Heena Sharma Blog

Facebook-owned Instagram on Saturday introduced three new options to share Boomerang Stories: SlowMo, Echo, and Duo, along with a new few feature to trim their length. "Your Instagram camera gives you ways to express yourself and easily share what you're doing, thinking or feeling with your friends. Boomerang is an iconic part of that, and one of the most beloved camera formats. Instagram is excited to expand on the creativity and give you new ways to use Boomerang to turn everyday moments into something fun and unexpected," the company said in a statement. The new filters are available in the Boomerang composer located in the Instagram Stories camera. With SlowMo, as the name suggests, Boomerang videos are slowed to half their original speed. Echo creates a double vision effect, enhancing Boomerang and Duo, both speeds up and slows down Boomerang, adding a texturized effect. It's also possible to trim and adjust the length of recorded Boomerangs with t...

Facebook started testing a tool on Monday that lets users move their images more easily to other online services, as it faces pressure from regulators to loosen its grip on data. The social network's new tool will allow people to transfer their photos and videos directly to competing platforms, starting with Google Photos. The company said it will first be available to people in Ireland and will be refined based on user feedback. The tool will then be rolled out worldwide in the first half of 2020. US and European regulators have been examining Facebook's control of personal data such as images as they look into whether the tech giant's dominance is stifling competition and limiting choice for consumers. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reacted by calling for new rules to address "data portability" and other issues. Facebook said that as it worked on a new set of data portability tools, it had discussions with policymakers, regulators, and academ...

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is working on a feature that will delete messages automatically after a stipulated time as set by users, according to WABetaInfo, a fan site that tests new WhatsApp features early. Renamed " Delete Messages " from earlier " Disappearing Messages ", the feature is being tested in beta mode. "In the WhatsApp beta for Android 2.19.282 update, we presented a new feature called ' Disappearing Messages ' that will automatically delete messages after a certain time. The feature is still under development, and WhatsApp is starting to work again on it in the 2.19.348 update, where they renamed 'Disappearing Messages' to 'Delete Messages'," WABetaInfo reported. Once available, the "Delete Message" feature will come with a toggle on/off button and users can choose a stipulated time -- 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month or 1 year -- for the messages to automatically disappear. Read More

Facebook and Instagram users lost access to the social network's applications in parts of the world Wednesday as a result of an outage of undetermined origin The California giant which has more than two billion users acknowledged the outage after users noted on Twitter they could not access Facebook or had limited functionality. "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible," a Facebook statement said on Twitter. A short time later, Facebook indicated the outage was not related to an attack aimed at overwhelming the network. "We're focused on working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, but can confirm that the issue is not related to a DDoS attack," Facebook said, referring to what is known as a distributed denial of service cyber strike. According to the website downdetector.com, outages were heaviest in North America an...

Facebook has launched in the US free online education programme CodeFWDTo to increase the numbers of underrepresented and female students interested in pursuing computer programming. "We're working on a number of initiatives like CodeFWD to widen the pipeline of diverse talent studying computer science so the next generation of tech innovators reflects and incorporates diverse perspectives, building a future that benefits us all," Lauryn Ogbechie, Education Partnerships Director at Facebook, said in a statement on Tuesday. Created in partnership with connected toys maker Sphero, CodeFWD by Facebook, has been designed for both English and Spanish speakers. It is a three-step programme where educators and organisations introduce computer programming to 4th to 8th grade students. With the first module "I do", CodeFWD prepares educators to introduce the basics of computer programming to their students, even as they may be discovering the concept...