Tech. Tech never changes. Well… okay… tech does a lot of changing – there’s exciting new gadgets released everyday – but one constant in the space is the unrelenting speed with which hardware and software updates roll out (and we really wanted to make a Fallout reference because the new show is fantastic, more on that below).

It’s a flurry that we know can be a struggle to keep up with. So if you feel a little out of the loop on this week’s biggest news, and want to get back up to speed, we’ve collected the seven most important tech stories of the last seven days in this one article to help you out.

Below you’ll find quickfire recaps on all of the latest goings on in the technology space including major Google Photos AI updates, our Fallout thoughts, and which phone is best for eclipse photography. Let’s get into it.

7. We launched a new podcast! 

Of course the biggest tech news story of the week is we have a new podcast – very creatively called the TechRadar Podcast. We’ve taken all the tech chats we’d have on Zoom, Slack and at our desks and put them into a microphone – so you can expect more of the insightful, first-person experiential content we give you on the site in a new audio-and-video-based format.

In our first episode we give you a recap of the year in tech so far – discussing CES 2024 and AI highlights – and show off a demo of the Apple Vision Pro. The show is hosted by our Editor at Large Lance Ulanoff, with Josephine Watson (Managing Editor, Lifestyle), Alex Walker-Todd (Senior Phones Editor) and Matt Evans (Fitness, Wellness, and Wearables Editor) lending their expertise, too. And as a futher bonus we were joined by Tom, The Tech Chap.

It’s available to listen to right now on YouTube and Spotify, and it should be appearing in other podcast feeds over the next few days! 

6. Windows 11 got an upgrade

Microsoft really wants you to upgrade to Windows 11 – with Reddit users reportedly seeing intrusive warning screens that advise them to download the latest Windows OS on their Windows 10 machines. Now, to help convince you to make the change, there’s a new Windows update with some interesting new features.

These include the Photos app getting a version of Google’s AI-powered Magic Eraser, and Nearby Share getting speed and reliability upgrades. Copilot also got some improvements you try out now, such as plug-in support for third-party services.

That said, Copilot also got a downgrade for some users, as Windows Insiders are saying the AI helper now launches on startup automatically in Windows 11 preview builds – which many have said they find frustrating. 

5. We saw how well smartphones captured the eclipse 

Everyone thinks their flagship smartphone is best and they especially have opinions about the cameras. Editor at Large Lance Ulanoff has tried and tested a lot of these phones and their camera arrays, so he decided to put them to the ultimate celestial test: The US Solar Eclipse.

It was an amazing show – even if New York City didn’t get totality – and a great showcase for the optical zoom capabilities of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, Google Pixel 8 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The only rule was no digital zoom.

The photos, which only worked because we used three tripods and an eclipse glasses lens as a filter, were way better than we expected. You might, though, be surprised by which phone did best.

4. Spotify’s playlist-making AI brought the party 

Spotify has been steadily integrating more AI into its music streaming platform, and it’s now released a playlist-making bot for all Premium subscribers in the UK and Australia.

It’s in beta, currently – read: it’s a little rough around the edges – but the idea is you give the AI a prompt like “hard hitting beats that’ll help me ace my next workout” or “relaxing music to tide me over during allergy season” and it’ll spit out a selection of tracks.

There are some prompt restrictions, for instance you can’t make playlists for current events, for brands or use offensive language – but you can have a lot of fun with the tool. And if it doesn’t get things quite right you can add follow up prompts such as “more death metal” or “less upbeat” to fine-tune the selection. And of course you can also straight up delete tracks you hate.

3. Google gave away its Magic Editor – kinda 

Google’s impressive AI image editing software, Magic Editor, is currently exclusive to paying Google One subscribers and Google Pixel 8 – or Pixel 8 Pro – phone owners, but this week Google announced that come May 15 all Google Photos users will have access to the tool for free.

Thanks to Magic Editor you can erase annoyances in your shot, reposition your subjects, cleverly adjust the lighting, and unblur your snaps to help make your favorite shots look even better – all you need is Google Photos and a smartphone with at least 3GB RAM and that’s running Android 8.0 / iOS 15 or higher.

Unfortunately, the free version only allows you to save 10 edited images a month but if you like the service you can pay for Google One or buy a Pixel phone to remove the restriction.

2. Fallout blew us away

Prime Video’s hotly anticipated Fallout show released this week, and it continues the golden age of video game adaptations we’ve seen in recent years through Netflix‘s Castlevania and Arcane, HBO’s The Last of Us, and even the big-screen takes on Sonic and Mario.

We watched the first four episodes, and found the ambitious adaptation is nothing less than “atomically entertaining” with a “satisfying blend of source material devotion and narrative originality.” Sure, there’s odd bump in the road, but these blemishes do little to spoil the luster of what is yet another fantastic video-game-to-TV adaption.

If you want to watch it yourself then you can binge the whole eight-episode first season on Prime Video right now.

1. Google launched its take on Apple’s Find My network

Android fans have been waiting for more than a year for Google’s rebooted Find My Device network – and this week it finally arrived. The feature, which is rolling out worldwide starting in the US and Canada, works in much the same way as Apple’s Find My network. Because it anonymously piggybacks millions of Android devices around the world, the network can show you precisely where your lost phone is – even if it’s offline.

If you have a Google Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro, the network even helps you find your phone when it’s powered off. We’ve also just seen the arrival of the first Find My Device-compatible trackers, courtesy of Chipolo and Pebblebee, which attach to your wallet, keys or luggage. We might attach one to our cat too, just to foil its hide-and-seek plans.

Photographers often utilize their cameras to look inward; revealing a trace of their soul. At other times, these artists convey a wider-world interpretation, capturing framed scenes that materialize seemingly through mystic portals. This ‘mirror and window’ duality of the two-dimensional medium is one reason why photographs often inspire powerful emotions.

A new ‘Cumberland Valley Photography’ exhibition at Washington County Museum of Fine Arts (WCMFA) perfectly illustrates this window and mirror concept. This Hagerstown show opened on March 23rd and concludes June 2nd. The exhibit contains a unique collection of 40 images, created by 27 local artists. This display was curated by Anne Gridley and Gary Graves. The selection reflects the judges’ cultured sensibilities honed from years spent in the photographic field. “Photographs embody ideas,” the curators said. “Great ones draw us to them mysteriously as if absorbing our gaze.”

This exhibition also served as a friendly competition among the chosen local photographers, and when awards were announced another theme emerged. The top two winners’ close connection revealed a rewarding teacher/student relationship. Sometimes, a talented pupil rises to the expert level of their revered mentor. In this exhibition, Taylor Brown was that student photographer.

Brown is a 16-year-old sophomore at Barbara Ingram School for the Arts. Kristen Green is Taylor’s teacher there. Taylor Brown’s ‘Girl in Grass’ was the grand-prize winner of the exhibition and Kristen Green’s ‘Looking Back’ finished second. Each image portrays a girl, caught in a mesmerizing moment.

When teacher Green first saw her student’s image, before the exhibition was curated, she knew Brown’s ‘Girl in Grass’ was special. “It’s a striking image that sticks with you,” Kristen said about Taylor’s photograph. The judges agreed.

Student Taylor Brown didn’t realize how special her image was until she received enthusiastic feedback from instructor Green. “I thought it was a good portrait,” Taylor said of her creation. The image resulted from an impromptu roadside photo-session with a classmate, the girl seen reclining in the grass. Reflecting on her prize-winning image, Brown said: “The texture in the grass and freckles on her face really stand out in black and white.” Taylor was inspired by famous depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange’s haunting work.

Kristen Green’s runner-up image features her daughter, taken on a train trip in Lancaster. “Shea had never been in a train before. She was fascinated and curious. She was looking out the window, trying to see through the fog,” Green recognized that special fleeting moment and created a tender image.

When asked about her winning student’s potential, Green said: “Taylor is a hard worker, reflective, with a lot of talent. Her future is bright.” As a dedicated instructor and gifted photographer, that same opportunistic window should frame Green’s future as well. She had another lovely image selected for this show titled ‘Clippings’.

Green offers encouragement to other photography students and hobbyists: “keep making images and put your work out there.” Taylor Brown’s and Kristen Green’s beautiful images are a reminder that collaboration inspires both pupils and instructors.

The exhibition’s third place winner was Valerie Dyer of Frederick with her mysterious photograph ‘Into the Fog’. The Washington County Arts Council Award went to Skyla Heise of Hagerstown for her unique portrait titled ‘Gypsophila’. After the show concludes, a people’s choice award will be announced, voted by museum visitors. WCMFA’s ‘Cumberland Valley Artists’ exhibit will follow this photography show, running from June 15th through August 25th.

This yearly Cumberland Valley Photographer’s exhibition has a long tradition at WCMFA. “We’re proud of the museum’s commitment to artists within our region,” Executive Director Sarah Hall said. “Our Cumberland Valley exhibit has a 90-year history. We began showing photography as art in the early 1930’s, when that was quite progressive.”

This wonderful exhibition honors that long-standing commitment by showcasing intriguing work from area photographers. Like a girl in the grass or a daughter on a train, it illustrates when artists peer through a symbolic window or gaze at an introspective mirror, exceptional moments are captured.

Portrait artists are like drill sergeants, commanding a few assistants to work on the lighting, the props, and the hair and makeup. When she was shooting big Vanity Fair group shots, Annie Leibovitz was more like a field commander, directing the efforts of dozens in composing the picture, making sure the subjects were posed in harmony with the others, and looking after myriad other small details.

The best party photographers, and their numbers are few, are like snipers. They fade into the background and grab their subjects in unposed assemblies, and most often without their knowing it.

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Hundreds of pictures daily fly across the news wires from battlefields around the world, inviting their audience to engage from a distance with the horrors that warring parties inflict on each other.

Does the source of these images, the war photographer, throw themselves into harrowing and deadly environments for a sense of duty? A thrill? A paycheque?

Peter van Agtmael, who spent many years on the ground with his camera in Iraq and Afghanistan, offers a nuanced answer in his new book, Look at the USA: A Diary of War and Home, published this month by Thames & Hudson.

As the title suggests Van Agtmael, a Magnum photographer born in Washington DC, had America on his mind while at work. He was not a dispassionate recorder of events but someone deeply concerned with the state of his country and how it was being affected by the waging of war down generations.

“Why does war persist? It’s who we are … Enough of us, anyhow, to make a mess of things,” he writes.

War had been an obsession of his from childhood, when the US first took up arms against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the Gulf War. In the introduction to his latest book he details how his nine-year-old self was spellbound by the patriotic maelstrom that followed Desert Storm and the reams of what might these days be called “content” published alongside it.

By 2005, Van Agtmael was 24 and still fixated on war. The US was two years into its invasion of Iraq, so he signed up to join American troops as an embedded photographer, later going on to Afghanistan.

Look at the USA brings together pictures from these tours with domestic photography to build a wider view of the American experience in the wake of 9/11, featuring also the imprints of nationalism, the election of Donald Trump, militarism, and race and class in American society.

Now 43 and living in Paris, Van Agtmael reflects on his years spent in war zones. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he said he had, for a time, been experiencing “moral confusion”.

“Traditionally, photographers are meant to operate from a position of authority and clear-headed detachment, but I never related to that,” he said. “For me, the professional and the personal are all tied together. In this book, I wanted to be clear that I was always an uncertain and confused observer.”

Van Agtmael’s earlier books Disco Night Sept 11 (2014), Buzzing at the Sill (2017) and Sorry for the War (2021) all dwell on post-9/11 America in some respect. With Look at the USA, he gathers images from these books – along with dozens of unseen photos – and guides the reader through them with his memories and thoughts on the meaning of the events and his work.

Van Agtmael is a mentor in the Arab Documentary Photography Program and has been a full member of the prestigious Magnum Photos collective since 2013.

He is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the W Eugene Smith Grant, several World Press Photo awards and an ICP Infinity Award.

Look at the USA: A Diary of War and Home is available from Thames & Hudson here