:Facebook To Buy Oculus VR, Maker Of The Rift Headset, For Around $2B:

Facebook To Buy Oculus VR, Maker Of The Rift Headset, For Around $2B In Cash And Stock

Facebook has announced plans to purchase Oculus VR, the company behind the Rift headset, for around $2B in cash and stock. This includes $400M, and 23.1 million Facebook shares. An additional $300M earnout will be paid in cash and stock if Oculus hits certain unspecified milestones.

“I’m excited to announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Oculus VR, the leader in virtual reality technology,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement today.

Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. For the past few years, this has mostly meant building mobile apps that help you share with the people you care about. We have a lot more to do on mobile, but at this point we feel we’re in a position where we can start focusing on what platforms will come next to enable even more useful, entertaining and personal experiences.
This is where Oculus comes in. They build virtual reality technology, like the Oculus Rift headset. When you put it on, you enter a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away. The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you’re actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it’s different from anything they’ve ever experienced in their lives.

Zuckerberg says that their efforts with Oculus will continue to focus on gaming initially, and that the company will continue to operate independently of Facebook. But after gaming, Zuckerberg says, they’re going to expand into a variety of other arenas.

“After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face just by putting on goggles in your home,” he says. “This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”

Facebook, of course, found early success with games. Social gaming is responsible for a lot of the growth and spread of Facebook as a platform, rather than just a social service. Acquiring Oculus could signal a variety of things, but being able to tap into what is potentially the next big gaming trend is likely one of them. In addition, Facebook has been aggressive about understanding and supporting mobile use cases but only after an initial period of foot-dragging and desktop focus. If VR is ‘what’s next’ then Facebook will want to tap the market early, to avoid any transitional gaffes this time around.

The purchase is expected to close in Q2 of 2014. Oculus has taken over 75k orders for its virtual reality headset so far. Those headsets have both been developer editions designed to get developers interested in playing around with VR technology. The most recent ‘Crystal Cove’ prototype features a full 1080P display and more sensors to detect and position users in virtual environments.

Of course, if you pull the thread of virtual reality out really, really far you could see a future where we’re not talking about the percentage of time people spend on mobile vs. desktop. Instead, we’re talking about the amount of time that people spend in virtual reality vs. actual reality. In that kind of landscape, Facebook starting in on VR early makes painfully obvious sense.

The company has received a total of $93.4M in funding so far from Spark, Matrix, Founders Fund, Formation 8, BIG Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Oculus got a big boost in legitimacy recently when one of the founding fathers of 3D gaming..

EnjOy..:)

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Spectrum auction for 3G‚ 4G technologies on April 23

 

Dar says PTA should ensure the best quality service for the consumers.

ISLAMABAD (Web Desk) - Spectrum auction for 3G and 4G technologies is scheduled for 23rd of next month and the sealed bids will be submitted to PTA on 14th of next month.

This was stated during a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Spectrum Auction held in Islamabad on Thursday under the chairmanship of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar.

Chairman PTA Dr. Syed Ismail Shah briefed the committee on the progress made so far on the auction of 3G and 4G licenses.

 

Dar said that PTA should ensure that quality service of the best international standards is provided to the consumers.

The minister emphasized that the whole process should be completed with transparency.

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Taiwan offers free Wi-Fi to all foreign tourists

Taiwan became one of the first countries in the world to offer free Wi-Fi on a mass scale to its citizens, and now it is extending that to any foreign tourist, also for free, in a move that will gain it a lot of goodwill.

The Taiwan government-backed free “iTaiwan” wireless network launched in 2011, and now has about 4,400 hotspots in major tourist spots, transportation hubs, cultural establishments and government offices all over the island country.

Citizens needed just their local phone number to register and then use the semi-fast 1 MBPS service.

Now, for foreign vistors, who generally have trouble getting a local SIM in the country (two forms of identity, etc), the process of tapping these wi-fi networks has been made a lot easier starting this month.

Visitors can open an iTaiwan account at a Taiwan Tourism Bureau counter/center, show their passport as ID and that’s it: they can login using their account, on their digital devices.

In addition, iTaiwan has established roaming agreements with four local governments so that tourists also have access in Taipei City, New Taipei, Taichung and Tainan.

EnjOy..:)

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Flickr Co-Founder Launches Findery App

Caterina Fake is the mind behind the massively popular Flickr photo-sharing site and is looking to eliminate that historical chain with a new location map-based social discovery platform, called Findery.

Findery is currently available on iOS, it becomes clear that the world is meant to be viewed by the user as a blank canvas that is ready for you to fully explore.  You can explore geo-tagged notes on a map to learn about places through experiences from different people from across the planet. Users of the app can post public or private notes with historical data, personalized stories via text, images, videos, and sound clips. The app will then cleverly annotate and then organize the information based on the location.

The social network side of the app, uses your current location to bring up appealing notes in the user’s immediate vicinity, thereby making it simple to find stories and pictures relevant to your own experience.  For example, you are exploring the historic city of Edinburgh in Scotland or you are visiting the Grand Canyon in the USA, all you need to do is open the Findery app to find out what previous visitors found of interest in those areas.  ”Every place has a story, or a thousand stories…Findery brings places to life, be they where you stand or where you hope to go,” Fake said in a statement.

Members are also able to create something called ‘Notemaps’ whih is a collection of notes about a location, topic or theme such as “Stag Party Blackpool” or “Blues in Chicago”.  This can then serve as either a travel diary or simply a record of your journey.  The app launches initially in English, although Findery have said they will support more languages this year. Findery is available now for free to download in the Apple iTunes Store.

If you have any sensible comments regarding this story, please leave your comments in the section below.

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Microsoft Office Web Apps Now Officially Office Online

It’s re branding time at Microsoft, it seems. The official statement about SkyDrive being re branded to OneDrive has barely made the rounds, and we’re now seeing another change. This time, it’s Office Web Apps, which is now called Office Online. It’s not that this move has been kept a secret, as there were hints in the past weeks, but now, it’s the real deal.

Office Online is basically the web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. I think all of us can agree that Microsoft Office is one of the strongest – if not the strongest           – suite of software for its niche, and the web-based version can carry its own weight as well.

Why the re branding?

Perhaps it’a all a part of spreading more awareness for the product. As you may have surmised, Office Online (even back when it had a different name) led a quiet existence. Microsoft didn’t really promote it much, although the service is free. Or maybe, it is exactly because of that that Office Online was not highlighted.

One very noticeable thing about the new look is how the most popular software is highlighted from the get go. You’ll also notice the inclusion of OneDrive.

In any case, the re branding can only serve to make users aware of this alternative online collaboration, especially those who want no issues with compatibility. Additionally, humans are creatures of habit, and I am willing to bet that the average Microsoft Office user will want to see the exact same thing (layout, etc.) if they use an online version of a piece of software. And yes, Office Online does look nice, too.

With Office Online now live, I wonder how this will affect usage statistics of Google Drive? If you’re a user of the latter, and you regularly use Microsoft Office, would you consider switching to Office Online now?

EnjOy..:)

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Use Yahoo Video Chats? You May Have Been Spied On

Everyday, it seems, there is new information released that makes individuals question how private their “private” lives really are. If it’s not revelations about the NSA intercepting our telephone calls and/or our emails, it seems to be something along those same lines. Unfortunately, in the year 2014, it doesn’t even seem like it’s even a remote possibility to have a private life. After all, if you own a smartphone you can most likely be found wherever you are. It seems all of the technology that is helping us run forward is also tying our hands behind our backs.

Edward Snowden shocked the world when we he released all of the confidential documents he “obtained” from the NSA. Even with all of the information he initially gave to the media, NSA officials were worried that more of their practices would eventually come to light. It turns out their fears weren’t without merit, as information about a British spy program known as Optic Nerve has recently been brought out into the open.

No, Not That Optic Nerve

It turns out that Optic Nerve is the codename for a surveillance program operated by Britain’s GCHQ (with help from the NSA). In an attempt to use facial recognition to catch terrorists and other wanted individuals, the images from 1.8 million users of Yahoo video chats from 2008 to 2010 were collected and stored on GCHQ’s servers. Obviously, most all of the images had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever.

And, of all of the images stored, there were many images besides people’s faces, as it turns out that a large number of sexually explicit images from the video chats were also stored on the servers.

When Yahoo recently found out about this invasion of privacy, they were not at all happy about it, saying it was a total invasion of their users’ privacy rights, and stating they had no prior knowledge of the spying.

Does this news surprise you at all?

EnjOy..:)

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