collaboration
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Eevee lives inside the first Pokémon Tamagotchi
The ultra-cute collaboration we've been waiting for has been confirmed: Pokémon's Eevee is coming to Tamagotchi. Information leaked earlier this month hinted at a new dawn in virtual pet ownership, now Pokémon website Serebii has settled the rumors.
Microsoft Word will automatically create to-do lists for you
Microsoft will start turning the notes you leave in Word documents into to-do lists. The company is testing a new feature in its word processor that will automatically detect notes and messages left for yourself and others and turn them into actionable lists. The beta version of the feature is available for some Office for Mac Insiders starting today and will roll out to Windows testers in the coming weeks.
Dropbox's collaboration tool adds timelines to coordinate your team
Dropbox's collaboration-focused Paper tool just became much more useful if your team is juggling multiple schedules. The company's answer to Google Docs now has a timelines feature that lets you track who's working on a project and when. You can set milestones (such as due dates), assign members, write notes and attach relevant files. Your timeline view is flexible, too, letting you glance at the entire year or drill down to your team's week-by-week challenges.
Bang & Olufsen unveils David Lynch speaker collaboration
Long-time Bang & Olufsen fan David Lynch is lending his creative eye to a special edition speaker collection. The series includes the Beoplay A9, M5 and P2, featuring selected images and details from Lynch's War Between the Shapes series and Paris Suite lithographs.
Microsoft’s collaborative Whiteboard app is now available
Microsoft's Whiteboard app, which lets users collaborate on an intelligent canvas through their Windows 10 devices, is now out of preview and available for download. As with a physical whiteboard, Whiteboard lets you draw, erase and attach sticky notes. But unlike a traditional whiteboard, you can also type, add and manipulate images and have ever-expanding amounts of space on which to work. Whiteboard can also recognize and enhance shapes, making it easy to put together a table, for instance.
Google's productivity suite now shows who viewed your files
If you've ever worked on shared documents, you know the potential for confusion: a coworker may harangue you over an old file without realizing that you made changes hours ago. That shouldn't be a problem with Google's G Suite in the future. Google is introducing an Activity dashboard for Docs, Sheets and Slides that lets anyone with edit access see who has seen a file and when. You'll know if your manager actually read that updated spreadsheet before giving you grief.
Microsoft's Slack rival helps you find and use apps
Microsoft is determined to make Teams a strong alternative to collaborative chat apps like Slack, and it's now targeting one of Slack's strong points: apps. The company is rolling out a major update whose centerpiece is a new app store that lets you find the tools you need, whether it's a productivity booster like Adobe Creative Cloud or a chat bot. Accordingly, you can bring content from apps directly into a conversation, such as a relevant news story or the weather, and check out what's happening across your apps in a dedicated space.
The OnePlus 5 got a whimsical French makeover
If you like your tech on the whimsical side, you'll probably be interested in OnePlus' latest collaboration with French designer Castelbajac. The partnership's line of "Callection" products includes a limited edition version of the OnePlus 5, complete with colorful hardware buttons and a handwriting-adorned back cover. The OnePlus 5 JCC+, which is otherwise identical to the regular OnePlus 5, is available as a 128GB variant and is on sale for the standard device price of £500 ($680). The phone will be available from a pop-up event in Paris on September 22, and online from October 2. But if that's a bit too spendy, you can still own a piece of the Callection with a limited edition T-shirt (£30/$40) or tote bag (£25/$35), or by downloading a Castelbajac smartphone wallpaper from the Callection website. Update: This article previously mistakenly stated a pop-up event was taking place in London, and has been edited accordingly.
Dropbox Paper's newest features cater to designers
Dropbox Paper originally seemed like a Google Docs clone built for the big businesses that have been an increasingly large focus for the cloud sync-and-share company. But two years since its initial introduction, Paper's ability to embed and display a huge variety of content (including images, Google spreadsheets, data from Github YouTube videos, Spotify playlists and plain old code) has helped it carve out niches in a variety of businesses.
Todoist team offers a less distracting take on Slack
Slack's team chat can be extremely helpful for coordinating with your coworkers, but it can also be supremely distracting. Do you really need a constant stream of alerts and unrelated funny GIFs when you're trying to get work done... or avoiding work on vacation? Doist (the team behind Todoist) doesn't believe so. Its newly launched Twist service is designed to offer collaboration without the endless pings and digressions of competitors like Slack. Rather than rely on real-time chat, it focuses on specific topics and otherwise does whatever it can to respect your free time. In a sense, it's a smarter alternative to email.
Master & Dynamic's new headphones take cues from Bamford watches
It's no secret that Master & Dynamic makes some of the best-looking headphones around these days, and the company routinely enlists other like-minded brands to join them. On heels of a Leica collaboration, M&D teamed up with UK-based Bamford Watch Department to re-imagine its wireless MW60 headphones. While Master & Dynamic's signature metal construction is still here with a matte black finish, it's the details from the luxury watchmaker that offer a new spin on the familiar over-ear headphones.
Lyft and Waymo work together on self-driving cars
Waymo just got a ton of help in its bid to make self-driving cars a common sight on public roads. The Alphabet-owned company and Lyft have forged a deal that will see the two work together on self-driving cars, both for development and for test projects. The exact terms aren't clear, but both have strong incentives to team up. Waymo tells the New York Times that it's about helping autonomous tech "reach more people, in more places." For Lyft, meanwhile, it's about getting access to the "best self-driving technology" and speeding up its plans for autonomous ridesharing.
Honda is in talks to use Alphabet's self-driving car tech
Mere days after Google spun out its self-driving car division as Waymo, the newly spawned Alphabet company is already in the midst of cutting big deals. Honda has revealed that it's entering talks with Waymo on integrating autonomous hardware with its vehicles. It's still extremely early, but Honda has proposed giving Waymo modified cars to help speed things along. This wouldn't sidetrack Honda's goal of getting its self-driving tech on highways by 2020, the company makes clear -- it would just allow for a "different technological approach."
Google Docs helps you figure out who's responsible for tasks
It's not always easy to determine who's responsible for what in a given online project, but Google thinks it can sort out that mess. It's introducing a slew of Google Docs updates (as part of a larger G Suite upgrade) that help you delegate tasks. On the desktop, typing phrases that assign tasks will automatically suggest action items -- write "Andrea to schedule a weekly check-in" and you'll foist that duty on your colleague. Both desktop and mobile users can also manually assign items by mentioning people in comments, so it should be easier to ask for an edit or status update. You'll get a heads-up on any files with tasks assigned to you.
Paper, Dropbox's answer to Google Docs, now has apps for iOS and Android
It's been almost a year since Dropbox formally introduced Paper, its vision for a collaborative workplace regardless of whether you're a project manager, coder, designer or any other kind of employee. It's been in closed beta since then, and we haven't heard much of how the tool has progressed, but today that's changing. Dropbox is announcing that the Paper beta is now open to anyone, and the company is also launching dedicated Paper apps for iOS and Android.
Google buys a startup to improve Spaces
It's no secret that Google Spaces in its current incarnation is... undercooked. The group-oriented app missing features you might expect from an internet giant, and those features that are there don't always behave like you'd expect. Google is in it for the long haul, though. It just bought Kifi, a startup that focuses on internet-based collaboration and sharing. The Kifi team isn't shy about what it'll be doing -- it's joining the Spaces team to improve its underlying features. While you'll probably have to wait some time to see what that entails, it's clear that Spaces isn't going to wither from neglect.
Dropbox adds real-time collaboration for Office Online docs
Following the release of a Windows 10 app for tablets, Dropbox is expanding its Microsoft Office integration. The cloud-based repository allows multiple users to edit a file with Office Online with all of the updates synced in real time. This means you won't have to alert someone when you're making changes to avoid overwriting tweaks from a colleague.
Paper is Dropbox's new vision for how teams can work together
Six months ago, Dropbox quietly announced a collaborative note-taking tool called Notes and launched it in an invite-only beta test. But starting today, the product is being officially branded as Dropbox Paper and the beta test is expanding significantly. You'll still need an invite, but the company gave us a preview of what's probably the biggest addition to Dropbox in years. It's far too early to tell if Paper will be able to keep up with entrenched tools from Google, Microsoft and many others -- but there are definitely some interesting features here that make it worth keeping an eye on.
Dropbox Teams will offer a host of business features to free users
Dropbox for Business is an increasingly important part of the company's revenue stream -- there are more than 130,000 businesses using the service -- but there are many more people out there using the company's more consumer-focused free service and its $9.99 monthly subscription plan. Millions of those users are in fact using their personal Dropbox accounts to get work done, as well -- so now Dropbox is going to offer a set of tools to make it a lot easier for individuals and smaller businesses to use Dropbox with a team of co-workers. In fact, that's the name of the new service that launches tomorrow: Dropbox Teams.
Slack's messaging platform is getting voice, video and screen sharing soon
There aren't many work collaboration tools that you'd describe as being a joy to use, but Slack, the latest startup from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, actually manages to come close. Now in addition to slick text and document collaboration (it's crazy fast), Slack will soon get voice and video chat, as well as remote screensharing. The company announced today that it's snapped up Screenhero, a startup that was aiming to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Webex, whose features will slowly be absorbed into the Slack platform. It's not the first collaboration tool to get video and voice chat -- HipChat has had them for a while, and plenty of organizations use a combination of Microsoft's Yammer and Skype -- but their addition gives people one less reason to count Slack out as they beg their companies to adopt it (ahem, Engadget editors).
