Hasta La Gadget!

It would seem as though music streaming services are the rage these days, what with Apple hopping on board the bandwagon with iTunes Radio, where they join the likes to Spotify, Pandora, and Rdio just to name a few. Well it turns out that YouTube is looking to do the same as well and that they could be launching said service later this year. This is according to a report by Billboard who claims that the music streaming service will share some similarities with Spotify, but with the bonus added feature of a video component, which we guess is not surprising given that is YouTube’s core competency. (more…)

YouTube Rumored To Launch Subscription-based Music Service Later This Year original content from Ubergizmo.

Facebook made headlines yesterday as they lifted their ban on graphic content that would allow graphic visuals, such as beheading videos, to be allowed to be published on the popular social network. It looks like Facebook has pulled the ole 180 as they have once again decided to ban graphic content to be published on their service in less than 24 hours. (more…)

Facebook Once Again Banning Graphic Content From Its Service original content from Ubergizmo.

We’re sure many of you guys have come across Wikipedia entries which sound as though someone paid the author of the page to write something nice about a particular product, brand, or company. Given that Wikipedia is expected to be a neutral source of information, this is a little disturbing, and probably the reason why many schools discourage or disallow Wikipedia to be used as source material for reports. In any case it seems that the Wikimedia Foundation has had enough of these deceptive practices and have since announced that they will be cracking down on sockpuppeting, which is where Wikipedia users create fake identities to help companies or brands edit Wikipedia pages that will put them in a positive light.

According to Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, “Unlike a university professor editing Wikipedia articles in their area of expertise, paid editing for promotional purposes, or paid advocacy editing as we call it, is extremely problematic […] We consider it a ‘black hat’ practice. Paid advocacy editing violates the core principles that have made Wikipedia so valuable for so many people.” Given that creating new or fake accounts is pretty easy, we can only imagine that the Wikimedia Foundation’s efforts would be more reactionary as opposed to precautionary, since fake accounts and glorified Wikipedia entries are only noticed after they have been edited, but still kudos to their efforts nonetheless.

Wikimedia Foundation To Crackdown On “Sockpuppeting” On Wikipedia original content from Ubergizmo.

Wikitude Studio has received an upgrade which brings a number of interesting features, such as a new transparent background for text augmentations, zooming ability for target images and a number of tweaks to the user interface. One major addition is video augmentations. For those who don’t know, Wikitude Studio is an online augmented reality tool that allows users to create, manage and publish augmented reality experiences.

So Wikitude Studio users can now add video augmentations in their AR projects. Adding videos is actually quite easy, users have to insert the appropriate URL for the video and match the file with a source trigger. Wikitude Studio is capable of working with self-hosted videos or videos that are hosted on Vimeo and YouTube, by default. Apart from this, the static canvas has been replaced with a zoomable canvas in Studio, which allows users to zoom in and out of their target image. This increases ease of use, particularly when users are working with large target images such as panoramas. With the addition of a transparent background option for text augmentations, users are now free to insert text anywhere they want while giving only minimal consideration to the background. The updated Wikitude Studio is now live, updated and ready to use.

Wikitude Studio Upgrade Brings Video Augmentations original content from Ubergizmo.

If you’re a regular user of Twitter, then you’re probably well aware the only way anyone can send you a direct message is if you happen to be following them as well. This leaves many private communications between Twitter users being made public if one user happens to not follow the other one. It looks like Twitter will be shaking things up a bit they’ll be giving its users the option to allow their followers to send them a direct message without needing to follow them back. (more…)

Twitter Now Allows Any Follower To Send You A Direct Message original content from Ubergizmo.