6 2 - 15 October 2019
Stealing a march on Apple Music
and Spotify, Amazon’s music-
streaming service now offers
listeners CD-quality audio. It uses the
FLACformatfor more than 50 million
tracks, encoding themat 16-bit 44 kHz
rather thancompressing intoAAC or
MP3. It is also more than doubling the
bitrate ofstandard servicesby
streamingat up to 850 kilobytes per
second (kbps).
Amazon MusicHDis making a
couple of million tracks availablein
‘ultra-HD’, too, encoding themat up
to 24-bit 192 kHz and streamingat
3,730kbps. You canlisten to the
higherquality tracks in the Amazon
Musicappfor iOS or Android, as well
as Echo devices, FireTVs, Firetablets
and adesktop app, with the option
to download songs for offlin e
enjoyment. In all cases, you cansee
a track’s quality by tapping the
SD/HD/Ultra HDbadge on the Now
Playing screen.fix-posture.glitch.me
Slouchingatyourcomputer can cause neck andbackpain
so,tohelp improve yourposture,developer Olesya
Chernyavskaya has devised atoolthatmonitors howyou’re
sitting inreal-time and usesyourwebcamtopromptyou to
moveintoa betterposition.
Shouldyou departfromthe perfect posture –thatis, with
the screenateye level, your backsupported,yourfeetflat
tothe ground, elbowspulledinandshoulders relaxed–
the screenwill blur, indicating thatthere’s aproblem.
Fix Postureworks by
tracking the top section
ofyourbody,analysing
the relationshipbetween
the tilt ofyoureyes,
yourshoulders andthe
horizon. The siteexplains
the principlesand
admitsit’snot perfect
becauseit doesn’t look
atyourwholebody
but it’sa goodreminder
thatevensitting still
affects yourhealth.
http://www.google.com/photos
Similar tothe stories you see at
the top ofInstagram, Google
Photos’ newMemories featurelets
you relivekeymoments fromyour
past. It displaysa seriesofsmall
circlesdedicated topreviousyears,
which you can tap toviewa
digitallycurated seriesofshots
without havingtoscroll through
yourentirelibrary.
Using machinelearning, Google
Photosfilters out duplicate images
andpicks the bestquality photos.
You can alsohide peopleortime
periodsyou don’t wanttosee,with
the resulting imagespresented to
you privately ratherthansharedtoall andsundry.
The feature has started toroll out, sokeepaneye out for
updates thatare due toarrivesoon. Googlehas also
announcedit will bemaking it easier toshare photos with
friends and family inthe comingmonths,letting you add
themtoa private conversation andallowcomments,
effectively turning Photosintoits own messaging app.There is, of course, a charge for this
extra quality. A monthly subscription to
Amazon MusicHDis priced at £12.
for Prime customersand costs £2 more
for non-customers. But both are
cheaperthan rivals such as Tidal and
Deezer, and there’s a90-day free trial ifStream hi-res music with AmazonInstantly fix bad posture
using your webcam
Relive your memories withGoogle PhotosWhat’s New Onlineyou’re not already using Amazon
Music(or 30days if you are).
bit.ly/amazonhd