Facebook has had its own Messenger app for mobile devices for nearly 8 years now, but it was five years ago they made one of the oddest and most criticized moves in the company's history.
In 2014, Facebook removed the Messenger function from its core Facebook app, and after that you had to download a separate app if you wanted to chat with your Facebook friends inside Messenger.
Many probably predicted doom and gloom for Messenger after that, but it has went on to increase its reach to over a billion people. However, it hasn't managed to gain as much traction as another messaging app owned by Facebook, WhatsApp.
Now it seems that Facebook is planning on bringing chat back to Facebook's own app. According to unreleased app feature guru Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook update is bringing Messenger functionality back to the Facebook app.
In pictures posted on Twitter, Wong shows that the Messenger icon in the top right corner of the Facebook app would open a new Chat section of the app instead of the separate Messenger app.
However, Facebook isn't planning. at least not yet, to move Messenger entirely back under its core app, since the Chat feature is fairly limited. There's no file transfer option nor is there voice or video calls.
Disney has been working on a streaming platform for its wide-ranging content portfolio from children's programming to Marvel franchises and more.
Late last year it finally revealed that it was going to launch their streaming service, Disney+, in 2019. Today Disney has confirmed the launch date and given us some other dearly needed details about the service.
Disney+ will be launched on November 12 and will cost $6.99 a month or if you commit to a year's subscription, you'll get a little cheaper at $69.99. That gives you access to Disney+ content in 4K and HDR on multitude of platforms including game consoles, smart TVs and mobile devices.
The service will obviously offer tons of content for children, but other Disney-owned brands include The Simpsons, National Geographics, Star Wars, and Marvel. New exclusive shows and movies include the likes WandaVision, The Sandlot, Lady and the Tramp, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, High School Musical The Series, and The Phineas and Ferb Movie.
Already previously Disney has shared information about Star Wars spinoffs, including The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a Rogue One series with Cassian Andor.
Disney also revealed that it will likely be bundled with other services, such as ESPN+ and Hulu.
SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time since its demonstration flight last year, and this time landed all three boosters.
This was also the first time that the so-called "block V" Falcon Heavy launched, referring to the version of the side boosters compared to the demonstration flight last February. The mission launched the Arabsat-6A communications satellite owned by Arabsat, a Saudi Arabian firm, and built by Lockheed Martin. It is heading for a highly eliptical Geostationary Transfer Orbit.
The demonstration flight of the Falcon Heavy last year was a success in that it demonstrated that the rocket could deliver its payload (a Tesla Roadster atop a platform), but the shot that received the most media attention was the synchronized landing of the two side boosters on land. It wasn't a perfect demonstration however, as the center core crashed into the sea right beside the automonous drone ship meant to be its landing pad.
Last night, SpaceX nailed the landing on all three boosters: the two side boosters lansing upright at land on two landing zones, and the the center core landing on the automonous drone ship "Of course I still love you."
The video quality from the Falcon Heavy from launch to landings was also noticeably better than previous launches, though the vibrations on the drone ship caused the video feed to freeze before the center core landed.
Streaming services are killing the traditional TV industry slowly, although not as slowly as cable companies would like, and surely. Services like Sling TV and YouTube TV are gaining traction as people are cutting cables.
Customers are tired of three figure cable costs, and for a good reason. You can get very adequate channel selection from online TV for half the price, or less.
Now YouTube TV has decided to increase the price, though. The reason behind that is the recent addition of new channels. YouTube TV now costs $10 more but has eight new channels.
$49.99/mo now buys you Discover Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and MotorTrend, in addition to the 70+ other channels.
However, the new price gets awfully close to what cable companies offer you. In 2017, YouTube TV offered 50 channels for $35. Last year the price went up to $39.99 as they added more channels, and now the $10 price hike takes is one notch closer to no-thanks-land.
Spectrum for example offers a 120 channel lineup, including the likes of Discover Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, and Animal Planet, for $44.99/mo. One thing YouTube TV, however, has going for it still is unlimited cloud DVR as well as YouTube Originals.
Apple's supremacy in the music distribution world ended as downloading music became obsolete to streaming it, and as paying per song or album lost to the subscription model.
The company still has the infrastructure of an undeniably decrepit and inadequate iTunes, which you use to control much more than your tunes. Apparently finally now in Cupertino they've realized that things need to change.
9to5Mac reports that Apple is planning on splitting iTunes into smaller and more specific apps within macOS, and they even have some leaked icons to prove it. The change in expected to happen with the next macOS update, which is due in the summer.
According to the report, iTunes will be split into Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. There's also a new Books app in the works for macOS.
While iTunes is being stripped of most of its functionality, it won't be dead quite yet. Apple is still keeping iTunes for synchronization purposes.
Perhaps this will save iTunes from dying altogether, although a name change to iSync would probably be appropriate.
To end the year, streaming giant Netflix released their first ever interactive movie. For Netflix Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a trial of sorts, which confirmed the concept a success. Others are now following Netflix's lead.
Just yesterday Netflix released their new interactive TV show, You vs. Wild, where the viewer guides survival expert Bear Grylls through survival situations. Now it has been reported, that YouTube is also bringing interactive content to their platform.
YouTube has previously experimented with interactive advertisement but the interactive programming is a completely different beast. They are also planning to use the interactive elements in both unscripted as well as scripted programming.
According to Bloomberg, YouTube is working on several projects under its new interactive programming unit.
At this point there's not much other details but fortunately we might not have to wait long for more information. YouTube is announcing new content in New York in a couple of weeks.
Amazon's Echo is considered the first smart speaker that sparked the interest of Google, Apple, Samsung, and others to pursue this new type of AI enabled home tech.
Alexa has thus become nearly an eponym of voice assistants, and is referred often in both good and bad of what the technology has to potentially offer.
However, the success of Alexa's listening skills is more than super advanced machine learning algorithms and computer AI. In fact, Bloomberg's report tells that Amazon has employees all over the world listening to Alexa conversations to help enhance Alexa.
The employees listen to commands given by Alexa users, and while Amazon would deny that they listen to actual conversations or the content, they do record private conversations with customers to improve their service.
Not only are Alexa commands recorded, but according to Bloomberg's sources they also hear noises that aren't meant for Alexa's eletronic ears at all, including things like singing in the shower, children crying for help.
Some employees have reported hearing noises that they've suspected were part of a sexual assault. Amazon's internal policies however dictate that they shouldn't intervene.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in London today, shortly after Ecuador removed his asylum status.
Assage has been hiding in Ecuador's embassy in London, UK since 2012 when he applied for a asylum status with Ecuador. Country granted him the asylum status, but UK stated that if he moves out of the embassy area, he will be arrested immediately. Thus, he has stayed within the embassy for the past seven years.
Ecuador removed his asylum status today, stating that Assange has breached international laws and should therefor lose his refuge status. Shortly after, he was arrested on warrant issued by London's Westminster magistrates court, issued in June, 2012, when he failed to surrender to the court.
Assange has refused to leave the embassy, stating that he would be extradited to the United States if he'd leave the embassy. In United States, he is likely to face charges related to WikiLeaks data leaks about U.S., including the leak of diplomatic cables back in 2010.
Apple has strategy with the iPhone has been to have a bigger update biennially and every other year you have an S version update.
This has been called the dichotomy between an evolutionary and a revolutionary update. This year it's once again the time for Apple to revolutionize the iPhone once more.
According to sources, Apple will be introducing a triple camera setup first time ever on an iPhone. Now reports from Japanese website Macotakara suggest that Apple is making the regular iPhone larger, or at least the display on it bigger.
Rumors have it that both iPhone 11 and 11 Max, or whatever they will be called, are going to feature triple cameras in the back and a big OLED panels in the front. The Max version is said to be 6.5 inches just like last year but the regular iPhone's display is going from 5.8 to 6.1 inches.
According to the same "trustworthy source", the iPhones are not going to adopt USB-C charging connector yet, unlike the iPad Pro, but they will charge much faster with the new 18 W charger.
Valve, the developer of online game platform Steam and upcoming game Half-Life 3, has been under investigation by the European Commission for couple years now.
Since early 2017, the regulatory branch of EU has been suspecting that Valve has violated European Union's antitrust laws by providing goods with geo-blocking.
Now the commission has delivered formal letter against the defendants in what's called the Statements of Objections. Alongside Valve are five game developers who are co-defendants in the case.
According to European Commission Valve, Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax have been selling games, or more specifically Steam activation keys, that are only valid in some EU member states. According to EU rules games should be valid in all EU member states.
The idea behind the country-specific codes was that they would be cheaper in EU countries with lower GDP, mostly in Eastern Europe, while in richer Western European countries games would cost more. This is against the EU rules on digital markets.
Countries in which codes were sold in included Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania.
Now Valve and the developers can defend their case to the commission after which they determine whether they still believe the companies have broken the rules.
Recent news about Apple's delays in 5G development for iPhones has sparked questions about whether Apple's semiconductor deals are set in stone.
Apple is not expected to ship a 5G enabled iPhone this year perhaps due to their sole chip partner Intel not being able to produce one.
Intel is hoping they'll get their XMM 8160 5G modem ready for Apple in early 2020 but earlier delays in the product line are reportedly eroding Apple's trust in Intel. This opens up question about other manufacturers.
This includes the likes of Samsung, MediaTek, and even Qualcomm, whom Apple have been battling against in the court recently because of several patent disputes.
Court cases don't seem to stop Qualcomm from effectively proposing to supply 5G modems to Apple. The company's president Cristiano Amon has told Axios that Apple "has their number."
Apple is said to be developing their first in-house modem which is expected to be the 5G modem likely heading to 2021 or 2022 iPhones. However, at that point its too late to enter the 5G competition, and to get there earlier they'll need at least one generation of externally designed modems.
Netflix has supported Apple's AirPlay ever since 2013, but just recently dropped the support for the feature. Feature has allowed users to watch Netflix on devices such as Apple TV.
Now, that Apple has expanded the AirPlay to also 3rd party products, under a licensing deal, Netflix has decided to drop the support for it.
Netflix states that the very reason is they want to certify each Netflix-capable device on their own. With AirPlay in its current form, this is no longer possible, as the protocol doesn't let Netflix know which device it is using. Thus, the experience could be subpar with some devices - and Netflix wont allow that risk.
Netflix has also dropped the option for Apple users to pay for their Netflix subscription via Apple's App Store, forcing users to pay directly to Netflix. This - and Apple TV+ service - have raised tensions between the two tech giants.
Tomorrow, 6th of April, 2019, marks a day when millions of navigation systems all over the world may go haywire, as the so-called Y2K19 bug hits them.
Satellite navigation systems (using GPS) that have been sold as recently as 2014 or so, might go nuts due a bug that makes them believe it is year 1999 again. This could cause serious problems, not only to people using GPS for navigation, but for various infrastructure that relies on GPS satellite data.
The bug is caused by the fact that GPS tracks time by weeks, as weird as it might sound. And the "week zero" has been set to year 1980, the year when the first parts of the GPS system went online. And the system was designed to allow the week numbering to go as up as 1,024 weeks. And we'll reaching that number, again, tomorrow. At that point, the counters will reset to zero again, thinking it must be year 1999 again. As you might have calculated, yes, we have already resetted the counter once, back in 1999. But back then, navigation devices were a rarity rather than a norm.
Most experts don't expect serious problems to occur because of this, but major manufacturers, such as Dutch TomTom and Garmin have all issued emergency patches to their devices - at least in TomTom's case, even to pretty ancient devices, too. Companies have reached out to their product owners and asked them to update their devices. At least in TomTom's case, the update is available to most of its old models - and the update is free. Garmin states that its devices should behave normally, although the dates shown might be off.
Microsoft has announced that the next major Windows 10 feature update will be called Windows 10 May 2019 Update and as the name suggests, will start rolling out in next month.
The new feature update, known as version 1903 and codenamed "19H1" will be available in next week for those users who have signed up to be part of the Release Preview ring of Windows 10. Rest of us will see the update arriving sometime in May, depending on each user's geographical location and various other factors. As always, Microsoft tries to balance the roll out so that not all users will get the update at the same date.
Compared to previous feature updates, the May update will be very small one, at least for regular user. The update focuses mostly on improving existing Windows 10 features, the stability of the operating system and fine-tuning some OS elements.
Most visible changes will be the new "light theme", some improvements to the Start menu and the Action Center. For full list of changes, check this list.
Netflix will increase its prices for U.S. users in May, 2019. The price hike will also affect those users in Latin American countries that are being charged in U.S. dollars.
Some of the new subscribers are already paying the increased price and some of the old users have already seen their prices rise to the new levels. However, the remaining subscription base will change to the new, increased price level in May.
The basic plan is rising from $7.99 to $8.99, the standard package from $10.99 to $12.99 and the premium plan, with UHD/4K streaming, will cost $15.99 instead of $13.99.
Netflix has been pumping money into its original content and is preparing to challenge the upcoming Disney subscription service, as well as Apple's new subscription service. Netflix poured $12 billion in content in 2018 and is expected to spend $15 billion this year on content.
Facebook has had its own Messenger app for mobile devices for nearly 8 years now, but it was five years ago they made one of the oddest and most criticized moves in the company's history.
Disney has been working on a streaming platform for its wide-ranging content portfolio from children's programming to Marvel franchises and more.
SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time since its demonstration flight last year, and this time landed all three boosters.
