Google has finally released Android 17 Beta 1 after wrapping up its previous testing phase. The release is live as of February 13, 2026. There are several performance improvements, along with updates to foldables and tablets. Additionally, there are a number of visual changes to the Pixel Launcher user interface. With this release, Google is emphasizing long-term development to pave the way for the next Android release.

One of the biggest highlights of Android 17 is Google’s stronger push toward large-screen optimization. Developers are now required to properly adapt their apps for foldables, tablets, and desktop-style modes. Orientation changes and resizable window support are no longer optional. This should lead to a smoother, more consistent experience on larger devices without layout issues.

Furthermore, Android 17 Beta 1 brings a slimmer home screen search bar with a cleaner look. The shortcut now sits inside the bar and can be customized with options like Gemini Live, Translate, or Song Search. Users can also remove the At a Glance widget. Minor tweaks include a refreshed brightness icon and clearer access to the volume panel.

Performance Improvements in Android 17

Google has rolled out various enhancements to the system to make the devices more efficient. The most exciting change includes the introduction of the generational garbage collection system. The update reduces CPU load by optimizing memory cleanup across various stages. This minimizes CPU load.

Moreover, Android 17 improves app memory management to ensure better utilization of system resources. The update also includes notification-related optimizations that lower memory consumption. Although these upgrades run quietly in the background, they improve speed, stability, and overall device performance.

Media and Camera Enhancements

The update introduces advanced tools for media and camera apps. Users will notice smoother transitions between camera modes and generally more solid performance. Google is also working on providing users with a more unified listening experience across different applications and devices.

How to install Android 17 beta 1 on your Google Pixel?

Installing the beta is simple for Pixel users:

1. Visit the Android Beta Program website.
2. Log in with your Google account.
3. Select your eligible Pixel device and tap Opt in.
4. On your phone, go to Settings > System > Software updates.
5. Check for updates and install Android 17 Beta 1.

As with any beta software, users should expect occasional bugs and instability. It’s best suited for developers or enthusiasts comfortable with early builds rather than primary daily drivers.

Walk into any school and you will find teachers using classroom technology in very different ways. One teacher builds interactive lessons with embedded videos and real-time polls. Down the hall, another uses technology more selectively, focusing on core features that support daily instruction. Both are effective educators. Both deserve classroom technology that works for them — and their students.

The challenge isn’t that teachers need to change how they work; it’s that most classroom technology is designed with only one pathway in mind. When tools offer multiple entry points instead, they can meet teachers where they are while supporting a wide range of student needs.

Recently, EdSurge spoke with three educators who use ViewSonic’s interactive display technology in distinctly different ways: Rebecca Ganger, technology coach and Chromebook coordinator, who also teaches high school students to repair devices and sponsors her district’s middle school Technology Club; Elena Clemente, technology trainer with 29 years of teaching experience in early elementary grades; and Brendan Powell, elementary STEM teacher. Their experiences illustrate what becomes possible when technology adapts to people rather than demanding that people adapt to it.

EdSurge: Why is it important that classroom technology offers multiple ways to engage?

Powell: Students need an engaging system to help them improve their understanding, and it makes learning more fun. Interactive technology helps a lot with coding, so my students can work through problems with me and are more engaged when they actually get to do the examples. Giving students choices helps them understand different concepts and piques their interest.

Clemente: Students learn in different ways, and teachers bring different approaches to their classrooms. While some students may prefer the interactive tools already displayed, others might prefer to choose which tool to use to demonstrate how to solve a math problem. The same goes for teachers. Some may prefer to use ready-made slides, while others prefer to create on the canvas. By offering choices, we allow both students and teachers to use technology in ways that make learning engaging.

What makes technology feel approachable rather than intimidating for teachers at different comfort levels?

Clemente: As I have led several professional development sessions for teachers, I know that some want only the basics, such as writing on the canvas or projecting slides. Others have created engaging lessons that bring learning to life. All teachers are able to learn more.

I have found that it is best to demonstrate how to use a tool on the interactive panel, have teachers practice and then discuss how they can use it in their lessons. When teachers take that learning back to their classrooms and apply it in a lesson, the tool feels more approachable.

Ganger: Often, new technology requires you to learn so many things just to be able to use the basics and get started. Being able to use parts of the software and then incorporate more as you become familiar and comfortable is a huge plus. You can start with just a little bit of instruction and then learn more to incorporate additional tools into your lessons as you’re ready. You can use it at your comfort level, and it is also very user-friendly for student participation at the board.

What changes occur when students interact directly with classroom displays?

Powell: When students use the display in my classroom, they are more willing to talk to each other about the process and explain their ideas more clearly.

Ganger: They become more focused on the activity and are excited to participate. Students are so accustomed to auditory and visual sources being their primary ways of obtaining information. Having the opportunity to interact with technology fits into their natural way of learning.

Clemente: One of the big changes I have seen, or rather heard, is the amount of conversation that takes place. Students are able to express their thinking out loud while building speaking and listening skills. Students take pride in being able to share and navigate the interactive panel.

How do you keep students actively involved during interactive lessons?

Ganger: I personally enjoy adding a variety of interactive tools. I incorporate sounds, videos and links to other sites all within my presentation. I also enjoy using game boards with subject-specific questions as review activities. Varying the activities keeps things fresh and interesting for students.

Clemente: One way I keep students actively involved is by having them use their [individual] whiteboards to participate while I am projecting. Students know that they are accountable and that I am looking to call on them to share good examples and demonstrate their learning. I also use partner talks so that students can share what they are learning and gain different perspectives. Students love being called up to engage with the interactive panel, so I call them up in groups. They line up and take turns, or sometimes they work as a team and collaboratively solve the problem.

When it works well, how does technology change your teaching?

Clemente: When technology works well, it makes my job as a classroom teacher easier. I am able to easily share material, provide visually appealing interactive slides and engage with my students using hands-on learning activities that build their technical skills. As a technology trainer, I use technology to demonstrate how teaching can come to life, creating engaging lessons that have a positive impact on student learning.

Ganger: It frees up time typically spent lecturing in front of the room, allowing more one-on-one interaction with students. It provides immediate feedback and allows for easy differentiation of material. Being able to reach all types of learning styles with interactive boards and software is a game-changer.

Powell: The technology that works well in my room has changed how my students access information and made learning more flexible for all of them. One thing I like to say in my room is that technology can help us learn new skills and ways of thinking that will benefit us in the long run. Technology is always evolving, so it helps to have my students involved with me as I’m learning as well.

OpenAI is broadening how it helps large organizations put artificial intelligence into real use. The company announced a new initiative, Frontier Alliances, teaming up with four major consulting firms, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), McKinsey & Company, Accenture, and Capgemini, to help enterprises move beyond pilot AI projects and embed intelligent systems deeply into business workflows.

The announcement, published on OpenAI’s own website, lays out the reasoning behind the push: having powerful AI models isn’t the main bottleneck anymore.

Instead, companies need help designing the strategy, integrating the technology across systems and data, redesigning workflows, and managing organizational change so that AI can actually deliver value at scale.

Central to this effort is Frontier, OpenAI’s enterprise platform for building, deploying, and managing AI agents, systems that act like “AI coworkers,” performing tasks across software tools, extracting context from business data, and handling workflows end-to-end.

These agents are meant to go beyond simple chat or isolated automation, helping with customer support, sales processes, software development tasks, and more.

In its official press release, OpenAI described several key points about the Frontier Alliances:

• The program pairs OpenAI’s Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) teams with consultants from BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and Capgemini to help enterprise customers adopt AI reliably and at scale.

• Each consulting partner will build dedicated practice groups certified on OpenAI technology, combining technical expertise with deep industry and transformation experience.

• The alliances cover both strategy and operational execution; from planning AI adoption to integrating Frontier with core systems and training internal teams.

Leaders from each consulting firm feature prominently in the announcement, stressing that teams need more than just tools, they need governance, change management, and end-to-end support to embed AI into daily operations.

This marks a clear strategic shift for OpenAI. Earlier this year, the company introduced Frontier as a platform designed to give AI agents shared context and capabilities that go beyond isolated demos or narrow use cases.

But real world deployments require more than technology alone. Large enterprises often struggle with data silos, outdated systems, and the internal alignment needed to scale new technology.

The Frontier Alliances are meant to bridge that gap.

Reuters notes that this move brings OpenAI closer to traditional enterprise software players and differentiates its enterprise offering from simple model licensing by leaning into operational support and integration.

The consulting partners bring decades of experience in transformation and change management, helping customers make AI part of the everyday workflow rather than a one-off experiment.

OpenAI’s approach reflects broader industry trends. Enterprises have spent recent years experimenting with generative AI tools, but many have yet to turn early pilots into sustained production use.

By combining Frontier’s agent platform with consultancy know-how, OpenAI hopes to accelerate adoption and deliver measurable business impact more quickly.

Competition in enterprise AI services remains intense.

Companies like Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google are also targeting corporate customers with their own AI platforms and partnerships.

For OpenAI, the Frontier Alliances are a way to leverage trusted business networks and implementation experience, giving its platform a stronger path into large-scale deployment.

from the millions-well-spent dept

Eight million ways to die.

According to AdWeek, the price for a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LX has soared to $8 million, after NBC opened in the summer by offering spots for $7 million. As AdWeek notes, “due to demand, the company has already reached its cap for the number of spots that were available for advertisers to buy during the upfront season.”

$8 million for 30 seconds sometimes means turning a niche product into a national phenomena. The 30 seconds purchased by Ring went the other way. If you want to see how $8 million can be used to promote mass surveillance enabled by consumer products, here you go:

Sure, it looks pretty innocuous. And what could be better than turning Ring and Flock Safety’s network of cameras into a digital proxy for posting “LOST DOG” signs all over the neighborhood? Well, as it turns out, pretty much everyone saw how problematic this offering was, especially considering what’s already known about Ring, Flock Safety, and both companies’ rather cavalier attitude towards privacy and other aspects of the Fourth Amendment.

To begin with, the “Search Party” feature that allows people to access recordings and images captured by other people’s cameras is already on, which likely comes as a surprise to owners of these devices. Here’s what The Verge’s Jennifer Tuohy discovered last October, shortly after Ring announced its partnership with Flock Safety — a company best known for allowing cops to hunt down people seeking abortions and/or allowing federal officers to perform nationwide searches for whoever they might be looking for (which, of course, would be anyone looking kinda like an immigrant).

[I]t turns out that Search Party is enabled by default. In an email to customers this week, Siminoff wrote that the feature is rolling out to Ring outdoor cameras in November and noted, “You can always turn off Search Party.”

I checked my cameras this morning, and they were all automatically set to enable Search Party. And I’m not alone; Ring users on Reddit have also reported that their cameras have been enabled for Search Party. 

This under-reported “feature” was exposed by Ring’s Super Bowl ad, which resulted in enough backlash that Flock Safety no longer has a Ring to wear. Back to Jennifer Tuohy and The Verge:

In a statement published on Ring’s blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: “Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint decision to cancel the integration and continue with our current partners … The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”

While that last sentence may be true, it appears sharing was on by default when it came to Ring’s own cameras. That Flock Safety never got a chance to participate is good to know, but “Search Party” has apparently been active since its implementation last year, even if it was limited to Ring devices.

And while Ring claims the Search Party feature can’t be used to search for “human biometrics,” that’s hardly comforting when it appears Ring definitely wants to add more of this kind of thing to its existing cameras.

On top of this, the company recently launched a new facial recognition feature, Familiar Faces. Combined with Search Party, the technological leap to using neighborhood cameras to search for people through a mass-surveillance network suddenly seems very small.

Ring insists this is not another mass surveillance tool, but rather something that attempts to recognize who’s at any user’s door when sending alerts, in order to differentiate friends and family members from strangers who might be within camera range. Again, there’s some utility to this offering, but the tech lends itself to surveillance abuses, especially when law enforcement may only be a subpoena away from accessing images and recordings captured by privately-owned devices.

Finally, the statement given by Ring only states that this won’t be happening right now, which is a wise choice considering its unpopularity at the moment. But that doesn’t mean Ring and Flock won’t seek to consummate this marriage of surveillance tech, albeit in a more private fashion that doesn’t involve alarming hundreds of millions of sports viewers simultaneously.

Filed Under: alpr, doorbell cameras, law enforcement, mass surveillance, surveillance abuse

Companies: flock safety, ring

In today’s world, where more and more lives are online, social proof is very important. Things like likes, shares, reviews, and follower counts show what people think about something. These signs help people feel trust and want to join in. But, many do not read these numbers in the right way. Some feel short-term jumps matter most, but they miss seeing steady growth that can last. To get the best out of this, marketers need a clear plan for checking, giving credit, and trying out new ideas.

Social Proof Metrics

Social proof is not only about numbers that look good. It shows how people see your trust and fame. But the kind of feedback you get is not always the same. Likes and comments of how many followers you have have all given useful clues. Still, you have to look at the whole story to make the best choices.

• Conversion rate: Tracks if social proof makes people do things we want, like signing up, downloading, or buying.
• Retention metrics: Shows if the first interest turns into regular use or keeps people coming back over time.
• Sentiment analysis: It looks as if the social proof shows good or bad feelings from people.

By looking at these numbers, marketers can see the difference between quick jumps in activity and real engagement. Stormlikes help them know what their audience truly cares about.

Attribution Challenges in Social Proof

One of the biggest challenges when using social proof is knowing where to give credit. Many campaigns can give a short burst of attention, but it’s very important to find out if these jumps in attention last over time. A lot of problems with tracking happen when people just look at simple numbers and do not link them to bigger business goals.

• Last-click bias: Looking only at the last thing people do can make the effect of a social proof tactic appear bigger than it really is.
• Channel overlap: Organic and paid campaigns often cross over, and this can make it hard to tell the effects apart.
• Short-term spikes: A boost that happens for a short time, like from paid follower services or viral posts, may not show true growth in the long run.

Marketers need strong analytics systems to know which actions really help people buy and come back again, not just make the numbers look high.

Experimental Approaches to Measure Authentic Uplift

Testing is important when you want to see if your social proof ideas work. The only way to know the real effect of social proof on people is to do controlled experiments. This helps marketers find out what works and make choices using facts and data.

• A/B testing: Compare content that has social proof and content that does not. This helps you see the differences in how people behave.
• Time-based experiments: Add social proof slowly over time. Watch for short-term changes and also keep an eye on the bigger trends.
• Geo or segment tests: Use social proof in certain groups or places. This lets you see the effect on people in one area or segment.

When you use these experiment ideas along with clear KPIs, you can tell the difference between short-term buzz and real growth.

KPIs to Track for True Social Proof

To make social proof work, marketers have to use both numbers and stories as key points. Do not look at just one simple sign, because that can give the wrong idea.

• Quality of engagement: Not every like means the same thing. Comments, shares, and mentions show more interest.
• Follower growth rate: A steady increase in followers can say more than a quick jump.
• Referral traffic: Shows if people come from social proof to take useful actions on your important pages.
• Customer value over time (CLV): Links social proof campaigns to results that matter for your business in the long run.
• Influencer amplification: Find out if popular supporters really help their followers trust the brand.
• These numbers show how social proof works. Marketers can use this to make their campaigns better and get results that last.

Ethical Considerations for Practices

It is important to think about ethics when you try out ways to use social proof. If you use numbers that are not real, or if you show fake likes and shares, people will not trust your brand. Here are the best things you can do:

• Transparency: Clearly tell people about any paid work or testing.
• Gradual scaling: Try things out on a small scale to stop fake excitement.
• Complementary strategy: Use social proof with top content and true messaging.

Ethical testing helps keep growth safe and steady. It makes sure your work fits with what people expect and trust.

Social proof can help your brand, but you cannot judge its effect just by looking at surface numbers. A platform like Stormlikes may help when you test things, but only if you use it in the right way and measure the results well. Knowing how the data behind social proof works helps marketers come up with plans that keep people engaged for a long time and make your brand look good. If you understand what driving action is, you will do better in the long run.

• Stream Love Island All Stars finale free on ITVX
• Watch ITVX when outside the UK with NordVPN (exclusive free gift)
• Airs Monday, 23 February

The Love Island All Stars season 3 finale airs on Monday, 23rd February so expect more twists before we find out if frontrunners Sean Stone & Lucinda Strafford will be crowned champions. But did you know that some viewers can watch Love Island for free with this streaming hack…

Here’s the hack: In the UK, all episodes of Love Island All Stars season 3 are available on ITVX. And guess what, it’s a totally free service.