Facebook product director joins Uber as head of driver product

Under Uber’s current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the ride-hailing service has placed heavy emphasis on its drivers. But the company has been without a head for its driver product division since December, when Aaron Schildkrout left after the company wrapped its 180 days of change driver campaign. That just changed as former Facebook product director for video and Facebook Live, Daniel Danker, joins Uber. He will serve as a senior director and head of driver product. Danker will be in charge of planning, strategy, and execution for the said division. He has been working in Silicon Valley for a while already. Between 2000 and 2010, he worked in a couple of roles at Microsoft and left when he was a director of development and operations. He found his way to BBC in 2010 and then went to Shazam where he served as chief product officer for almost three years.

“Drivers are the heart of the Uber experience, and Daniel’s passion for our mission and deep product knowledge will ensure we continue to improve and innovate on their behalf,” Uber Head of Product Manik Gupta told TechCrunch in a statement.

Essential Phone gets some camera improvements with new app update

One of the Essential Phone’s weaknesses is its subpar camera performance. Thankfully, the company is acknowledging this is an issue and has continuously been rolling out updates to improve the camera. The latest update, which rolls out via the Google Play Store, brings a few new features. One is a new look for the camera roll. With new icons, it’s now easier to identify modes like slo-mo, 360-degree, Burst Mode, and videos. The update also ushers in the return of “Tiny Planet” feature for 360-degree videos. Burst Mode has also been improved. Plus, there’s the usual slew of stability fixes introduced into the app. The update is currently rolling out to users so keep an eye out for it.

Source: 9to5Google

Samsung Canada announces four winning schools in 2018 Solve for Tomorrow Challenge

Samsung Canada announced the four winning schools in the 2018 Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Challenge. Today, Samsung Canada announced the final four regional winners in its annual Solve for Tomorrow Challenge, a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-based education initiative that seeks to ignite student passion in these subjects. This year, Bernice MacNaughton High School (Moncton, NB), Thornlea Secondary School (Thornhill, ON), Meadows West School (Winnipeg, MB) and Westwood Community High School (Fort McMurray, AB) will each receive $20,000 in Samsung technology as a result of their creative and collaborative STEM solutions to real-world issues facing their communities.

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Facebook bundles its ‘On This Day’ updates into new Memories section

Facebook is hoping its new feature will get users to share more personal posts on its site. Called Memories, it revamps the “On This Day” feature a bit and adds some new (or should we say old) stuff into the mix. Aside from On This Day, the section also shows you the friends you’ve made on that day, seasonal or monthly recaps of your memories, and “memories you may have missed” (if you don’t check this section regularly). People who like looking fondly at their past might love this new feature but of course not all memories are pleasant and some might think this could just unearth some horrible past events. If you’re the latter, then it’s best to stay away.

You can access the Memories section on the desktop on the left-hand side menu. Meanwhile, in mobile you can access this through the “More” menu. These throwbacks are also accessible through facebook.com/memories.