Facebook Will Likely Have to Testify About Those Russian Ads
Any banking app developer online during last year’s contentious U.S. presidential election knows that the social media landscape was a mess. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, civic debate is now powered as much by memes and the dreaded fake news as much as it is an exchange of thoughts and ideas. But since […]
Here Comes the New iPhone (Please Let There Be Surprises)
The day has finally come: it’s September 12th and tech reporters and Apple cognoscenti will soon pile into the brand new Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus to hear all about those new iPhones. But as any iPhone app developer who has not been in a coma over the past few months will […]
Buying Music Rights May Be Facebook’s Ticket to Beat YouTube
As app developers know, Mark Zuckerberg will not rest until Facebook is a one-stop online media powerhouse. So how is Facebook going to beat YouTube, one of its biggest rivals for our attention spans (not to mention advertising dollars)? In addition to its new video tab Watch, the platform is trying to broker a deal […]
Facebook and Google Own 8 of the 10 Most Popular Apps
The American appetite for apps has plateaued since last year, but mobile app developers should have no fear: 57% of our digital media usage is spent in apps. It goes without saying that mobile apps are now an integral part of our lives. But which ones are the most used? The answers are, well, less […]
Tech Companies Stamp Out Neo-Nazis After Charlottesville
The events this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, shocked the nation, and Trump’s equivocating response threw salt in the wound. For many years now, the trend of political polarization has made common ground harder and harder to find, but it used to be that denouncing Nazis was as American as hot dogs, sparklers, and apple pie. […]
Airbnb Kicks Alt-Right Extremists to the Curb Before Protest
One of the recurring themes in the tech world during the Trump era so far is startups’ need to align their actions with their professed values. Twitter has had to find ways to fight trolling and abuse without completely squashing free speech. Facebook and Google are attempting to fight the fake news that propagated on […]
Zuckerberg Listens to America (But Isn’t Running for Office)
Before he was elected president, Donald Trump was just a businessman (by many accounts, a corrupt and failed businessman) and celebrity with no real experience in the political realm. According to his supporters, what qualified him for office were his willingness to play outside Washington’s established rules and his prodigious deal-making skills — after all, […]
Google’s AI Branch Is Moving to Tech-Friendly Canada
Over the past five years, Google has been on the hunt for the top talent in the field of artificial intelligence. The company is hoping to beat competitors like Facebook, Apple, and Amazon that share the same belief that AI is the way of the future. Google is already using machine learning to revamp Google […]
MIT to the Rescue with the New Jungle Hawk Owl Drone
It should be no surprise that MIT — you know, that school that’s basically synonymous with innovation — is doing amazing work with drones. Boston IoT app developers may already be aware of the autonomous, AI-assisted camera drones being tested by researchers at the school’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Now the brilliant engineers […]
Facebook’s Original Streaming Content Is In the Works
The San Francisco mobile app development community has long known about Facebook’s interest in launching streaming content, but until now details were scant. Plans to showcase original content at the F8 developers conference in April and the Cannes Lions advertising festival earlier this month fell through, leaving the tech industry to wonder if the social […]