8 Great Hidden Features in iOS7

1. Clock Icon

Go ahead and look at your clock app icon. Take a closer look. It's an actual clock with a working second hand. A nice little touch from Apple.

2. Text Timestamps

If you slide text messages to the left, you can see the timestamp for all of them — not just the most recent.

3. The Level

By opening up the Compass app and swiping your finger across it, a new digital "level" feature is revealed. You'll never have a crooked painting on the wall again.

4. Night Mode for Maps

If you're driving late at night, the glow of your iPhone screen can be nearly blinding as you try to use the Apple Maps app. Now, the platform displays a darker interface at certain times. This is less distracting and easier on the eyes when navigating at night.

5. Closing Multiple Apps

You can close multiple apps at once! Here's how: double click the home button to reveal open webpages and platforms. You can then swipe up to three apps at the same time by using three fingers and dragging them upwards.

6. Siri Controls Settings

You can use Siri to set alarms and reminders on previous iOS versions, but now you can lean on her to navigate settings too. For example, by saying "Open Settings," Siri will open the Settings folder. By asking Siri to "Turn Off Wi-Fi," she'll gladly oblige without you having to lift a finger. You can also tell her to make calls and play voicemail messages too.

7. Block Calls

If you're getting harassing calls, you can now put a stop to it. Visit Settings > Phone > Blocked to add numbers you want to restrict.

8. Apps Near Me

The Apple App Store has a new "Near Me" feature, which shows apps that are popular near your current location. So if you live in New York City, it will highlight handy apps such as NYC Subway KICKMap and Way2ride taxi, which lets you pay for cab rides via the app.

GOOGLE HUMMINGBIRD ALGORITHM

Google revealed a new search algorithm named Hummingbird. Designed to be more precise and provide faster query results, the algorithm is based on semantic search, focusing on user intent versus individual search terms.

Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole query – the whole sentence or conversation or meaning – is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a few words.

Hummingbird is a definite expansion of Google’s semantic capability evident at the search interface level that reveals, significantly, two things,” “First, Google has increased its ability to deal with complex search queries which means that it also has got better at indexing entities in Web documents. Second, it has got a lot better at relationally linking search queries and Web documents which means that its Knowledge Graph must be considerably enriched.”