Skip to main content

Oyster On The Tube

Oyster On The TubeEvery real Londoner knows the Oyster card, which can be swiped to pay for journeys on the city’s famous underground system and other public transport in the city. Indeed, owning one is the markof a real Londoner.   But in a sign of the times, the card might soon be replaced by a mobile phone. According to a report in The Guardian, Nokia isworking on a system that will let users run a compatible phone over the card reading machine instead.   The system will use RFID technology that’s already quite commonplace on mobilephones in Japan, allowing for contactless payment.   So far, none of the parties has been willing to say more, but the trial will involve Transport forLondon, Nokia, and mobile operator O2.  

Digital Trends Staff
Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…
YouTube Stories are going away starting June 26
The Digital Trends YouTube channel on an iPhone.

YouTube today announced that it's going to kill off its Story feature — like the similarly named Instagram Stories, basically its answer to Snapchat — starting June 26. That's the last day you'll be able to post a new YouTube Story. And seven days after that, any story that already was live will die an unceremonious death.

That doesn't mean there won't be an alternative to a full-blown YouTube video or a smaller YouTube Short. (Which is, in and of itself, YouTube's answer to Tiktok.) YouTube is pointing creators to "YouTube Community posts" instead, which it says "are a great choice if you want to share lightweight updates, start conversations, or promote your YouTube content to your audience." Community posts essentially are ephemeral updates that also allow for text, polls, quizzes, filters, and stickers.  It added that "amongst creators who use both posts and Stories, posts on average drive many times more comments and likes compared to Stories."

Read more
YouTube gives iOS users another reason to pay for Premium
YouTube Premium on iPhone.

Subscription fatigue is real. But YouTube today just gave more reasons to pony up a few bucks every month for YouTube Premium, especially if you're on iOS. The big selling point for Premium, which costs $12 a month, is that you'll get rid of ads on your YouTube experience. That's worth it in and of itself. But you'll also get the ability to play videos in the background, download for offline viewing, and a subscription to YouTube Music Premium.

The new stuff adds on to all that.

Read more
Don’t watch this YouTube video if you have a Pixel 7
Someone holding the Google Pixel 7 Pro.

Reports of another "cursed" piece of content have been making the internet rounds as a video on YouTube has been causing Pixel devices to crash. The video, a clip from the 1979 movie Alien, seems to cause Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, and some Pixel 6 and Pixel 6a smartphones to instantly reboot without warning.

As first reported on Reddit and spotted by Mishaal Rahman, the video will begin to play for only a second or two and then instantly reboot the Pixel 7 it's being played on. Digital Trends can confirm the bug to be active and working, too, with the video instantly rebooting a Pixel 7 Pro we tested it on.

Read more