If you want to take a trip to Middle Earth tonight but don't have a passport, Google's got you covered with a new addition to Street View. The internet juggernaut's partnered with New Zealand's Department of Conservation to use Google Trekker to create some pretty rad 360 degree panoramas of the country's most stunning vistas, the "Great Walks." It isn't the first time Mountain View's gone someplace that inspired a movie before, and hopefully it won't be the last. The real question here is if that's an ent moot off in the distance or just your eyes playing tricks on you.

Huawei is now Europe's second largest Android brand, according to Kantar, but there's just no time for celebration. Not too long after launching the Huawei Mate S and the Nexus 6P, the Chinese telecom giant is already teasing the launch of the Mate 8 on November 26. Little is known about this new smartphone so far, but it'll likely be using Huawei's upcoming Kirin 950 chipset announced today, which joins the Apple A9 chip to be one of the first to use TSMC's 16nm FinFET Plus process for improved efficiency. Like its predecessor, the Kirin 950 has an octa-core processor but with much improved performance: 4 x Cortex-A72 and 4 x Cortex-A53 instead of the old mid-range offering of just eight Cortex-A53 cores. It also uses ARM's flagship Mali-T880 GPU so gaming should be blast on the phone.

Attention future Commonwealth explorers: The Fallout 4 Pip-Boy app is available for you to download. Unlike the gap between the release of Fallout Shelter on Android and iOS, both versions are available right this very moment. More than just acting as a mobile menu setup, you can play any holotape games you find in Fallout 4 within the app (with what sounds like a version of Missile Command built in). Sounds cool, right? Well, now you've got another something to keep you busy until November 10th -- even if you have an oversized phone.

Update: A Windows Phone version has been promised, but as of this writing hasn't gone live yet.

Police are increasingly turning to biometric tech in the field. It's supposed to help cops verify the identity of suspects, but there's a real concern that they could abuse this to get personal details on record -- and the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants you to know when this hardware might come into play. The rights group has published a report detailing the biometric scanners in use by California law enforcement, and they're in more widespread use than you might think. Mobile fingerprint readers are in use at several departments, and face recognition is getting traction. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is using tattoo recognition, and some police departments are looking into iris scanning.

When I was younger, I had a friend whose dad would shut down their house's internet connection every 12AM without fail. He'd love Circle with Disney if his children were still kids. It's a cube (despite its name) that pairs up with your WiFi network and gives you the power to control your kids' internet activities. The device's creator, Jelani Memory, originally tried to raise funds via Kickstarter a couple of years ago, but the campaign didn't reach its goal. It turned out to be, as Memory told Wired, "a really great failure," because the startup found a powerful partner in Disney.

The Sony A7 II is one of the best mirrorless cameras available right now, although it isn't perfect. After trying it out earlier this year, one of our main issues with the full-frame shooter was its autofocus performance, which was at times slow and unreliable. But Sony has an update coming soon that, along with bringing a new feature, promises to fix some of these woes. In addition to activating the phase detection AF on the A7 II, the company's also turning on support for uncompressed 14-bit RAW image capture -- something that already exists in models such as the A7S II, A7R II and RX1R II. You can grab the refreshed firmware, version 2.0, on November 18th from Sony's support website.

If you're carrying an iPhone, Google Maps just got much more helpful in those moments when you're determined to avoid gridlock. As on Android, Maps' iOS app now speaks out traffic warnings in navigation mode. You'll get a verbal summary of conditions before you start moving, and alerts for any congestion or crashes while you're on your way. Is this a simple addition? You bet -- but it could mean a lot if it helps you take a detour.

Can't wait until November 10th to wander through a desolate nuclear wasteland? That's a little weird, dude -- but if you need something to tide you over until Fallout 4 hits stores, Forza Motorsport 6 may have the ticket: starting today, players will be able to download a Fallout-themed 1956 Ford F100 for free.

You're probably well aware that many mobile apps want to share your data. They need your email address to set up an account, or your location to tag your photos. However, a research team has discovered that at least some of that software is sharing more than you might be comfortable with. On average, 110 Android and iOS apps sent data to three separate internet domains. That's not necessarily a problem by itself, but that info sometimes goes to places you'd rather not send it (say, medical search terms sent to marketers). Also, this info sometimes arrives in combinations that could be used to track your behavior, like your name and location.

Sketching has been available in Evernote's Penultimate app for quite some time, but now the company's main productivity app is handling your scribbles on its own. With an update for its iOS apps, Evernote now lets you sketch notes with a Jot stylus or Apple Pencil and stores them for safekeeping. What's more, if your input device of choice supports 3D Touch, you'll notice the line weight vary based on how much pressure you apply. You can also adjust the line thickness manually between five settings and choose between 10 color options. When you're done, those drawings sync just like any other Evernote entry and the app's handwriting recognition makes those scribbles searchable, should the need arise. The new version of the app also delivers split-screen multi-tasking that's made possible by iOS 9, so long as you're using it on a iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, or iPad Mini 4. Ready to give it a go? The update is available now from the App Store.

Facebook's growth shows no sign of stopping. Today is announced that it has over one billion users on average using it everyday. In August it announced it had passed a milestone of having one billion users on the site in a single day. By the next month that was the average. That's a year-over-year increase of 17 percent. Monthly active users increased by 14 percent to 1.55 billion as of the end of September, an increase of 14-percent from the year before. Meanwhile the company continues to see a majority (78-percent) of its ad revenue come from mobile. In the earnings statement CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated, "we're focused on innovating and investing for the long term to serve our community and connect the entire world."

We're living in a cord-cutter's world where everyone seems to be ditching their cable and satellite subscriptions in favor of the cheaper alternative: streaming. The problem is, when we clense ourselves of all those pesky cords we also lose a wide range of local news broadcasts. NewsON is a new app available for Android, iOS and Roku that offers video content from a total of 118 stations in 90 different markets. The app features live and on-demand newscasts, clips from the station that can be accessed at any time and even the ability to post real-time tweets about the news coverage.

Have you dreamed of becoming a space explorer? You now have your chance to do something about it: after a four-year silence, NASA is once again hiring new astronauts. The recruiting drive will run between December 14th and mid-February, with the final selections made public in mid-2017. You'll need the right mix education, experience and stamina to even get your foot in the door (there's a long-term spaceflight physical, for example). However, it could easily be worth clearing that high bar.

According to Financial Times, Facebook will be releasing yet another standalone app. The yet-to-be-released Notify app will feature news from media partners like The Washington Post, CBS and Vogue. Users will receive alerts when one of the outlets publishes an article and it becomes available within the app. Unlike Instant Articles -- which embed articles within the main Facebook app -- Notify will be a one-trick pony. Both the app and in-app features are meant to reduce the load time of stories and give the social network the opportunity to become the go-to destination for news from multiple sources. If the app does emerge from the company next week, it'll join a growing number of single-use apps the company has released over the years including, Messenger, Poke, Camera, Rooms, Slingshot, Groups and Pages.

[Image credit: Shutterstock]

That US Army radar blimp that ran amok didn't just trigger an internet frenzy... it may have put the brakes on a big military research initiative. Pentagon officials have frozen the JLENS (Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System) program behind the blimp while they investigate what went wrong. The government isn't saying what it might do, but there are already politicians calling for the blimps to be cut. JLENS had already been hanging by a thread ever since 2010, when the Army threatened to kill it -- there are longstanding concerns about both the technology's reliability and its effectiveness compared to conventional aircraft. Don't be surprised if these defensive dirigibles vanish in short order.

[Image credit: U.S. Air Force/Tiffany DeNault via Getty Images]

Google's Android One program was supposed to help the developing world go mobile and promote 'pure' devices full of Google services, but that's not how it panned out -- the phones flopped as both customers and vendors preferred heavily customized Android devices. However, the search giant may not be giving up just yet. Wall Street Journal sources claim that Google is planning to relaunch Android One in the "coming months" with a more relaxed policy that reflects some lessons learned. It's reportedly loosening the strict hardware requirements, which made it difficult to compete on price and launch phones quickly -- companies now have their pick of multiple parts. That's important in India, where even a small discount can lead to a competitive edge.

With the holiday shopping season just around the corner, this week Motorola will open its first brick-and-mortar store in Chicago. Named Moto Shop, the space is designed to be a showroom and hands-on area for all things Motorola, the company revealed today in a blog post. That includes a Moto Maker mini workshop, which will let you customize a Moto X Pure Edition smartphone; and a Moto 360 boutique, for people who would like to try Motorola's latest smartwatches. If you happen to be in The Windy City and want to check it out, the Moto Shop's grand opening is on Saturday, November 7th.

Science seems obsessed with creating tiny objects that can do big things. Like a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison which has created a new microlens with a 170-degree field of vision. Modeled after an insects multi-faceted eye, the flexible lens is roughly the size of a pinhead. Where typical lenses refract light, this one focuses using diffraction, which bends it as it passes over the folded barrier. Each of these bendable structures look like bullseyes because the lens is made up of both light and dark regions. The distance between these concentric circles determines how far the lens can see and the best part is, because they're flexible, the field of vision can be easily altered.

It's been two years since Apple announced its plot to put your iPhone's core features inside the dash of your car, but only now is its CarPlay software becoming available in lots of new models. In brief, CarPlay allows you to connect your trusty iOS device to a vehicle's infotainment system to make things like texts, maps and music accessible from the console. Sure, the goal is to provide an easier way to use your phone on the road, but it also nixes the distraction of swiping through screens on the phone itself. To put CarPlay through its paces, I hit the highway for a 7.5-hour road trip in a 2016 Camaro SS, a model that'll arrive soon at your local dealer. From Philadelphia to Raleigh, North Carolina, I used it to navigate, find food and stream in-car entertainment along the way. This first version of Apple's software for the car is certainly useful, but as I found, there's room for improvement.