Author: Staff Writer

Instagram New data portability tool.

Staff Writer
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Instagram is building its own data portability tool which will allow users to download a copy of everything they’ve ever shared on the platform, similar to how Facebook’s download your information tool works. The platform confirmed the news to TechCrunch. The tool could help Instagram users monitor how much of their data is on the platform. It will also help Facebook, which owns Instagram, comply with the forthcoming European data privacy rule, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will require all data to be portable. The rule will also require…

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New AI software that helps doctors diagnose like specialists.

Staff Writer

For the first time, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved an artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic device that doesn’t need a specialized doctor to interpret the results. The software program, called IDx-DR, can detect a form of eye disease by looking at photos of the retina. It works like this: A nurse or doctor uploads photos of the patient’s retina taken with a special retinal camera. The IDx-DR software algorithm first indicates whether the image uploaded is high-quality enough to get a result. Then, it analyzes the images to…

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How to Find Out If Your Facebook Data Was Stolen by Cambridge Analytica

Staff Writer

Roughly 87 million people had their Facebook data stolen by the political research firm Cambridge Analytica. And starting today, Facebook will finally notify the people who had their information scooped up. About 70 million are in the US, while the rest are primarily in the UK, Indonesia, and the Philippines. How can you find out if your Facebook information was compromised? A notification will appear at the top of your Facebook newsfeed, along with a new button for changing your privacy settings. Even if your information wasn’t swallowed up by…

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Facebook Reveals New Verification Process for Large Pages

Staff Writer

Facebook released policy prescriptions to combat election meddling in the upcoming U.S. midterms. These prescriptions are its most detailed to date. The new rules will impact businesses running Pages and Instagram accounts. The plan is effective immediately in the U.S., and in the coming months elsewhere. On Friday, the company said that it would require large Pages to verify the identities and locations of the people and businesses managing them, a move largely meant to prevent people outside the U.S. from making fraudulent posts on topics like domestic politics. (It…

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New JuuBike: Streamlining the Kenyan Bodaboda Transport Sector

Staff Writer

The Boda Boda Safety Association of Kenya recently launched a new app called JuuBike that will connect riders to customers in what the Association says will streamline the industry and inject discipline. The IBCA caught up with its founder who told us more about it. How can you define the technology sector in Kenya? JuuBike: The technology in Kenya has been improving rapidly and being adopted by very many different sectors eg, communication,Transport, manufacturing and many others. It has the engine that is driving the Kenyan economy as today almost everything is…

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People Jobs are likely to be destroyed by New AI and robots says OECD

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Fewer people’s jobs are likely to be destroyed by AI (artificial intelligence) and robots than has been suggested by a much-cited study, an OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) report says. An influential 2013 forecast by Oxford University said that about 47% of jobs in the US in 2010 and 35% in the UK were at “high risk” of being automated over the following 20 years. But the OECD puts the US figure at about 10% and the UK’s at 12%. Even so, it says many more workers face…

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Snapchat adds new 16-person group video calls

Staff Writer

Snapchat has launched a feature that enables up to 16 people to take part in a live chat together, using either video or just their voices. The app’s members can also start tagging each other by username, using the @ symbol in their posts. The changes will roll out over the coming weeks, the firm said. Snapchat came under fire for a recent redesign. A petition calling for the changes to be reversed attracted more than 1.2 million signatures. At the weekend, Snapchat’s first TV advert aired in the US.…

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Instagram suddenly chokes off developers as Facebook chases privacy

Staff Writer

Without warning, Instagram has broken many of the unofficial apps built on its platform. This weekend it surprised developers with a massive reduction in how much data they can pull from the Instagram API, shrinking the API limit from 5,000 to 200 calls per user per hour. Apps that help people figure out if their followers follow them back or interact with them, analyze their audiences or find relevant hashtags are now quickly running into their API limits, leading to broken functionality and pissed off users. In a puzzling move,…

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New Self-care Apps on the rise

Staff Writer

Millennials may be a bit obsessed with self-care — and it’s beginning to pay off for the makers of self-care and digital wellness apps. According to data from multiple app store intelligence firms, the category is now seeing notable growth. In the first quarter of 2018, the top 10 grossing self-care apps in the U.S. earned $15 million in combined iOS and Android revenue, and $27 million in worldwide revenue, according to Sensor Tower. The firm also found that the top 10 wellness apps (e.g. mindfulness and meditation) made about 170…

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LinkedIn is introducing auto-playing video ads

Staff Writer

In a move that was probably inevitable, LinkedIn is introducing video advertising as one of its Sponsored Content formats. Although my LinkedIn newsfeed already includes plenty of video, Abhishek Shrivastava, director of product for the Socail network’s Marketing Solutions, explained for advertisers, the only way to incorporate videos was to link to other websites. Now, the Microsoft -owned professional network is rolling out a native ad format, where video ads will appear as standalone posts in the feed. The video ads will play automatically, though with the sound turned off…

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