IntellectBeat

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 busi...

Microsoft for the first time since Windows 8 has updated its Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) interface that shows up when the operating system crashes due to a critical error. The updated screen now shows QR codes to help technicians identify error codes in the blue screens. It is worth mentioning that until now, the Windows 'stop code' stayed visible only for a few seconds during a Blue Screen, making it difficult to note, research, and fix the specific. However, now that's not the case. Now users can scan the QR code from their handsets to find an encoded URL with specific troubleshooting information for the problem and related support articles. Nonetheless, the sad ASCII smiley that was introduced with Windows 8 will still be there on the blue screen. Prior to Windows 8, Microsoft used to display more detailed information about the crash. These QR codes were found by testers in the latest preview version of Windows 10, so it is yet to reach all the users. The QR codes i...

HTC is no stranger to product details being leaked out before scheduled launches. Its next flagship - the HTC 10 - is no exception either. The phone is set for a release today and there is little left to anticipate about the new handset, thanks to the series of image and specification leaks that have been doing the rounds of the internet from weeks. Here's a list of features the new HTC 10 is expected to come powered with: 1. The HTC 10 is in line with last year's much talked about iPhone-lookalike A9 with its overall clean metal design. The new phone, however, comes with chamfered edges, a camera bump in the rear along with the familiar HTC logo. 2. A promotional video of the smartphone, leaked just a day ahead of launch, shows off volume rockers on the right along with a power button and a physical home button. 3. Earlier leaks have hinted at the HTC 10 having a 5.15-inch QHD display offering 2560 X 1440 pixels resolution. 4. The latest flagship is likely to come wi...

Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astrophysicists from the University of Birmingham have discovered extra-solar planets whose atmospheres have been stripped away by their host stars. According to them, planets with gaseous atmospheres that lie very close to their host stars are bombarded by a torrent of high-energy radiation. Due to their proximity to the star, the heat that the planets suffer means that their "envelopes" have been blown away by intense radiation. This violent "stripping" occurs in planets that are made up of a rocky core with a gaseous outer layer. "The results show that planets of a certain size that lie close to their stars are likely to have been much larger at the beginning of their lives. Those planets will have looked very different," said Dr Guy Davies from the University of Birmingham's school of physics and astronomy. The findings have important implications for understanding how stellar systems, like ou...

Social media giant Facebook and mobile message service WhatsApp are increasingly being used to sell weapons like AK-47s and truck-mounted machine guns in war-ravaged Libya, a media report said on Saturday. The report, based on data collected by the specialist consultancy Armament Research Services (ARES) and commissioned by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, pointed out that this dangerous trend was triggered by the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, the quasi-dictator who ruled the African nation for more than 40 years, tech website The Verge said. Gaddafi tightly controlled the arms trade during his time in power but after he was deposed in 2011, the government's stockpiles were raided and a black market sprung up, added the report. According to the ARES data, in the past 18 months, majority of the arms trade constituted handguns and rifles but more advanced armaments were also up for sale. ARES director NR Jenzen-Jones was quoted as saying that most weapons were posted on social ne...

Unlike when Google Glass was first unleashed on the world, the hype surrounding virtual reality and headsets from the likes of Oculus and HTC is clearly not misplaced. According to the latest data from research firm Strategy Analytics, revenues generated from headset sales alone are expected to generate some $895 million before the end of 2016. However, the cutting-edge VR headsets that need to be tethered to a PC or console are only now hitting the market -- the Oculus Rift started shipping in March and HTC's much lauded Vive headset won't be wowing owners until June at the earliest. Therefore, it's basic smartphone compatible devices that will account for the vast majority of the 12.8 million headsets expected to be snapped up in 2016. "Consumers will soon be exposed to an incredible diversity of virtual reality options ranging from ultra-low cost to super premium. While we expect smartphone-based viewers to take the lion's share of VR headset volumes in 2016...

In a bad news for astronomers searching for extraterrestrial life in deep space, NASA 's planet-hunting spacecraft Kepler has gone into an emergency mode 75 million miles from the Earth. The last regular contact with Kepler probe was on April 4, technology website The Verge reported, as NASA engineers tried to manoeuvre the spacecraft to the centre of the Milky Way for a new task. Unable to reach the probe till this weekend, NASA has declared a mission emergency for Kepler which has switched itself into emergency mode. The team still does not know what prompted Kepler to go into the emergency mode. A team of NASA engineers was working to fix the anomaly as communications signals take up to 13 minutes -- travelling at the speed of light -- to and from the Kepler spacecraft. Kepler mission had confirmed the first near-Earth-sized planet in the "habitable zone" around a Sun-like star. Kepler spotted nearly 5,000 exoplanets as part of its primary mission. In July 2012...