Heena Sharma Blog

Apple has revealed its " Best of 2019 " apps and games across platforms such as iOS, macOS and tvOS. "Developers around the world inspire us all with innovative apps that have the power to influence culture and change our lives, and this year that is as true as ever. The 2019 App Store Best Apps and Games winners reflect our global desire for connection, creativity and fun," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said in a statement on Monday. The iPhone app of the year went to Lux Optics' Spectre Camera, an AI-powered photography app. Digital notebook app Flow by Moleskine was the top iPad app, while Serif Labs' Affinity Publisher publishing and design app took top honours for Mac. The Explorers, an app designed to "create a comprehensive 'visual inventory' of the natural world through photo and video," ranked as the year's best Apple TV app. Sky: Children of the Light was named iP...

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 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...

The new encryption feature could be activated from a "New Private Conversation" option that is now part of the "Compose" menu or from the recipient's profile Technology News : Microsoft has reportedly rolled out end-to-end encryption for private conversations on Skype that would ensure that the chat content between two people is hidden in both, the chat list and the notifications. This feature comes after months of testing and is now available for all users on Skype iOS, Android, Linux, Mac and Windows, tech website MSPoweruser.com reported late on Monday. Microsoft is yet to confirm the development. The new encryption feature could be activated from a "New Private Conversation" option that is now part of the "Compose" menu or from the recipient's profile. Users could participate in only one private conversation from a single device at a time and on switching the conversation to other devices, the messages the...