Category: Tech news

 Uber released its first-ever transparency report today, following in the footsteps of other major technology companies and detailing the kinds of information it shares about riders and drivers with the U.S. government. Between July and December 2015, Uber disclosed information about 14 million users to law enforcement and regulatory agencies, according to its report. Most of the data —… Read More

 According to a new study published by the data science team at Hired, a jobs marketplace for tech workers, the average female candidate sets her expected salary at $14,000 less than men. Relatedly or not, 69 percent of the time, men receive higher salary offers than women for the same job title at the same company. (On average, employers pay women 3 percent less for the same roles, though… Read More

 Facebook today launched the Facebook Profile Expression Kit, which gives third-party developers a way to publish videos recorded on their apps as profile pictures on Facebook. The service was announced at the company’s annual developer conference, f8, in San Francisco today. Videos that are recorded on third-party services can now be used as profile videos with the new tools. Details are… Read More

 Marfeel, a startup that helps publishers adapt to mobile, now supports publishing Instant Articles on Facebook. That might not sound like a big breakthrough — basically, it just means Marfeel can repackage articles for Facebook’s new, native publishing format. However, it illustrates today’s mobile strategy means much more than just creating a mobile website or app.… Read More

 Messenger is all about bots now. As expected, Facebook unveiled the Send and Receive API at its F8 conference. It lets you create bots for Messenger to search for things and interact with businesses. But what if you want to use machine learning and create more complex scenarios? Meet the Bot Engine, Facebook’s more powerful bot framework. Read More

 Facebook Live could take live video to a new level of popularity. Now third-party developers will get a chance to participate. Today at Facebook’s F8 developer conference, the company said it’s releasing an API for developers who want to plug into Facebook Live, and it also announced the first partners — including Livestream (maker of the Mevo camera), BuzzFeed, Vidpresso… Read More

 While chatbots might be the highlight of today’s F8 conference, Facebook is also releasing a slew of tools for developers that help them build, grow and monetize their apps. Despite Facebook shutting down its Parse development platform, it’s still adding new widgets, buttons and APIs.
Account Kit is a new plug-in for apps that lets users sign up with their phone number or email… Read More

 At Facebook’s F8 developers conference this morning, the company shared some interesting metrics related to the traction and growth of its popular messaging applications, Messenger and WhatsApp. One especially notable figure CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled was that Facebook’s two messaging services, when combined, saw more activity on a daily basis than SMS (traditional texting).… Read More

 How can Facebook get more 360-degree video in the News Feed and VR content on Oculus? By inventing its own virtual reality camera from scratch and open sourcing it so people can build their own and start shooting. Today at F8, Facebook revealed the “Surround 360”, a 17-lens 3D VR camera that looks like a UFO on a stick and requires almost zero laborious post-production work,… Read More

 An upgrade to Twitter’s Moments feature, originally designed to offer users a curated “best of Twitter” experience, now turns Moments into a source for tweetable playlists. Through an ongoing partnership with music streaming service SoundCloud, Twitter Moments will now allow curators to create and share Moments containing SoundCloud’s audio cards – that is,… Read More

 Facebook will now allow businesses to deliver automated customer support, e-commerce guidance, content and interactive experiences through chatbots. By providing utility through its huge developer and business ecosystem, Facebook could boost loyalty with Messenger, one-up SMS and keep up with chat competitors like Kik, Line and Telegram that have their own bot platforms.
This confirms… Read More

 Anyone who cares about display quality in their handheld devices has probably come across DisplayMate reviews, and the latest product to be evaluated by Ray Soneira is the new iPad Pro 9.7″. Spoiler: “It is by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested.” Read More

 I’m impatient to see breakthroughs in cars. I have high expectations for what Apple will do and respect for what Tesla has already done. I agree with Peter Thiel on the we-were-promised-jet-cars-but-got-140-characters thing, and with Larry Page who worries that Silicon Valley doesn’t throw the ball down the field enough. Read More

 Technology has transformed how we work, communicate and travel. In contrast, modern digital technology has not yet transformed financial services. Open data is the key to change in this sector of the economy. The time has come for the financial services industry to join the open data revolution. Read More

 People often ask me about the impact of 3D printing on jobs. Will the technology be a job creator or destroyer? The short answer is, it will take more jobs than it makes — and 3D printing is not alone. Technology will eventually make work obsolete. Our big problems are going to be figuring out how to survive the transition, then figuring out what to do with all that free time. Read More