Charity ads subvert Facebook to highlight the UK’s lonely elderly
If you live in the UK, you’ve probably seen Facebook’s new “Friends” ads on TV or the London Underground. They’re refreshingly simple and focus on what the goliath social network was originally designed for — staying connected with the people that matter most in our lives. However, soon you might see some new billboard ads, featuring a few subtle but incredibly powerful tweaks: namely, the use of the phrase “No Friends.” They were designed by the J. Walter Thompson London communications agency for the charity Age UK, and highlight the loneliness experienced by many older citizens. We suspect more than a few passersby will do a double-take after seeing these, and hopefully they’ll raise awareness for an important issue and the organisation trying to tackle it.
Source: Marketing Magazine
Google could be working on yet another new dialer
Last year, Google introduced a new dialer with Android 4.4.3. The dialer, limited to Nexus devices and GPE devices, added the ability to find people and businesses and call them directly from the app. With Facebook and Yahoo working on their own dialer apps, it appears that Google is taking the fight to them with an updated dialer.
Unlike the current dialer, the dialer app wouldn’t be limited to a small range of devices, and would be readily available to more people. This version is rumored to be more tightly integrated with messaging. Other than that there isn’t much to go off of. Yahoo’s app is said to blend text and video as well as feature a combination of live and recorded messages.
With Google I/O scheduled for the end of next month, we could very well see the new dialer soon rather than later, but then again, we could not.
source: The Information
via: TechnoBuffalo
Come comment on this article: Google could be working on yet another new dialer
5 Android apps you shouldn’t miss this week! – Android Apps Weekly
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Welcome back to Android Apps Weekly! Here are your headlines this week:
- A new study came out this last week that shows that three out of the top four regularly used apps belonged to Facebook. The main app, Whatsapp, and Instagram, all owned by Facebook, are in the top four with Blackberry Messenger clocking in at number two. Also up there is Twitter, Snapchat, WeChat, and an app called Average.
- While we’re on the subject of Facebook, they’ve also started testing out WhatsApp integration. In some apps, you now have the option to send things to people directly over WhatsApp from the Facebook app which is interesting because the services have remained separate for so long. It’s not available for everyone, so if you want to try it, patience.
- A new Humble Bundle is out now. You can pay whatever you want and get Bounden, Auro, and Avernum: Escape From the Pit. If you pay the average, which is around $4.18, you get 80 Days, Kingdom Rush Origins, and Riddick: The Merc Files. As always, it’s a great way to give to charity and buy some awesome games.
- Reports are out that say that YouTube is preparing to launch a subscription option that removes advertising from all videos. They’re still working out the details and we don’t know how much it’ll cost, but we do know that it is happening. Soon you can pay to remove all ads from YouTube.
- In our last bit of news this week, Amazon Prime Instant Video now officially works on Android tablets. This was some key functionality that’s been missing for a long time but now it’s there and you can watch it. It’s a little convoluted to install and it’s a bit shaky to use but it’s there. Now, we wait for Chromecast support.
If you want to see even more headlines, updates, and new releases, don’t forget to check out this week’s newsletter. We send it out every Friday along with the show so give it a bookmark and check out all of this week’s biggest Android apps and games news. You can also sign up with your email address if you want to.
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Playworld Superheroes
[Price: $3.99]
Playworld Superheroes is a new kids game that’s a mixture of a crafting game and an action-adventure game. Players can craft various costumes and such in the treehouse and then take to the streets to thwart bad guys. The graphics and game play mechanics are phenomenal and this is definitely a step above most kids games. There are also no in-app purchases which will make parents happy and there are even some lessons to be learned from the game. It hits all the right notes and is worth a try.
AppSlinger
[Price: Free]
AppSlinger is an application that helps you find other applications. The premise is pretty simple because it only shows you applications that are free to use. This is great for Android users on a budget and those who don’t want to go surfing through the Play Store to find good free stuff. The recommendations are customizable and the app claims to never show you the same app twice. It’s interesting and so far has really good ratings so it’s worth a shot.
KX Music Player
[Price: Free]
KX Music Player is a free music app with a dark theme and some basic features. It’s not trying to compete with something like PowerAmp but it’s a good option for those looking for something minimal, small, and simple. It has a built-in equalizer including bass boost and sound effects and basic controls like editing playlists and using shuffle/repeat. It is simple and it does lack some features but it is also entirely free.
KromacelliK
[Price: $0.99].
KromacelliK is a unique game where you play as a cell as you make your way around a strange world by moving other microbes and cells out of your way. The mechanics are simple and the graphics are colorful and retro. It also features an ambient soundtrack. It’s definitely a design and game type we don’t see every day and it’s exploration-style game play is quite enjoyable. Thankfully, it’s only $0.99 and there are no in-app purchases.
Adventures of Poco Eco
[Price: $1.98]
Adventures of Poco Eco is a beautifully designed adventure game with colorful, 3D graphics and a story that has you helping Poco find his tribe. It features atmospheric music, simple game mechanics, and really focuses more on the whole experience than any individual part of the game. It’s a mixture of a puzzler and an adventure game and it really is a joy to play. It’s $1.98 and there are no in app purchases for this one either.
Wrap up
If we missed any great Android apps and games news, let us know in the comments!
Facebook launches Messenger as a standalone website
Facebook has just unveiled a new version of the Messenger platform, built solely for the web. The new website, which can be found at Messenger.com, aims to give users an interruption-free communication experience, leaving all of the distracting Timeline posts and event notifications on Facebook’s main site. And don’t worry – unlike the mobile application, you’ll still be able to access Messenger from Facebook’s main website.
Once you head on over to Messenger.com, you’ll be asked to enter your Facebook account login information. After you’re logged in, you’ll be presented with a nice big view of your conversations, similar to what you’d see on Facebook.com. You can still send photos, stickers and thumbs up signs, but oddly enough, there’s no way to record audio messages like you can do from mobile. The site is pretty bare on Settings, so what you see is what you get.
This news comes after the social network’s recent announcement of the Messenger Platform, which allows third-party application developers to integrate their apps into the Messenger service. Facebook has big plans for Messenger, and that’s becoming clear thanks to all of the recent advancements the service has been receiving as of late.
Facebook owns three of the top four most regularly used apps
The Google Play store is full of app these days, but not all of them manage to retain active users over a long period of time. To do so requires offering a uniquely useful service, and Facebook owns three out of the four most long term popular apps, according to data collected from Quettra’s study of 75 million Android phones and published by The Information.
Before we delve into the data, it’s worth noting the geographic distribution of the devices. Half of results came from the Asian market, while the rest were evenly distribution through other territories.
The data found that Facebook, Blackberry Messenger and WhatsApp users stay very active after the first 90 days, while the average app loses close to 70 percent of its user base after the first three months. Instagram came in fourth with around a 50 percent retention rate after 90 days, followed by WeChat, Snapchat and Twitter propping up the bottom of the list with a 31 percent rating.
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Facebook owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and of course its own social platform, along with its own Messenger service, which did not rank nearly as highly. Interestingly, BlackBerry Messenger is proving particularly popular in Asia’s emerging markets, possibly because of its preload deals with manufacturers in these regions. Western favourites, such as Snapchat, Skype and Twitter, lose most of their active users within weeks in the Asian market.
The apps which tend to retain users appear to be the ones which see the most interactions per day and some apps are better at encouraging continual use than others. The results suggests that multiple features and larger contact pools help to prolong activity, while usage of more specific and limited apps, such as Snapchat, fade with time.
Love it or hate it, Facebook definitely has an eye for services and features that keep users coming back for more.
Leaked pictures show WhatsApp integrated within the Facebook for Android app
Several leaked images of Android’s Facebook app shows it being integrated with WhatsApp. As a refresher, Facebook purchased WhatsApp for $22 Billion last year and we’re finally starting to see the results of that merger. In the images, you can see the much familiar WhatsApp logo on a send button that Facebook has now added, as compared to the older version without it.
I’m sure this is merely a small step into Facebook’s bigger vision with this merger as they are continuing to create a tighter grasp in the Messaging market/platform. No word as to when this version of Facebook will be released, though we can assume it shouldn’t be too far from now.
source: Geektime
Come comment on this article: Leaked pictures show WhatsApp integrated within the Facebook for Android app
Judge says you can serve divorce papers through Facebook
How do you end a marriage to someone who’s purposefully avoiding your divorce papers? Try Facebook. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge has ruled that a New York woman can serve her divorce summons by messaging her soon to be ex-husband on Facebook. He’ll get the notifications once a week on the social network for three weeks, and it’s splitsville if he either acknowledges a message or refuses to respond.
The ruling could set an important precedent for divorces in at least New York state, since you may no longer need to track someone down to deliver a breakup notice in person. And in this case, that kind of remote notice is necessary — the husband doesn’t have a fixed address or known workplace, so his wife would have a much harder time filing for divorce unless investigators got lucky.
[Image credit: Alamy]
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Source: New York Daily News
Facebook begins testing WhatsApp integration
Last year Facebook acquired WhatsApp, a popular rival online messaging service, for $19 billion and appears to have begun testing some level of integration between the two services. Appearing in a new version of its Android app (v 31.0.0.7.13), Facebook allows users to send and share news directly to WhatsApp.
The new feature appears as a simple “send” button alongside the usual array of responses to a post. You can then share the item with a user in your WhatsApp contact list. However, I haven’t been able to find the button using Facebook v32, so perhaps this feature is only available to voluntary beta testers. See the screenshot below for a quick look.
How far Facebook and WhatApp will end up being integrated is currently unknown. Previously, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum stated that the app would continue to function independently, but that doesn’t mean that the two apps couldn’t begin to share some common features. Rumors also suggest that in the future the two apps may share the option to send messages between each other, effectively sharing their contacts lists. There’s also the possibility that Facebook may be interested in WhatsApp’s online voice call technology.
For Facebook, just having users share additional content between the two platforms will likely drive more ad revenue its way and could help bring additional users to each of the two platforms.
We will have to see how integration with WhatsApp affects Facebook’s own Messenger service, or if the company intends to keep the two as distinctly separate platforms.
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: oil rig oasis, bio-pyramids and Facebook’s new home
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Tesla, the Silicon Valley-based electric carmaker, is unrivaled when it comes to automotive innovation, and now the company is moving beyond the garage and into the home. Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed earlier this year that the company is developing a house battery that could help homeowners go off the grid. But Musk isn’t done: He also announced that Tesla would release a new product — one that it isn’t a car — at the end of April. Will it be the house battery? We’ll just have to wait and see.
The New York Auto Show kicked off last week, with press reveals of some of hottest new hybrids and EVs, and Inhabitat was on the scene to get an early look. For the second year in a row, BMW took the Green Car Award for the BMW i8, a sleek hybrid that has an all-electric range of 23 miles and can go from 0 to 60 in just 4.4 seconds. Chevrolet made a big splash with two separate reveals at the show: the faster and more efficient 2016 Spark and the 2016 Malibu Hybrid, which is more efficient thanks to technology borrowed from the 2016 Chevy Volt. On the luxury side of things, Lexus took the wraps off the 2016 Lexus RX 450h Hybrid, which features a sportier exterior than previous models and is offered with a V6 hybrid powertrain. And in the urban category, Smart unveiled the new 2016 Fortwo, which is just 8.8 feet long, but features more space than older models. And on the other side of the country, Inhabitat test-drove the Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive and the BMW i3 on the streets of Los Angeles for a head-to-head comparison. Click through to find out which high-end EV is better.
The winners of eVolo Magazine‘s annual skyscraper competition were announced last week, and Polish firm BOMP took top honors for its Essence Skyscraper project. Among this year’s honorable mentions was an enormous bio-pyramid that would enclose the Egyptian pyramids inside a greenhouse-like biosphere. Designing structures that help to regenerate biodiversity was a major theme of this year’s competition. The cellular Re-Generator Skyscraper, designed by Gabriel Munoz Moreno, would grow like a living organism and help China’s Hangzhou wetlands to recover. The Noah Oasis project proposed transforming offshore oil rigs into bio-habitats that would clean up oil spills and restore damaged marine ecosystems. In a proposal that sounds like pure sci-fi, Chinese designer Qidan Chen drew up plans for a skyscraper complex that would facilitate the artificial reproduction of animal and plant species. A team from China proposed building a radiant skyscraper that would purify the air and water in Chernobyl, absorbing radiation and giving off soft- or high-intensity light. And a team of Malaysian designers produced plans for converting former mining sites into housing.
Green design is important, but green design that addresses a social need is even better. Paul Lukez Architecture has done the latter by designing a small, “energy plus” home for a schoolteacher who wanted to stay in the Boston area despite the ever-rising cost of housing. Facebook officially moved into its new Frank Gehry-designed, LEED-certified headquarters in Menlo Park last week. The building features a sprawling green roof and a vibrantly decorated interior. Italian architecture firm Piuarch unveiled designs for the ENEL Pavilion at the upcoming Milan World Expo. The structure will be a physical representation of a smart energy grid using 650 vertically oriented polycarbonate vectors. And on the furniture design front, Christian Sjöström rolled out a new line of modular furniture inspired by molecular structures.
The Solar Impulse 2 landed in China last week, continuing its quest to become the first solar-powered airplane to fly around the world. The plane, which is piloted by a pair of Swiss aviators, will make one more stop in China before heading to Hawaii. In other green energy news, Facebook might be dipping its toe in the solar-powered drone market. Their in-the-works drone, which is the size of a commercial jet, would beam internet signals to communities that lack data networks. Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas are working to develop a new kind of plastic used in tubing that can produce electricity when stretched. The material could have revolutionary effects on both green energy and medical applications. Workers recently broke ground on the UK’s first zero-carbon community, North West Bicester, and the first residents are expected to move into 393 zero-carbon homes later this year. And one town in Texas — the heart of America’s oil country — is expected to run on 100 percent clean energy by 2017. Georgetown, a town of about 50,000, is located near Austin (of course). Israel installed 1,500 solar panels at the country’s national assembly in Jerusalem, making it the largest solar field of any parliament in the world. And for renewable energy on the go, there’s no better option than the Pulse, the world’s first hybrid portable charger, which can draw energy either from a wall outlet or from a solar panel.
Filed under: Misc, Household, Peripherals, Transportation, Science, Facebook
WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger Windows Phone apps get minor updates
Popular messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone got new updates this week. However, neither one has a change log so we can assume they are minor revisions.
AIVAnet 