Facebook teases simplified Messenger redesign

Facebook didn’t announce Messenger Lite for iOS today, but the social network did reveal a redesign for the app. Specifically, a cleaner interface that’s faster and, well, a little lighter and simpler too. Hopefully that means the camera app will get an upgrade too, especially with the augmented reality features Facebook is grafting on. Facebook says soon you’ll be able to share 4K photos and 360 degree video, too, in addition to everyone having access to translation. The app has grown to support 300,000 chatbots, and some 8 billion messages are sent every month.

From the looks of it, Messenger will eventually resemble an iMessage window of open conversations, cutting back on clutter like the camera and games tabs. It’s been in the works since beginning this year, and the company said the redesign will be be out very soon.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2018!

Instagram will filter out bullying comments

At the F8 conference today, it was announced that Instagram will filter out bullying comments from posts, starting today. This includes anything “intended to harass or upset people in our community,” the platform’s CEO said in a post. Doing this will ensure Instagram remains “an inclusive, supportive place for all voices,” he wrote.

From our CEO @kevin: “Starting today, Instagram will filter bullying comments intended to harass or upset people in our community. To be clear: we don’t tolerate bullying on Instagram. Our Community Guidelines have always prohibited bullying on our platform, and I’m proud to announce this next step in our ongoing commitment to keeping Instagram an inclusive, supportive place for all voices. We also believe in promoting kindness — encouraging our community to support one another both on and off Instagram. On Saturday we will host a Kindness Prom to celebrate people on our platform who are spreading positivity. These young leaders are inspiring their peers by helping kindness, acceptance and support grow on Instagram and in the world. Since Mike and I founded Instagram, it’s been our goal to make it a safe place for self-expression and to foster kindness within the community. This update is just the next step in our mission to deliver on that promise.” Check out the link in our bio to learn more about this update. Photo by @runnerkimhall

A post shared by Instagram (@instagram) on May 1, 2018 at 10:31am PDT

This is a more forceful attempt to rid Instagram of negative interactions than their earlier efforts to clean up the platform. Back in September 2016, they enabled users to create filters for blocking content featuring certain words — a potentially effective but laborious method that put the onus on the user. Last year, they introduced another to block offensive comments, but it was aimed to protect users from frequently-targeted groups.

The new bullying filter hides any comments on “a person’s appearance or character, as well as threats to a person’s well-being or health,” according to Instagram. It’s enabled by default to automatically comb content, but can be turned off in the Comment Controls. Either way, the filter will still detect and flag bullying content for official review.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2018!

Source: Instagram blog, Instagram

Nintendo faces Switch patent infringement investigation in the US

Nintendo is under investigation by the US International Trade Commission, and the fate of the Switch hangs in the balance. Gamevice, the company behind the Wikipad and a line of snap-on controllers for mobile devices, says the Nintendo Switch violates its patents on attachable handheld gamepads and their related accessories. Alleging violations of the Tariff Act of 1930, Gamevice is requesting a cease and desist order against Nintendo, a move that would halt imports of the Switch into the US.

The USITC notes that while its investigation has begun, it hasn’t ruled on the validity of the complaint. The commission will hold an evidentiary hearing to determine whether Nintendo is in violation of the Tariff Act, with a final decision “at the earliest practicable time.” The USITC will announce a target date for the end of the investigation within 45 days.

“The products at issue in the investigation are controller systems with parts that attach to two sides of an electronic device, such as a smartphone or tablet, and the parts fit into a user’s hands and have gaming controls,” the USITC’s announcement reads.

Nintendo declined to comment on the investigation. We’ve reached out to Gamevice and will update this story as we hear back.

This isn’t the first time Gamevice and Nintendo have gone head-to-head over the Switch. In August, Gamevice sued Nintendo for violating its Wikipad patents with the Switch, but that lawsuit was dropped in October.

For the record, Gamevice doesn’t hold a patent on cardboard-based video game accessories. Nintendo’s grip on that market is secure, at least.

Via: CNET

Source: USITC

Augmented reality and yard sale junk collide to make art

Who doesn’t enjoy digging through piles of old junk at yard sales? They’re a window into the past, capturing lives and forgotten memories. At the Tribeca Film Festival, the installation Objects in Mirror AR Closer Than They Appear takes that concept to the next level. At first, it just looks like a random assortment of trash and old gadgets. But after donning a pair a custom pair of augmented reality goggles, built out of the shells of antique stereoscopes, you’ll discover hidden videos and experiences tied to each object.

As I sifted through old photos, aging YouTube memes popped up in the glasses, which made me ponder how digital media becomes nostalgic at almost light-speed. When I stepped into a small corner filled with photos from Hawaii, a 360-degree video of an idyllic beach appeared. If this were a real garage sale, I’d imagine how the owners might be recalling a family vacation (or perhaps, pining for a trip they never took). One experience didn’t even rely on the AR goggles at all — it was an old phone with instructions to dial a specific number. As you’d expect, a recording popped up when I called it, but the mere act of dialing that number and cradling a corded handset in my neck brought back memories of an age before smartphones.

Sensorium

“What brought us together was a shared fascination with the way that physical objects function as windows into inner worlds, portals that transport us into memory, nostalgia, and absurdist fantasy and a common desire to explore how technology can make this ephemeral, even Proustian experience visceral and immediate to the senses,” said Graham Sack, one of Objects in Mirror’s creators, in a statement.

Objects in Mirror was co-developed by Sack, Geoff Sobelle, John Fitzgerald, and Matthew Niederhauser. And if the concept sounds familiar, that’s because it was inspired by Sobelle’s popular theater installation The Object Lesson, which also explored the beauty in digging through piles of nostalgic junk. If you’re in NYC over the next few weeks, you can check out Objects in Mirror at the New York Theatre Workshop’s Next Door performance space.

Click here to read all the news from Tribeca Film Festival 2018!

Sling TV expands Cloud DVR to Chromecast, Xbox One and smart TVs

Sling is expanding its Cloud DVR service to more devices. Now, you can use the DVR with the Chrome browser, Chromecast, Xbox One, LG Smart TVs and 2016 and 2017 models of Samsung Smart TVs. The company has been rolling out the service to more devices since last year. With the $5 per month service, you can record up to 50 hours of TV shows and movies, record multiple programs at once and protect certain recordings from being deleted. There are some limitations to the service. You can’t, for example, record live content on Disney and ESPN channels — you can see the list of channels that can’t be recorded here.

The Cloud DVR price is on top of any Sling TV subscription. You can add it to your account by selecting “Add Cloud DVR” on sling.com.

Source: Sling

Projection is the ideal medium for Gustav Klimt’s electric art

Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is celebrated for his boldly-colored paintings that marry portrait, decorative, symbolic and abstract art forms. Nowadays, they sell for vast fortunes at auction, making it difficult to see a comprehensive collection in one place. A brand new Paris exhibition space called Atelier Des Lumieres (meaning “Studio of Lights) is showing many of his paintings in a whole new way, by projecting them on 35,000 square feet of space including the walls, floors and ceilings.

The show (which opened April 13th and runs until November 11th, 2018), took months to set up, and uses 140 high-end, light-blasting Barco laser projectors and 50 Nexo speakers to create an immersive experience for spectators. It was created by a group called Culturespaces, which developed a system called “AMIEX” (art & music immersive experience), which was previously used for another exhibition called Carrières de Lumières that drew 600,000 visitors.

The show features over 3,000 moving images with works by Klimt, Egon Schiele and other Austrian artists. The first four sequences take visitors through different periods of Klimt’s life and work, including the “Vienna Secession” with its art nouveau themes and Klimt’s golden period when most of his masterpieces were created (he literally used gold leaf on some of his works).

Other sequences include works by Schiele and other Austrian artists, and the last one features Klimt’s images of women, often nude and adorned in bright, primary colors (and gold, of course).

The multimedia displays and new exhibition space are perhaps the perfect way to show off Klimt’s diverse body of work, and demonstrates how curators are getting creative with digital technology in the service of art. “The role of an art center is to decompartmentalize,” said Culturespaces President Bruno Monnier, “and that is why digital technology is so important in twenty-first century exhibitions.”

The Culturespaces show is far from a regular projection, the group said, as it’s “based on virtualization and very high-resolution projection of works of art on immense surfaces, thanks to unique digital equipment.”

“People do not learn about culture as they did in the past,” said Monnier. “The passive observation of works of art is no longer relevant, and I’m convinced that people are increasingly learning about art through this immersive experience and the emotions they generate. The marriage of art and digital technology is, in my opinion, the future of the dissemination of art among future generations, as it is able to reach a younger and wider audience than that of the traditional museums.”

Via: DesignBoom

Source: Culturespaces

CNBC: Facebook’s smart speaker could debut outside the US

According to rumors, Facebook decided that since it’s mired in privacy controversies this year’s F8 event might not be the best time to introduce an always-listening connected home device. Amazon has Alexa and Echo, Apple has Siri and HomePod, Microsoft pushes Cortana and Google has Assistant/Home. Now, with the opening keynote of F8 over and no smart speaker or video chat-ready “Portal” device mentioned, CNBC reports that the device is still in the works. It’s apparently connected to remnants of the dearly-departed “M” chatbot technology but when it does appear there’s a possibility it will launch first in international markets.

An “M” powered AI assistant could even get a new name, like…Marvin, and use the translation features announced for Messenger today. Still, with the fallout from Cambridge Analytic a and the prospect of increased regulation hanging over its head, Facebook will keep watching the home assistant battle from a spot on the sidelines.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2018!

Source: CNBC

Twitter’s Windows app finally has recent features

Twitter updated its Windows 10 app back in 2015, adding top tweets, trending stories and social features to Microsoft’s operating system. Now, Twitter is bringing its focus back to Windows yet again with an “updated experience” for Windows users via Twitter’s Progressive Web App (PWA). The new web app is optimized for the April 2018 update, and adds support for 280 character tweets, the topical Explore tab, bookmarks, and improved accessibility for screen readers.

Progressive Web Apps may look and act like native Windows apps, but they’re really just a way to package up content from a specific web site, like Twitter in this case. A company blog post explains that this new release is a way to commit to Windows, and “is part of a longer-term strategy to reach greater feature parity to all of our platforms.” The team also promises additional features like night mode in the coming “weeks and months.” Previous versions of the Twitter app will no longer be supported starting June 1st, so you’ll want to update to the new PWA soon.

Source: Twitter

Facebook users will be able to make normal photos look 3D

Facebook has been working to implement 3D objects into user interactions, but at the company’s F8 conference today, announcers introduced a few new features to add dimensionality and VR to photos. This summer, users will be able to upload pictures as a ‘new media type’ allowing them to capture 3D moments in time, according to the social network. But it’s also adding a new feature that takes photos of old locations — your childhood home, perhaps — and uses machine learning to recreate them in VR, albeit in a funky pointillism-like style.

The point cloud reconstruction uses AI and machine learning to fill in the gaps between photos to recreate environments, which users will be able to navigate in VR. Facebook already gives folks opportunities to dive into the past, and this will show off the analytical AI muscle it can bring to bear — in this case to augment nostalgia, but it could be used to create other virtual reality environments in the future.

From Facebook’s initial description, 3D photos will seemingly require users to use the app when capturing photos into a new format. Sometime this summer, users will be able to share photos with what looks like a faux-3D effect on pictures, such that scrolling past makes them appear three-dimensional. We’ve reached out to Facebook to confirm or get more details.

Source: Facebook newsroom

Snap’s redesign slowed down user growth

This earnings season has seen the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon report unsurprisingly profitable results. As the biggest tech players continue to make an embarrassing amount of money in spite of controversy and backlash, we now get to see if smaller upstarts like Snap have had similarly successful quarters. From the looks of the company’s just-released earnings report for Q1 2018, things over at Snap have not been very smooth. This quarter, it added just 2 percent new Daily Active Users (DAUs), a drop from the 5 percent increase in Q4 2017. While its overall revenue of $230.7 million is up from the same period last year, that number has dropped 19 percent since the last quarter. Snap attributed this sequential decline to its recent redesign and “seasonality.”

After struggling for two quarters to add users at a satisfying rate, Snap finally saw its efforts start to pay off in the fourth quarter of last year, hitting an encouraging 5 percent increase in DAU from the quarter before. It focused on improving its Android app and rolled out a redesign aimed at making its interface more user-friendly. Despite some unhappiness over the new look, things appeared to look up for the ephemeral messaging app.

Now, we’re learning that the redesign may have done more harm than good, at least in the short term. Not only has user growth slowed, but CEO Evan Spiegel also noted in his prepared remarks accompanying the results that there was “a disproportionately negative impact among Android users.” He attributed this to “number of performance regressions” due to “the volume of changes we made with the redesign.”

The new layout affected users across all operating systems, too. Spiegel said that the March DAU average was lower than the overall first quarter average of 191 million, but pointed out that the number for that month is still higher than the Q4 average.

The company had anticipated this negative impact, Spiegel said, noting that “a change this big to existing behavior comes with some disruption, especially given the high frequency of daily engagement of our community.”

While the company is starting to see early signs of stabilization among its iOS users “as people get used to the changes,” Spiegel admits that it still has “a lot of work to do to optimize the new design, especially for our Android users.”

This story is developing…