of the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 to India. Now, the country also manufactures the iPhone 13, and there were even recent reports that it could take on the production of the iPhone 14. Vietnam has manufactured the Apple Airpods since 2020 and now produces iPads as well. These types of expansions can be big, not only for Apple but also for the countries involved, so it will be interesting to see how things move forward in Vietnam, India, and also China.
From XDA
Indian fintech Uni to suspend card services amid central bank’s guidelines
Indian pay-later cards startup Uni plans to temporarily suspend its card services in the South Asian market following the local central bank’s guidelines on digital lending, it said in a notice to users seen by TechCrunch, in a move that will impact millions of users.
“This means your card will be inactive for now. We are working with our banking partners to resume the card services as soon as possible and will keep you posted. However, there will be no change to your billing and repayments,” wrote the startup, which is valued at $350 million, in the notice.
Uni, which is backed by General Catalyst, Elevation Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch that it plans to suspend card services on its products (Uni Pay 1/3rd Card and the Uni Pay 1/2 Card) and expects to roll out the change to the entire customer base by Monday.
“While it is a decision taken with a heavy heart, we are always committed to being compliant and want to be on the right side of the regulations,” the startup said in a statement.
From Techcrunch
Google just thwarted the largest HTTPS DDoS attack in history
Google has confirmed that one of its cloud customers was targeted with the largest HTTPS distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack ever reported.
As reported by Bleeping Computer, a Cloud Armor client was on the receiving end of an attack that totaled 46 million requests per second (RPS) at its peak.
The aforementioned figure means it’s the largest such attack in history — it’s more than double the previous record holder (up by nearly 80%, to be exact); a 26 million RPS attempt blocked by Cloudflare during June.
The latest incident commenced on June 1 with an initial goal of directing 10,000 RPS toward the HTTP/S Load Balancer. Within eight minutes, that number increased ten-fold to 100,000 RPS, triggering Google’s Cloud Armor Protection by creating an alert derived from traffic analysis data.
Once the ten-minute mark was reached, an unprecedented 46 million requests per second were being sent toward the victim.
These numbers may not mean much to those who aren’t familiar with the nature of HTTPS DDoS attacks, but for reference, Google stated that it was equal to receiving all daily requests Wikipedia receives in the span of 10 seconds.
From Digital Trends
