Author: Geek Planet

Google is finally bringing Chrome‘s Gemini side panel to India, New Zealand, and Canada starting today. The move adds support for more than 50 languages, including Hindi, French, and Spanish, which means millions of new users can now access the AI assistant on desktop, iOS, and Chromebook Plus devices without switching their browser language. The assistant runs on Gemini 3.1 and lives in a side panel so you can keep browsing while asking for help. Need to summarize a dense article? Just ask. Wondering if you can make that recipe vegan? The AI can figure it out. It can even…

Brynn Brewer got in line around 9:30 a.m. last Saturday morning behind dozens of others — some of whom got there as early as 6 a.m. to be near the front of the line — for the chance to experience the Criterion closet like the filmmakers and artists featured on the entertainment company’s YouTube channel. The South by Southwest experience to Brewer, a content producer at Chubbies Shorts, felt like an “organic activation” and “more like an interactive art installment.” Brewer isn’t alone in her assessment. The three women around her in line shared similar sentiments, noting their love of classic…

Amazon burned its fingers with the Fire Phone back in 2014. The device, personally overseen by Jeff Bezos, lasted barely over a year before Amazon pulled the plug and wrote off $170 million in unsold inventory. Now, the company is taking another shot at the smartphone market. According to Reuters, Amazon is developing a new phone internally under the codename “Transformer.” The project is part of a group called ZeroOne, which focuses on building breakthrough devices. It is led by J Allard, a former Microsoft executive who helped bring the Xbox and Zune to market. What will the Amazon phone…

Google is working on a feature in Android 17 that could quietly remove one of the most annoying security steps on your phone. If you use a SIM PIN, you may soon not have to remember it or enter it every time you restart your device. According to Android Authority, the feature, called automatic SIM lock protection, first appeared in Android 17 beta and is now live in the latest Canary build. How does automatic SIM lock protection work? A SIM PIN is different from your phone’s unlock PIN. It protects your SIM card itself and is required when you…

Apple has never been known for making affordable products. So when the company launched the MacBook Neo at $599, it caught everyone off guard, including its biggest rivals. With the education pricing of $499, the MacBook Neo is an even more enticing product for students.  As reported by PCMag, Asus co-CEO S.Y. Hsu didn’t mince words on a recent earnings call, calling it a “shock to the entire industry.” He believes that the entire Windows PC ecosystem, including Microsoft, Intel, and AMD, is actively discussing how to respond. That’s quite the statement. The PC industry is already feeling the heat…

This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It’s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series → In Digiday+ Research’s first-quarter survey of marketing professionals, respondents told Digiday that Instagram and Facebook still hold the majority of their companies’ marketing budgets. YouTube and TikTok came out behind Meta’s platforms in third and fourth place. TikTok saw brands’ and retailers’ usage and marketing spend on the platform decline this year, according to Digiday’s survey. Marketers’ use of TikTok fell by 17 percentage points in Q1 2025 compared to Q3…

Nothing CEO Carl Pei thinks the smartphone we use today is barely any different from the Palm Pilots and PDAs we used two decades ago. It’s the same lock screens, home screens, app stores, and full-screen apps experience.  According to Pei, it’s because the industry has not really evolved in 20 years, and he is convinced AI is the answer. Speaking at SXSW, Pei made a bold claim that apps are going to disappear. Not tomorrow, but the direction is clear, and founders better start paying attention. Are your apps going to be obsolete in the future? Pei’s argument starts…

Samsung has come up with a fresh way to lure in more customers toward the Galaxy S26 series in one of its key markets. Via a press release published earlier today, the company announced a new “Galaxy Forever” programme in India.  The name might be a bit confusing, but it’s essentially an ownership or periodic upgrade program in which buyers can get the Galaxy S26 Ultra (available from $1502) or Galaxy S26 Plus (available from $1,288) by paying 50% of the device’s price upfront, spread across 12 interest-free monthly installments. The regular Galaxy S26 isn’t eligible.  What exactly does the…

We’ve been there. You spend twenty minutes crafting the perfect prompt, an AI spits out a gorgeous Instagram graphic — and then you realize the font is slightly off and the background color clashes with your brand. Now what? Re-prompt and pray? That’s essentially been the state of AI-generated design: beautiful outputs, zero editability. Canva is calling that out directly with Magic Layers, a new feature now live in beta across the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. How does Magic Layers work? Here’s how it works: drop in any flat PNG or JPG, and the tool reverse-engineers it — pulling out…

YouTube is turning 20 next month and if there’s one thing the company wants you to know, it’s just how big it is. The numbers are staggering, but what do they really mean?Digiday has sifted through the data to find the numbers that actually matter. Here’s what you need to know: YouTube has become huge Over the past 20 years, YouTube has cemented itself as one of the most dominant platforms in the digital landscape. Launched in 2005, the same year as Reddit and just a year after Facebook, it emerged at a time when social media was still a…