Alex Hern and Samuel Gibbs 

Boot up: New Foursquare, new Shield, new Lumia and new wearables

Plus Snapchat surprises, the Yosemite beta, and an MP who wants to defend your right to War(craft). By Alex Hern and Samuel Gibbs
  
  

The new Foursquare.
The new Foursquare, with (R) and without (L) Swarm installed. Photograph: Foursquare Photograph: Foursquare

A quick burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

This MP Wants People Who Steal World Of Warcraft Weapons To Be Punished Like Real-Life Thieves >>> Buzzfeed

Mike Weatherley, who is also David Cameron's chief advisor on intellectual property, asked ministers to consider new laws so that "people who steal online items in video games with a real-world monetary value receive the same sentences as criminals who steal real-world items of the same monetary value". The Conservative MP, who himself plays the fantasy role-playing game Warcraft, told BuzzFeed that players sometimes spend large amounts of real world money on in-game items.

The far more pertinent question for most, of course, would be whether conventional property rights can be extended to digital downloads from sites such as iTunes or Amazon. That would obviously affect criminals who steal accounts - but it would also pose thorny questions for the companies who sell such digital property, and have got used to being able to impose restrictions on their use and sale.

NVIDIA's new Shield is a tablet built for gaming >>> Engadget

Shield Tablet dumps the original Shield's 5-inch screen in favor of a bigger 8-inch, 1080p display, swaps the original Tegra 4 in favor of K1 and drops the controller bit entirely. Should you wish to pair a controller with Shield Tablet and NVIDIA thinks you should the company's making one (it's even got WiFi Direct for lower latency than Bluetooth), but it's totally optional and doesn't come packed in with the tablet. So, what is this thing? Who is it for? And is it any good?

Android gaming isn't quite as big as it is on the iPhone and iPad, mainly because developers have struggled in the past to deal with the various device specifications. The original Shield was great, let's hope the tablet is too.

A brand new Foursquare, with a brand new logo and look, is almost ready for you >>> The Foursquare Blog

Everyone explores the world differently - guided by their own unique tastes, their friends, and the people they trust. Local search has never been good at this. It doesn't get you, and, as a result, everyone gets the same one-size-fits-all results. Why should two very different people get the same recommendations when they visit Paris? Or the same list of places when they're looking for a bar? We're about to change that. In a couple weeks, we're rolling out a brand new version of Foursquare that's all about you. Tell us what you like, and we'll be on the lookout for great places that match your tastes, wherever you are.

The first part of the Big Foursquare Relaunch was splitting the app in half, moving checkins over to the new Swarm app. This is the second half. But they've got an uphill struggle, after existing users rebelled over the change.

You can try Apple's OS X Yosemite beta starting from tomorrow >>> TechRadar

The beta is totally free but you'll need to sign up over on Apple's site. Remember though, this is still in development, so you can expect a few bugs and crashes. In fact, Apple recommends installing it on a secondary Mac in case, you know, you've just got one lying around.

You do have a spare Mac, right? Still, it'll be interesting to see what's genuinely useful in all that new stuff.

Surprise: Snapchat's most popular feature isn't snaps anymore >>> The Verge

Snapchat says that its most popular feature is now its most public, least ephemeral one: Stories. Snapchat tells The Verge that more Stories are now viewed per day than snaps. One billion Stories are viewed per day, the company says, up from 500 million just two months ago. If you're not familiar, Snapchat's Stories feature launched late last year and lets users create compilations of snaps that last 24 hours. Stories are only be viewable by friends, unless you change a setting to let anyone who adds you view your Stories.

Watch out for Facebook's new "Tales" feature, coming soon to Slingshot.

Microsoft unsheathes cheap Android-killer: Behold, the Lumia 530 >>> The Register

The 530 is a smaller device than the Lumia 520 or recently launched Lumia 630/635, with a 4-inch display. Yet it still packs a quad core processor and can take memory cards of up to 128GB. As with the 520 and 630, the designer omits a front-facing camera and LED flash. A dual-SIM variant will be available in some markets. It bundles offline maps, free navigation and an Office client, with some 15GB cloud storage for new users. As you'd expect, it's 2G and 3G only, not LTE.

The Lumia 630 was decent, but not spectacular. Will the Lumia 530 beat Motorola's £80 Moto E? It'll be difficult. Microsoft killed off the Nokia X line to do this though.

New Xiaomi Mi Band is ridiculously cheap >>> CNET

The Mi Band will retail for the ridiculously low price of just 79RMB (which converts to $13, £7.5, AU$13.5). It has a 30 day battery life, which is impressive compared to some of the smartwatches and fitness bands on the market today. It also doubles up as a discrete alarm clock.

When simplicity is the key, why does it have to cost hundreds?

Did HTC just leak its own smartwatch? >>> TechRadar

At first glance it looks a tad like the first-gen TomTom Runner, but zoom in and this is definitely a UWO (Unidentified Wearable Object).

HTC's been rumoured to be creating a watch for a while now. Some expected it at MWC in February, and then again at the MTC One M8 launch. HTC's smartphone hardware is some of the best in the business, perhaps its smartwatch will be too.

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