Facebook launches Newswire for journalists !

 

                                                      

                              Facebook has launched FB Newswire, with the aim to make it easier for journalists and newsrooms to find, share and embed newsworthy content from the popular social networking website in their work.

The FB Newswire is a Facebook page of hand-selected and journalist-verified news stories from across Facebook's platform, according to Andy Mitchell, director of news and global media partnerships at Facebook.

The newswire is designed to help journalists share and embed newsworthy Facebook content that is made public by its members such as photos, status updates and videos.

"Every day, news is made on Facebook. More than one billion people use our platform to discover, explore and participate in news-making events around the world," said Mitchell.

"Today, we're excited to announce FB Newswire, a resource that will make it easier for journalists and newsrooms to find, share and embed newsworthy content from Facebook in the media they produce," Mitchell said.

Powered by Storyful, that is involved in social content discovery and verification for newsrooms, FB Newswire aggregates newsworthy content shared publicly on Facebook by individuals and organisations across the world for journalists to use in their reporting.

This will include original photos, videos and status updates posted by people on the front lines of major events like protests, elections and sporting events.

FB Newswire is accessible on Facebook at Facebook.com/FBNewswire and on Twitter at @FBNewswire, and will be updated in real-time with content related to top news stories.

"In Storyful, we're excited to have found a partner with a track record of understanding both the potential of the social web as a key resource for media as well as the tools that newsrooms need to utilise it," said Mitchell.

Facebook is confident that their news expertise will help make it even easier for journalists to use compelling social content from Facebook in their news-gathering and reporting.

"News is finding a bigger audience on Facebook than ever before. Journalists and media organisations have become an integral part of Facebook, which is visible in features such as Trending Topics, improvements to Pages, and recent changes to News Feed," according to Mitchell

Ex-Apple CEO John Sculley launches Obi Mobiles in India

Former Apple CEO John Sculley has launched his own smartphone brand, Obi Mobiles, exclusively in India.

Obi Mobile is headquartered in Gurgaon and is promoted by Singapore-based Inflexionpoint.

Focused on mid-range smartphones, the company plans to take the brand and business to other growing markets in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Latin America.

Obi Mobiles plans to invest $20 million in setting up the supply chain, design centre along with sales and after sales services in the key centres across India this year.

The operations of Obi Mobiles will be led by Ajay Sharma as the CEO of the brand. Sharma has earlier established a key role in establishing HTC in India and was also associated with Micromax for the smartphone division.

It is rumoured that the Obi Mobiles devices will be priced between Rs 5,000 and Rs 8,000 and will be available in the market starting early next month.

Facebook plans to spread INTERNET using drones and satllites !!!!!!!!!!!

Facebook Inc is harnessing satellite, drone and other technology as part of an ambitious and costly effort to beam Internet connectivity to people in underdeveloped parts of the world.

The world's No. 1 social network said on Thursday it has hired aerospace and communications experts from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and its Ames Research Center for the new "Connectivity Lab" project.

"Today, we're sharing some details of the work Facebook's Connectivity Lab is doing to build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone," Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook.

He gave few specifics and did not specify a time frame.

The move extends the social networking company's Internet.org effort, aimed at connecting billions of people who do not currently have Internet access in places such as Africa and Asia. Facebook has been working with telecommunications carriers to make Internet access more available and affordable.

"We're going to continue building these partnerships, but connecting the whole world will require inventing new technology too," Zuckerberg said in his post.

Facebook envisions a fleet of solar-powered drones as well as low-earth orbit and geosynchronous satellites delivering Internet access to different regions of the world. Invisible, infrared laser beams could allow Facebook to dramatically boost the speed of the Internet connections provided by the various aircraft, Facebook said on a Web page that explaining the project.

Facebook's plans to take to the skies underscore the company's rising ambitions to exert its influence beyond the confines of its 1.2 billion-member social network and to set the pace for new technology that will shape society.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced plans to acquire Oculus VR Inc, a maker of virtual reality goggles that Facebook hopes could become the computing platform of the future.

Facebook is following in the steps of Google Inc, the world's largest Internet search engine, whose Google X division is working on a variety of so-called "moonshot" projects including self-driving cars and wearable computers.

Google announced plans last year to use solar-powered balloons to deliver Internet access to remote regions of the world.

Among the jobs openings posted on Facebook's website on Thursday were roles such as Antenna Systems Engineer and Electro-Optical Network Access Hardware Engineer.

Facebook also said it had hired a five-member team that worked at Ascenta, a British company whose founders created early versions of the Zephyr, which Facebook said held the record for the longest-flying solar-powered unmanned aircraft.

Shares of Facebook were up 28 cents, or less than 1 per cent, at $61.25 in after-hours trading on Thursday

Apple offering free recycling of all used products

Apple is offering free recycling of all its used products and vowing to power all of its stores, offices and data centers with renewable energy to reduce the pollution caused by its devices and online services.

The iPhone and iPad maker is detailing its efforts to cultivate a greener Apple Inc. in an environmental section on the company's website that debuted on Monday. The site highlights the ways that the Cupertino, Calif., company is increasing its reliance on alternative power sources and sending less electronic junk to landfills.

Apple had already been distributing gift cards at some of its 420 worldwide stores in exchange for iPhones and iPods still in good enough condition to be resold. Now, all of the company's stores will recycle any Apple product at no charge. Gift cards won't be handed out for recycled products deemed to have little or no resale value.

The offer covers a wide array of electronics that aren't supposed to be dumped in landfills because of the toxins in them. In the past seven years alone, Apple has sold more than 1 billion iPhones, iPods, iPads and Mac computers.

The new initiative, timed to coincide with Tuesday's annual celebration of Earth Day, strives to position Apple as an environmental steward amid the technological whirlwind of gadgets and Internet services that have been drawing more electricity from power plants that primarily run on natural gas and coal.

Technology products and services accounted for about 2 per cent of worldwide emissions in 2012, roughly the same as the airline industry, according to statistics cited by environmental protection group Greenpeace in a report released earlier this month. Some of biggest electricity demands come from huge data centers that house the stacks of computers that process search requests, store photos and email and stream video.

These online services, often dubbed "cloud computing," collectively consume more electricity than all but five countries - China, the US, Japan, India and Russia.

As the world's largest technology company, Apple is trying to hatch more environmental solutions than problems.

"What the company wants to do is use all our innovation and all of our expertise to make the planet more secure and make the environment better," Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environmental initiatives, said in a Monday interview. Jackson ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama before joining Apple last June.

Apple CEO Tim Cook underscored the commitment by narrating a 1 minute, 44 second video about the company's efforts to protect the environment. "To us, better is a force of nature," Cook says in the video.

The campaign appears to be more than just public relations stunt, based on Greenpeace's high praise for Apple in its recent review of the technology industry's environmental responsibility.

Among the 19 companies covered in the report, Greenpeace described Apple as "the most innovative and most aggressive in pursuing its commitment to be 100 per cent renewably powered." Greenpeace also gave high marks to Apple rival, Google Inc., and Facebook Inc., which makes one of the most popular apps on the iPhone and iPad.

All four of Apple's data centers, which are located in North Carolina, Oregon, Nevada and California, already rely entirely on renewable energy, the company said. The electricity comes from a variety of alternative sources, including biogas, as well as wind, solar and hydro power.

That means whenever people are interacting with Apple's iTunes store, sending messages or engaging in video chats, they "can feel comfortable that they are not adding any carbon pollution to the atmosphere," Jackson said.

About 94 per cent of the power in Apple's offices in the world is now supplied by renewable energy sources, up from 35 per cent in 2010, according to the company. Apple is building a new 2.8-million-square-foot headquarters in Cupertino that will be powered solely by renewable energy when it's completed in 2016.

About 120 of Apple's US stores, or nearly half of the outlets in the country, run entirely on renewable energy. The stores running on renewable energy include locations in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Monica, Calif. The company isn't specifying a timetable for meeting its goal to convert its other 300 stores in the world to renewable energy.

Sony Xperia E1 Dual review: Consider if music is priority, and not the camera

Consider if music is priority, and not the camera !!!
Name: Sony Xperia E1 Dual
Price: Rs 8,210
Rating: 4/5
Specs: 4-inch display, Android Jelly Bean, 3MP camera, 1.2GHz dual core processor, 512 MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, micro SD card slot, Bluetooth, 3G, WiFi, 1700 mAh battery, 120 g

Sony's Walkman series of phones has been popular, and now the company is back with a dedicated Walkman key on its new affordable smartphone, the Xperia E1. Packing in a four-inch display, the WVGA resolution (800 x480 pixels) is somewhat lacking in brightness and colour. The power key and volume controls are on the right edge, and the Walkman key and the 3.5-mm jack are at the top. The charging port is on the left panel. The E1 feels bulky, with its 12mm thickness, and has a slightly rough finish at the back.

Sony is pitching it as a value-for-money smartphone, and has added features to live up to its promise. To start with, it's a dual SIM phone. It runs Android Jelly Bean, and is powered by 1.2GHz dual core processor from Qualcomm. The 512 MB of RAM is on the lower side, but it manages to launch all the apps without crashing. It can handle basic gaming, but don't expect it to handle heavy games. Browsing on Google Chrome was smooth.

The biggest highlight of the Xperia E1 is the Walkman app. If you use a good pair of headphones, the sound output is impressive. The Walkman app launches a feature-rich music player. For example, the ClearAudio+ mode produces a more refined and clear sound, while the xLoud feature raises the volume. The phone also packs a 3MP camera, which is somewhat underwhelming, as images have a lot of noise. The Xperia E1 comes with 4GB internal storage, of which only 2GB is user accessible. However, it can be expanded by using the micro SD card slot. When fully charged, the battery was good enough for a day, and ran low by the end of the day.

Facebook adding new "location-sharing" feature..!!!

Facebook users in the US will soon be able to see which of their friends are nearby using a new feature the company is launching on Thursday.

The "Nearby Friends" feature must be turned on by the user, so people shouldn't expect to broadcast their location unknowingly. It will use your smartphone's GPS system to tell your Facebook friendsyou are nearby - provided they have the feature turned on as well. Rather than share your exact location, it will show only that you are nearby, say, within half a mile.

If you like, you can manually share a more precise location with a specific friend you'd like to meet up with. Friends can see where you're located in a particular park, airport or city block. By default, your exact location will be shared for only an hour, although you can change this.

Nearby Friends launches amid the growing popularity of location-based mobile dating apps such as Tinder and Hinge. But unlike those apps, Facebook's feature will let you meet up only with people who are already your friends.

Facebook, whose motto has long been "move fast and break things," built a lot of precautions in this new tool as it tries to avoid privacy fiascos that often bubble up when it makes changes to its service.

The new motto, "ship love," is evident in the cautious rollout of Nearby Friends, said Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum, an industry-backed think tank in Washington. He has advised Facebook on privacy issues, including the latest feature.

He believes Facebook is showing "a deeper appreciation that with a billion users, any change needs to be implemented in a way that doesn't surprise the audience." That's especially so when it comes to privacy, especially when it comes to location sharing.

"Once you start bringing this to a mass audience, you need to be cautious," Polonetsky said, "so inadvertent oversharing is not possible."

Nearby Friends also won't be available to users under 18, said Andrea Vaccari, a product manager at Facebook. He said the tool "makes it easy to join your friends in the real world."

Of course, all the safeguards and slow rollout mean that most users won't have the feature available right away on Thursday but rather in the coming weeks and months. Initially it will go to people who are likely to appreciate it, Vaccari said, such as people who have "checked in" to various restaurants, bars or other locations using Facebook.

Unlike with other features, Facebook isn't forcing people to use Nearby Friends. Therefore, there is a possibility it won't catch on widely.

Vaccari is optimistic that it will.

Vaccari joined Facebook in 2012, when the company acquired Glancee, his startup service for meeting nearby people who have friends and interests in common. He has been working on the new feature since then.

Facebook employees have been testing Nearby Friends, and Vaccari cites ways it has helped people get together:

- When two people landed at the airport at the same time from different flights, they saw that they did through Nearby Friends and shared a ride home together.

- When two people were out shopping alone in San Francisco, they joined forces after seeing each other nearby.

Nearby Friends, Vaccari said, isn't for the five to 10 close friends whom you feel comfortable texting or calling up to hang out. Rather, he said, it's for the broader group of friends you enjoy spending time with but wouldn't necessarily call. Nearby Friends may provide that extra push. Users can limit whom they share their location with to smaller groups of friends.

Users who sign up will be shown a short tutorial on how the feature works. Besides seeing friends who are nearby, users can also see which of their friends are traveling, and in general which friends are using the feature even if they are not nearby.

Facebook says there are no current plans to draw advertising revenue from Nearby Friends. The company says it does not currently target ads to users based on where they happen to be at the moment, but uses their stated "current city" and the location of their computer based on its numeric Internet Protocol address.

'Canvas Doodle 3' for Rs 8,500

Home-grown handset maker Micromax on Tuesday launched its new six-inch phablet 'Canvas Doodle 3' for Rs 8,500.

The Android Jellybean operating system based-device is powered by a 1.3 GHz dual core processor, 4GB ROM and 512 MB RAM (expandable memory up to 32 GB), Micromax said in a statement.

The smartphone features a 5 MP AF rear camera, 0.3 MP front camera, 2500 mAh battery and comes preloaded with M! Doodle, Bigflix, M!live, Getit, Kingsoft Office and Opera apps.

Using the M!Doodle application, users can doodle chats, animate, scribble smileys and write text over clicked pictures.

"At Micromax, we have always aimed to offer something new and different with every product launch with affordable innovation being our core DNA," Micromax CMO Shubhodip Pal said.

The Canvas Doodle 3 further reinforces Micromax's commitment to empower consumers with larger screen to help them express their imagination in a more creative way like never before, he added.

"With our foray in Russia and SAARC countries, we have charted a successful journey to become the 1st Indian hardware brand to go global. Our intentions are clearly to take Micromax to key international markets and further pursue our innovation story," he said.