Everything announced on Facebook F8 2016 Conference

Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference is one of the biggest events of the year, especially given how social media is changing our lives in significant ways. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, delivered a keynote speech yesterday which showcased Facebook’s vision of the future. He also listed how Facebook is expanding vigorously in other tech fields as well.

Zuckerberg’s F8 2016 keynote was mostly about Facebook’s future and some customer products. Bots took center stage just like at the Microsoft’s developer conference that was held recently. This was followed by improvements in some customer products, new Facebook features and some new tech coming from the world’s biggest social network.

Lets take a look at what Facebook is bringing for its users down the road.

Messenger Gets a Bot Platform

Facebook is going with bots after many of its competitors did so. Telegram, WeChat, Kik offer it already and Skype just got it. Now its Messenger’s turn to incorporate AI-powered bots for its 900 million users. The company took its sweet time before launching the feature. Even now, it’ll be offered with the newly launched Messenger Beta platform.

The developer platform will let businesses, including news companies, create bots which can interact with Messenger users. Bots can send and receive text, images, buttons, bubbles and calls. Facebook showed off a CNN messenger bot which was capable of reading stories, getting summaries and offered an “Ask CNN” command.

Zuckerberg says the app will learn from your actions and personalise its algorithms to evolve with time.

Facebook Bot Engine

The social network announced the beta launch of Bot Engine, a tool which lets developers teach chatbots what to say in specific situations. Developers can use the Bot Engine along with the Send/Receive API to build Messenger bots. The technology comes from the Messenger’s Wit.AI team.

Facebook Live Stream

Facebook Live is the company’s answer to Meerkat and Periscope. It lets users stream live videos to the social network which, the company hopes, will play a big role in its next growth phase. Live API now supports third-party hardware allowing people to use separate cameras to live stream content. The company has partnered with different manufacturers to build on it and release its own products within the next five years.

Internet Beaming Satellite

During F8 2016, Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s Free Basics program will soon launch its first satellite into orbit in the next few months. According to him, the free internet program is helping more than 25 million people around the world.

Facebook has also announced a Free Basics simulator which lets developers test out how their websites would look like when accessed using Free Basics.

360 Degree VR Camera

The social network just released its Oculus Rift VR headset a few weeks ago. However, it’s not stopping there. Facebook just revealed its new open-source 360-degree camera which can capture some great quality VR content. The camera boasts 17 cameras and can record 8K video at 60 frames per second. The built-in software automatically stitches the videos together.

Being open-source, developers can make their own hardware and software based on the available designs and code.

Instant Articles for Everyone

Facebook announced a couple of months ago that it was bringing Instant Articles to everyone. WordPress will be getting a plugin which will let publishers export their content to the social network. Instant Articles will be added to user feeds directly and increase reader interactions as a result.

Account Kit

The social network announced a new software called the Account Kit. Third-party developers can add it to apps, letting their users to sign in to connect with just their phone number or email address – no passwords needed.

Save To Facebook

Save to Facebook will be a new addition to the social network’s portfolio. It will let users add content to a list of things to view later. The button will be visible on websites, and work like Pinterest, Pocket or Digg.

Share Quotes Easily

Sharing quotable quotes have become quite popular on Facebook. That’s why the company is bringing a new method that will let users clip quotes they like on the web (or e-books) and share them on Facebook in a neat and clean way.

Mark’s View on VR and AR

The founder of Facebook says that virtual reality and augmented reality of the future will be accessible using a gadget not so different from a common pair of glasses. The glasses have been announced as a part of Facebook’s 10 year plan for the future. AR and VR are expected to grow to a $120 billion market by 2020.

Vine for Profile Videos

Facebook is making it much easier for people to replace their profile pictures with profile videos. The ability to upload a 7 second video instead of still pictures has been available since last year. However, users will now be able to upload videos using third-party apps.

Vine and Boomerang will be the first two partners with support for the profile video feature on Facebook.

Facebook and WhatsApp Beat Regular SMS

People use Facebook and WhatsApp to send 60 billion messages every single day, three times more than regular SMS. The figure is a clear indication of the world moving towards online methods of communication rather than the offline ones.

So there you have it folks. Which of these announcements are you excited about? Let us know in the comments below.

Windows 10 Blue Screen of Death comes with QR code

If you are a Microsoft’s Windows user, you may have encountered the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).

The Blue Screen of Death generally appears when Windows encounters any critical error due to software or hardware issues, displaying a sad face and no information other than "Your PC ran into a problem."

However, now the company is apparently giving its infamous Blue Screen of Death a makeover.

With the Microsoft's Anniversary Update, the company is making the Blue Screen of Death a little helpful for its users.

Microsoft is adding QR code to its Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) in Windows 10 that will make it easier for users to identify potential issues with their devices.

The new QR codes are featured in the Redmond's latest Windows 10 Preview, Build 14316, which will debut this summer as the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Now, when your operating system fails, you will see not just a sad face, but a QR code that would be helpful in two ways:

1. You would be able to scan this code with your smartphone and be directed to a Web page that could include the details on the encountered error.
2. You could also call Microsoft support to figure out the problem by determining the source of the bug based on the specific QR code and even help you troubleshoot or fix it.

Though the change is not groundbreaking one, it will surely benefit millions of Windows 10 users whose hearts stop for a while when their screen goes blue.

The BSOD QR codes are expected to come out this summer when Microsoft releases the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Microsoft's Anniversary Update for Windows 10 will bring a lots of new features, including Ubuntu file system that will allow you to use Bash to run command-line Linux applications without a virtual machine.

How many of you think the BSOD QR codes would be useful?

Let me know in the comments below.

WebUSB API- Connect USB with Internet, SECURELY

Two Google engineers have developed a draft version of an API called WebUSB that would allow you to connect your USB devices to the Web safely and securely, bypassing the need for native drivers.

WebUSB – developed by Reilly Grant and Ken Rockot – has been introduced to the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Incubator Community Group (W3C WICG), is build to offer a universal platform that could be adopted by browser makers in future versions of their software.

Connecting USB Devices to the Web

WebUSB API allows USB-connected devices, from keyboards, mice, 3D printers and hard drives to complex Internet of Things (IoTs) appliances, to be addressed by Web pages.

The aim is to help hardware manufacturers have their USB devices work on any platform, including Web, without having any need to write native drivers or SDKs for a dedicated platform.

Besides controlling the hardware, a Web page could also install firmware updates as well as perform other essential tasks.

However, the draft API (Application Program Interface) is not meant to be used for transferring files to or from flash drives.

"With this API hardware manufacturers will have the ability to build cross-platform JavaScript SDKs for their devices," Google engineers wrote in the draft project description.

"This will be good for the Web because, instead of waiting for a new kind of device to be popular enough for browsers to provide a specific API, new and innovative hardware can be built for the Web from day one."

Privacy and Security Concerns

The Google engineers also outlined security concerns.

• WebUSB will include origin protections, like a type of the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), to restrict the Web pages from requesting data from other domains except the one from where they originate.

This means a Web page could not be able to exploit your USB device to access your PC, or your important files or any files that your computer or the USB device itself may hold.

• To address the issue of USB devices leaking data, WebUSB will always prompt the user to authorize a website or web page in order to detect the presence of a device and connect to it.

For now, the WebUSB is only a draft of a potential specification, which hasn't been officially adopted by W3C. WebUSB remains a work in progress at the current, though you can check out the full WebUSB codebase on GitHub.

This Real Hoverboard Can Go up to 10,000 Feet, Unlike Those Exploding Ones

The Flyboard Air is a hoverboard that puts all those other exploding vehicles to shame, since it actually hovers up to 10,000 feet in the air, according to a YouTube video of its prototype's first test run uploaded Saturday. Jet skier Franky Zapata of Zapata Racing is the man behind the somewhat terrifying mode of transportation.

In the video, Zapata launches himself high over a body of water — and survives with a smooth landing. 

Source: 

Aptly dubbed the Independent Propulsion Unit, the literal hoverboard can ride for 10 minutes to a frightening top speed of 93.2 miles per hour, according to the YouTube video. 

Getting humans to fly isn't entirely new ground for Zapata and his company, since they rolled out the water jetpack Flyboard in 2011,Gizmag reported. Unlike the attachment-free Flyboard Air, the original Flyboard was linked to a jet ski using a thick hose, which would use the water to launch the rider into the air. 

But don't get too excited about flying over those plebes on your morning traffic commute, since the Flyboard Air probably won't hit the market in 2016.

Facebook uses Artificial Intelligence to Describe Facebook for Blind Users

Today the Internet has become dominated by images, and it’s the major feature that got Facebook to a Billion daily users.

We can not imagine Facebook without photos, but for Millions of blind and visually impaired people, Facebook without photos has been the reality since its launch.

But not now! Facebook has launched a system, dubbed Automatic Alternative Text, which describes the contents of pictures by telling blind and visually-impaired users what appears in them.

Blind and visually-impaired people use sophisticated navigation software known as screen readers to make their computers usable. The software turns the contents of the screen into speech, but it can't "read" pictures.

However, Facebook's Automatic Alternative Text or AAT uses object recognition technology that can decode and describe photos uploaded to the social network site using artificial intelligence and then provide them in a form that can be readable by a screen reader.

Video Demonstration

ATT tool, led by Facebook's 5-year-old accessibility team, has already made its way to iOS devices and would soon be available for Android and the Web as well.

Facebook says its AAT tool The more images it scans, the more sophisticated the software will become. While still in its early stages, the AAT technology can reliably identify objects and activities in categories including:

• Appearance - baby, eyeglasses, smiling, beard, jewellery, shoes and selfie
• Environment - outdoor, sky, grass, tree, mountain, snow, ocean, beach, water, wave, sun
• Food - pizza, ice cream, dessert, sushi, coffee
• Transport - aeroplane, train, bus, boat, car, motorcycle, bicycle, road
• Sports - tennis, basketball, baseball, golf, swimming, stadium

The move by the social network giant is a bigger step forward for blind and visually-impaired users, although it only works in English at the current.

So in order to see the AAT technology in action for yourself, iOS users using iOS’s built-in screen reader can Go to Settings → General → Accessibility, and activate VoiceOver.

The company will soon bring the new functionality to other mobile platforms as well as languages. You can see the video demonstration to know how AAT tool works for someone using a screen reader.