‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Apps And Software. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Apps And Software. إظهار كافة الرسائل
الأربعاء، 26 أكتوبر 2016

Want to become a journalist? Facebook wants to help you


The days of using Facebook to procrastinate could soon be behind you.
In a blog post on Tuesday morning, Aine Kerr, Manager of Journalism Partnerships for Facebook announced that the social network is launching a series of online training courses for journalists.
What will the courses focus on? Well, as Facebook continues to make inroads in the media industry, the company is offering users a crash course in how to perfect their social media skills to survive online journalism in 2016. 
While the courses may seem completely unnecessary to many millennial users who live and breathe Facebook, if you're wondering how to achieve that beautiful, blue verification check mark on your account or looking to ensure no one from work sees those embarrassing pictures from your weekend in Vegas, you might consider giving them a try.
The courses, which will be updated regularly based on feedback, will be available through Facebook's global training program, Blueprint.
They range from an extremely rudimentary "Getting Started" course —  intended for new users (and perfect for technologically-inept parents) — to more advanced courses that enlighten people on the site's lesser known features.

Upon launch, an intriguing course called, "How Journalists Can Best Utilize Facebook and Instagram" will be available, along with other various courses such as Facebook Live, 360 videos & photos, and Instant Articles.

In the next few months, Facebook plans to translate the site into more than eight languages, in an effort to connect with more journalists around the world (and further its plan for total industry takeover.)
The company hopes that the social media savvy e-learning courses "will inspire tens of thousands of other journalists" to learn and create.

1:18 ص
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You can now check weather.com via a Facebook chatbot


When IBM bought The Weather Channel for $2 billion in 2015, analysts were fairly uniform in their responses: What are they thinking?
Now, IBM is beginning to make clear how it is using this vast amount of weather and climate data that the company has collected for years on a second-by-second, worldwide basis. 
On Tuesday, IBM announced that The Weather Channel has launched a Watson-powered "cognitive weather bot" for Facebook Messenger.
 The Weather Channel bot gives users a new way to access and share personalized weather content including current conditions, severe weather alerts and five-day forecasts. 
As part of the merger, IBM gained ownership of weather.com, but did not purchase the cable network itself, which remains owned by a consortium of private equity firms and NBC Universal. 
The new bot will use IBM Watson's natural language and machine learning tools to get to know a user's preferences for weather information, according to an IBM press release. Over time, the bot will make recommendations about weather and news information. 
“At The Weather Company, we want to create the best user experiences, and that means providing weather information and content in any format people want to receive it,” said Cameron Clayton, the general manager of The Weather Company, in a statement. 
The bot is an interesting move for IBM and The Weather Company, since it could cause users who would have gone to weather.com or tuned into The Weather Channel to instead remain within Facebook's massive ecosystem. 
Giving up on that traffic and viewership is a tradeoff that the company feels is worthwhile considering the audience that can be reached on Facebook. 
“One billion people use Messenger every month, and most want to know how the weather will impact their day. The Weather Channel bot for Messenger will create a highly personalized experience for each one of those individuals,” Clayton said.  
The bot does, however, link back to weather.com's mobile website for extended forecasts. 
The bot can be accessed on The Weather Channel's Facebook page as well as the Messenger app.
1:02 ص
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Facebook shows off its experimental augmented reality app




LAGUNA BEACH, California — Facebook just gave an early look into an experimental camera app that uses artificial intelligence to make live video look like art.
Speaking Tuesday at the Wall Street Journal's WSJD Live conference, Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox demoed the app, which he said offered a look at how the social network is investing in augmented reality. The application aims to recreate the look of famous artwork in real-time within the camera using a technology called "style transfer." It's a bit like the app Prisma, except that the effects are created within the camera live, not after you shoot a photo or video. 
"Style transfer lets you take an artist like a Monet or a Rembrandt and transfer the representation of that style onto any image," he said. Cox primarily demoed a Starry Night-style effect but he said they also had styles for Georgia O'Keeffe and other artists.
Behind the scenes, Cox said the app uses a new type of artificial intelligence technology called convolutional neural nets, as well as "some cool computer vision stuff."  
While apps like Prisma have used similar AI technology to create fine art-inspired images, they aren't able to process images or video in real time. 
"This is very interesting because it's taking something that was a known technology but it was getting it to be really, really fast on the phone and able to be done at a low enough latency that there's no issues with dropping frames or with stuttering or blurring or anything like that," Cox said.
The application also offers an interesting look into the social network's efforts in augmented reality and how it views the smartphone camera as an entry point to AR.
Facebook has been investing heavily in virtual reality, but the company's ambitions in augmented reality have been less clear, though Zuckerberg has previously confirmed the company is working on AR applications. The CEO also showed off a concept for augmented reality glassesat Facebook's F8 conference earlier this year. 
"This is something that's a prototype right now, it's not connected to any of our services," Cox said. "But it's an area of work we're really invested in which is making it easy for the camera to be an early application of AR."
12:28 ص
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السبت، 24 سبتمبر 2016

Leaked video appears to show Snapchat's long-rumored smart sunglasses


Snapchat may be moving closer to launching its long-rumored wearable.


A video of what appears to be a commercial for the device — apparently called "Spectacles" — has surfaced, suggesting that the company may be getting ready for a launch.
The video was first spotted by Business Insider's Biz Carson, who managed to capture the video before Snapchat had it removed from YouTube. The 30-second spot is light on details but clearly shows the glasses capturing videos, which are then shared via a smartphone. It's not clear whether these video are shared via Snapchat or another app — the clip shows videos in landscape mode, which would be a departure from Snapchat's vertical video format.

The video has since been removed from YouTube — Carson reports Snapchat had it removed, citing a copyright claim, following her request for comment on it — but you can watch it in its entirety over at Business Insider. 
Rumors about Snapchat's plans to enter the wearables space have been swirling for months. Notably, the glasses shown in the latest video appears to match those shown in paparazzi photos of Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel taken earlier this year. The company also reportedly went on a hiring spree in order to create a team focused exclusively on wearables. 
While Snapchat has so far refrained from commenting on the matter, there are other signs the company may be moving closer to a wearable. Earlier this week, the company put up a new series of billboards and others ads in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., that depict the company's ghost mascot with its eyes wide open. 
Previously, Snapchat's ghost mascot always appeared without eyes. Given the video that was just leaked this hardly seems coincidental. 
We've reached out to Snapchat for comment on Spectacles and will update if we hear back.

3:57 ص
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How to check if you've been the victim of a breach like the Yahoo hack



In what has already been called the worst hack ever, Yahoo confirmed Thursday that at least 500 million users were affected by a security breach from a state-sponsored actor. 


If you want to tighten up your security, one of the first steps you should take is checking to see how many of your accounts have already been impacted by a security breach. 
SEE ALSO: If you use any Yahoo services, here's what to do following the massive breach
While the Yahoo hack is the biggest, there have been plenty of other massive data breaches over the years and chances are you've been affected by at least a few of them. It's true that most companies try to alert their users to these breaches as soon as possible, but even they sometimes don't find out about them until months or years after the fact. 
Below, we look at how to know if your information was exposed in the Yahoo hack, or a security breach like it. 

Yahoo

Yahoo says it is emailing owners of affected accounts now, so be sure to keep an eye out for an official email from them. (But beware of any suspicious looking messages, especially ones that prompt you to click on any links.)
In the meantime, even if you haven't gotten an email from them, it's still a good idea to change your password and enable two-factor authentication anyway. 

Other Accounts

One of the best ways to check many of your major accounts at once is the websitehaveibeenpwned, which is run by security researcher Troy Hunt, who tracks data breaches. 

Enter the email addresses you regularly use into the site to see which of your accounts may have been affected. The site will tell you when the breach occurred and exactly what information was impacted. 
You can also sign up for alerts tied to your email address so you can be notified as soon as another breach is detected. 
While there could still be other sources of personal information out there, Hunt's website is by far the most comprehensive of its kind, so it's not a bad idea to run your email addresses through it every once in awhile. 

3:42 ص
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