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While ads are pushed to web users through virtually every possible ways nowadays, push notifications certainly is the most annoying of the lots. But not anymore for Firefox users, as Mozilla has introduced a blockade for push notification in Firefox 59, that stop websites from asking to send its users any notifications.

Though most have moved to an HTML5 overlay to request notifications, as the overlay can be used for lots of other sruff, Firefox can’t really block such notifications. But that's not the case for sites that use the push API standard for sending push notifications to pop up these notification requests.

The blockade settings dialog also allow users to block sites from asking access to their device’s camera, microphone and location. Which option is hidden in the settings menu via the Firefox Options menu, then Permissions > Notification Settings > Block new requests asking to allow notifications.

Firefox 59 also feature new functionalities like faster graphics rendering for Mac users, a makeover of the Home page, and the ability to add annotations to screenshots with better support for pen and touch screen pointer input.

Also, there's a small change to the Private Browsing Mode that will remove path information from referrers, making it a bit harder to track users as they surf from site to site.

Mozilla calls the new blockage "experimenting with a popup blocker" to dismiss them automatically, and curating a dataset for it. If you know of a site that shows these kinds of popups, you can report them by submitting it here: https://goo.gl/forms/ubVeA8uBvS1US96i1 …

Mozilla thwarts annoying push notifications in Firefox 59 for desktop



The NCAA's March Madness college basketball tournament is about to get more interesting, as Google teams up to host a developers' challenge on Kaggle, the world's largest online community of data scientists, tasking the participants to build and train machine learning models to forecast the games’ outcomes.

Google has set aside $100,000 in prizes for any computer scientist or group who could write the best AI software to predict the outcome of the NCAA's March Madness college basketball tournament.

While Kaggle has hosted such contests in the past, this year’s competition will be taking things to the next level with a new data set that contains every play-by-play moment in men’s and women’s NCAA Division I basketball since 2009.

Since 2009, a database of 40 million basketball plays have been recorded in the men's and women's NCAA Division I basketball games.

The data scientists will run the database through their neural networks, and it involves a log-loss approach that grades how well their predictions fare for all matchups that actually took place.

And because the competition is based on ML models, not basketball know-how, makes anyone’s game a win.

Also, the NCAA is migrating 80+ years of data across 24 sports to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), using Google tools to power analyses of teams and players, which will afford everyone a strategy for making their picks for the NCAA’s March Madness tournament.

Google's AI developers challenge to forecast the outcome of NCAA's tournaments



Giphy supports animated GIFs from YouTube videos or images with captions and stickers, but the self acclaimed fast and easy GIF maker is rather taunted for its extremely racist slur. Both Snapchat and Instagram have temporarily removed the Giphy GIF sticker features from their platforms, citing users complaints of racist undertones, and have gone ahead to disable the Giphy GIF support until they can be assured it won’t repeat itself.

The disturbing GIF includes text containing a racial slur, which sample reads "N—– Crime Death Counter – Keep Cranking Bonzo, the Numbers Just Keep on Climbing!"

The incident is quite embarrassing for social media generally and perhaps do raise a flag on Facebook’s Messenger Kids app, which also has Giphy integration that is supposed to show G-rated contents.

All Giphy GIFs in Snapchat are meant to be “rated PG,” meaning they’re mostly suitable for the 13-and-up teens that are formally allowed on Snapchat.

The racial slur could deter Snapchat from working more with outside developers, which it’s only recently allowed to contribute content through its Lens Studio and the Giphy integration. Albeit, it only launched on February 20th for users to jazz up their photos and videos with moving images curated by the Giphy team.

Though Giphy seems to have removed the offending GIF, as the community guidelines prohibit this kind of objectionable content in the first place, but since it indexes the top GIFs on the web, bad stuff can still pass undetected.

Giphy, however have taken full responsibility for the embarrassing mishap and sincerely apologized to anyone who may have been offended.

Giphy GIF sticker racial slur: A dent on the Social Media platforms



Facebook is currently testing its Camera AR Effect using location markers in the real world that trigger AR experiences in a precise location, with promotions for the upcoming Ready Player One and Wrinkle In Time films.

While the Facebook AR Camera’s Ready Player One effect takes one of the movie’s posters and overlays a window in the virtual Oasis world. It plans to bring the tracker-based AR to its AR Studio tool which is open to all developers.

The company launched its AR Camera Effects platform and AR Studio just less than a year ago at F8, but hitherto it hasn’t made a ton of progress, other than opening AR Studio to all developers back in December.

As Facebook opens the marker-based AR to its AR Studio tool, developers worldwide could start creating experiences tied to physical locations.

The AR markers could offer a much wider range of AR content that users would actually know where it is in the real world. Unlike the markerless AR, whereby users have to spontaneously think to use Facebook’s Camera, the markers can act as promotional reminders that there’s invisible content waiting to be unlocked.

And it is much more powerful because the AR now has immediate context as it is directly tied to a place or target familiar to everyone.

Facebook confirmed that the testing is still in closed beta, and that the AR camera is evolving beyond selfie masks and randomly placed 3D objects to using location markers in the real world that trigger AR experiences in a precise location.

Facebook's AR Effect evolving beyond Selfie masks and randomly placed 3D objects



Google's updates for Chrome happens in the background, and users can also install the latest version manually, by clicking on "About Google Chrome" from the Help menu; with the result tab display showing if the browser has been updated or the download-and-upgrade button.

The company on March 6 released Chrome 65 for Windows, macOS and Linux, with fixes for 45 vulnerabilities, and other enhancements that may not be observed by most users.

Chrome 65 toed the line of the previous version, with the end-user modifications that alter the browser's performance, signal adoption of web standards or debut new functionality. And top of the list is support for the Web Authentication API which enable the creation and use of strong, public key-based credentials by web applications, for the purpose of users authentication.

While Microsoft and Mozilla have also committed to the standard in their respective browsers, Edge and Firefox, the Support for the API though disabled in Chrome 65 by default; can be enabled from the page that results from typing chrome://flags in the address bar.

The previous version, Chrome 64 allowed auto-play in some exceptions: like when a user clicked or tapped (desktop Chrome or mobile Chrome), "somewhere on the site during the browsing session," the auto-play will still take effect.

And perhaps Google has delayed the enforcement to the middle of April, when Chrome 66 will arrive.

Other improvements in Chrome 65 include: CSS Paint API (which allow developers to craft images programmatically without the need to insert actual images) and the Server Timing API which brings the functionality that site designers and administrators can use to pass performance information on the server, and from the server, to the browser.

Google reportedly offered $34,500 to researchers for reporting 19 of the 45 bugs, with one additional bounty still to be decided.

What's new in Chrome 65 for Windows, macOS and Linux



Twitter "verified" status was originally conceived as a way to let users know a celebrity's account wasn't fake, while the program had over the years expanded to other public figures (including, politicians and journalists).

Now, the company is planning to expand the blue check-mark verification badge to more of its users, as the current system is rather meant to only indicate authenticity, according to Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO in a Periscope livestream.

Twitter is working on a new process to verify people's identity and ensure credibility, in an effort to further its mission to rehabilitate the network and its reputation following criticism of hosting tons of hate subcultures and misinformation.

As the current verified system is rather broken, because it has turned to status symbol, and the check-mark is now seen as a form of endorsement.

The company is especially focused on ensuring that accounts for candidates in elections are verified, with concerns that the Russian government-backed infiltrators might attempt to influence the upcoming US elections.

Twitter aims to make the verification system one of the most trusted services in the world, with the further expansion of the program.

Twitter set to simplify the 'Verified' system to accommodate more users

The next version of Google's mobile software, Android P - which at the moment is only available as a developer preview version brings upgrades in security and indoor mapping, among other nifty additional visual changes.

While still in the first developer preview version, Android P is very likely getting more enhancements — and as obvious some of the features already documented might look different in the next preview.

Google is toeing the line of Apple's iPhone X feature, the notch, with little cutout at the top of phones screens that take up about the whole screen. And that's perhaps the biggest changes in the software at the moment, and some manufacturers are already building notch compliant devices.



Since the new OS is optimized for notches which cuts into the top display area, Google has changed the position of notifications right next to the time. And about four different app icons will be displayed; which Android P shows a simple dot to let users know more items are waiting on sliding down the notification tray.

Also, the layout of items is a bit altered, and the grayscale icons of Oreo replaced by colorful circles.



Additionally, it presents the option to use Smart Replies, Google's AI-powered responses to texts that are already available in Gmail and its chat app Allo. And you'll find images in notifications which is helpful to quickly show who's on chat.

The new software focuses more on improving security as it restrict access to your phone's microphone and camera while apps are running in the background, which could help thwart the effort of hackers.

Albeit, Android P remains unfinished and the preview only serve to to give software developers a template to work on before the actual release.

As Google's tradition of naming its new mobile software flavors alphabetically and after something edible, it's expected Android P will also get a delicious moniker. The company will definitely unveil more features at its annual developer conference, Google I/O, in May and perhaps the new name choice, too.

Android P: What to expect from the next version of Google's mobile software



Google Lens, hitherto was only available to users of the Photos app on the latest Pixel phones, but now, Google is rolling out the feature to all Android users. Lens offers users a visual search engine that can recognize what’s in their images and scan business cards, among other image processing capabilities.



While the feature isn't yet foolproof, Lens can be both useful and frustrating at times, as it’s easier to take a picture of a landmark or restaurant to get more information than searching for it with a keyword.

Though you probably won’t need Lens to tell you when you're standing in front of the Burj Al Arab, the fact that it can show you more information about places of note, is actually quite handy.

And the ability to scan a business card can be pretty useful, though, most of us have done away with the good old business cards a long time ago. But users can also create a contact from a business card and certain phones will eventually be able to access Lens through Google Assistant.

Perhaps, Google’s visual search function could be improved upon to easily identify and annotate all objects, later in the future. Google had promise to bring Lens on Google Photos for iOS users soon, but no particular time frame has been set for it to happen.

Google Lens now available to all users of its Photos on Android



While Google has brought all its different payment tools under one umbrella, Google pay, still it hasn't been able to fend off the Apple advances, as the number of e-commerce websites that support Apple Pay on the Safari browser continue to soar.

According to a survey by dealspotr, in this quarter's usage of mobile payments, particularly emerging mobile payments technologies such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, as well as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are preferred among the Millennials and Generation Z shoppers.

As admittedly obvious, the young adults are the early adopters of new paradigms like influencer commerce and social-media driven shopping.

The survey was based on Google Market Research, in which about 1,000 people in total (comprising 500 Millennials - females and males aged 25 to 34 and 500 Generation Z - females and males aged 18 to 24), whose ages in summary are "young adults"category.

Against, the popular believe that there's a lackluster adoption of Apple Pay in general, the research findings indicates that this trend may be changing, especially among users between 18 to 35.

As Apple Pay dominates in usage and interest / affinity among young adults, and remarkably, 15% of young adults overall have used Apple Pay to pay while shopping online. And the majority of these cases involve paying for items through iOS mobile apps that connect to Apple Pay, indicating strong use of Apple Pay within native iOS applications.

While another 10% of young adults have used Apple Pay to pay in-store, which is broken down to 11% of Millennials and 10% of GenZers using Apple Pay to pay for items in the checkout line.

The 10% recorded with Apple Pay was significantly more popular than rival payment platforms such as Google's Android Pay (4%) and Samsung's Samsung Pay (2%) put together. Albeit, credit card and PayPal remain the most dominant forms of payment for online shopping.

Apple Pay leads in Mobile Payments among Gen Z and Millennials in Q1 2018



Google's mobile UI framework, Flutter is aimed to help developers to build high-quality native interfaces on iOS and Android in record time. The framework project, however isn't related to Google’s 2013 purchase of the gesture recognition startup with the same moniker.

While Flutter works with existing code, and employed by developers and organizations around the world to build applications and interfaces via a single code base that compiles directly to native ARM code. The company has just released the first beta, which can be downloaded from the Flutter webpage.

The new capabilities include Flutter's stateful hot reload which allows for quick code changes, with results of changes available quickly without losing application state. And the existing code written in Java and Kotlin for Android applications, or in Objective-C and Swift for iOS applications, can be reused with the framework.

Albeit, the alpha release last year added iPhone X and iOS 11 support, along with inline video and additional image formats.

The framework now works with a beta of Dart 2 language, a general-purpose programming language originally developed by Google, and can use the device’s GPU and access platform APIs and services.

The major highlights of the framework include: Integration with other development tools, such as Android Studio and Visual Studio, so that developers can use their familiar editor or IDE.

And there's now a set of interactive widgets, with rendering and gestures moved into the framework, providing control over pixels and offering the ability to build custom designs.

The new betas of Flutter are expected roughly every four weeks, and the future roadmap for Flutter capabilities include: embedding of Flutter screens into existing applications, and additional support for Google’s Firebase development platform.

Google’s Flutter mobile development framework hits first beta

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