Facebook racks up more users, nearly triples profits
While Twitter is trying to rebuild itself, Facebook recorded yet another blockbuster quarter. Over the past three months, the social network had $7.01 billion in revenue and $2.38 billion in profits, which is an astounding 166 percent increase over this time last year. You read that right; Facebook’s profits this quarter has nearly tripled year-over-year.
A big part of that growth lies in mobile advertising. 84 percent of its ad revenue comes from mobile, and the number of mobile monthly active users has risen to 1.66 billion, an increase of 20 percent year-over-year. In fact, a whopping 1.055 billion of its users are mobile-only. An average of 1.09 billion people use Facebook via mobile on a daily basis. Its total monthly active users has grown too, to about 1.79 billion people. That’s a 16 percent growth from this time last year.
In the earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that going forward, the company is putting video first. “We’re prioritizing to put video first across our family of apps,” he said. “We think the camera will be the main way people share.”
He called out the rise of Facebook Live, which he said has grown four times since May. People from all over the world are broadcasting live from Facebook, he said. Instagram Stories, which incorporates both photos and videos that disappear in 24 hours, has also gained more users. It now has more than 100 million daily active users, as does Instagram Explore. Look forward to more visual messaging tools over the next few months, he said.
Zuckerberg mentioned a three phase approach in how he hopes to grow Facebook’s apps over the next few years. The first phase would be to deliver a great consumer experience, the second would be so users could interact organically with businesses and the third is to give businesses more ways to reach people. He said that Instagram is now in the third phase, with over 500 million monthly active users and 300 million users who use it daily. Messenger is in the second phase, and he said that the messaging platform now has around 33,000 bots from a variety of businesses. WhatsApp will be starting on the second phase next.
A big contributing factor to Facebook’s growth is also its efforts with Internet.org, which is its initiative to spread internet in developing countries. He said that Internet.org has already connected more than 40 million people.
Next, Zuckerberg talked about how the company is investing in tech like Artificial Intelligence (AI). He said that Facebook is already seeing impact in how AI can have an impact in enhancing people’s experiences on Facebook, like filtering out clickbait stories and finding terrorist propaganda. It’s still early days, he said, but he hopes AI can be used to improve the quality of News Feed in general.
As for VR, he reiterated the news announced at Oculus Connect, which is that Touch controllers are arriving in early December and the next phase in VR would be focusing mostly on great software experiences. Indeed, he said the company is going to be investing over $250 million on developing more VR concepts.
“Everything we do is about opening the world to everyone and helping more people to connect and share,” said Zuckerberg.
Source: Facebook
Dell hints at its take on a Surface Studio-like creative PC
Microsoft and HP haven’t completely cornered the market on creativity-minded desktops, apparently — Surface Pro Artist noticed that Dell teased its own all-in-one creative PC as part of the AdobeMAX opening keynote. The short clip (below) avoids offering any explicit details, but it’s clear that this isn’t a direct parallel to the Surface Studio. You’re not drawing directly on the computer, to begin with. Instead, Dell will have a Cintiq-style tablet display (it’s not certain if this is standard or optional) where you’ll create your masterpieces. The prominent chin on the Dell rig is also a sharp contrast to Microsoft’s minimalist design. Are those speakers?
Not that there aren’t any parallels to Microsoft’s system. Dell will have its own Surface Dial-like accessory that can pop up brushes and other creative tools wherever you place it on the tablet display.
In keeping with Dell’s time-honored tradition of not saying anything about products during teasers, the teaser doesn’t discuss features, performance, price or ship dates. The company only mentions that you can expect a formal announcement soon. From a cursory glance, though, it’s reasonable to presume that the dual display configuration you see in the video won’t be cheap.
Via: The Verge
Source: Surface Pro Artist (Twitter)
‘Pokémon Go’ will keep users hooked with daily bonuses
Now that Halloween is over, the folks at Niantic Labs have cooked up a new bonus scheme to keep players coming back for more. The next update to Pokémon Go will make it easier to rack up more XP, items and Stardust if you catch a Pokémon or visit a PokéStop every day.
For starters, your first Pokémon catch of the day will kick in 500 XP and 600 Stardust, but if you go on a seven-day catching streak, you’ll be rewarded with a quadruple bonus of 2,000 XP and 2,400 Stardust. Likewise, if you’ve got a favorite PokéStop that you visit on a daily basis, that’ll start to pay off a little bit more. Trainers will get 500 XP and bonus items on their first PokéStop visit and seven straight days of check-ins will bless your character with 2,000 XP and even more item pickups.
If you’re curious, the bonuses refresh every night at midnight in your local time. So, if you catch a Pokémon at 5 PM on a Tuesday, you’ll be eligible for the next daily bonus at 12 AM on Wednesday morning. This latest update, combined with a more balanced playing field should make it easier for casual Pokémon Go players to get a quick boost while also rewarding the hardcore fans still walking around with their phones out.
Source: Pokémon Go Live
Apple Releases Minor Update to First macOS Sierra 10.12.2 Beta
Apple today seeded a second version of the initial macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta, which comes two days after the macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta was originally seeded to developers.
The build number of today’s update is 16C32f, while the original 10.12.2 beta build number was 16C32e, indicating a small incremental update that does not count as a full second beta release.
Because the new beta is not showing up as an over-the-air download in the Mac App Store for developers who have already installed macOS Sierra 10.12.2, it likely only includes minor tweaks and will be provided only to developers who are downloading the beta for the first time.
macOS Sierra 10.12.2 includes the same new emoji and emoji updates that are present in the iOS 10.2 beta, introducing support for Unicode 9 emoji and new profession emoji. Some of the new emoji characters include selfie, face palm, crossed fingers, shark, owl, butterfly, bacon, avocado, and croissant.
Apple has also updated many existing emoji with new artwork, adding detail and making them look brighter and more realistic.
The 10.12.2 update also includes under-the-hood bug fixes and performance improvements to address issues discovered since the release of macOS Sierra 10.12.1.
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iOS Adoption Remains at Lowest Levels Since 2014 as Android Captures Record 87.5% Market Share
The latest data from market research firm Strategy Analytics claims Android captured a record 87.5% share of the worldwide smartphone market in the third quarter, reflecting the period between late June and late September.
Strategy Analytics director Woody Oh on Android’s continued dominance:
Android’s leadership of the global smartphone market looks unassailable at the moment. Its low-cost services and user-friendly software remain attractive to hardware makers, operators and consumers worldwide. However, several challenges remain for Google. The Android platform is getting overcrowded with hundreds of manufacturers, few Android device vendors make profits, and Google’s new Pixel range is attacking its own hardware partners that made Android popular in the first place.
While most of Android’s gains can be attributed to the continued demise of BlackBerry and Windows smartphones, which are now practically non-existent on the market, iOS adoption remains at its lowest levels since mid 2014.
iOS recorded 12.1% market share in the quarter, down slightly from 13.6% in the year-ago quarter, allegedly due to a lackluster performance in China and Africa. That nearly mirrors the platform’s 12.2% market share in Q3 2014.
iOS and Android together account for 99.6% market share in what has become a two-horse race over the past several years. Windows Phone is virtually dead, and BlackBerry recently said it is done designing its own smartphones.
Tags: Strategy Analytics, Android
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Elgato Announces ‘Eve Motion’ HomeKit-Enabled Wireless Motion Sensor
Elgato today announced the latest product in its line of HomeKit accessories, debuting the Eve Motion wireless motion sensor. The Eve Motion is a small square-shaped accessory that can be put anywhere in your house, indoors or outdoors.
It works in tandem with other HomeKit accessories, allowing you to create scenes that can be set off using automatic triggers. When placed in an entry way, for example, the Eve Motion can automatically turn on the lights and raise the thermostat when it detects that you’ve entered the house. It works with the Eve HomeKit app, Apple’s own Home app, and with other HomeKit apps that support third-party accessories.
“Motion sensors are an indispensable part of a home automation setup,” said Markus Fest, General Manager of Elgato. ” With no wires attached, Eve Motion is a versatile trigger for a host of unique and creative scenarios.”
Eve Motion connects to a HomeKit setup using Bluetooth and like the rest of Elgato’s products, it does not require a bridge. It runs off of two replaceable AA batteries, so it doesn’t need to be charged, and it has a 120 degree field of view and a range of nine meters with a response time of two seconds. An IPX3 water resistance means it’s resistant to small splashes of water and moisture, but it shouldn’t be outside in a torrential downpour.
Eve Motion joins Elgato’s other HomeKit-enabled products, including the Eve Energy smart outlet, the Eve Room indoor sensor, the Eve Weather outdoor sensor, the Eve Door & Window door sensor, and the Eve connected Light Switch.
The Eve Motion is available from the Elgato website or from Amazon.com for $49.95.
Tags: HomeKit, Elgato, Eve
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OnePlus gets into the schwag game, starts selling bags and t-shirts Nov 3
Never Settle for a backpack that doesn’t match your phone.
OnePlus is known for its phones and accessories, but now the company is expanding its offering of lifestyle products outside of China with the launch of “OnePlus Gear.” Though it isn’t yet bringing a full suite of gear to the rest of the world, the new portion of its online store will launch November 3 with bags and t-shirts previously only available at its pop-up shops.
The product offering on Day 1 is pretty simple: two t-shirts, a travel backpack, a travel messenger bag in two colors and a premium leather messenger bag. If you’re a OnePlus fan this is obviously a neat way to support the company — though the branding is quite subtle — while also getting a slick, stylish and functional piece of gear in return. I can’t speak for the other products, but having used the OnePlus travel backpack for a while I can say it’s quite nice.
Never Settle for a bag that doesn’t match your OnePlus 3.
OnePlus is wading into its Gear offerings slowly, kicking things off with a 24-hour sale at its online store starting at 6:00 a.m. ET on November 3. The store won’t be up for those in India (OnePlus says it’s coming soon), but elsewhere around the world you can shop while supplies last.
The products haven’t been listed on the OnePlus store just yet, so we don’t know what official U.S. and European pricing will be set at, but you can get a good feel for the product features from the Chinese OnePlus website — here’s the shoulder bag and the backpack. As far as pricing goes, a direct currency conversion from the Chinese store sets the bags at about $30 and $45, respectively — we’ll see how they’re priced for sure when the store goes live in the morning.
OnePlus 3
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OnePlus
Hands-on: Wileyfox’s Swift 2 adds metal chassis, fingerprint and upgraded CPU for £159
British startup ships its most premium phone yet, as it looks towards a future of subsidies, revenue sharing and life beyond CyanogenOS.
Wileyfox is keen to paint itself as the quintessential startup: a disruptor in a world of crusty, outdated brands. For a company that didn’t even exist two years ago, its goals are lofty. It wants to challenge Samsung, and the perception that you need to spent hundreds to get a great smartphone, while beating established mid-level players like OnePlus and Honor. Its arsenal consists of its brand, affordable yet capable hardware, and finely tuned software.
The reality isn’t so rosy. Last year’s entry-level Wileyfox Swift was pretty good, but the mid-level Storm was underwhelming. And the Spark, released over the summer, was hot garbage. Add to that the recent news that software partner Cyanogen is moving on from being an OS provider, and you’ve got a fair number of challenges.
In future, Wileyfox wants its customers to be able to upgrade for free.
Nevertheless, the company is bullish. Today at a launch event in London for its new Swift 2 handset, Wileyfox laid out a vision of where it’s headed in 2017. Not only does it want to sell good phones for less than the competition, it also wants to let customers upgrade at no cost. Wiley was light on exact details of how this will work, but plans apparently involve sharing revenue from preloaded services with consumers, while working with partners like Amazon and Google to reward consumers who use their services. At the same time, it’ll continue to hone its brand, working with charities like Center Point to give away phones to people in need.
But that’s the future. The present is the Wileyfox Swift 2, announced and made available for sale today, starting at £159 (or €189). It’s a significant step up from the original Swift, a plastic-clad beast which broke cover just over a year ago. And upgrades can be found both inside and out — there’s now an attractive metal unibody, complete with polished chamfers and an ample serving of foxy branding. The camera has undergone a significant upgrade, jumping to 16 megapixels on the higher-specced Swift 2 Plus.
The “Plus” model isn’t physically bigger — both variants pack 5-inch displays — but it does boast more storage and a better camera. The Swift 2 has a 13-megapixel rear camera, while the Plus bumps you up to 16. Meanwhile the storage and RAM configuration goes from 16GB/2GB in the Swift 2, up to 32GB/3GB in the Plus. The cost of those upgrades is a bump up to a £189 price tag (or €219).
A quicker performer than the Moto G4, and with better build quality to boot.
Besides those few differences, both models share a common hardware setup — that 5-inch display, at 720p resolution, which actually looks pretty decent despite its relatively low density. And a Snapdragon 430 CPU, the latest entry-level part from Qualcomm that brings QuickCharge 3.0 support and eight cores at 1.4GHz. There’s also a hefty 2,700mAh battery, which should be ample for the hardware inside. And it’s also nice to see a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner brought along for the ride — a relative rarity for phones at this price level — and NFC support, important for Android Pay.
The new Swift 2 models clearly share some design DNA with their predecessors, while upping the game in terms of material and build. The company boasts aircraft-grade aluminum, and talked up the additional manufacturing steps it takes to get the feel of this just right. The result is a pair of phones living around the price point of Motorola’s Moto G4 price, but with a much more premium in-hand feel.
As for imaging, we were given a Swift 2 Plus to review, which has the fancier 16-megapixel Samsung camera sensor with PDAF (phase-detection autofocus) and ISOCELL technology for clearer daylight pics. We haven’t had the chance to test the lower-end 13-megapixel shooter in the real world, but the “Plus” model’s upgraded camera seems relatively impressive given the price tag, even though you’ll need to deal with CyanogenOS’s relatively clunky camera app. The software experience is basically identical to that of the Spark — though much, much faster thanks to having three times the available RAM. CyangeonOS comes with more features than you’ll ever need, and a somewhat OTT orange fox-themed skin as standard — although this is easily changed.
Which brings us to the broader software picture. The Swift 2 runs CyanogenOS 13, complete with “MOD” plugin support, based upon Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. That’s unsurprising given that all Wileyfox’s previous phones have run Cyanogen’s stuff, but it does raise questions about future upgradability because CyanogenOS will soon be going away — questions we put to the company at today’s launch event. Wileyfox told us that it’s committed to future upgrades for all its phones, including an over-the-air Nougat upgrade “in some way, shape or form” for the Swift 2 series.
With or without CyanogenOS, Wileyfox’s ‘no bullshit’ software experience will live on.
Given the precarious future of CyanogenOS, it’s unlikely it will be part of the Swift 2’s upgrade path — however representatives stopped short of explicitly throwing Cyanogen under the bus. Instead, we were promised that Wileyfox’s “no bullshit” approach to software would continue, whatever happened. “We’re keeping our cards close to our chest.”
However things play out in the long run, Wileyfox has made a good start with the Spark 2 — a product which should banish memories of the disappointing Spark, a phone which was slow to the point of being unusable. By contrast, the Spark 2 — and in particular the speccier Spark 2 Plus — look like being cheap phones worth checking out.
That’s what Wileyfox needs as it doubles down on the European market in 2016 — specifically countries like the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands, where it’s already gotten a reasonable amount of traction with its online-only, direct-to-consumer strategy. The next step, the company says, involves working with carriers and MVNOs to offer phones on contract, broadening the means in which it’s able to offer its phones to customers And there was even a nod towards working with retailers on subsidized devices, perhaps a nod to a Moto G4-style team-up with someone like Amazon, to show ads somewhere on the device.
Wileyfox’s business — and its products — are far from conventional. Nevertheless, despite a few hiccups over the past year, it remains an interesting company to watch.
The Wileyfox Swift 2 and Swift 2 Plus are available to order starting today in the UK and Europe.
See at Amazon
Hide away atop these mountainous wallpapers
It feels like you’re on top of the world…
When we look at all the diverse environments this little blue marble of ours has to offer, it’s easy to see why mountains are so special to our lands, our cultures, and our history. Mountains are powerful symbols: to survive one is to prove yourself mightier than its thin air and rough terrain. To conquer one is to tame it and claim its power for your own. Mountains offer protection to those who choose to build on them, but if you make even the slightest mistake, they can kill you. Their imposing stature puts awe and adventure in the hearts of all who behold them, and they remind us all how small we are.
Isn’t that the kind of power you want on your home screen?
Canada is home to many great mountains, but Moraine Lake, nestled in the Valley of Ten Peaks, is one of its most picturesque. It’s little wonder that it’s been used as a stock wallpaper on devices like the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Pearl. We could climb those majestic peaks, or go for a leisurely canoe ride across that magnificent lake…. Or we can make it a wallpaper and dream about going there.
Moraine Lake
Now this is a bright blue glacier-fed lake…. And that is a magnificent mountain that feeds it. The Altai Mountains in East Asia are quite breathtaking, and while most of us will never see these ‘golden’ mountains, we can all appreciate the sunset and the brilliant glow that gives the mountain range its name.
Sunset at Kucherla Lake by Dmitry A. Mottl
Mt Fuji may be one of the most picturesque peaks in the world, and if I ever get a two month sabbatical to the cultural smorgasbord that is Japan, I would love to pay it a visit. In the meantime, there are almost as many photos of the massive structure as there are sakura blossoms at a festival, but this thread of Mt. Fuji photos will give you a wallpaper that feels like you’re living just within reach.
Mt Fuji
While living in the shadow of Fuji must be beautiful, the idyllic countryside cottage nestled here in the French Alps looks positively breathtaking. I don’t even wanna know how hard it’d be to get Wi-Fi set up out there, but as a wallpaper, we don’t have to worry about any of that. We just have to bask in its beauty and wonder how long it’d take us to make French Onion soup…
French Alps
Not all mountains have to be imposing, in fact this one is almost too welcoming. I’m almost convinced it isn’t even a photo, but rather a mirage, beckoning me towards the light and warmth of this fertile valley… While most mountain wallpapers are looking up at the peak, this one is looking back down from the heights, from that peak of power, giving us a unique perspective and a sense of accomplishment.
Mountain Valley
Vine co-creators unveil their own take on live streaming
Vine may be on the way out, but two of its original architects are determined to carry the torch for mobile video apps. Co-creators Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov have launched a livestreaming app, Hype, that aims to do more than just broadcast raw footage. You can slip music, photos and videos into your stream, and customize the layout to suit your presentation. It doesn’t just have to be about whatever you capture on-camera, to put it another way — you can take a back seat. There’s also more two-way interaction than you get with the likes of Periscope or Facebook Live, as the audience has direct ways of asking and answering questions, casting votes or getting their comments featured.
The result is a service that’s less about as-it-happens events and more about pre-arranged productions. Test users have created news and talk shows, for instance. And even if you’re not bent on internet stardom, Hype could be helpful for recapping a vacation without having to send a wave of media links to your friends.
Hype is only available for iOS right now (the team is creating an Android version), and there’s no certainty that it’ll find success. Remember Meerkat and Qik? Facebook and Twitter already have many livestreaming fans, and it may be difficult to shift the momentum away from these heavyweights. The newer service may stand a better chance than most, though. It’s offering features that Facebook Live and Periscope don’t offer right now, but aren’t just novelties — there’s a tangible benefit to expanding the kinds of broadcasts you can offer. The challenge is convincing users that it’s worth switching to Hype for these new tricks.
Via: BuzzFeed
Source: Hype (Medium), App Store
AIVAnet 