Facebook introduces Hello app for caller ID and more

Facebook tells that they are now testing Hello, a new app created by its Messenger team. It connects with Facebook in order to see who’s calling, block unwanted calls, and search for people and places.

When you receive a call, Hello will show you information of the person who is calling you, as long as they have already shared it with you on Facebook.

In addition, you can call people and businesses on Facebook using the app.

In order to block unwanted calls, go to settings where you can block specific numbers and whether you want to automatically block calls from “commonly blocked numbers.” These blocked calls go straight to voicemail and can be accessed from your recent calls list.

Although Hello is still being tested, you can download it from this Play Store link. Lastly, here’s Facebook’s video on the app, if you’re interested.

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Facebook continues to make most of its money from mobile

Facebook’s bet on mobile continues to pay off in absolute spades. The first quarterly earnings report of the year from Zuckerberg and crew lay testament to that, showing that a whopping 73 percent of its $3.32 billion in ad revenue now comes from mobile alone (Total revenue for the quarter was $3.54 billion). Its number of mobile users is also on the rise — out of Facebook’s 1.44 billion monthly active users ,1.25 billion are on mobile, which is up 24 percent from this time last year. Perhaps more impressive is that the number of daily users — ie. its most engaged audience — has gone up as well; 936 million people visit Facebook everyday, and 798 million of them do it from their phones.

Facebook’s other properties saw growth as well: Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp now have around 300 million, 600 million and 800 million users respectively. Zuckerberg said on the earnings call that people are sharing content with greater frequency, adding that there around 45 billion messages are sent everyday on Messenger. He also said that VOIP is an avenue for growth, especially as WhatsApp has recently brought voice calls to its iOS app. Zuckerberg added that Messenger, which also lets you make voice calls, apparently accounts for 10 percent of global VOIP.

The growth in mobile is particularly noteworthy as the company shifts toward more standalone apps, like today’s release of Facebook Hello. Also don’t expect video ads to go away any time soon; Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, says that Facebook has about 4 billion video views a day. Quite a bit of this revenue is going to Facebook’s longer term projects such as Internet.org, its plan to spread web access to everyone in the world, along with its investment in AI and virtual reality such as Oculus Rift.

[Image credit: PL Images/Alamy]

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

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Source: Facebook

Facebook officially introduces dialer app, aptly named “Hello”

Facebook has just launched a new app for Android called “Hello” which essentially works as caller ID for your smartphone. This was said to be in the making for quite some time, but it’s good to see that the company has finally launched the app.

The app essentially tells you who’s calling, thanks to the myriad of numbers on their database. This is done by taking the users’ consent, so only those who wish their numbers to be shared with Facebook will have their names pop up when they call somebody.

The app is Android only for the time being with no word on whether iOS users will be able to get their hands on the app anytime soon.

Using Hello, you will be able to block unwanted callers and also learn who is on the other end. This is something that apps like Truecaller have already achieved, so it’s nothing new to the Android users.

But having the large numbers on their database courtesy of Facebook will certainly help in making Hello a popular app among Android users. Make sure you give the app a try from the link below.

Source: Google Play Store, Facebook Newsroom

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Virtual reality stole my dance with Bjork

Maximum Bjorkness! That’s what I came in expecting at MoMA PS1, the Museum of Modern Art’s Queens-based offshoot, where the famous musician/distressing fashionista’s new virtual reality exhibit is on display. “Stonemilker,” a lilting, melancholy track from her new album Vulnicura, is the basis for Bjork’s foray into VR. Considering the freaky name — Stone milk? Gross. — the harrowing emotional subject matter of her new record and the tech, you can understand why I arrived ready to get weird.

This is the same person that turned the song “All is Full of Love” into a Chris Cunningham-directed video that forces you to confront the sexual nadir of the Uncanny Valley. This is the artist who helped Lars von Trier make a movie about a singing blind woman that simultaneously fills you with awe at the world’s beauty and makes you want to die because of its cruelty. Now she’s made an album boldly chronicling the dissolution of her marriage to artist Matthew Barney and filtered that through virtual reality filmmaking? Sign me up.

Much to my disappointment, however, the “Stonemilker” experience is neither as strange nor as harrowing as I’d hoped it would be. It was beautiful and intriguing, but it was also irreparably hindered by the inherent limitations of VR gear.

Inside the Stonemilker exhibit at MoMA PS1.

Rather than present an ethereal fantasy world of robot ladies and techno-organic sprites, the exhibit itself feels almost nostalgically familiar when you enter. A small dome set up just inside PS1’s entry, it’s kind of like a sturdier version of an elementary school planetarium, only full of hipsters instead of children. The room is dark, save for a dusky image of Iceland’s volcanic coastline projected on the ceiling, and the soft sound of waves crashing fills up the interior without ever becoming too loud. It’s inviting and warm, but still strange and scary: a perfect atmosphere for the music on Vulnicura. In the center are a series of stools you’re required to sit on so you can spin around in 360 degrees after strapping on a pair of sharp headphones and an Oculus Rift headset to enter “Stonemilker.”

The compulsion to dance with her as the song goes on is almost overwhelming. But no, you have to remain seated on the stool.

Andrew Thomas Huang’s seven-minute virtual reality video for “Stonemilker” is actually quite lovely. Bjork herself stands before you on the same coastline projected in the dome outside your helmet of technology. Wearing a billowing green dress, she sings about the moment when one person in a relationship sees things clearly and the other doesn’t; when their ability to feel changes and blooms while their partner’s calcifies. She spins around you, and you in turn spin around on the stool to follow her, and before long she’s split into two and three people filling your view. Rather than a ghostly effect, it all feels like living in the moment of a memory. Was she standing next to me while I looked at the lighthouse in the distance or behind me? Could I see her when she described getting me to talk like “milking a stone?” Even the gauzy pixelation of the Oculus Rift’s screens — often referred to as the “screen door effect” that newer models help alleviate — makes the video feel like something slightly unreal.

As the minutes clock by while the music dips and swells, though, the confines of that damn stool start to chaff the brain. I can only spin around and try to follow the singer as she dots the landscape, staring at the sky or blackened ground every now and again to try and push at the edges of just how far the technology will let me go. Forget walking over to where she’s standing or to the waves hitting the rocks. Lean too far from center and the image starts to warp, Bjork’s face getting comically big like a member of the Peanuts gang. The compulsion to dance with her as the song goes on is almost overwhelming. But no, you have to remain seated on the stool.

Headdress art (is that what that is?) from Bjork’s MoMA retrospective.

Of course you have to sit on the stool! Even if Oculus’ tech did offer free roaming, which it doesn’t, you’d still be locked to the stool. Not only would giving you free reign over the beach damage the choreography already in place, but also the exhibit space itself would be a nightmare! Imagine bespectacled, bearded dudes and chicks in pastel-hued Lisa Loeb glasses bumping into each other left and right, damaging the VR helmets and creating a lawsuit quagmire for the museum in the process. The stool allows for a coherent artistic vision and a safe audience space even as it leaves you feeling trapped.

The argument could be made that isolation is the point. “Stonemilker” is, after all, a song about an ever-widening chasm between two people. The roles in VR work are still undefined, but whether you’re a viewer, listener or participant here, you’re still always divorced from the performer. The multitude of Bjorks pirouetting around your fixed position brings that gulf into stark relief.

Intentional or not, “Stonemilker” doesn’t quite work. Any kind of emotional resonance created by your near-separation from the work is drowned out by the physical alienation of the technology itself. Regardless, for fans of Bjork, it’s still worth a visit. “Stonemilker” is still a lovely song and the exhibit’s still a cool space even if the Bjorkness on display isn’t at extra strength.

[Images: Andrew Thomas Huang (lede image); Matt Hawkins/Attract Mode (“Stonemilker” exhibit); Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images (Bjork MoMA headdress)]

Filed under: HD, Facebook

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Indian firms back out of Facebook’s free internet program

Facebook’s Internet.org effort is supposed to democratize the internet by providing free access to key websites, but some Indian companies don’t think it’s quite so altruistic — and they want out. Cleartrip, NewsHunt, NDTV and the Times Group have all announced that they’re withdrawing some or all of their sites from Internet.org because they believe it violates net neutrality. They argue that Facebook’s program unfairly favors certain sites over others — why should it cost you to use some sites, and not others? As the Times Group explains, a site shouldn’t be punished for taking a “principled stand.”

There are still numerous services involved, such as AccuWeather and Reuters Market Lite. However, these departures are definitely going to be noticeable — both for users and for Facebook, whose reputation is taking a bruising. The move could have other sites thinking twice about signing up, and may pressure Facebook into changing its strategy.

[Image credit: AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.]

Filed under: Internet, Facebook

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Via: Huffington Post, PandoDaily

Source: Cleartrip, Times Internet, Prannoy Roy (Twitter)