Apple’s iTunes App Store is home to over 1.5 million apps and Google Play hosts over 2 million, but the number of apps that actually get installed and used on consumers’ devices is still quite small. We already knew that people only interacted with a small handful of third-party apps on a regular basis, and now, according to a new study on mobile app usage, we learn that about one… Read More
Facebook’s artificial intelligence systems now report more offensive photos than humans do, marking a major milestone in the social network’s battle against abuse, the company tells me. AI could quarantine obscene content before it ever hurts the psyches of real people. Facebook’s success in ads has fueled investments into the science of AI and machine vision that could give… Read More
Apple’s Thunderbolt Display, first introduced in the summer of 2011, may be getting a refresh at WWDC, if inventory shortages at retail stores are any indication. Just try getting one at your local Apple store — dozens of locations near me are “ship to store” only, suggesting (as is often the case before a refresh) that stock has not been replenished or even, as a… Read More
Microsoft just dropped the price of its gaming console. The Xbox One now costs $299 in the U.S. with a 500GB hard drive, or €299 in Europe. For $319, you get a 1TB hard drive. And bundles also get a $50 price cut. Interestingly, this news comes right before E3. Microsoft is set to announce a new, slimmer Xbox One. Rumor has it Read More
Instagram this morning officially announced the launch of its tools for business users, including new business profiles, analytics, and the ability to turn Instagram posts into ads directly from the Instagram app itself. The launch comes following a series of leaks and reports of the tools’ imminent launch, and largely confirms details we already knew – like how the profiles would… Read More
Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube, Microsoft as well as the European Commission unveiled a new code of conduct to remove hate speech in less than 24 hours across these social media platforms. The EU has ramped up efforts leading to this code of conduct following the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris. Read More
Facebook, Twitter, Google’s YouTube, Microsoft as well as the European Commission unveiled a new code of conduct to remove hate speech in less than 24 hours across these social media platforms. The EU has ramped up efforts leading to this code of conduct following the recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris. Read More
Tor users are currently being served DuckDuckGo search results by default. Read More
Imagine that you are lead strategist for the Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump campaign (take your pick). Your job is to maximize voter turnout in November. You hypothesize that more people would vote if doing so were fun. If your campaign could turn rallies and voting into a game, you’d drive more people to the polls, right? Not exactly. Read More
Google was caught by surprise. Last week, nearly a hundred employees of France’s equivalent of the IRS (Direction générale des finances) raided Google’s office in Paris for a tax noncompliance investigation. And French financial prosecutor Éliane Houlette <a… Read More
When Google bought bebop Technologies last fall for $348 million, it got more than a stealthy startup. It also landed Diane Greene as executive vice president of Google Cloud Enterprise and that perhaps was the bigger prize. Greene brought with her years of industry experience having co-founded and been CEO at VMware for a decade, building it into a virtualization powerhouse. In fact, under… Read More
Branded content was already becoming more attractive to many marketers and publishers trying to navigate the shoals of the online media ecosystem. Now, thanks to Facebook, it’s set to really take off. I think this sector will grow quickly, and in some interesting new directions. Read More
Livestreams start boring because broadcasters don’t want to begin the real action until more people have tuned in. That can take a few minutes, even with streams being rapidly distributed via push notifications, tweets, and the News Feed. But by that time, the initial audience may have bounced, and the recorded replay won’t entice viewers later. Facebook Live videos auto-play… Read More
I’m writing this from a slightly saddened perspective, revisiting my favorite SNES RPGs and realizing something: I’ve been spoiled by modern UX design. The sentiment is pretty universal. Read More
The Omen X by HP VR PC is nothing if not compelling. The company showed off a picture of the concept earlier today and let slip a smattering of details around the backpack PC but not much else. No press release, no product page. It was a fairly usual announcement for HP. The hardware company’s VP of Consumer PC & Solutions Mike Nash agreed to shed a bit more light on the upcoming… Read More
If you didn’t already know the jury’s decision in Oracle’s long-running lawsuit against Google, you wouldn’t have been able to guess it from looking at either company’s legal team yesterday. Moments after the verdict was read, both sets of high-powered intellectual property lawyers huddled up and spoke softly, without any outward signs that Oracle had just lost… Read More
A San Francisco startup whose technology can turn any video game into a tournament played for cash prizes, Skillz, has a new Chief Product Officer, ex-Electronic Arts’ mobile vice president Bill Mooney. Skillz quietly brought Mooney on in February this year. Earlier, at EA Mobile, he managed teams that were responsible for games in the Simpsons and Star Wars franchise. And before that,… Read More
Google launched an updated version of its Google app for iOS today. Typically, these are minor updates, but today’s version brings a couple of interesting new features to the app. The most immediately useful of these is the addition of support for fast-loading AMP pages to the app. Google previously teased this launch, which follows AMP integration into Google News and Search earlier… Read More
This much-talked about Instagram photo wasn’t the only product of President Obama’s recent visit to Vietnam. The Southeast Asian country also cut access to Facebook while the head of the U.S. was on its soil. Read More
Facebook’s advertising network is already a colossal business — it helped the social network bring in $5.38 billion in revenue during its most recent quarter alone — but it is about to take a step towards become the internet’s advertising exchange after announcing that it will start showing ads to non-users across the web. Read More
Apple Pay may only be available in a handful of countries right now, but the iPhone maker is working hard to extend the footprint of its digital payment services into new parts of the world. Read More
Minecraft, a game that skyrocketed to unprecedented levels of popularity among all ages because of its open-ended gameplay, infinite worlds, and limitless possibilities for creation and collaboration, is getting a deathmatch mode. Read More
Software developers can breathe a massive sigh of relief — a jury found today that Google’s implementation of 37 Java APIs in Android qualified as fair use. “Today’s verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community, and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages… Read More
Here is some news you don’t read every day: Microsoft and Facebook today announced that they are teaming up to build a subsea cable across the Atlantic that will connect Virginia Beach, Virginia, with Bilbao, Spain. The companies say the so-called MAREA cable will allow them to “meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services… Read More
Live streaming platform and gamer community Twitch is today launching a new feature that it hopes will help spread its content further afield. The company has now debuted Clips, a feature that lets website viewers quickly and easily clip a 30-second portion video from others’ live streams. These clips automatically include links back to the original live broadcaster, which eliminates… Read More
