Looking to spice up your Facebook Stories? Try 3D drawing, a new AR effect

It’s not just Instagram that’s competing against Snapchat — now parent company Facebook is getting into the action as well. As originally reported by TechCrunch, you’ll soon be able to take a photo of your surroundings, annotate them using AR technology, and turn them into Instagram Boomerang GIFs, all using your Facebook Camera. Because if Facebook has learned anything from photo-sharing apps, it’s that folks love to create and share their own content.

“We wanted to give people an easy way to create with augmented reality and draw in the world around them” John Barnett, a Facebook Camera Product Manager, said. The company is calling the new feature “3D drawing.”  If you haven’t received the feature yet, you should find it in your Facebook Camera capabilities within the next few weeks.

Much like other augmented drawing features, you’ll be able to hold up your phone and effectively draw on the outside world, even when you move your camera, your scribbles will stay in place. Think of it as ephemeral graffiti that is visible to you and you alone. You can even add your annotations before you start recording a video, so that you can create a big reveal moment as you move your camera from your boring old window to the AR doodles on your wall. And moving forward, Facebook is looking to add additional brushes — as it stands, you only have a few pastel colors to choose from.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook’s technology must “understand the corners and objects in the room to create a 3D spec.” Only then will it be able to accurately superimpose your drawings onto various surfaces in a realistic way. And since you can turn these drawings into GIFs, Facebook is obviously hoping that its users will begin making viral content to send back and forth.

The social media giant has been experimenting with augmented reality technology for quite some time now — AR effects were first launched at last year’s F8 in April, and more recently, the company has introduced AR effects that are tied to real posters or QR codes. Of course, Snapchat has been playing in the AR world for quite some time, and as Facebook continues to battle a growing number of social media companies for dominance, it’s looking for new ways to engage its users.

Editors’ Recommendations

• How to use Instagram
• Escape reality with the best augmented reality apps for Android and iOS
• How do people really use apps? We asked an expert
• Facebook brings AR features to ‘Ready Player One,’ ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ posters
• Snapchat now uses the iPhone X’s TrueDepth Camera to make better filters

A brilliant, devious way to stop telemarketing calls once and for all

Is there any group more persistent than telemarketers? Like the dogged protagonist of a romantic comedy, once a telemarketing company has you in its sights, it won’t stop chasing you until you agree to buy some product you have no interest in. In a time when people tend to carry smartphones everywhere, telemarketers can strike you anytime, and are seemingly impervious to disinterest or outright anger.

Tell them you’re not interested? They’ll call back. Ask them to take your number off their list? They might… or they might not, and call back at a later date.

As persistent as telemarketers may be, you do have options. You can register your number with the National Do Not Call registry, though this will only deter sales calls, and even then, shady businesses may still call you. Thankfully, there are a few other things you can try.

Try using the number-blocking function on your smartphone

On an iPhone, go to Settings, then Phone. Under Calls, tap Call Blocking & Identification.

On Android, open the phone app and click the three dots in the upper-right corner. Tap Settings, select Block Numbers, and enter the numbers you wish to block.

Even if you block a telemarketing company’s number, chances are they have plenty more to call you from. As long as they know that there is a living, breathing human on the other end — one who could potentially give in to their sales pitch — they’ll keep making attempts. The best thing to do is convince the telemarketers that your number doesn’t work. But how?

To stop telemarketers once and for all, trick them

Believe it or not, you can fool telemarketers by playing a message that says your number is not in service. To do so, you’ll merely need a recording of one of those disconnected phone messages, which you can then play whenever a telemarketer calls.

First, buy a recorder — preferably one you can plug into a headphone jack, so as to record the “not in service” message with better clarity. Afterward, find a “not in service” message, which you can easily do online, and record said message.

When a telemarketer calls you, answer (preferably in a quiet place), but don’t say anything. Play the recording, and the telemarketer on the other end, be they person or robocaller, should determine that your phone number is not in service, and remove it from their call list.

Granted, you’ll have to keep the recording on-hand for whenever you get a spam call, but if it works, the telemarketers will give up on you. Besides, you may also feel a sense of glee bamboozling the corporations that have long plagued you.

David Cogen — a regular contributor here at Digital Trends — runs TheUnlockr.com, a popular tech blog that focuses on tech news, tips and tricks, and the latest tech. You can also find him over at Twitter discussing the latest tech trends.

‘Sea of Thieves’ updates will focus on new maps, not perks

Ask a Sea of Thieves player for complaints and they’ll likely have one common theme: there’s not enough to do. You can only dig up so many treasures on the same islands. And Rare knows it. The developer has detailed content plans for the first several months after launch, including a shift in priorities. While Rare had talked about adding pets and ship captaincy early on, those features are “on the back burner” as the company focuses on adding more raw gameplay, including maps, enemies and events.

The first wave of new material arrives in May, including The Hungering Deep (which focuses on a “new AI threat” and a special event) as well as weekly events that bring “new mechanics” and rewards. In the summer, you’ll get both a new ship type through Cursed Sails as well as a new region in Forsaken Shores. Both of those later updates will once again toss in new gameplay dynamics, AI enemies and rewards.

Rare was careful to warn that its plans would remain “fluid,” but maintained that all new content will be free. It doesn’t want to split the player base, and that means ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

This won’t necessarily change your mind if you weren’t already inclined to swashbuckling. However, it’s an acknowledgment of a recurring problem we’ve seen with games like Destiny 2: when the experience centers around cooperative play, you need a steady stream of new content to keep players interested. A good underlying concept will only go so far if gamers have no reason to come back.

Source: Sea of Thieves

Hulu renews Sarah Silverman’s talk show for a second season

Hulu might not be as committed to streaming talk shows as Netflix, but its fledgling efforts are paying off. The company has renewed Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America for a second season, with the 11-episode run beginning on September 6th. While there aren’t any clues as to what’s on deck, it’s safe to presume the show will continue to focus on the cultural and political landscape of the US, using chats with notable figures (such as Roxane Gay and Patton Oswalt) as a hook.

It’s not certain exactly how well I Love You, America and other internet-only talk shows have fared, since the services involved rarely provide viewer numbers. Chelsea Handler said she ended her Netflix show to focus on upcoming elections. The allure to Hulu, Netflix and others is fairly self-evident, however. Weekly talk shows give you a reason to come back on a regular basis. That, in turn, may keep you subscribed where you’d otherwise be tempted to jump ship.

“I am fundamentally changed with each episode, each interview, each encounter. By the end of this I will likely be a butterfly. Or a really colorful moth.” -@sarahkatesilverman

New episodes of @ILYAmerica arrive Sept. 6, only on Hulu https://t.co/zZe8Tq31x6

— hulu (@hulu) April 15, 2018

Source: Hulu (Twitter), Hollywood Reporter

How to send webpages from Google Chrome to your Android phone

Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, and there’s a high chance it’s your browser of choice on both your PC and your phone. But what do you do if you want to send links between your phone and your computer? Here’s our guide on how to send webpages from Google Chrome on your desktop to your Android device, and then back again. Now you’ll be able to pick up right where you left off, no matter what device you’re using.

Before we start, you’re going to need Google Chrome installed on both your PC and your smartphone. Head over to the Chrome download page on the web, and the Chrome for Android page on the Google Play Store if you haven’t already. Download both of these, and sign in to your Google account.

Using Google’s inbuilt syncing options

Google unfortunately shut down the Send to Mobile Chrome extension a few years ago, and there’s no native support to send a single page across platforms, even if both devices are running Google Chrome. But that doesn’t mean all is lost. Tucked away inside the Settings options are a couple of little tools that should help you out.

First of all, make sure that your devices are synced to your Google account. On the PC, hit the three vertical dots in the top right, then click Settings to open your settings menu. From there, tap Sync to open your sync settings. On an Android device you’ll open your Chrome settings the same way, but once you’re in the options menu, tap your Google account’s name, then hit Sync on the next menu to access the sync options.

From the sync options you can change your synchronization settings however you like, so if you don’t want your passwords to be remembered between devices, then just untick Sync all and untick Passwords. For now, have everything ticked with the Sync all button, and you can change whatever you like later.

Using recent pages

So you’re in the middle of reading a very interesting article — perhaps on a certain tech website — but suddenly you have to drop everything and zoom out of the house to get to an appointment. Now you’re sat in a waiting room bored, wishing you could quickly refind that article on your phone.

Thankfully, you can. On your Android device, open Chrome, then tap the three dots in the top-right corner. Then hit Recent tabs to get a list of the last tabs open, listed under each device. Just tap the page you want, and you’re away. If you’ve chosen to keep your history synced, then you can also access your full history from here too, making it even easier to get back to whatever you were up to before. Keep in mind it won’t track Incognito Mode. 

The other way around is just as simple. To access a page you’ve had open on your Android device, again click the three dots in the top-right corner of Chrome. Then navigate down the menu to History and scroll down until you find the listing for your Android device. Keep in mind that the history title may be marked with the device’s model number, so it may not be immediately recognizable.

Using your bookmarks

It’s probably been a while since you bookmarked anything. The venerable bookmark seemed to be all the rage when the internet was fresh and new, but now it seems that we all collectively use about five different websites, making the idea of bookmarks something we sometimes remember to do, rather than being a necessity. But they’re still fantastically useful when you need to quickly swap between devices.

To make sure this works, you’ll need to have your bookmarks synced between devices. If you left your sync settings set to Sync all then you’re fine, but if you turned off Bookmarks then you’ll need to be sure to go back and flip that back on.

To bookmark a specific site on the PC, you can either click the star to the right of the address bar, or press Ctrl+D. A pop-up will ask you to choose a bookmark folder, but then hit Done and you’re finished. To then access that bookmark on your Android device, open your Chrome browser, then — you guessed it — tap the three dots in the right-corner. Hit Bookmarks, then select the folder you placed the bookmark in earlier, and tap your bookmark to open it up.

If you’re doing this the other way around, hit the three dots in the top-right, then tap the little star icon at the top of the menu. Then go back to your computer, hit the three dots in the top-right, then navigate to Bookmarks > Mobile bookmarks, then find your site in the list. The Android version of Chrome saves bookmarks to Mobile bookmarks by default, but you can move bookmarks in Android by tapping the (now blue) star in Chrome to edit or remove it.

Sending pages with third-party apps

Chrome’s inbuilt options work well for people who don’t need to use the service often, but if you’re constantly changing between devices and need something a little more powerful, then something a little more heavy-duty might serve you better. We’ve covered a bunch of the best read-it later apps that can work for this, but we’re also going to highlight how you can use Pushbullet to share links between devices.

Pushbullet is a service that delivers notifications and shares links between a Chrome extension and an Android app, and it’s extremely good if you want to reply to text messages on your computer or be immediately alerted to phone notifications on your PC. For this guide, we’re just going to focus on the sharing feature, which shares links between your devices.

To use it, you’ll need to download the Pushbullet Chrome extension and the Android app so that both devices can talk to each other. Then sign up to Pushbullet — you can do so with your Google account to save time.

Setting Pushbullet up

Installing the Chrome extension is easy, and as long as you’ve signed up and signed in the Pushbullet website, the extension should log you in without much issue.

Setting up the Android app is a little bit more intensive, and requires allowing the app access to a couple of permissions on your phone. Don’t worry, it’s safe and the app needs those permissions to send you certain types of notifications. Following the setup instructions shouldn’t be too time-consuming and should have you up and running in no time.

Using Pushbullet

Once you’re set up, it’s time to send your first link. From the page you want to send, hit the Pushbullet icon in the top-right corner of Chrome on your desktop — it should be a little white bullet with a green background. From there, you’ll be able to hit the send arrow to fire off your link. Your link will then appear in the chat-style stream, and you’ll receive a notification on your phone that you’ve received a link.

Pushbullet is set up to send to all linked devices by default, but you can change that by clicking the little bubble marked All Devices and selecting a specific device.

Sending a link from your phone to your PC is a similar process. Open the page you want to send, tap the three dots in the top right, and then hit Share. Select the Pushbullet icon from the sharing options given to you — you may need to scroll through the list. Once the Pushbullet popup has opened, tap either the Chrome icon or the All Devices icon to send to everything. If you have a Chrome window already open then the page will automatically open — otherwise you can access the link through your Pushbullet extension at a later date.

Editors’ Recommendations

• How to take a screenshot on a Chromebook
• Google adds tablet-friendly features in the latest Chrome OS 64 build
• Google Images altered to calm legal grumblings made by Getty Images
• Google Chrome Canary update adds new quick-access emoji menu
• How to use Windows Timeline

Today’s best deals you won’t want to miss

Whether you’re looking for new tech gear or household items, we’ve got you covered.

Today you can get big discounts on the Google DayDream virtual reality, the Apple Watch Series 3, the GoPro Hero5 action camera, and more! Don’t pass these up.

View the rest of the deals

If you want to know about the deals as soon as they are happening, you’ll want to follow Thrifter on Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter, because missing out on a great deal stinks!

Study finds over 3,300 Android apps improperly tracking kids

There’s little doubt that mobile apps sometimes overstep their bounds by collecting more data from kids than the law allows. But how often does that happen? It might be more than you think. Researchers using an automated testing process have discovered that 3,337 family- and child-oriented Android apps on Google Play were improperly collecting kids’ data, potentially putting them in violation of the US’ COPPA law (which limits data collection for kids under 13). Only a small number were particularly glaring violations, but many apps exhibited behavior that could easily be seen as questionable.

Of the 5,855 total apps included in the study, 281 of them collected contact or location data without asking for a parent’s permission. Needless to say, those are red flags for any app targeted at kids. A further 1,100 shared persistent identifying info with third parties for restricted purposes, while 2,281 of them seemed to violate Google terms of service forbidding apps from sharing those identifiers to the same destination as the Android Advertising ID (which gives you control over tracking). About 40 percent of apps transmitted info without using “reasonable security measures,” and nearly all (92 percent) of the 1,280 apps with Facebook tie-ins weren’t properly using the social network’s code flags to limit under-13 use (though they may not have realized they were using this info for law-breaking purposes).

The researchers are adamant that they’re not showing “definitive legal liability.” These apps may be running afoul of the law, but it’s up to regulators at the FTC to decide if they are. Without iOS data, it’s also unclear how common this problem is across platforms. We’ve asked Google for comment on the findings as well.

Whatever the response, the findings illustrate the challenges that Google and officials face in enforcing COPPA and similar child-focused privacy laws. It’s not as simple as performing an age check or asking for parents’ permission. There’s a whole range of data sharing concerns that have to be addressed, and developers may not be fully aware of these — especially for apps where kids aren’t the sole focus. Likewise, it can be difficult for app store operators like Google to manually inspect apps when there are thousands added per day (over 2,700 per day as of March 2018, according to AppBrain). The automated tool behind the study could go a long way toward addressing that, but it might still require checking apps by hand before removing them or involving the law.

Via: Education Week

Source: PET Symposium (PDF)

Ford’s self-driving car network will launch ‘at scale’ in 2021

Ford hasn’t been shy about its plans for a self-driving car network in 2021, including its hopes of fielding a purpose-built vehicle that year. However, there have been questions about the size — will this be like the services we’ve seen so far, where one city gets a limited taste of the autonomous future? Thankfully, no. Ford’s Jim Farley told the Financial Times in an interview that the automaker’s self-driving car network will be running “at scale” in 2021. It launched its recent Miami pilot precisely so that it “can scale [by] then,” the executive said, not to merely get the ball rolling.

Farley also stressed that this would be a truly Ford-run service. While Ford does have self-driving car partnerships with companies like Lyft, it intends to “own the fleet” for its own services. That’s somewhat similar to Renault-Nissan, but a sharp contrast with Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo and others focused on selling vehicles to outside services.

The company’s own efforts are focused more on delivery than on passengers. However, it’s not entirely surprising that the company would push for a large, in-house driverless network. Its leadership has repeatedly talked about preparing for the decline of car ownership, and that means a shift toward services (such as its on-demand commuter vans) instead of pure car sales. If it runs its own fleet, it has a reliable business even if vehicle sales to other customers eventually dry up.

Source: Financial Times

Best Buy’s Latest Sale Offers Up to $200 Off 13-Inch MacBook Pro

Best Buy is continuing its string of sales this spring with a new offer focused on the MacBook Pro today, which will last until next weekend. The focus of the new sale is Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, with discounts of up to $200 off select 13-inch models (or up to $250 off for students and parents of students).

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

• MacBook Pro – Save up to $200 or more / as low as $1,149.99 ($1,099.99 with Student Deals)

Best Buy is also currently running a special iPhone 7 and iPhone 6s deal that offers $150 off when purchased on an installment plan from AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint. The discounts bring the total cost down to $520 for iPhone 7 Plus, $400 for iPhone 7, $400 for iPhone 6s Plus, or $300 for iPhone 6s.

Additionally, if you’re looking to trade in an old iPad for some credit, the retailer is still offering a minimum $125 Best Buy gift card with the trade-in of select iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro models. Best Buy debuted the in-store offer as a chance for customers to upgrade to Apple’s new sixth-generation iPad at a discount.

Head over to our full Deals Roundup for more details on the latest sales happening this week.

Related Roundup: Apple DealsTag: Best Buy
Discuss this article in our forums

Oath revamps Yahoo and AOL privacy policies to allow email, photo scans

Verizon’s Oath, which owns both Yahoo and AOL, has updated its privacy policies with new information concerning what the company is allowed to do with user data. The company’s recently updated policies state that the sites it owns are allowed to scan emails, instant messages, photos, and other user data. The agreement also says that the data may be shared with Oath’s parent company, Verizon.

If you think Facebook is bad, Verizon under its stealth brand of “Oath” just rolled out a new privacy policies on a Friday hoping you wouldn’t notice. This says Verizon’s subsidiary Oath can scan your email to help advertisers micro-target you. Greed. Pay attention to the public. https://t.co/clhMg9kOTt

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) April 13, 2018

Prior to being acquired by Verizon, AOL’s policies did not mention anything regarding the collection of user data. That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t happen, but there was nothing in their privacy agreements regarding the process. Yahoo, on the other hand, did specify that it “analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content.”

Another thing worth noting about Oath’s privacy policies is its section regarding banking information. As CNET reports, the company does scan emails related to banking and financial information. Their terms of service state that Oath may “… analyze user content around certain interactions with financial institutions.”

Another important change that Yahoo users will want to be aware of is the fact that Oath’s anti-arbitration agreements have been extended to Yahoo as well, making it more difficult to sue the company should users feel that their privacy has been violated.

Understandably, Oath’s new policies have prompted many questions from reporters and users concerned about privacy in the wake of the Facebook scandal involving Cambridge Analytica. However, as of the time of this article’s publication, Oath has only released the following statement which does not address any specific concerns users might have.

“The launch of a unified Oath privacy policy and terms of service is a key stepping stone toward creating what’s next for our consumers while empowering them with transparency and controls over how and when their data is used.”

Overall, this news isn’t completely out of character in 2018, but it’s always a good idea to read over these agreements.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Porsche could build its own charging network as it bets big on electrification
• Facebook rolls out stricter rules regarding email-targeted advertisements
• Facebook spells out data use from mouse clicks to metadata in policy update
• Yes, Facebook is reading the messages you send through Messenger
• Facebook was always too busy selling ads to care about your personal data