Facebook is making it easier to find bots, order food on Messenger

Why it matters to you

Facebook Messenger is becoming more than just a texting app — it’ll take care of restaurant recommendations, bills, and more.

Facebook Messenger, the peer-to-peer texting platform used by millions of people around the globe, now has 1.2 billion users and 60 million businesses who send a collective 2 billion messages. And Facebook wants to keep the momentum going.

First on the docket at Facebook’s F8 2017 conference on Tuesday were Messenger bots, the artificial intelligence-powered apps that perform tasks and serve up recommendations on command. David Marcus, Messenger’s product manager, announced that more than 100,000 developers had signed onto the network’s bot platform, and that Apple Music, the Wall Street Journal, Spotify, and others would be joining the fray in the coming weeks.

The deluge of bots is good news, Marcus said, but he acknowledged that it hasn’t made new ones easy to find. To address what Facebook calls the “bot discovery problem,” it’s launching Messenger Platform 2.0, a collection of tools designed to help people connect with bots — and vice versa. “We have a shot at becoming the Yellow Pages of messaging,” he said.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

To that end, a new Discovery tab in Messenger shows featured bots, trending bots, and a search bar to look for news ones. There’s a relevant categories tab, a carousel of recently used bots, and a new QR format that lets you add a bot by scanning a physical code.

Then, there’s what’s Facebook calls Chat Extensions, a new feature that lets bots come into — and interact within — group chats. The Spotify bot can share tunes with everyone in a Messenger session, for example, and the OpenTable bot can book restaurant reservations. More are on the way from the Food Network, Kayak, and TheScore.

On the developer side of things, businesses are getting new tools to automate responses. A restaurant can program a reply to the question, “When are you open?” for example, and direct Facebook’s Wit.ai bot engine to respond without the need for human intervention. And Facebook business Pages can now automatically respond to questions about directions and contact details.

Bots aren’t the only Messenger feature that will see enhancements. Soon, Facebook’s AI-powered M assistant will start to initiate food-related conversations with restaurant recommendations, and even go so far as to place orders via Deliver.com. And it will also serve up stickers, ping you with meeting reminders, and remind you of upcoming payments and bills.

Messenger Games are getting attention, and not without good reason — Marcus said that more than 1.5 billion games have been played on Messenger. Turn-by-turn games now work on Messenger, and a new Challenge feature lets you invite friends to gaming sessions.

“I really believe you have everything you need to take the Messenger experience to the next level, Marcus said.

So far, that certainly appears to be the case.

Facebook is making it easier to find bots, order food on Messenger

Why it matters to you

Facebook Messenger is becoming more than just a texting app — it’ll take care of restaurant recommendations, bills, and more.

Facebook Messenger, the peer-to-peer texting platform used by millions of people around the globe, now has 1.2 billion users and 60 million businesses who send a collective 2 billion messages. And Facebook wants to keep the momentum going.

First on the docket at Facebook’s F8 2017 conference on Tuesday were Messenger bots, the artificial intelligence-powered apps that perform tasks and serve up recommendations on command. David Marcus, Messenger’s product manager, announced that more than 100,000 developers had signed onto the network’s bot platform, and that Apple Music, the Wall Street Journal, Spotify, and others would be joining the fray in the coming weeks.

The deluge of bots is good news, Marcus said, but he acknowledged that it hasn’t made new ones easy to find. To address what Facebook calls the “bot discovery problem,” it’s launching Messenger Platform 2.0, a collection of tools designed to help people connect with bots — and vice versa. “We have a shot at becoming the Yellow Pages of messaging,” he said.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

To that end, a new Discovery tab in Messenger shows featured bots, trending bots, and a search bar to look for news ones. There’s a relevant categories tab, a carousel of recently used bots, and a new QR format that lets you add a bot by scanning a physical code.

Then, there’s what’s Facebook calls Chat Extensions, a new feature that lets bots come into — and interact within — group chats. The Spotify bot can share tunes with everyone in a Messenger session, for example, and the OpenTable bot can book restaurant reservations. More are on the way from the Food Network, Kayak, and TheScore.

On the developer side of things, businesses are getting new tools to automate responses. A restaurant can program a reply to the question, “When are you open?” for example, and direct Facebook’s Wit.ai bot engine to respond without the need for human intervention. And Facebook business Pages can now automatically respond to questions about directions and contact details.

Bots aren’t the only Messenger feature that will see enhancements. Soon, Facebook’s AI-powered M assistant will start to initiate food-related conversations with restaurant recommendations, and even go so far as to place orders via Deliver.com. And it will also serve up stickers, ping you with meeting reminders, and remind you of upcoming payments and bills.

Messenger Games are getting attention, and not without good reason — Marcus said that more than 1.5 billion games have been played on Messenger. Turn-by-turn games now work on Messenger, and a new Challenge feature lets you invite friends to gaming sessions.

“I really believe you have everything you need to take the Messenger experience to the next level, Marcus said.

So far, that certainly appears to be the case.

MSI introduces new VR-ready gaming notebooks with 120MHz 5ms displays

Why it matters to you

Gamers can now enjoy a midrange gaming notebook option with desktop monitor-like refresh rate and response times.

If you’re looking for a new gaming notebook, then your decision just keeps getting harder. The number of excellent options at all price points just keeps growing, from low-end machines that offer decent gaming performance for under $1,000 to massive dual-GPU monster pushing $10,000 fully configured.

MSI is doing its part to expand the gaming notebook market, with a new line of thin and light gaming machines that offer some seriously high-end specs. The company has just announced the GP62X and GP72X Leopard Pro series, and they appear focused on ensuring not just high performance but also some of the best refresh rates you’ll find on gaming notebooks today.

The highlight of both machines is MSI’s offering up a full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display option that features a 120Mhz panel with 5ms response times. Normally available only in desktop displays, these specs offer smooth and tear-free gaming. The display is available exclusively on the 17.3-inch GP72X Leopard Pro machines to go with a more mundane panel, while the 15.6-inch GP62X Leopard Pro offers two FHD displays using wide-view and IPS panels.

Both the GP62X and the GP72X utilize NVMe solid-state drives (SSDs) for fast game loading with read performance up to 2.2GB/s. The use of seventh-generation Intel Core i7–7700HQ quad-core processor and GeForce GTX 1060 3GB graphics in the GP62MVR and GP72VR variants should provide outstanding 1080p gaming performance and support for virtual reality (VR) systems. The non-VR machines utilize GeForce GTX 1050 or 1050 TI GPUs, and a maximum of 32GB of DDR4 RAM can be configured for all machines in the series.

MSI has built in its Cooler Boost 4 technology to keep things cool, which utilizes two fans with six separate heat pipes dedicated to the CPU and GPU. Overall, the cooling system increases airflow by 20 percent and results in what MSI lables “the most advanced heat pipe design in a gaming notebook.”

In terms of input options, MSI worked with SteelSeries to pack in keyboards that offer highly customizable RGB lighting utilizing SteelSeries Engine 3 technology. SteelSeries GameSense means that titles like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Minecraft allow changing keyboards backlighting based on in-game action. Connectivity is robust with a USB Type-C 3.0 connection, two USB Type-A 3.0 ports, a USB Type-A 2.0 connection, an SD card reader, and both HDMI and mini-DisplayPort outputs.

The machines are available today at retailers like Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy. Pricing starts at $1,099 and goes up from there. Anyone looking to add another gaming notebook to the list now has a brand new line of versatile of portable gaming and VR systems to consider.

Amazon

Huawei Watch 2 is now available and it comes with 10 weeks of Play Music

Is that enough incentive for you to buy the second-gen smartwatch? You’ll have to read our review to find out.

We weren’t too impressed by the Huawei Watch 2 in our initial review, but perhaps the ten weeks of free Google Play Music could entice you to give it a try, anyway. The Android Wear 2.0-based smartwatch is now available for purchase at various retailers around the U.S., including BestBuy and Amazon.

The Huawei Watch 2 is the successor to the widely popular Huawei Watch from 2015. It runs on a Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor and 768MB of RAM. It also offers 4GB of storage, a heart rate sensor, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC and optional LTE. You can get it in carbon black or a color called concrete gray, which features brightly colored speckles and a more athletic aesthetic. There’s also the Huawei Watch 2 Classic, which comes in Titanium Grey. The watches cost $299.99 and $369.99, respectively. You can read more on the Google Play Music deal in Huawei’s official press release.

Read more in our review of the Huawei Watch 2

Android Wear

• Everything you need to know about Android Wear 2.0
• LG Watch Sport review
• LG Watch Style review
• These watches will get Android Wear 2.0
• Discuss Android Wear in the forums!

Save 20% Off Already Low Cell Phone Plans from Mint SIM

Looking for a killer deal on a new cell phone plan for yourself? Don’t miss this awesome offer from Mint SIM!

In the recent years, we’ve seen a whole lot happen to cell phone plans. First unlimited data, then price hikes, then tiered data, cheaper plans, the return of unlimited data and so much more. Competition continues to grow in this field, and Mint SIM is getting in on the action with some extremely aggressive pricing for its plans. Mint SIM is an alternative carrier that offers you an extremely affordable way to have the data you need on your phone, and right now you can save an additional 20% off any 6- or 12-month plan using the coupon ACMINTSIM20.

Mint SIM utilizes T-Mobile’s growing 4G LTE network to ensure you have great coverage and fast speeds across most of the United States. The way it works is Mint SIM buys access to networks and packages and then is able to resell them to its customers for better rates than the major carriers are charging.

Save 20% with coupon ACMINTSIM20 Learn More

With Mint SIM you can port your existing number over, or start service with a new one if you wish. You can pay monthly, or buy in 3, 6, or 12-month bundles, which help you save even more.

The additional 20% off comes when you buy either 6 or 12-months, but the savings is pretty big. The Big Four carriers charge upwards of $90 a month to gain access to a reasonable amount of data, meaning you are paying nearly $1,100 a year for service. With Mint SIM you can get 10GB of data per month with unlimited talk and text for just $323 for the year.

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There are a ton of deals out there, but none of them are quite this good. You can use the unlocked phone of your choice with any of these plans, so pick one you like, order a new SIM card and give it a shot today!

Facebook’s latest Messenger makeover is all about business

Last week, Facebook announced that Messenger now has 1.2 billion monthly users, making it one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. With so many users on its platform, it’s no surprise that businesses have been clamoring to be on Messenger as well. At last count, 60 million businesses are on Facebook, and 80 percent of them have messaging enabled. The idea is that be it with a real-life human or a simple chatbot, the direct Messenger conversations between businesses and consumers will make users’ lives “more seamless and fun.” With Messenger Platform 2.0, Facebook hopes to realize this even further with a new Discovery tab, chat extensions, smart replies, an AI-driven delivery service and more.

One of Facebook’s main goals is to make businesses more successful at using Messenger. Facebook attempted to do so last year with the introduction of chatbots, but that has been a little slow to take off. “Chatbots were always a means to an end, not an end,” says Stan Chudnovsky, head of product at Messenger. “Our goal was always to enable meaningful and useful conversations between people and businesses. Bots were a means to achieve that goal.”

So at F8 2017, the focus is more on helping people find these businesses in the first place. “The number one thing businesses want is to be discovered,” says Chudnovsky. “So we are connecting the White Pages, the people’s directory, with the Yellow Pages, which is the business directory.” That’s why one of Messenger 2.0’s new features is a Discover tab just for businesses. Tap the hexagon icon on the bottom right and you’ll see a list of Featured businesses along with popular bots, what’s nearby and a bunch of categories like Food & Drink, Entertainment and News. From there you can find out more information about any business, book an appointment or simply start a conversation. There’s also a search field if you want to talk to a specific store.

But that doesn’t mean Facebook has given up on bots. In fact, it’s making them easier to access than ever thanks to Chat Extensions, which is a way for multiple people to chat with the same business at the same time. So if you’re in a group conversation with friends and you want to share the latest Kendrick Lamar album, you can just tap the plus button, choose Spotify, enter in the name of the song, hit “Send to Group” and it’ll drop in a Spotify music bot in the thread. Tap the play button and you’ll hear a short preview clip; if you’re already a Spotify user, however, you’ll hear the whole song. The same experience goes with other bots too, like OpenTable (make dinner reservations with a bunch of your pals), Kayak (arrange those group travel plans) or the NBA (discuss the scores of last night’s game). (Update: David Marcus said on stage at F8 that there’ll be an Apple Music chat extension coming as well)

Oh, and remember the “M Suggestions” personal assistant feature that Messenger rolled out a couple of weeks ago? Well there’s going to be one more update to that, and that’s integration with delivery.com. So if you’re chatting with your friends about what to have for dinner, M might pop up a suggestion to place an order from your favorite restaurant. And then you can do just that — all the way from picking what you want (maybe a pizza with pepperoni?) to paying for your meal. This is the first third-party business to get access to Facebook’s AI layer, so it’s a little bit of a test for Facebook. “All of that AI complexity, all of that neural network stuff, will be built for developers as well,” says Chudnovsky. Like M, delivery.com suggestions will get better over time as it learns more about you. Eventually, Facebook plans to open up M suggestions to even more third-party developers, so stay tuned to see more integrations like this going forward. Oh, and M Suggestions will start recommending Chat Extensions too.

If you’re a business who doesn’t necessarily want a full-on chatbot but still wants an easy way to communicate with customers, there’s a new AI-enabled feature for you too. It’s called Smart Replies, and it’s really just a way to enable automated answers to frequently asked questions. So if customers ask “When are you open?”, you don’t have to keep answering “From 8 to 5;” you can just program Smart Replies to do that for you. Of course if the customer asks for more than that, Messenger will prompt you to reply just like you usually would.

And hey, bots aren’t just all work and no play. At F8, Facebook is also announcing additional features for game bots and “rich gameplay” for turn-by-turn games like Words with Friends. The games are integrated right into Messenger thanks to a new Games tab, so now you can challenge your buddies to a duel while trash talking them at the same time.

Last but not least, Facebook is also rolling out Messenger Codes to businesses and bots (It introduced them as a way to find your friends last year). The idea here is that if you see one of these parametric QR codes at a baseball game, for example, you can just scan it to add the related bot to Messenger.

With all of these features in Messenger, it’s easy to see why many people are calling the app bloated these days. But Facebook really wants Messenger to be your one-stop-shop of communicating with the world, be it for chatting with your friends or ordering a pair of shoes. Whether or not it succeeds, however, is another story.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

Source: Facebook

Facebook adds a login shortcut to other Android apps

The great part about being tech obsessed is getting the latest and greatest devices. The less great part is having to log into all the services you use when you get new hardware. Today at F8, Facebook announced it’s giving the developers of third-party Android apps the ability to recognize if you’ve already linked a service with the social network.

Soon when you download or reinstall something like Pinterest, you won’t have to wonder what your password is if you’ve already installed Facebook. The supported app will prompt you to log in via the social network.

The social network is also giving third-party developers the opportunity to use Facebook as an account recovery solution for when you forget your password. Considering how often the social network’s accounts are phished, you might be better off continuing to use your email. Also, Facebook’s history of bumping people off the network because they’re using aliases doesn’t make it the ideal place for anyone using a pseudonym on any platform.

But if you’re super good about not sharing your login with nefarious individuals and you’re using your legal name, this might appeal to you. But again, an email account is still your best option.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

Lomography’s super-cheap film cameras look like disposables

Thanks to the smartphones in our pockets, we all have a basic understanding of digital photography, even if we don’t own a fancy DSLR. But this casual familiarity can make delving into analog, film shooting a bit daunting, at least initially. Champion of film Lomography has made exploring the 35mm format that much more accessible today, though, launching a trio of super-cheap cameras, preloaded with its dreamy films, that even the most inexperienced of photographers can easily get to grips with.

Lomography is known for its trippy 35mm rolls and stocking a wide array of inexpensive, plastic cameras that celebrate the creative (and imperfect) side of film photography. Its new range of “simple use” point-and-shooters are extra cheap, costing $16.90/£15.90 for the 36-shot color negative and black-and-white models, or $21.90/£19.90 for the camera that includes the kooky LomoChrome Purple film. You can also get them cheaper if you buy in bulk, or pick up one of each.

The models preloaded with color films also feature gel flash filters you can mix and match to give photos different tints. And it might be worth grabbing one of those if you’re at all interested, because even though the cameras are modeled after the kind of disposable you can pick up at your local grocery store, each one if fully reusable with any brand of 35mm film. While opening the thing to remove the included film once you’ve burnt through it voids the warranty, there’s nothing stopping you from loading another roll and continuing to snap away. The AA battery that powers the flash is replaceable, too.

Other than turning the flash on and off, though, you have no way to change any of the other settings. This means the aperture is fixed at f/9 and the shutter speed at 1/120, so whatever replacement film you use needs to be 400 ISO or thereabouts — otherwise you risk wasting a whole roll on under/overexposed pictures. But if you like the sound of point-and-shoot simplicity, then remember to get digital copies alongside physical prints when it comes to getting your rolls developed. Because Instagram is life, yeah?

Source: Lomography

Spin your yacht rock playlist from Spotify in Facebook Messenger

If you want to listen to Run the Jewels in Facebook Messenger, you’ll totally be able to do that. From the F8 stage, Facebook’s David Marcus announced that soon you’ll be able to share tracks from both Apple Music and Spotify within the app — all without the need to have either of the music streaming services installed on your phone. Marcus’ example? RTJ’s ode to El-P’s and Killer Mike’s significant others, “Stay Gold” from Run the Jewels 3.

Music is a part of the greater Chat Extensions push to make Messenger conversations a little more lively without having to leave the app. Music integrations, specifically, are similar to what Twitter has been doing for the past year or so.

Now, will Messenger suggest music based on what you’re talking about? Hopefully not. If the app’s current context-deaf suggestions for quick replies or in-app payments are any indication, we’re in for a bumpy ride regardless of the soundtrack.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

Source: Facebook Developers (1), (2)

Facebook takes on Slack with a free version of Workplace

Facebook’s not-so-subtle bid to take on Slack and Microsoft Teams just got particularly serious. The social network has announced a free version of Workplace that will let virtually any group chat and collaborate online when it arrives later in 2017. You won’t get administrative tools or integrations with other services (such as Google’s G Suite or Box’s cloud storage), but you won’t have to pay a cent if you just need the basics. And if you do need those features, Facebook is promising to undercut at least Slack’s prices.

The full version of Workplace will be free until September 30th, but Facebook plans to charge a modest monthly rate of $3 per person for the first 1,000 people, $2 per person for the next 9,000 users, and $1 per person after that. Slack does offer 5GB of storage and service integrations with its free service, but you’re looking at a minimum of $6.50 per month for perks like additional storage or searching chat archives. That can add up quickly if you’re part of a large outfit.

Workplace is also getting bots that can automate tasks in group chats, such as ordering food for a long meeting or Lyft rides for the trip to an event. You’ll also have the option of broadcasting live video from pro equipment, such as a high-end camera at a presentation.

Should Slack be worried? That’s hard to say at this stage. Facebook’s name and resources will certainly get its foot in the door, but Slack has years of lead time and a presence on virtually every major platform. Also, some organizations may prefer Slack precisely because it isn’t Facebook. You don’t have to think about sharing your Facebook identity with your office, for example. It won’t be surprising if Workplace makes further inroads with its free tier, but it isn’t guaranteed to dominate.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2017!

Via: The Verge, Mashable

Source: Facebook