Technology News - Facebook Messenger introduced 6-screen group video chat with selfie masks

Youngster app sensation Houseparty will get some opposition as fb Messenger is launching its personal break up-display institution video chat characteristic. Six users can seem in break up-display at the time and don Snapchat-style selfie mask, while 50 general can concentrate and communicate over voice while sending textual content, stickers, emojis, and GIFs.

The function should make a Messenger a place to “livechill” with friends instead of only a manner to send texts to alternate more utilitarian statistics or plan logistics. as opposed to simply popping in to fire off messages, you may cling out for extended periods on the app. facebook frames it as “perfect for the ones spontaneous moments in which text just isn’t enough”.

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group video chat starts rolling out worldwide on iOS, Android, and net, these days, although Android will have to wait for the MSQRD-powered selfie mask that might not ever come to computing device. It’s unfastened on wireless however widespread statistics expenses will practice on cell connections.

We’ve been waiting for this launch due to the fact Messenger launched one-on-one video calling in April 2015 and institution audio calling a yr later. 245 million humans make video calls on Messenger each month already, so this option ought to see speedy adoption.

The release makes Messenger the first famous western messaging app with organization video chat. It’s controlled to overcome FaceTime/iMessage, Google Duo, and Snapchat to the punch. Messaging pioneer WeChat brought it a year in the past. WhatsApp driven video calls final month, and may handle companies video thru Booyah. [Correction: WhatsApp lacks a native group video chat feature.] Google’s disregarded Hangouts app released a lot of these functions returned in 2013, however it hasn’t grow to be a middle area for textual content messaging, making it extra of a specialty app amongst Google’s fragmented conversation family.

facebook-organization-video-chatUS teens is probably maximum familiar with the format from the recent rise of Houseparty, the brand new app from the makers of Meerkat. We profiled Houseparty’s climb to one.2 million daily customers because it will become a laid-back “livechill” organization opportunity to laborious performances on live broadcasting apps like fb live. It’s in view that in brief climbed into the pinnacle 5 iOS apps and raised $50 million led by Sequoia.

Messenger group video chat works a touch in another way, but with a similar design. in place of absolutely logging into an ever-gift video chat room that notifies buddies like on Houseparty, you deliberately select pals or a group textual content thread to ask to a video call.

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once in, as much as four Messenger customers can share huge slices of the display screen, even as Houseparty comprises eight. between 4 and six callers, the Messenger display switches to a gallery layout, with whoever is speaking taking over the majority of the screen with little thumbnails of all and sundry else at the lowest. And every body beyond the first 6 up to 50 callers will handiest be able to listen, communicate, and ship content however gained’t seem in the video gallery.

by means of embracing institution video chat, Messenger becomes more of a communication destination in preference to only a sporadically used device. in conjunction with its energetic Now characteristic, we should see it becoming greater of its own full-fledged actual-time social network, whilst fb proper becomes a hub for ingesting existing content material.

Technology News - Apple Unveils Design Book With 450 Photos Chronicling 20 Years of Products

Apple has just announced a hardbound book that compiles 450 photographs chronicling all the products that the company has made in the past. This book has been released to commemorate co-founder Steve Jobs, and it represents Apple's journey since its foundation days.

The book is titled 'Designed by Apple in California' and it comes in two sizes - the smaller one with dimensions 10.20x12.75-inch is priced starting at $199 (roughly Rs. 13,500), while the large hardbound book with dimensions 13x16.25-inch is priced starting at $299 (roughly Rs. 20,300). The design of the book is sparse at best, and it contains just Apple product photographs lined up in ascending order one page after the other.

In the book's foreword, Design Chief Jon Ive explains, "While this is a design book, it is not about the design team, the creative process or product development. It is an objective representation of our work that, ironically, describes who we are. It describes how we work, our values, our preoccupations and our goals. We have always hoped to be defined by what we do rather than by what we say. We strive, with varying degrees of success, to define objects that appear effortless. Objects that appear so simple, coherent and inevitable that there could be no rational alternative."

While it's rather odd of a company to boast of its own achievements, Apple is considered as the pinnacle of success when it comes to design and consumer products. Its evolution in design is worth being documented, but monetised? That's another debate altogether. Ive claims that this gathering of product designs in one book, will give a huge understanding and learning of how products evolved over the years, and be a rich resource for design students in the future.

In any case, "Designed by Apple in California" is available on the company website in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the UK and the US, and in select Apple Stores.

WhatsApp Suspends Giving Facebook European User Data

WhatsApp has temporarily suspended giving parent company Facebook information about users in Europe for ad targeting, responding to concerns there over privacy, a source close to the matter said Tuesday.

Conversations with officials in Europe over the past few months resulted in the social network deciding to only tapping into WhatsApp user data there for purposes such as fighting spam, according to the source.

The break was described as an effort to give regulators time to share privacy concerns and for Facebook to consider ways to address them.

German data protection authorities in September cited privacy concerns when they blocked Facebook from collecting subscriber data from WhatsApp there.

"It has to be (the users') decision whether they want to connect their account with Facebook," Hamburg's Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Johannes Caspar said at the time.

"Facebook has to ask for their permission in advance."

WhatsApp announced in August that it would begin sharing data with Facebook, in a bid to allow better targeted advertising and to combat spam on the platform.

Users of the instant messenger were given the ability to opt out of sending information to Facebook through settings in WhatsApp's applications on smartphones.

European data protection group G29 formally expressed its concerns at the end of October.

The G29 sent letters asking Facebook and WhatsApp to stop sharing data until appropriate legal safeguards were in place.

The sharing of WhatsApp user information with Facebook went beyond what subscribers consented to in the original terms of service, the G29 reasoned.

Facebook bought WhatsApp about two years ago in a deal valued about $19 billion.

In mid-September, the European Commission recommended tighter privacy and security requirements for services including WhatsApp and Microsoft-owned video calling service Skype, saying they should be regulated more like traditional telecoms.

Under the proposal, the commission would require companies like WhatsApp or Skype to offer emergency-calling services when customers dial traditional phone numbers as well as obey stricter privacy rules.

Technology News - This is why Snapchat didn’t give Spectacles to techies

If you want to make something cool, don’t give it to geeks first. Google Glass learned that the hard way.

Despite Snapchat’s best efforts, Robert Scoble still got a hold of a pair of the Spectacles camera glasses. He’s the enthusiastic tech blogger above who shot a nude selfie wearing Google Glass in the shower that came to embody the gadget’s cursed brand. He even admits to me that it was smart that Snap Inc didn’t send him a pair.

A SpectaScobles selfie was the exact opposite of Snapchat’s plan. That’s why it didn’t deliver any review units of Spectacles to bloggers, or send them to tech celebrities who usually get early beta access to new products.

If it did, that would have forged a perception of Spectacles as a serious device meant to be painstakingly reviewed instead of casually played with as they should be. And it would have positioned them for serious adults and early adopters, instead of the typical teens that make up Snapchat’s core user base.

So instead, it suddenly dropped a goofy vending machine full of Spectacles on a beach boardwalk in LA, near a national park in Big Sur, California, and a roadside tourist trap off Route 61 near Tulsa, Oklahoma. Snapchat lovers scrambled to get there quick and stand in long lines in hopes of scoring a pair.

There are several reasons this was brilliant:

Artificial Scarcity – People love exclusivity, but with an air of egalitarianism. By not openly selling them online or in a permanent brick-and-mortar store, and instead making their availability extremely limited, somewhat random, and only for those willing to stand in line, their perceived value skyrocketed. Sure, people are selling them on eBay for huge markups at $800 to $2000 dollars. But the point was anyone with $130 and some luck could don the glasses.

Geographic Clustering – Snapchat itself blew up in LA high schools, becoming a hit with a densely interconnected group of teens long before the press picked up on the phenomenon. Facebook actually started quite similarly, only being available at a few elite colleges like Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford. Spectacles were also launched like this. Beyond making everyone else a bit jealous, it limited the chance of someone being the only person in their area using the product. For Snapchat and Facebook, that meant people actually had friends to use the app with. And for Spectacles, it means there will still be hype left to exploit when they hit the east coast and abroad.

Buying As An Experience – When was the last time the acquisition of a product felt as momentous as owning the product itself, and that moment wasn’t annoying? Sure lots of people stayed up late to order their Apple Watch and tweet what configuration they got, though I wouldn’t call that fun. People got excited about their place in the waitlist to use the Mailbox email app, yet the eventual rollout was anti-climactic. But the googly-eyed Snapbot vending machine, dropped in scenic locations, with an augmented reality try-on screen, got almost as much coverage as the videos you make with Spectacles.

Snapchat isn’t the only one realizing big, flashy press conferences and early access for journalists aren’t the only way to release a product.

Facebook cut back on glitzy launch events following one it threw for Facebook Home, which immediately flopped. And after Sean Parker’s video app Airtime bumbled its 2012 launch extravaganza with broken demos featuring celebrities like Jim Carrey, its 2016 relaunch had no event attached.

Snap Inc CEO wearing Spectacles, shot by famous photographer Karl Lagerfeld for the WSJ Magazine

And poor Google Glass. It tried to normalize wearing a computer on your face by handing it to the least fashionable people around, bloggers and app makers. It needed people to look cool wearing it, or at least not super weird, before anyone cared what the reviews said and the apps did. That’s why the first memorable photos of Spectacles weren’t shot by Scoble, but by famous fashion photographer Karl Lagerfeld.

Scoble concludes that the Spectacles Snapbots “make a lot more sense than the way Google rolled out Google Glass to developers and nerds.”

“Anti-smartphone” Light Phone runs into delays

For people who feel that we are a little bit too connected these days, Kickstarter project Light Phone was promising a respite. It was scheduled to ship in May this year, but has seen a number of setbacks. This week, the company issued a statement. It says that while it missed its goal, it hopes to start shipping late this month.

Light Phone’s goal was to be the opposite of a smartphone. Including a 2G SIM card and the ability to take and make calls only, the phone aimed to have three weeks worth of battery life on a single charge.

Tiny, pretty, and with a three-week battery life. What’s not to love?

The company suggests “A few limitations in our initial user experience goals due to some iOS restrictions” is the reason the device is shipping late, but the company has received some criticism for how it has handled its Kickstarter campaign, too. It hasn’t posted any public updates since August last year, instead opting to post updates exclusively to its campaign backers. Not a big problem for backers, of course, but a bit iffy to those of us who were following the company’s progress from the sidelines.

The company came under fire for only offering a dated cell technology for the telephony side of the phone, suggesting that relying on 2G may have been a poor solution. In some countries, the 2G network is scheduled to be switched off soon. “Australian 2G is being switched off on 1st December 2016,” one backer writes, referring to the first round of switch-flicking during a 9-month shutdown process of 2G networks down under. The Light Phone company, in turn, offered to refund backers in countries where the phones would no longer be usable.

When the Light Phone was first announced about 18 months ago, it seemed like a novel and interesting idea. At $100 per device, it’s undoubtedly cool, but the device is also entering a spectacularly competitive space. You can pick up a no-name quad-band phone for a seventh of the price, and most carriers will let you turn off SMS functionality altogether, if you feel passionate about only receiving phone calls. That raises the question; who is the Light Phone actually for?

I look forward to trying the Light Phone out and learning what it feels like to live a life without fending off the barrage of social media notifications. Realistically, however, if this was a problem someone was passionate about solving, they’d have found a way of turning off the notifications or get a no-features burner phone already.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the design and the general concept, but it can’t be denied that creating a phone is a complicated process. On top of that, the types of radios used in mobile phones is heavily regulated throughout the world. The icing on the “hmm, is this gonna work” cookie: in telecoms R&D and manufacturing, a $400k budget (the amount the company raised from Kickstarter) to bring a product to market is an incredibly daunting prospect.

Either way, Light Phone is an incredibly inspiring company; it takes some serious focus and dedication to bring a complex product in this space from cocktail napkin to brick-and-mortar shops. The company is bringing a fresh pair of eyes to the humble mobile phone, and I’ll be cheering them on from the sidelines.