Facebook Messenger gets festive with new features

Facebook is getting into the spirit of the holidays with new features for its Messenger app. One feature is Photo Magic. What this does is it makes it easier for you to share holiday snaps with friends and loved ones. When you take photos, Facebook’s face recognition will look for your friends on Messenger and then prompt you to send these photos to your friends. You can also opt out of this. The feature was limited before but is now more available for users. You can check if you have it by going to Messenger settings (the cogwheel) and then tapping on Photos & Media. The Photo Magic option should be there.

Another new feature is some Christmas-themed options in Messenger. Just tap on the info button of one of your conversation and from there you can change color of your chat window, or even your emojis to something more season-appropriate. If you select the likes of Christmas tree or snowman, you can even make it snow on your mobile screen phone. Or you can download Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Frozen sticker packs for some snowy surprises. And those on Android should see the snow globe effect on friends’ chat heads again for a limited time.

Source: Facebook Newsroom

iPhones become the top used ‘camera’ for Flickr uploads in 2015

For Flickr’s Year in Review, we see that the iPhone has overtaken Canon as the most used camera brand for 2015. It jumps from around 25 percent to about 30 percent over the past year, with Canon going down to roughly 20 percent in the same period. The top six most popular cameras are all Apple devices. iPhone 6, then iPhone 5s, followed by the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 4, and then iPhone 6. The Apple domination gets broken as Canon EOS 5D Mark II takes the seventh spot but they regain it yet again with the iPhone 5c in the eighth spot.

The only other smartphone brand to make the list is Samsung with the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S5 taking the 11^th and 13^th spot, respectively, and the Galaxy S3 taking the 19^th spot and sandwiched between two Nikon DSLRs.

Source: Flickr | Via: Apple Insider

Spotify subscribers can now stream the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" OST

John Williams' iconic and masterful score for all the Star Wars movies has been one of the defining features of this beloved movie franchise and this continues for Episode VII. Just in time for the global opening of the film, Spotify is making available the entire soundtrack to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It's a nice, spoiler free way to ruminate on the movie before or after seeing it and Williams delivers another dramatic and heroic score that's intrinsic to the movie's character.

Breitling's smart wearable merges tech with craftsmanship

Marquee timepiece maker Breitling has revealed its wearable. The Exospace B-55 Connected is a genuine Swiss Timepiece with all tbe premium case treatments anf compilcations expected from a Breitling but it also interacts with a smartphone app for setting timers and accessing the chronometer's features. There's no social media, notifications or cute watchfaces here, just some very precise functionality. Read more about it here.