Facebook purchases Oculus Rift for $2 billion

Facebook is looking to venture into virtual reality with its latest acquisition—and they aren’t afraid to spend big. Kotaku has just reported that Facebook is buying Oculus Rift for US$2 billion. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second quarter of the year and will be made up of $400 million cash payout and the rest as Facebook shares.

"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."

Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR says in a PR release. "We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."

iTunes Radio adds NPR as first news station

Apple is bringing talk radio into its iTunes Radio streaming service with the introduction of NPR. This first and new non-music station will run 24 hours a day and offer both live reporting as well as pre-recorded NPR shows. This new addition will help open NPR to new markets and help Apple differentiate its service from other streaming audio services. According to Tech Crunch, there are rumours going around that iTunes Radio will be offered to other markets, including Canada and UK. Hopefully, we can verify the veracity of that information. 

Tumblr boosts security with optional two-factor authentication

Tumblr is adding to the SSL encryption it introduced to the site with the addition of two-factor authentication. The feature can be seen in the Settings section of the site. This means any login attempts you do will require two separate entries. First is your regular password and second is a unique six-digit code sent to your mobile device of choice.

Source: The Next Web

Apple App Store reports iOS 7 adoption moves up to 85%, iOS 6 drops to 12%

More and more Apple users are adopting iOS 7, according to the report Apple shown on its support page for developers. Apple iOS 7 (including iOS 7.1) have reached the 85 percent mark, while iOS 6 has dropped to 12 percent. The numbers are based on the usage of the App Store.

Apple first published the iOS numbers based on App Store usage back on December 1, 2013. At that time, 74 percent of users were using iOS 7, 22 percent were using iOS 6, and 4 percent were using earlier versions.

Source: The Next Web