Where did the summer sun go? If you’re feeling blue now the skies have turned grey, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a roundup of this week’s biggest news stories to keep you entertained and informed.
ASOS Launches Innovative Photo Search Functionality
Ever seen a photo on Instagram and thought ‘I wonder where that dress is from?’ If so, ASOS may have just launched your new favourite tool.
Download the ASOS app, tap on the camera icon in the search bar and upload a photo of your desired item. The app will then do a visual search of its product catalogue to find similar items.
(images from ASOS)
Sexist Google Memo Revealed
This week a memo by a Google engineer, James Damore, was revealed which criticised his employer for pursuing gender diversity; he believed his female colleagues to be biologically inferior to him and other male employees.
For example, he claims women have a “stronger interest in people rather than things” and therefore are less suitable to be coders.
Unsurprisingly, after this hit the press, Damore got the sack, and Google made an announcement saying that suggesting “a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK”. Despite action being taken, many have been left still questioning what people working for the search giant really think.
Instagram is Testing Split-Screen Live Streaming
Instagram users have now been able to live stream on the app for some time, however it is now testing a new feature which will allow you to stream a live broadcast with a friend using a split-screen-style mode.
To do this, you will need to click the new icon which appears in the bottom right of the screen (it looks like two smiley faces) and then select the friend you want to add. And that’s it. Comments, hearts etc. will remain unchanged.
(images from Instagram)
Facebook Bans Cloaking to Cut the Spam
There’s been a lot of news coverage about ‘fake news’ on Facebook recently, but the social network’s latest development will tackle another unwanted form of content ‘spam’.
In the past, many spammers have cloaked their ads by presenting links to ‘safe’ landing pages when they’re in fact showing ads that violate Facebook’s policy. For example, selling diet pills or porn.
This week Facebook Ads Product Director, Rob Leathern, told Tech Crunch that if a case like this is caught Facebook will “deactivate their ad accounts” and “kick them off”, as well as get rid of their pages. The team will also soon be using artificial intelligence systems to find these crooks. Leathern says:
“There’s no legitimate use case for cloaking […] If we find it, it doesn’t really matter who that actor is. They’re usually bad actors and spammers by definition. So, the line is if anyone does this in any way, shape, or form, we want them off the platform.”
For more news updates, guides and opinion pieces, take a look at a few more of our articles.
