Digital Week in Review: New MotoX Phone, iCloud Improves Security Measures, and Twitter Makes Changes to User Interface

In this week’s Digital Week in Review: The new MotoX phone to be released later this month, iCloud improves their security measures, and Twitter changes font and adds “Tweet To” button.

New MotoX Release This Month

The new and improved model of Motorola’s flagship MotoX smartphone is being released later this month.  The new version will come with a 5.2 inch display with full HD resolution, 423 ppi pixel density, Android 4.4.4. KitKat, Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5 GHz, and Adreno GPU. The phone’s rear camera will be 13 megapixels and can capture 4K videos, has a 4x zoom as well as a ring flash around the lens for better effects and lighting. The original MotoX had 3 microphones but the new one will have 4, which will improve with sound capturing and background noise isolation.  Consumers are also most likely to get excited about the new turbo charging feature which can deliver 8 hours of use in only 15 minutes of charging!

The phone can be customized with different backs including the signature wood look, different colors,  or even leather from  U.S. manufacturer Horween. The price point for this phone will be $499.99 unlocked.

To read more about the new Moto X click here.

iCloud Improving Security Measures

Following last week’s massive iCloud hack which led to the leak of many celebrities’ personal pictures, Apple has added more security measures to iCloud, including alerts if a password is changed, alerts if iCloud has been downloaded to a new device, or is being logged into on a different device. Once the notification is received, users will be able to change their passwords or contact Apple security. These alerts will start in the next couple weeks.

When interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, CEO Tim Cook had this to say:

“When I step back from this terrible scenario that happened and say what more could we have done, I think about the awareness piece. I think we have a responsibility to ratchet that up. That’s not really an engineering thing.”

Going forward Apple plans to stress the use of a two factor authentication, and if the celebrities who were hacked had used the two step authentication then the hackers would have apparently not been able to gain access to their accounts or guess their security questions.

Twitter Adds “Tweet To” Button and Changes Font

On Wednesday Twitter announced a few changes to its web platform, intended to improve user experience. Twitter has changed their font back to its original font, Arial on Windows and Helvetica Neue on Macs. A few months ago Twitter switched the website font to Gotham Narrow, but has now decided to revert back to the fonts used before.

There have also been a few new buttons such as a “Tweet To” button which opens up a Tweet box with the “@username” already filled in. There is also a new  “Message “ button which does the same thing as the “Tweet To” button but for private messages, but you have to be followed by the user you are sending the message to.

There are also some new color options in the Design tab. You can now have a Theme color setting that allows you to change the color of things like the Tweet button and other various metrics on your profile.