Land grab! Net neutrality! Imperialism! There was a lot of justified outrage (and perhaps delight) when Mark Zuckerberg’s dream of bringing the Internet to rural Indians came crashing down recently, fueled by the 11 million people who contacted the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in protest and 457 companies and more than 800 startups that signed letters vehemently opposing […]
Facebook has launched a tool, Automatic Alternative Text, for blind and visually impaired people to “see” images on the site. For people using screen readers to identify what’s displayed, AAT uses object recognition technology to generate descriptions of photos on Facebook. This tool, led by Facebook’s accessibility team, has been several months in the making. “You […]
In news that is not April 1-related, North Korea has this week begun to block access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other websites in the country. The AP, which has a bureau in North Korean capital Pyongyang, reports that the government named YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Voice of America, a number of South Korean websites, porn and gambling […]
Most people are terrible at shooting video. Any longer than 15-seconds and it will probably be boring. That’s why Instagram capped videos at a quarter-minute when it launched the feature in 2013. Yet today it extended the length to 60 seconds for user-shot or uploaded videos. That’s why I have a hunch that Facebook and […]
“Where am I? And how did I get here?” Even after months of repeatedly leaping in and out of disparate worlds filled with jaw-dropping (see above) visuals, every time I’ve whipped off one of the various iterations of Oculus’s Rift virtual reality headset, for a brief moment I’ve always had to wonder where exactly the device has […]
Lyft is now allowing third-party developers to build on its platform, starting with Facebook Messenger today. Uber opened its API to third-party developers more than 18 months ago, announcing a partner integration with Facebook Messenger in December, which allowed Messenger users to order or schedule an Uber and let their friends know they are on their way via […]
BlackBerry-loving device clutchers are facing a tricky choice if they wish to continue to interact with their friends: WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook Messenger all hit the “unfriend” button on the struggling phone maker’s latest operating system, BlackBerry 10. Facebook-owned WhatsApp made a hesitant and half-hearted debut on the BlackBerry platform three years ago, and announced at […]
Snapchat bought Looksery to supercharge its animated selfie filters, and now Facebook has made an image filtering acquisition of its own to keep up the messaging pace. Today, the company confirmed that it has bought Masquerade, like Looksery an app that adds fantastical filters to your smartphone-generated images, but this time focused on video. The startup (written […]
Google today announced that it is joining the Open Compute Project (OCP), a five-year-old project founded by Facebook and a number of other companies that aims to drive IT infrastructure development forward through open source hardware. For Facebook, for example, this has meant open sourcing how it builds some of its servers and other data center hardware. Over […]
Zuck announced last month that Facebook would be bringing the company’s 360 dynamic streaming to Gear VR to improve experiences. Now, the company is giving users a crazy amount of personalized content to check out with direct Facebook integration. Oculus announced today that the Oculus Video app on Gear VR would be incorporating a new Facebook video […]