Friday
Mar252016

Vevo personalizes your feed further using social media

Music video app Vevo hopes to bring you more of the music that you like with its latest update. The app now lets you link Spotify, Twitter, and YouTube to look for the artists you follow on those networks. You have the option to automatically import your favorite artists to help out the apps on curation. When you sign up to use Vevo, it asks you the genre of music you like and it’ll generate artists from there. When you pick your favorite artists, these will affect the next set of recommendations. The update is coming to Android first and then will be coming to iOS in the following week or so.

Source: The Next Web

Friday
Mar252016

Oculus starts shipping Rift VR headsets to customers

It’s finally happening. The headset that’s seen to have kicked off the resurgence of virtual reality is finally going to make it into the hands of the public. Oculus VR Chief Executive Brendan Iribe confirmed on Twitter that their company has started shipping the consumer version of the Rift to those who preordered the headset. It should arrive at customers’s doors by the March 28th official launch date. It isn’t just a big moment for the company but for the industry as well as they are the first big VR company to release to the public. The HTC Vive is still up for preorder and coming out in May, while the PlayStation VR is coming out at the end of the year. Of course, you can argue for Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR but these still lack the feature set the Rift has.

Source: The Independent

Friday
Mar252016

Snapchat acquires Bitmoji maker for US$100 million

In what looks like a way to compete with Facebook in the mobile messaging market, Snapchat has snapped up Bitmoji creator, Bitstrips Inc., for over $100 million USD in cash and stock. If you’re unfamiliar with the Bitmoji app, it lets users create cartoon avatars based on themselves that they can send via a special smartphone keyboard. This acquisition is seen to help Snapchat further its library of visual filters and lenses to its over 100 million users. Earlier this month, Facebook bought Masquerade Technologies to let users enhance their videos with filters and “swap” faces with someone else in the picture, a popular feature on Snapchat.

Source: MarketWatch

Friday
Mar252016

You can now download Google's Nik Collection of $149 photo tools for free

Google is generously giving away its $149 Nik Collection suite of digital photography desktop plugins. Google acquired the company to bolster its Snapseed application and it looks like it is done with the remnants of the company.

Nik Collection includes Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, and Dfine, all of which work in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture. Buyers of the suite will be duly refunded. The download is available here.

Source: The Verge