Your Tech Story

tech news

Airbnb Confirms its Plans to Buy Last-minute Hotel Booking App ‘HotelTonight’

News, Tech News / By

In January, the Wall Street Journal had reported that Airbnb was planning to acquire the hotel-booking application HotelTonight, but the negotiations for the transaction had “gone cold”. But, on Thursday, the company confirmed in a statement, that it is going to acquire the last-minute hotel booking business HotelTonight.

airbnb
Image Source: abc.net

The HotelTonight is a hotel booking app that allows its users to find and book good and affordable hotels even at the last minute. The app is specially designed to help its partners to sell their unsold rooms, and similarly, it is beneficial for the people, too, who are always on the go or for the ones who are in the need of last-minute arrangements.

This acquisition will help the Airbnb users to easily book hotels for their immediate plans, and they will have the freedom to travel without months-long planning. HotelTonight, currently, is operating in America, Europe and Australia. It also offers great discounts to entice more users. The company was recently valued at $463 million in the private market.

After treehouses and the boutique hotels, this is another progressive step for Airbnb towards growth. Last year, with the introduction to boutique hotels, the company claimed to have gained raised profits, and with the success of the boutique hotels, even the company has doubled the number of those hotels.

Airbnb has not disclosed the terms and the sum of the deal. Also, even after the deal, HotelTonight will operate as a separate entity and will work collaboratively with the Airbnb President Greg Greeley.

“We started HotelTonight because we knew people wanted a better way to book an amazing hotel room on-demand, and we are excited to join forces with Airbnb to bring this service to guests around the world,” Sam Shank, co-founder and CEO of HotelTonight said in a statement. “Together, HotelTonight and Airbnb can give guests more choices and the world’s best boutique and independent hotels a genuine partner to connect them with those guests.

Airbnb has been working on expanding its services and acquiring other hotel booking services in order to grow bigger. Also, the start of the year for Airbnb was with the acquisition of Danish startup Guest. A platform which provides the facility to book venues for meetings and other work-related events.

Tesla Launches New V3 Supercharger to Slash the Waiting Time for its Users

News, Tech News / By

Tesla hosted a customer event at its Fremont, California headquarters on Wednesday evening, where it launched its latest third generation V3 Supercharger charging stations. The new V3 Supercharger is specially designed to reduce the charging time for the electric vehicles and can charge some of the Model 3 at a rate of 250kW, making the vehicle capable of running at a speed 75 miles in 5 minutes of charging.

tesla-supercharger
Image Source: inverse.com

Due to the high demand of the Tesla cars, especially the Model 3, the requirement for the charging station has also increased. Due to the lesser number of charging stations and with lesser power chargers, the waiting time for the vehicles has been the biggest concern for the Tesla owners.

The company is also going to the update the battery system for its vehicle, such that the battery will be able to warm up before charging, such that the battery will be charged at its peak point for the maximum time, in order to slash the wait time.

The new V3 Supercharger is a completely different device from its predecessor and includes a 1 MW power cabinet and a liquid-cooled cable design. According to Tesla, after charging a vehicle for an hour, the vehicle can run to up to 1,000 miles.

The new V3 Supercharger has also been improved at the charging rates for Model S and Model vehicles, and it takes 50 per cent lesser time to charge the mentioned vehicles.

For now, the first few V3 Superchargers have been installed in Fremont available to members of Tesla’s “early access program”. These are few of the Tesla car owners who are allowed to participate in the testing of the latest software and hardware updates from the company.

For the other users, the V3 Superchargers will be available only in April, and according to Tesla, by the end of this year, the Supercharger network will be capable of serving more than twice the vehicles, it currently provides services to, per day.

Nintendo Announces a Labo Cardboard VR Kit for the Switch

News, Product, Tech News / By

It was in 2014 when Google demonstrate a cardboard virtual reality. Last year in April, Nintendo introduced a gaming and construction toy platform, including kits with cardboard cut-outs and other materials, that are used to create different toy-con DIY projects.

Nintendo Labo VRKit
Image Source: uploadvr.com

Now, Nintendo Labo has stepped a bit forward and has announced the latest Labo VR Kit for the Switch. The new Labo VR Kit transforms the Nintendo Switch into a VR Kit and puts the system a few inches from your face. The kit is available in various options, and when assembled.

The cost of the main Labo VR Kit is $79.99 and offers six different toy-con designs. The six toy-con includes a pair of VR goggles, a blaster, a camera, an elephant, a bird and a wind pedal. The kit also comprises a screen holder and a safety cap. The Labo VR Kit also incorporates the Labo software, step-by-step instructions, and the “garage” mode for building your own Labo creations.

The users who already own a Labo VR Kit can use the Toy-Con Garage with the Nintendo Labo Kit and experiment with their Labo Kit.

Although the $79.99 is a complete kit, the company is also offering cheaper kits with lesser toy-con sets. You can also buy a $39.99 starter kit that includes the goggles and blaster. The other kits for the same price are the pairs of the elephant and the camera, and the wind pedal and the bird. You can also purchase additional project kits as well. Even you can get the elephant for $20, later.

Nintendo Labo works towards teaching engineering and basic programming to its users, so the Labo Kits for VR are just to promote creativity. These are the fun games that are nowhere close to the high definition games. The Labo VR games can be played without mounting the Switch to your face or even without using the Nintendo Switch.

The kit is a way to “introduce virtual reality in a way that’s fun and approachable for both kids and kids at heart,” said Doug Bowser, the incoming President of Nintendo America.

The new Labo VR Kit is considered as the unique first Virtual Reality experience. The kit will be available in the market from 12 April this year.

The Disc-less Xbox One S All-Digital Edition to be Available for Preorders from Mid-April

News, Tech News / By

The rumours of Xbox launching the disc-less console were already making rounds, starting from November last year. Apparently, the company has also confirmed the news that it is planning to launch a new Xbox One S without a disc drive in the coming month.

xbox
Image Source: onmsft.com

It is expected that the console may be cheaper than its predecessors, as the company is removing the expensive Blu-ray drive from the console. The console will rely on the digital downloads and Microsoft’s services like Game Pass.

Microsoft had launched the game pass service in 2017, and if go with the company claims, it has registered millions of users for the same in the past two years. The monthly plan for the game pass costs a $9.99, under which the users get access to 100 different games, including Rocket League, the Halo series and Gears of War 4, etc.

Allegedly, Microsoft will also provide options to the users to have pre-installed games on the console. Even the buyers can choose on which games they want to have on their consoles.

In recent times, the company has been publishing all the new games digitally. Even the popular game Fornite has never been released physically. So the disc-less console maybe another lead to the digitization of the gaming industry.

As there are already speculations, that the new console will be cheaper, the cost of the console is estimated between $200 and $250. It is also expected that the Xbox One S may have a greater emphasis on Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service.

According to a report from Windows, Central reports, Microsoft’s All-Digital Edition Xbox One S will be available for preorders, starting from mid-April and will be launched widely to be available for purchases in the stores from the month of May, before Microsoft’s upcoming E3 show takes place in June.

The new console may prove to be a milestone for Microsoft, as Microsoft will be the first company to launch a non-physical media home console.

SoundCloud is Now Offering Student Discounts at $4.99/Month for its Go+ Streaming Service

News, Tech News / By

After numerous requests from the student subscribers over many past years, finally, SoundCloud has launched an affordable subscription plan for them, giving them a 50 per cent discount on its premium SoundCloud Go+ streaming service reducing the price from $9.99 down to $4.99 a month.

soundcloud-go
Image Sourec: digitaldjtips.com

SoundCloud is the famous online music streaming service providers, currently, operating in 190 countries. But the premium service from SoundCloud is only available in nine countries including the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

The company was getting requests from the students, the subscribers of the SoundCloud premium plan, to reduce its prices for them, and for that matter, in 2017, SoundCloud had also launched a limited SoundCloud Go plan for $4.99. But the plan was not that impressive and could not please its users, as they were given access to a limited edition of songs under the plan.

SoundCloud hosts over 200 million tracks including the tracks from the tie-in and rising artists, which is also a reason behind the popularity of this platform. So not having the access to the wide SoundCloud collection even at $4.99 was a turn off for its student subscribers.

But now, with the new plan, the students belonging to a certified college or university will have access to the huge high-quality SoundCloud audio collection on half the prices. The students who are already registered with the SoundCloud Go+ can switch to the new plan through the SoundCloud website.

SoundCloud might be a bit late to provide the affordable subscription plans to its student subscribers, as other audio streaming providers including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Unlimited, have already introduced many pocket-friendly plans to its users. But the loyal users of SoundCloud will stick to the service with the new plan. In the same regard, amid the tough competition, the company may also win new users.

For now, the service is only available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. And, in the coming week, it will be introduced to the users in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Flickr Plans to Soon Dump its a Decade Old Yahoo Login System

News, Tech News / By

The photo-sharing website Flickr has announced that it no more will have the same old Yahoo’s login system. After a long decade, the company has finally decided on dumping the tedious feature that none of its users is interested in using.

flickr
Image Source: siliconindia.com

In 2007, Yahoo had acquired Flickr, and only after two years of the acquisition, the company installed a Yahoo login for Flickr. In the pre-Instagram era, Flickr was at the top of the all photo sharing websites, but the users always complained about the Yahoo login system, as nobody used their Yahoo mail Id otherwise and often used to forget the passwords.

In April 2018, SmugMug acquired Flickr, and since then it has been working on the new login system for the Flickr users. Even due to the massive data breach it faced, which affected its three billion users, badly, Flickr was receiving the requests for a new and secure login system.

As of now, Flickr might not be as influential as it used to be, but still, there are many loyal Flickr users that are continuously posting and sharing pictures on the platform. So the new login system is the biggest news for them, and the platform can expect more user engagement in the future.

Also, Flickr has extended the dates for its free account users to download the pictures, now rescheduled to March 12 from Feb 5. Last year, the company had announced new plans for the users, in which the users with premium accounts would pay a $50 as the monthly charge, and the ones with free accounts will only be able to download 1000 photographs from the platform.

“We hope you love this new, simpler login experience,” Flickr said in a statement. “We’re still hard at work on performance and stability improvements across the site, but we’re delighted to check this key item off our members’ wish lists.”

The new login system is still under the process until then the users need to use the same Yahoo account for Flickr. But as soon the new login system comes into effect the users will have to register themselves with a new account and password on Flickr.