Use Siri to find a lost iPhone's owner

Use Siri to find a lost iPhone's owner

This works even if a found phone is locked. But there's something you should know about this feature.

Ask, and Siri answers. But just how much info will she give a stranger?Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Suppose you're strolling through the park one day (say, in the merry, merry month of May) when you spot a phone lying in the grass. Upon closer inspection, it's an iPhone -- and, like all phones should be, it's locked.

Now what? You're a good Samaritan, but how can you reunite the precious with its owner?

Simple: ask Siri. When you invoke Apple's gal Friday and say, "Who does this phone belong to?", you'll see the owner's contact information. This might help you reach out and notify the person before he/she activates Lost Mode and possibly remote-wipes the phone so there's no contact info left.

Now for the flip side: if you're the owner of an iPhone that goes missing, just what information is going to be revealed to someone who uses this tip?

The answer: the full contents of whatever contact you've designated as "me." That might include more information than you'd want a stranger to see, even one just looking to do a good deed.

The solution, then, is to create a new "Lost Phone" contact, put in only your emergency-contact info, then let your iPhone know that that's you. Or, rather, "me." (But, you know, you.)

It might make sense to choose a new 'me' contact for your iPhone.Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

Once you've created that new contact, tap the Settings app, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Scroll down until you find My Info, tap it, then choose your newly created contact -- the one you want to appear if someone asks Siri who owns your phone.

There are other ways to help get your lost phone back, of course, like adding emergency-contact info to your lock screen. And that would probably save someone from bothering with the Siri option.

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Google Now gets cards from Airbnb, Lyft, Pandora and more

Google Now gets cards from Airbnb, Lyft, Pandora and more

Information and actions from the top Android apps will now show up in Google's personal assistant dashboard.

Google

Your favorite Android apps are teaming up with Google Now. The Google-powered personal assistant, found in the Google app, is getting special cards from 30-plus select apps that will start to show up in your dashboard starting today.

That dashboard is where you can already see sports scores, stock numbers, weather forecasts and more. And now, you'll see cards from select apps already installed on your device that will either show helpful information or give you quick actions that you'd normally have to open the app to do.

For example, the new Airbnb card will show you suggested listings for upcoming trips, or remind you to book a rental if you've searched listings for a specific date. The Instacart card will let you quickly reorder groceries, while the Lyft card will help you hail a car if you caught a Lyft from your home location which you set in the Google app.

A particularly interesting card is from Walgreens, which displays your rewards card barcode. That's very similar to Passbook on iOS, where you can already keep store loyalty cards.

All in all, Google teamed up with 40 apps to bring these special cards to the Google Now dashboard, including Airbnb, Instacart, Runtastic, Lyft, Mint, Hootsuite, Kayak and Ford. Check out all of them onGoogle's website. If you have these apps installed on your Android phone or tablet, the cards will appear automatically when relevant. At any time, you can turn off cards from particular apps from the settings in the Google. You can expect these to show up in your Google app in the coming weeks.

While this is hardly a ground-breaking feature, it does help beef up the Google app, which is already quite helpful for getting directions, finding your parked car, checking calendar reminders, checking TV listings and, of course, searching the Web.

Instacart's Google Now card helps you reorder groceries.Google

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50 foot long 'dragon' dinosaur species discovered in China

50-foot-long 'dragon' dinosaur species discovered in China

The long-necked Qijianglong lived about 160 million years ago in the Late Jurassic period. Did its fossils inspire ancient dragon legends?

A rendering of what the Qijianglong might have looked like by co-discoverer Lida Xing.Lida Xing

Sauropods, a category of dinosaurs that includes the Diplodocus, typically had necks that comprised up to a third of their body size. A new species of dinosaur described in a recent Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology had a neck that could stretch up to 25 feet long, which is half its body length.

The dino has been named Qijianglong (pronounced "CHI-jyang-lon"), which means "dragon of Qijiang." Its bones were discovered near China's Qijiang City by construction workers in 2006. It belongs to a family of sauropods known as mamenchisaurids. Miraculously, when the beast was unearthed, its head was still attached to its vertebrae, something extremely unusual in the paleontology world.

"It is rare to find a head and neck of a long-necked dinosaur together because the head is so small and easily detached after the animal dies," explains Tetsuto Miyashita, a University of Alberta paleontologist who, along with former master's student Lida Xing and professor Philip Currie, discovered the new species.

Also of note is that the dinosaur's vertebrae were filled with air, much like the skeletons of birds. This made their necks fairly lightweight for their massive size (and no doubt, kept them from face-planting when they were being chased by other big baddies). The vertebrae were also found to be interlocking in such a way that would have allowed the dinosaur to lift its head up and down like a construction crane, but not move it very easily from side to side.

The dragon of Qijiang is thought to have lived about 160 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period, when dinosaurs like the Stegosaurus also roamed Earth. Its unusually long neck hints at the breadth of evolutionary adaptations, says Miyashita.

"Qijianglong is a cool animal. If you imagine a big animal that is half neck, you can see that evolution can do quite extraordinary things," he said in a statement.

The paleontologist also wonders if ancient residents of China -- the only place where mamenchisaurids are found -- once stumbled upon the remains of a Qijianglong, which could have contributed to legends of dragons in the region.

"China is home to the ancient myths of dragons," said Miyashita. "I wonder if the ancient Chinese stumbled upon a skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur like Qijianglong and pictured that mythical creature."

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