Although the typical tactic for promoting a new product is to talk about it as much as possible, it looks like the reverse might also be true. Radiohead has been killing off their entire website and social networking online presence in the lead up to (what is suspected to be) …
Read More »Instagram tries to force namechange on anti-littering app
Much like companies like King believe they have the rights to certain words, Instagram is claiming that only it has the right to have applications with the ‘gram' moniker at their end. In an attempt to defend that right, it's demanding that a British run anti-littering app known as Littergram, …
Read More »Hilary Clinton trolls use Facebook reporting to down Sanders pages
As the American political party nominations build up to a frenzy on the road to the general election in November this year, the tactics of the various politicians and their supporters are turning nasty. Supporters of Hilary Clinton's bid for the democratic nomination abused the Facebook reporting system to have many of …
Read More »Facebook to take on Snapchat with in-development camera app
Ever since Snapchat turned down Facebook's $3 billion acquisition offer in mid-2013, the social network has been hankering for its own share of the Snapchat pie. Evidently it's now decided that: if you can't join them, beat them, as Facebook is said to be working on a photo sharing app …
Read More »Facebook’s social VR app lets you jump inside 360 degree images
In-case you haven't been following the VR scene particularly closely, it was shaken up quite violently in 2015, when Oculus VR was purchased by Facebook. While the parent firm has been rather quiet on its plans for the VR start up, now that the first consumer hardware is shipping (slowly), …
Read More »Facebook set to recruit army of chat bots for customer service
As much as companies have made great strides in improving customer service over the past few years, offering social media responses, live-chats on websites and more localised call centres, they're still far from perfect. To help improve that, Facebook is looking to recruit chat bots to answer more people's questions, …
Read More »Win a STEAM game of your choice this week
We have another little competition running today over on our Facebook page – the chance to win a STEAM game of your choice! There's no major catch, all you need to do is head over to our Facebook page and give an entertaining caption to the image below from Dark …
Read More »Oculus responds to Rift privacy policy concerns
When Oculus was first bought by Facebook, the reaction was fairly negative and while things have settled down a lot since then, recently the Oculus Rift began shipping and unfortunately, not everyone is happy with the Oculus privacy policy. The policy says that Oculus can collect user data ranging from …
Read More »First Oculus Rift CV1s have shipped, start arriving Monday
Three and a half years on from its initial Kickstarter campaign, the consumer version of the Oculus Rift headset has now begun shipping to consumers. Confirmed by CEO Brendan Iribe on Twitter, the first ones out the door will begin arriving on customers' doorsteps on Monday, the 28th. While that …
Read More »Facebook/Whatsapp to discontinue support for BlackBerry
At this point, BlackBerry is in a tricky position financially so in an attempt to win back some customers, the company launched its first Android smartphone. However, this has led to some companies, like WhatsApp and Facebook to presume that BlackBerry OS might be dead now, which is causing support …
Read More »Oculus digital platform now supports Facebook
Although the specifics of how Oculus VR's digital store and home-hub platform will work are still mostly unknown, we do know that it can support Facebook. Although unsurprising considering the social network is the parent company of the VR startup, this is something that could really separate Oculus' Rift headset …
Read More »Facebook will start paying more tax in the UK
Facebook, like other major tech firms in the UK is often accused of paying far too little corporation tax. In 2014, despite making more than £840 million through UK advertising sales, it paid just £4,300 for the entire year. That's set to change moving forward, as Facebook is changing its …
Read More »British prosecutors may charge trolls for making fake profiles
Prosecutors in England and Wales may soon have another charge they can rap arrested internet trolls with: creating fake social media accounts. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is recommending that those charged with harassment of others online, also be charged for creating a fake persona to do so. The charge …
Read More »Facebook takes down Syrian groups selling ‘CIA’ weapons
Facebook is playing whack-a-mole with a number of specific groups on its social networking site that claim to be selling weapons in the Middle East. There's even a suggestion that they were supplied by agencies like the CIA. The pages offered everything from small arms to grenade launchers, with admins …
Read More »Gates, Zuckerberg stand with FBI in Apple phone hack case
More tech firms are picking sides in the ongoing battle between Tim Cook's Apple and the FBI over cracking iPhone security for the handset of one of the San Bernardino attackers. This time around though they're siding with the FBI, with both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft founder Bill …
Read More »Facebook to start showing ads in Messenger
It looks like Facebook will soon be monetizing its Messenger app with paid advertisements some time in the next few months. Facebook is currently distributing a document to business partners indicating that they will be able to send ad messages to customers directly starting this year though businesses will only …
Read More »Twitter growth stagnates, losses compound, shares tumble
The future of the Twitter social networking service is being called into question after it reported a lack of user growth throughout the fourth quarter of 2015. It also reported a loss of nearly $100 million, despite a near 50 per cent increase in revenue. This sent shares tumbling by …
Read More »Steroids are being quite brazenly sold through Facebook
As much effort as the police and other authorities put into stamping out the Silk Road darknet market, even going so far as to hand its convicted owner life in prison, not much seems to be being done about drug sales on Facebook. As part of a report by investigating …
Read More »Thai government wants Facebook to remove ‘harmful’ content
Officials from the Thailand's National Council for Peace and Order military government, are set to meet with executives from Facebook and Korean search provider, Line, in order to discuss censoring their sites. The content it wants removed without fail is anything that could be considered harmful to the monarchy, or …
Read More »Facebook makes its first billion dollar quarter profit
Despite being one of the world's most valuable companies for the best part of a decade, it's taken a long time for Facebook to earn the kind of money that matches its valuation. Still as advertising on it has improved and it's increased its usage to more than a billion …
Read More »WhatsApp to start sharing data with Facebook
While it is common knowledge at this point that Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, the company hasn't actually done much with the messenger app until recently. Just last week it was announced that WhatsApp would no longer require a yearly subscription and now, it seems that the app is …
Read More »Facebook’s Sports Stadium puts all your sports talk in one place
Although Facebook and Twitter definitely target different social networking activities, the latter certainly has the live-commenting on events down. Facebook may be looking to offer a competing service now though with its Sports Stadium, which brings together all of your friends and family, journalists and analysts to talk about sporting …
Read More »Court rules lawsuit against Oculus founder to go ahead
Today a US judge ruled that a lawsuit filed against Oculus co-founder, Palmer Luckey, will go ahead. The lawsuit comes from a company known as Total Recall Technologies, which employed Luckey in 2011 to build a head-mounted display, prior to the Oculus Rift Kickstarter in 2012. Total Recall Technologies claims …
Read More »WhatsApp is dropping its subscription and will be ad-free
It has almost been two years since Facebook purchased WhatsApp for a massive $19 billion but since then, the company hasn't really done anything with it or changed the way it operates at all. However, one big change is finally happening- WhatsApp is dropping its annual subscription entirely. WhatsApp's subscription …
Read More »Oculus Rift goes on sale for £530
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is now available for pre-order, priced at $600 (£530 inc. shipping the UK). This is vastly more than the originally projected $300-$350 cost for the consumer head mounted display (HMD), but we were warned previously by Palmer Luckey and several others involved in its …
Read More »Mark Zuckerberg wants to build AI to run his home
It looks like Mark Zuckerberg wants to try his hand at being Tony Stark as the Facebook CEO has set himself a goal of building artificial intelligence system to help run and control his home this year- Arnold Schwarzenegger even offered to be the voice of it. Zuckerberg set himself …
Read More »Mark Zuckerberg wants to make his life easier with a home A.I.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg often starts the year off with a particular challenge, one that is publicly announced near the start of it. While previously the founder has pledged to read more books or meet more people, in 2016 he wants to turn his attention to artificial intelligence, leveraging his …
Read More »Flash’s dead horse beaten again – Facebook just dropped it
Adobe's Flash Player is continuing its steady demise with another major blow to its usage: Facebook has now killed off all flash videos on its site. With more than eight billion views a day, the switchover to HTML 5 will see the number of flash videos watched every day immediatly decline …
Read More »Oculus VR now sending out CV1s, SDK 1.0 to launch-day developers
Oculus VR has known about virtual reality's chicken and egg problem since day one. Without games and experiences ready to play, nobody would buy a VR headset, but without VR headsets, nobody would develop them. It's assuaged that issue with developer kits over the past couple of years and to make sure …
Read More »Facebook to offer $15,000 subsidies to ease worker housing costs
Working for the big tech companies has a lot of advantages. Earlier this year Netflix, Adobe and a number of other firms announced that they now offered their employees unlimited parental leave following the birth of a child, as well as unlimited holiday allowance. Facebook is upping the game again, …
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