Facebook Messenger's Latest Update Shows 'Bots and Businesses'

Facebook's standalone instant messaging app has been rumoured to receive a new chat bot feature which allows users to have conversations with company's automated representatives. A new update to the Messenger shows a new heading added in the app - "Bots and Businesses" - seen when searching or as contacts when creating a new message.

Engadget spotted the feature first and adds that Facebook can announce the arrival of chatbots in the Messenger app at the company's annual developer conference, F8. It adds that prior to the update, the Messenger app listed "Businesses" with list of the companies users can interact for customer support and other inquiries. It's worth noting that new "Bots and Businesses" heading is not visible after the latest update to Messenger for iOS and Android in India tipping that it may be a region specific feature.

As of now, there is no word whether the chatbot feature in Messenger app will be limited to just businesses or will it include publications as well. We can expect to hear more about the feature at Facebook's annual global developer conference will be held at Fort Mason in San Francisco starting Tuesday.

To recall, Facebook had previously allowed third-party integrations into its Messenger app such as allowing Messenger users to hail Uber rides directly from the app, without leaving a conversation or downloading the ride-hailing app.

Recently, Facebook announced Dropbox integration into its Messenger app. Few weeks back, the company had announced a tie up with the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines which allowed the air travellers to receive every piece of information related to their travel on Messenger - including the boarding pass.

Last week, Facebook announced that its Messenger app had over 900 million monthly active users, up from 800 million in January.

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Flexible Camera Developed That Can Be Wrapped Around Objects

A team led by an Indian-origin professor at Columbia University has created a novel sheet camera that can be wrapped around everyday objects to capture images that cannot be taken with one or more conventional cameras. "Cameras today capture the world from essentially a single point in space. While the camera industry has made remarkable progress in shrinking the camera to a tiny device with ever increasing imaging quality, we are exploring a radically different approach to imaging," said Shree K Nayar, computer science professor at Columbia University. "We believe there are numerous applications for cameras that are large in format but very thin and highly flexible," added Nayar who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, in 1984. Nayar's team designed and fabricated a flexible lens array that adapts its optical properties when the sheet camera is bent. This optical adaptation enables the device to produce high quality images over a wide ...

Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) Leaked in Press Images

The anticipated successor to the popular Samsung Galaxy J1, tipped to be called the Galaxy J1 (2016), has once again been leaked in images on the Web. While in the previous leaks we have seen the unannounced smartphone in its Black colour variant, the new leaked image shows the handset in two additional colour variants. The image tweeted by @evleaks on Monday shows the Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016) smartphone in Gold and White colour variants. The design of the handset also fall in line with the models leaked in images previously. It is worth mentioning that the screen bezel seen in the image stay black in all the three colour variants. The smartphone is seen featuring a physical home button, along with a multi-window, and a back capacitive button on either side. At the back, the smartphone sports a camera at the centre with a LED flash and a speaker on either sides. Samsung is yet to announce the smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016)leaked in images last month as well...

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