Netflix's speed test tool is now on iOS and Android

Netflix launched an internet test at fast.com back in May, and this week it rolled out dedicated apps for the tool on ios and android. While the apps are identical to the website, Fast's launch as an app could go a long way toward getting people to use it. And that's a big part of the goal here: the more people using Fast, the more data Netflix has on where internet service providers are doing a poor job.
There's good reason to pick Fast over other speed tests, too. Service providers are well aware of certain popular testing sites, and they can optimize their network to perform better on those specific tests. That means the results you get could be inflated beyond what you're getting in day-to-day use. Fast, on the other hand, measures your connection to Netflix's servers. And while internet providers may well optimize for that, that's still going to be useful to a lot of people.

It Looks like Apple Is Seriously Building an All-Glass iPhone

For months, rumors have swirled about Apple’s top secret all-glass iPhone. We’ve tracked the developments closely; saying early concepts looked ridiculous and would break too easily. But as a new patent shows, Apple is serious about this all-glass iPhone idea.
In the patent, first reported by Patently Apple, Apple describes a curved display wrapping around the edges to for active sidewalls with “virtual buttons” or what appears to be a set of customizable touch-capacitive buttons.
The patent description sounds rather sophisticated.
Bent flexible displays may be bent to form front side displays and edge displays. Edge displays may be separated from the front side displays or from other edge displays using patterned housing members, printed or painted masks, or by selectively activating and inactivating display pixels associated with the flexible display
Edge displays may alternately function as virtual buttons, virtual switches, or informational displays that are supplemental to front
Side displays Virtual buttons may include transparent button members, lenses, and haptic feedback components for providing feedback to a user when virtual

buttons are activated
The patent includes reference drawings that show several different uses for virtual buttons including shortcuts to the messages, calendar, and camera apps. It also shows how the virtual buttons could change into other options, such as flash settings, once the camera app is launched. In other images, the title of a song it’s playing is shown along the edge.
It’s worth noting that some of the features described in Apple’s newest patent are already being used in the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, such as displaying the title of a song being played. The only major difference is that the Edge phone is pinched, not a flat edge as its shown in Apple’s new patent.
The virtual buttons also echo some of the design language used in new patents granted for MacBook laptops, including the “zero travel” keyboard concept we reported on earlier this year. Apple’s design team clearly loves touch-capacitive screens and buttons.
It remains to be seen whether the all-glass iPhone will ever go on sale. This year’s iPhone 7 probably won’t will include any of this new technology, and it will probably take a couple of years before an all-glass iPhone is ever shown to the public. Some suggest that the radical redesign could be ready for the iPhone’s 10th anniversary in 2017. But if patent filings are any indication (and they often can be), then its appears that Apple really wants to create the all-glass abomination we always hoped it wouldn’t in the not-too-distant-future.

Google's My Activity reveals just how much it knows about you

Google's My Activity reveals just how much it knows about you

Google has rolled out new tools to let users see what its ad-tracking service has learned about them, and to let users opt in or out of a new personalized ads service.

The addition to Google’s account settings, called my activity, allows users to review everything that Google has tracked about their behavior – across search, YouTube, Chrome, Android and everything else – and edit or delete it at each step.

If you use Google for everything you do, you might be surprised by just how much it catalogues about your comings and goings on the internet.

The my activity tools comes with new ad preferences. Google currently uses the information it has learned about you to tailor ads across its own services, of which you can opt out.

But now Google is offering to use its behavioral information to tailor ads shown across the wider non-Google internet and Google’s search pages, which until now was purely done through the use of cookies.

The big difference to most other moves by similar companies offering ads on its own services and third-party sites, including Facebook, is that Google is making this internet based advertising extension opt in, not opt-out. If a user does not actively select to enable the new ad targeting they will not automatically be enrolled.

Now there are two separate behavioral advert settings for users to switch on or off as they see fit. One is so-called signed in ads, those on Google services, and signed out ads, those served by Google on third-party sites of which there are over 2m across the internet.

For the privacy conscious, you’re unlikely to want to opt in for greater profiling and should you wish to turn off both signed in and signed out ads, Google also has a Chrome extension to permanently opt out of Google’s DoubleClick tracking cookie. But to encourage users and make dealing with ads a more palatable proposition Google’s making tools available to users to sweeten the deal. These include the ability to “mute” certain ads, including those that irritatingly seem to follow you around the internet after the odd search or product viewing, and find out why you’re seeing particular ads.

The new tools and controls are rolling out to users at the moment, but not everyone has immediate access. Users should get a notification about privacy and security changes in the near future, which will guide them to the new ads settings.

• Google blocked 780m ‘bad ads’ in 2015 such as weight-loss scams
• Google to place global ban on payday loan adverts from July