Animated Emoji wars heat up as Samsung partners with Disney on AR Emoji

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

In case you missed it, animating yourself as various AR (Augmented Reality) Emoji characters is now as important as the specs, camera functionality and design of today's flagship phones.

The gauntlet was thrown down by Apple last year when it made Animoji a key feature of the iPhone X. Being able to talk and match facial expressions with various emoji animals was the sexy feature for one hot minute and led to a short deluge of TV ads and Animoji Karaoke videos.

Apple's Animoji did resonate with many users, although I'm not sure if they were a defining feature for people to consider purchasing the iPhone X.

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Intuit's app helps self-employed workers invoice, manage expenses, and file taxes

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Self-employed workers are faced with a lot of pain points when tax time comes around. Not only do they need to carefully monitor expenses as well as send and follow up on invoices for jobs, getting all the necessary information to file taxes accurately and on time is a constant challenge. Intuit's QuickBooks Self-Employed mobile app eliminates the pain points associated with financial management and helps self-employed workers easily manage their operations from anywhere.

"We identified this new market, the independent contractor and we noticed that there wasn't a quick adoption of the traditional QuickBooks App.  We did a ton of research and identified what their unique needs were. Rather than needing a full financial picture of their business, the things that were important to them were being able to keep track of their expenses and getting ready for tax time," says Melika Hope, Senior Product Manager at Intuit.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ flagships now available in Canada

Samsung's Galaxy S9 and the larger S9+ are now available in Canada. The new flagships boast powerful new processors, class leading cameras with Dual Aperture lenses offering the best low-light performance we've seen in a smartphone yet at the F1.5 setting. Also outstanding is the super slow-motion video recording which manages 960 frames per seconds on HD recording.

Aside from a fingerprint reader, the Galaxy S9 also has iris and face recognition access control. Check out our full review of the smaller Galaxy S9 here. 

The Galaxy S9 and S9+ sell unlocked for $960 and $1,100, respectively. Canadians who trade in their old phones will also get a minimum of $100 off in addition to the trade in value when you purchase the Galaxy S9 or S9+ February 25 through April 9, 2018. Also available today are new Disney AREmoji featuring Mickie and Minnie Mouse, showing Samsung's openness to third party content providers.

Hands on with the new ecobee Switch+ Alexa powered smart light switch

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

with the ecobee Switch+ you can make any home or apartment a truly smart home by integrating Amazon's Alexa and all its connected features on a structural level.

Smart speakers are the hottest consumer technology devices in Canada this year. We already have an ongoing turf war between Google Home, which has a year's head start in Canada (and was also partly developed in Waterloo, ON) and Amazon Echo, whose Alexa smart assistant leads the market in the US and which is available on a range of speakers, PCs and other devices.

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