Facebook is holding Workshops for Developers in Nigeria,SA and Kenya this August

 

 Facebook will hold a series of developers workshops in three African cities – Lagos, Nairobi and Johannesburg this August.

The events will be split into three workshop streams namely a) Reaching your audience with Bots on Messenger b) Building fast and reliable login flows with Account Kit and c) Making your apps globally accessible with React Native.

Registration for these events is free but attendance is by invitation and it’s limited to 60 participants. The application deadline for all three cities is this Thursday, August 11, 2016 so if you’re interested in attending, register as soon as possible.

World’s Largest Aircraft Leaves its Hangar for the First time Today since its 10 years of Building

The world's largest aircraft, known fondly as the 'Flying Bum', left its hangar for the first time today. The world's largest aircraft made its first journey at 4am today.

 

Originally known as the Airlander 10, it was christened Martha Gwyn in March, in honour of the wife of the company's chairman
The Airlander 10, which cost £25million to build over 10 years, is 92 metres long and pumped with a million cubic feet of helium and has been converted from military to civilian use. The Airlander 10 (pictured) inched out of the hangar in Cardington, Bedfordshire.

Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

 

Image copyright Flickr

US internet firm Yahoo will be sold to American telecoms firm Verizon Communications for nearly $5bn (£3.8bn) in cash.

 

Yahoo will be combined with AOL, another faded internet star, which Verizon bought last year.
The deal does not include Yahoo's valuable stake in Chinese firm Alibaba.

The price tag for the deal is well below the $44bn Microsoft offered for Yahoo in 2008 or the $125bn it was worth during the dot.com boom.

Verizon said the deal for Yahoo's core internet business, which has more than a billion active users a month, would make it a global mobile media company.

MICROSOFT BUYS LINKEDIN FOR $26.2 BILLION

 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.  Getty Images/Mat Hayward

 

Microsoft is buying LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, the company announced on Monday.
Microsoft will pay $196 per share for the company.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of the social network for professionals, reporting directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Under the terms of the acquisition, LinkedIn will maintain its "distinct brand, culture, and independence" — similar to how Facebook handled its acquisition of WhatsApp — and Microsoft says LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and Weiner "both fully support" the purchase, with both boards signing off.

The deal is expected to be completed this calendar year.

Instagram's New Logo debut and is causing the Internet talking

 

Instagram’s new logo,  revealed May 11, debut. This new, updated design got many people talking.

 

(The New York Times called the resulting online explosion of strong opinions, jokes, GIFs and virtual hand-wringing a “freakout.”).

 

Gone was the leather-clad vintage camera icon Instagram since launch five years ago and in its place glowed an abstract but simple graphic of a camera laid over a color gradient taken from the 90’s. As a icon change the new one caters to the current web aesthetic — but the critics aren’t having it.

 

Tim Nudd of ADWEEK called it “a travesty” and he joined a chorus of others wondering if it could be changed back. The Guardian’s Hannah Jane Parkinson was equally unkind, describing it as if “the camera was murdered, and chalk was drawn around its body. Murdered at sundown.”

Google Designs Emojis Depicting Professional Women

                         

Image caption Google is suggesting 13 new emojis depicting women in a range of jobs 

               

Google engineers have designed a set of 13 emojis that they say better represent women in the world of work.The designs have been presented to the Unicode consortium, the body that approves and standardises emojis.

 

The team said that they hoped the samples would "empower young women (the heaviest emoji users) and better reflect the pivotal roles women play in the world".
 
The term - which means picture (e) and character (moji) in Japanese - was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.
 
The team of four Google employees cited a New York Times op-ed called "Emoji Feminism" as the motivation for its new designs.

Facebook just laid off about 40 people

                     

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Facebook told around 40 people late last week that they had 45 days to look for new roles within the company or else there would not be jobs left for them.

Those staffers were part of the account-management and sales teams within the company's "publisher ad-tech group."

That recently formed division works across several products, including the Facebook Audience Network that lets brands extend their Facebook ad campaigns on sites and apps other than Facebook, the LiveRail video supply-side platform, and Instant Articles.

The layoffs hit the LiveRail side of the division.

Mark Trefgarne, the former CEO of LiveRail, which Facebook bought for a reported $400 million to $500 million in July 2014, left the company on Friday. 

Facebook — which crushed all analyst expectations for its Q1 earnings on Wednesday — is letting staff go

Source:Business insider

Google's latest feature will help you learn new skills and practice hobbies

 

           

Google wants to help you learn yoga.The tech giant is launching a new feature for its Calendar app to help users practice hobbies and reach goals that they set themselves.

You can set a Goal — learn Spanish, say — and set a desired frequency (twice a week, perhaps) and time (evenings, for example). It will then automatically slot in events to your calendar reminding you to do this activity at a time when you don't already have any events.

It might schedule your weekly run for Wednesday if that's when you're normally free — but if you have a late meeting one week, it will automatically reschedule it for another time. Similarly, if the notification pops up but you can't do it right then, you can tap "Defer" (the way you'd hit Snooze on your alarm), and it will reschedule it for another available slot.

WhatsApp joins fight against Terrorism by switching encryption on for its billion users

 

According to a recent WhatsApp Blog post, end-to-end encryption will lock out cybercriminals, hackers, ‘oppressive regimes,’ and even WhatsApp officials to keep your data private.

 

Messages on the Facebook-owned service will only be visible to the person who has sent them, and the individuals on the receiving end.

The system works by using a ‘lock’ to secure messages between individuals or in a group chat.

 

This lock is paired with a distinct ‘key,’ which only the sender and the recipients will have.

Each message in the conversation will have its own unique lock and key, the website explains and the exchanges will occur automatically.

 

Users won’t have to turn on a particular setting to secure their messages – with the latest version of the app, end-to-end encryption will be an automatic feature.

‘We live in a world where more of our data is digitized than ever before,’ the blog post explains.

 

Google just announced a new service called Fiber Phone — here's how it works

Google

 

Google on Tuesday introduced Fiber Phone, a home-phone service that's part of Google Fiber, the company's broadband and TV service.

If you've used Google Voice, Google's app that provides select phone services, then many of Fiber Phone's features will be familiar to you. You'll get cheap international-calling options and be able to choose your own phone number, and your voicemails will be transcribed and texted to you. It also includes spam filtering and a "do not disturb" function.

Fiber Phone will be available only as a $10-per-month add-on to people who already have Google Fiber's internet service.

One of the world's most successful programmers has some surprising advice for success

Linus Torvalds has added to his status as one of the world's most famous programmers. (He's been known to hobnob with Hollywood stars at the Oscars.)

Torvalds invented Linux, during his college days,  the free operating system that today powers most of the world's computer servers (including the ones used by Google and Facebook), powers many of the world's fastest super computers and is the basis for Android,. 

He created it in 1991, famously launching it with a little message describing the software as a "a (free) operating system, just a hobby, won’t be big and professional."

How to find out what Google knows about you

 PHOTO: Google

 

The techno­logy we use on a daily basis has our every move record­ed ou may have come to accept that the technology we interact with on a daily basis has our every move recorded.

Your smartphone knows everywhere you’ve been, Google Maps is always up to date with your location and Facebook has built a detailed character profile of all its users.

However, if you’re one who wishes not to live in oblivion and find out exactly what Google knows about you, your interests and the places you’ve visited and your search habits, here’s how you can find out. Follow the steps below, and you can see just how much Google knows about you

Instagram is Switching Up Your Timeline from Chronological to “Relevant Posts” First

 

 

These changes, according to a blog post published by the Instagram team, include an algorithm based reorder of users’ feeds on their timeline.

 

The post reads “You may be surprised to learn that people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.”

New 500c barbecue Oven can cook your meat in 5 minutes and pizza in just 90 seconds

   

                       
Roccbox barbecue Oven can cook stone-baked pizza, sausages, hamburgers and kebabs in less time than it takes to make toast, removing all the frustrations of a traditional barbecue.

It is ready to use in just 15 minutes and can bake a crisp 12-inch pizza in 90 seconds, as well as roasting meat, fish and vegetables, and even baking crusty bread.

More than 116million barbecues were fired up last year, with all too many taking ages to get to the right temperature. The result? Ritual offerings of meat burnt to a crisp on the outside yet raw in the middle. According to the makers, who are based in Dorset, that won't happen with the Roccbox.

You can now use Selfies to Authorize payments on Amazon shopping

 

                                                                           

Online retail colossus Amazon last week was granted a US patent on using selfies - instead of passwords - for shopping when using smartphones.
Seattle-based Amazon reasoned that combining sensor and camera capabilities in smartphones with face and gesture recognizing software results in higher security than passwords or identification numbers.

"Such approaches provide for user authentication without the user having to physically interact with a computing device, which can enable a user to access information by looking at a camera, performing a simple gesture such as a smile, or performing another such action," Amazon said in a patent application filed late last year.

Google Now may soon be able to work Offline without internet connection

                                                                                                             

                            

According to reports, Google could be working on making Google Now, it’s speech recognition-based assistant work for Android users even if they are offline.

According to a report by Gizmodo, speech recognition heavily relies on cloud computing to function optimally. It’s essential as the processing power and memory required is huge. The report reveals that in a recent paper, Google engineers have shared how they used deep machine learning techniques to run a not so heavy speech recognition program that resides on the smartphone.

Apple launches tech support account on Twitter

Apple's Geniuses are now on Twitter.

 

Apple has never fully embraced Twitter, but we've seen a sort of glasnost in recent years as executives and CEO Tim Cook have taken to the microblogging platform to share deep thoughts and, occasionally, blurry pictures.Early Thursday, though, the company opened a new front on Twitter, launching the Apple Support account with a spare, two-word tweet:

 

The account is notable for being less about promotions than existing accounts like Apple Music (@AppleMusic) and the App Store (@AppStore) account. Apple made that much clear by quickly offering up a detailed tweet on how to turn lists into checklists in the Notes app. Other Apple support accounts on Twitter include Beats by Dre and Apple Music Help.

Toyota Launches a Wooden car - Setsuna

Toyota will show the Setsuna concept  at the Design Week in Milan, Italy, a month from now. Setsuna is a roadster (not a convertible) with the main chassis and body parts made from wood. Machined aluminum parts and leather covers create a contrast against the wooden materials.
The body consists of replaceable wooden panels, and the overall shape reminds of an Italian Riva speedboat. Setsuna means “moment” in Japanese, a reference to the ephemeral nature of our lives and cars.

The car is using Japanese cedar for the exterior panels, and Japanese birch for the frame. The floor is made from elm wood (Japanese zelkova, to be precise). The prickly castor oil tree supplies the material for instrument panel and front seats, Japanese cypress provides for the steering wheel.

Not just pictures you can now share document on your WhatsApp on iOS and Android

Mobile messaging service WhatsApp is enabling document sharing feature on iOS and Android devices reports Tech Crunch.

The new feature has begun to appear on users’ phones, enabling them to share PDF documents.
The document sharing joins existing sharing features for photos, videos, contacts, and locations, however, although it is now available for iOS and Android users, it is not yet available on Windows Phone.

The feature is easy to use and enables users to select documents from storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, among others.

The fastest car in the world: Bugatti's Chiron 261mph that can do 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds and costs £1.9m

   

 Bugatti's Chiron was officially launched on the eve of the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, it's been dubbed the 'world's most powerful, fastest, most luxurious and most exclusive production super sports car' to be built.

 Based on the numbers, it will gazump everything else out there in a game of Top Trumps, with a 261mph top speed, 1,500bhp power output and a £1.9million asking price.