Internet

Discord announced its powerful in-game communication tools, including high-quality voice chat, cross-platform messaging, and linked channels, are now available to developers through the Discord Social SDK. Previously launched in closed beta earlier this year, the Social SDK can now be used commercially to bring Discord’s trusted voice and messaging features directly into games, connecting players for longer playtime and improving multiplayer experiences.

Developers that integrate the Social SDK in eligible games unlock powerful social features that enhance in-game communication and drive stronger player retention. Discord data shows that players who link their accounts through the SDK return more frequently resulting in more active days in-game. By unifying friends lists, players can seamlessly connect with their Discord contacts from within the game and continue conversations with in-game friends directly on Discord, making it easier to team up, stay connected, and jump back in, whenever they’re ready to play.

Designed to streamline player connections and increase engagement, the Social SDK extends a game’s reach into Discord’s highly engaged community of over 200 million monthly active users globally who collectively spend more than 1.9 billion hours each month playing games while on the platform. Discord is today’s digital living room designed for gaming where close-knit friends and community groups influence each other potentially more than a developer’s typical marketing or traditional ads can. In fact, over 40% of players on Discord join the same game within an hour of watching a friend stream (source: Discord internal data).

With this milestone launch, developers ranging from indie developers to major game publishers can now integrate the same high-quality voice and messaging infrastructure that powers Discord’s global community, including:

Cross-Platform Chat:
Players can keep the conversation around the game going across desktop, console, and mobile, even without a Discord account. Direct messages between users can show up in both the game and Discord, allowing players to talk to their Discord friends without leaving the game.

Linked Channels:
Players who link their Discord accounts can connect their in-game chat channels to specific Discord text channels of their choosing, providing a space for guilds, groups, and squads of all sizes to connect with messaging that syncs across both the game and Discord.

Voice Chat:
Players can enjoy some of the highest quality audio chat available today, powered by the same technology behind Discord’s voice tools that have made it the gold standard for video game communications.

More information: Discord.com

Mapbox have announced New Dynamic 3D Urban Environments. The new Mapbox Standard core style enables a highly performant and elegant 3D mapping experience with powerful dynamic lighting capabilities, landmark 3D buildings, and an expertly crafted symbolic aesthetic.

The new ready-to-use style currently in public beta enhances wayfinding and spatial orientation for users, and provides a polished canvas for custom location data. Mapbox Standard is available in pre-releases of the latest versions of our web and mobile SDKs.

Mapbox Standard provides four carefully curated lighting presets: Day, Night, Dusk, and Dawn. As the sun moves throughout the day, based on a user’s location, shadows shift and highlight different areas of the map. Supplementary light sources like flood lighting or entrance lights make the map come alive at night. The dynamic lighting creates a feature-rich and true-to-life experience that helps users better orient themselves in the physical world. For developers and designers, using Mapbox Standard eliminates the need to maintain and transition between separate ‘day’ and ‘night’ map styles as the style is completely reactive.

More information: https://www.mapbox.com/blog/standard-core-style

An unsecured database containing personal information of millions of users of a higher education social platform was recently discovered by a security researcher. The social platform, formerly known as CampusKudos and now called PeopleGrove, left an internal database exposed to the internet without a password, allowing anyone with knowledge of its IP address to access the data using a web browser.

The exposed database contained gigabytes of personal information, including email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, details of university achievements and scores, and resumes containing detailed work histories and employment details. Shockingly, none of the exposed data was encrypted, making it easy for anyone to access and steal sensitive personal information.

CloudDefense security researcher, Anurag Sen, discovered the database on Thursday and immediately contacted TechCrunch, who then notified PeopleGrove. The server hosting the database became inaccessible soon after.

Read more: https://www.clouddefense.ai

OpenStreetMap Foundation corporate member OpenCage has announced a new collaboration with popular geospatial podcast MapScaping to help encourage the growth of small OpenStreetMap-based projects.

OpenCage has purchased four episodes worth of MapScaping advertising slots, and will donate these slots to small OpenStreetMap projects. Each selected project will receive a 30 second ad read, a presence on the MapScaping website, and promotion via social media. The definition of “OpenStreetMap projects” is intentionally left vague to encourage a wide spectrum of applications. Examples of the types of projects OpenCage and MapScaping could imagine supporting with the initiative include: open source tools seeking developers, OSMF volunteers recruiting volunteers, start-ups looking to make their service more widely known, or local OSM communities advertising new initiatives.

Full details of the initiative and application process are laid out in a post on the OpenCage blog. Applications are open until the 15th of October. Preference will be given to projects that, due to their newness or non-commercial nature, don’t have the resources to advertise themselves.

“Our service has depended on OpenStreetMap since the day we first started eight years ago. While we’ve always done our best to give back to the OSM community – for example by sponsoring events, and becoming corporate members of the foundation – we specifically wanted to find a way to help smaller, up and coming projects. Working with MapScaping gives us a great tool to help these projects accelerate,” said Ed Freyfogle, OpenCage co-founder.

Daniel O’Donohue, founder and host of MapScaping said, “We’re delighted to provide a platform to help the OpenStreetMap community grow by sharing these projects with our global audience. OpenStreetMap has been a key ingredient in the explosion of geospatial innovation over the last decade, and I’m looking forward to working with creative projects that are at the leading edge of that innovation.”

About OpenCage

OpenCage operates a highly-available, enterprise level geocoding API based on OpenStreetMap and other open datasources. In addition to being corporate members of the OSMF, OpenCage are proud members of the UK and German local chapters, co-sponsor and contribute to the open source development of Nominatim (the primary OpenStreetMap geocoding software), and regularly sponsor OpenStreetMap events.

About MapScaping

The MapScaping Podcast is a weekly podcast for the geospatial community. Started in 2019, MapScaping has grown rapidly to become a leading independent media voice in the global geospatial discussion. The show profiles innovative geo projects and technologies, and provides a forum to discuss issues facing the geospatial community.

What is OpenStreetMap?

OpenStreetMap was founded in 2004 and is a international project to create a free map of the world. To do so, we, thousands of volunteers, collect data about roads, railways, rivers, forests, buildings and a lot more worldwide. Our map data can be downloaded for free by everyone and used for any purpose – including commercial usage. It is possible to produce your own maps which highlight certain features, to calculate routes etc. OpenStreetMap is increasingly used when one needs maps which can be very quickly, or easily, updated.

What is the OpenStreetMap Foundation?

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, formed to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project, is financially supported by membership fees and donations, and organises the annual, international State of the Map conference. The OSMF supports the OpenStreetMap project through the work of our volunteer Working Groups. Please consider becoming a member of the Foundation – you can become a member for free, if you are an active OpenStreetMap contributor.

More information: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2022/09/21/osmf-and-opencage-joint-press-release-2/

PenaltyBeGone (PBG), announced the introduction of a new proprietary platform that targets Google’s most pervasive and destructive penalties – Google manual actions and their algorithm updates known as the Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird.

Google’s punitive actions are well documented in message boards dating back to 2011 and continuing to the present day. Webmasters and domain owners worldwide have grown increasingly concerned over the ongoing wave of search engine penalties levied by Google against domains that they believe violate any aspect of their quality guidelines. “We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of clients calling us because they have been penalized or they strongly suspect that they have been penalized by Google,” said PenaltyBeGone CEO Michael Sherman.

Citing growing demand for a remedy and preventative medicine to guard against Google penalties, PenaltyBeGone developed a proprietary platform that uses in-house software and a unique process for removing Google penalties. Their penalty removal service has proven to be a highly effective tool and according PBG management, their platform will remove a much greater percentage of Google penalties than any options offered by their competitors.

“We firmly believe that our penalty removal and recovery service gives website owners the best chance of getting their penalty removed,” said Sherman.

Sherman understands that getting a Google penalty removed is only the beginning of the process in helping to restore search engine rankings. “Google penalties are just the start of the nightmare for many webmasters,” Sherman noted. “Uncertainty regarding their penalty, and more importantly, life after the penalty is removed is the biggest fear and concern we hear from the people calling us about their penalty issues.” He then mentioned that restoring search rankings can be more problematic than removing the penalty and in that regard not all website’s are the same. “Some websites recovered quickly and some didn’t. Making matters more confusing is that many domain owners weren’t aware of any penalty because Google will only notify you about one of their manual actions, not an algorithm penalty.”

PenaltyBeGone is in the business of removing penalties and restoring search engine rankings, but they also know how important it is to educate webmasters about best practices in preventing these issues from becoming recurring problems. As a part of their services PBG also offers their clients a backlink and penalty monitoring service that will ultimately help them prevent penalties from occurring in the first place.

About PenaltyBeGone: PenaltyBeGone is a New York based search engine consulting firm that specializes in removing penalties from websites that have been slapped with Google manual spam action penalties, Google unnatural link penalties and by Google algorithm updates known as Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. They also offer preventative services such as backlink and penalty monitoring services to keep domain owners from being penalized by Google again or incurring a search engine penalty in the first place.

PenaltyBeGone
2480 Lawn Drive
East Meadow, N.Y. 1154
516-486-3902
Website: http://www.penaltybegone.com

Evernote for Android has been updated with:

“Better Attachments

One of the things that makes Evernote so useful is that you can keep everything related to a project — text, images and audio — together in one note. The new Android update lets you not only add attachments, but it also places these files in-line within the note. So you can see everything in the right place as you scroll through.

Better Editing

If you are like many Evernote users, then you’re creating notes across a variety of platforms. It used to be that when you tried to edit one of these notes on Android, you were likely to wipe out much of the text styling. Not anymore. Now, Evernote for Android has expanded its support for styles created in other versions of Evernote. Also, if a given style is unsupported on Android, the app will allow you to edit the content, while maintaining the styling so that it displays correctly when viewed on other platforms.

External Keyboard Support

If you use a tablet for research and long-form note taking, then you likely have an external keyboard. Evernote now offers full keyboard support, including a number of special keyboard shortcuts:

Create New Note: Shift + Control/Command + N
Bullet: Shift + Control/Command + U
Numbered list: Shift + Control/Command + O
To-do: Shift + Control/Command + T”

More info: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evernote

:For the past few years, we’ve worked with museums around the world to make their collections available on the Google Cultural Institute. Now, we’ve opened up the technologies behind this project so that anyone with cultural content can publish it, creating exhibitions that tell engaging stories on their own website. Take a look at how the Belgian Comic Strip Center used the Google Open Gallery to tell the story of their iconic Art Nouveau building—the Waucquez Warehouse—through a quirky mix of comic-style drawings, photographs, sketches and first hand experiences. ”

Read More: http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/online-exhibitions-made-easy-with.html

Dropbox has updated it’s Android app to version 2.3.11.

Features include:
New notifications feed for quick access to recent activity
• Send photos and videos to contacts (adds contacts permission)
• New payment options for Pro (adds camera permission)
For more information about why we request these permissions:
Contacts: https://www.dropbox.com/help/1979/
Camera: https://www.dropbox.com/help/1980/
In version 2.3.10.4
• Bug fixes and performance improvements
In version 2.3.10
• Easier to manage quota when running low on space

More info: https://www.dropbox.com/

Google are launching a new community site called Views that makes it easy for people to publicly share their photos of places by contributing photo spheres to Google Maps (photo spheres are 360º panoramas that can be easily be created with your Android phone).

Photo spheres can be created with the camera in Android 4.2 or higher, including most Nexus devices and the new Nexus 7 tablet. The video below shows you how to get started. You can also share panoramas you’ve created with your DSLR camera.

Creating photo spheres: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/2839084

Monarch Software Designs today announced the immediate availability of their Facebook-powered auction application, Monarch Market. The free service allows anyone with a Facebook account to signup with one click and start selling. There are no fees of any kind, other than those to your payment provider.

“Thanks to Facebook’s platform and the affordability of our Cloud hosting provider Heroku, our cost of operation is quite low,” said CTO Brian Thomason. “Given that, we don’t feel the need to charge exorbitant rates like some websites out there. In fact, we don’t wish to charge any fees at all.”

Where revenue is concerned, Monarch plans to team up with a payment provider. Currently, only PayPal is supported for sending or receiving payments.

In addition to being free, Monarch also plans to entice users to join due to their integration features with Facebook. “We are not only an auction site. We are a full-featured ecommerce solution integrated into Facebook,” said CEO Jason Radolec. “With one click of the mouse you can begin setting up a store, adding product inventory, and launching auctions. Once you have launched an auction, you can then share that with your friends or followers by using our ‘Announce’ feature to post it to your Facebook page or timeline.”

Monarch also boasts a wishlist feature whereby users can essentially bookmark items they’d like to own. In turn, their friends can then view this list, and if they are feeling generous, can purchase an item from it and have it delivered directly to the owner of the list.

EE, the UK’s digital communications company, has launched a range of new unlimited home broadband and call plans designed to make it as simple as possible for customers to choose a great value bundle to meet their needs.

Available immediately across all EE channels including retail shops and online, customers can now choose between one of six unlimited home broadband packages – with the entry level bundle starting from just £5 per month plus line rental. All customers need to do is to choose how fast they want their broadband (between a choice of up to 14 Mbps over standard broadband or up to 38 and up to 76 Mbps over superfast fibre), as well as whether they require only ‘weekend calls’ or an abundance of calls included in their plan (‘anytime and mobile calls’) for only £7 more a month.

Plans with unlimited weekend calls include 0845 and 0870 numbers and for those who want a more inclusive home phone calling option, ‘anytime and mobile calls’ covers unlimited anytime calls to UK landlines and 30 international landline destinations, plus 1,000 anytime minutes to all UK mobiles.

EE’s fibre broadband service now covers more than 50% of UK households and offers speeds typically ten times faster than today’s average broadband speeds**. Fibre broadband from EE allows customers to stream films in HD with plenty of broadband left for the whole family to play games, browse their favourite online shops, or chat to their friends on Facebook – all at the same time. Unlimited Fibre Broadband and calls plans now start from £15 per month plus line rental, making it the best monthly price in the UK for this speed, up to 38 Mbps. What’s more, until the end of June mobile customers can try Fibre for free for the first 3 months – all they have to pay for is line rental and out of bundle call charges if they make any.

The refresh is part of EE’s commitment to offer the best value home broadband packages for mobile customers. All plans come with a year of McAfee Family Protection, EE’s award-winning Bright Box wireless router, and access to a great range of EE benefits, including 2-4-1 cinema tickets as part of EE Film.