MEDOLOGY

• Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Android Oreo beta program ends, stable update expected soon
• Twitter is using neural networks for smart auto-cropping of Images
• Google Bulletin hyperlocal and community news app released
• Google Files Go gets option to open files in other apps, tablet support and more

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ Android Oreo beta program ends, stable update expected soon Samsung ended the Oreo beta program for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ in India and UK earlier this month, now the company has announced to its beta testers through 'Samsung Members app' that it is ending the beta program in the USA from yesterday, i.e January 26th.  Samsung had released the 7th and final Oreo beta firmware for the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ last week. Since the company is ending its beta testing, we can expect the final roll out very soon. The announcement states that there will no further beta releases, no further responses to feedback. However, communication will still be open to beta users. Though Samsung says that it will make sure to roll out the update as soon as possible, it still didn't mention any time frame as of now. That said, it shouldn't take long, since the beta testing is now concluded, the next pit stop will the official stable release of the Oreo build. Samsung in the previous beta notice that it posted in the app two weeks ago mentioned that " we will do out best to distribute the official S/W version in January as soon as possible." Source

Twitter is using neural networks for smart auto-cropping of Images Twitter feed doesn't show images in full on the news feed, and the company thinks that it can be challenging in rendering a consistent UI experience and the photos more often than not are framed awkwardly. Today Twitter is solving the problem by using neural networks for smart auto-cropping of Images. The company previously used face detection to focus the view on the most prominent faces in the pictures which had its own limitations when presenting images. Now with neural networks, Twitter will focus on "salient" image regions. In general, people tend to pay more attention to faces, text, animals, but also other objects and regions of high contrast. This data can be used to train a neural network to identify what people might want to look at. The basic idea behind this is to use these predictions of the neural network to center a crop around the most interesting region. However, doing a pixel-level saliency analysis of all the pictures uploaded to Twitter can be a lengthy process so to address the concern, engineers developed a smaller, faster neural network that can identify the gist of the image. Secondly, Twitter is said to have developed a pruning technique to iteratively remove feature maps of the neural network ...

Google Bulletin hyperlocal and community news app released Google just launched Bulletin hyperlocal and community news app for Android. The app is designed with an aim to inspire users to share hyperlocal stories on a community platform right from your phone. Google also hopes that the app highlights the inspiring the stories that aren't being told. The bulletin stories are open for everyone to read, but then there will be some sort of moderation before the story goes live. Users have the flexibility to share stories in the form of text, images, videos similar to a blog post. The news will be shared other members of the community almost instantly. Users will also be able to share the links to stories via message, email, etc. Since it is a Google product, not much is required except for a working Google account and a smartphone in terms of setup. The app is free to use, however, Bulletin availability is currently limited to Nashville, TN, and Oakland, CA. If the testing phase goes well, we can expect the app to release officially for public very soon. Users can also request early access by signing up for the Bulletin Pilot program here. Source

Google Files Go gets option to open files in other apps, tablet support and more Google Files Go that was launched back in December last year has now received a significant update bringing features like open files in other apps, SD card support and more. Files Go app basically lets you free up storage on your phone that is occupied by junk files.  The first addition with the new update is support for SD cards. Google says that since many users use SD cards to back up necessary files and data, with one tap, you can now see and filter the files stored on your SD card. Another addition to the Google Files Go is the inclusion of tablet support allowing you to manage storage or transfer files between your small and big screen Android devices without using any data. Google further added open files in other apps feature which lets you customize which apps open your data with the new "Open with" flow. This will allow wider controls on different file formats including PDF files. This will further let you filter the files to save the space. The update has just started rolling out, so might be a while before it reaches everyone. You can download the Google Files Go app from PlayStore here. Source