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Twitter considers letting you tweet to 'trusted friends' only
Twitter is thinking about new ways to share tweets with specific groups of people, with "trusted friends" and "facets."
Xbox One gets another simplified dashboard redesign
Microsoft revealed last month it's been working on a whole host of changes for the February 2020 Xbox One Update, and now they're finally rolling out. The biggest change is yet another new Home interface -- so if you've got downloads set to install automatically you'll notice things are different as soon as it hits. Twists have been removed to make room for dedicated rows for Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, Xbox Community and Microsoft Store, and you'll be able to add or remove rows however you wish. Over in My Games & Apps, meanwhile, things have also been pared back for easier navigation.
Microsoft contractors reportedly reviewed Cortana clips on insecure PCs
New details have emerged about how Microsoft operated its Cortana and Skype grading programs in the past. Building on a Vice report from last summer, The Guardian says that for several years, the tech giant contracted a company in China that used almost "no security measures" to protect the recordings.
Microsoft contractors listen to some Skype calls and Cortana commands
Microsoft is the latest company charged with listening to its users calls and voice commands. A report by Vice found that contractors are listening to bits of conversations collected through Skype's translation service. Some contractors are also listening to voice commands spoken to Cortana.
Instagram's latest Stories sticker is a direct link to group chats
Instagram is introducing a new feature that will let users start private group messages around specific Stories. The company announced the change on Twitter today. Users will soon be able to add a "join chat" sticker to their Stories. If followers tap the sticker, they'll be added to a private group chat -- though the author will have the ability to approve or deny requests.
FTC complaint alleges Amazon's Echo Dot Kids violates child privacy law
A month after we found out Amazon employees might listen to your Alexa conversations, Amazon is facing more privacy concerns. This time, they have to do with how the company stores data collected by its Echo Dot Kids. Today, a coalition of privacy and child-advocacy groups plan to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that Amazon stores kids' conversations and data even after parents attempt to delete it. According to the The Wall Street Journal, the group is asking the FTC to investigate.
A week with Twitter's attempt at a more civil internet
Over the past few months, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has been adamant that one of his goals is to "increase the health of public conversation" on the site. Because it's no secret that, as great as Twitter is at connecting you with people across the world, it's also great at connecting you with bots, trolls and spam. Unsurprisingly, Twitter wants to change that. And it's hoping to find a solution by publicly testing new conversation features, through an experimental program that users can apply to participate in. This launched last week as an app called Twttr, which I've been using as my main tool for reading and writing tweets for the past week.
Twitter's improved conversations are now in public beta
During CES last month, we had an early look at Twitter's plans to change how it displays replies as part of its drive to improve conversations and make them easier to follow. As of today, you can apply to join Twitter's "conversations prototype testing program" to see what the proposed changes look like in practice.
Twitter now ranks your conversations based on who replies
Threaded conversations are some of the best interactions you can have on Twitter -- with dozens of users chattering away 140 characters at a time. Unless you're already in a conversation, however, it can be hard to tell if a tweet is getting a lot of social interaction. Now, it's a little easier: Twitter has added a reply counter and a 'conversation ranking' to its mobile apps designed to push the most relevant discussions to the top of a tweet thread.
Facebook preps in-store purchases for Messenger
Facebook already lets you send money to friends through its Messenger app, but it appears the social network has much loftier ambitions for financial transactions. The Information reports that Menlo Park is preparing to offer its chat app as another way to pay for things thanks to a feature for in-store purchases. Based on code for the iOS app, Facebook is working on a way for you to use Messenger to pay for goods in person. As The Information notes, this would put Zuckerberg & Co. in the mobile payments fray that includes Apple Pay, Android Pay and several others.
Twitter conversations now have their own pop-up window
If you participate in Twitter conversations with multiple accounts, you know that once you get past seven replies it can be difficult to keep track of the chat and your dynamic timeline. Today Twitter introduced pop-out conversations. Click on "view conversation" on a tweet on Twitter.com and the thread will appear in its entirety floating above the timeline.
Twitter lets you share public tweets in your direct messages
Well, that was fast. Twitter casually mentioned at its Analyst Day festivities last week that it'd soon give users the ability to share public Tweets in private conversations, and now a new update to its apps and web clients means you can do just that. Either a long-press on a Tweet or a quick pop into the 'More' menu in Twitter's mobile and desktop versions respectively will let you dump that micro-missive into a Direct Message conversation, where it'll pop up in a tiny card for lightspeed perusal. We can hardly contain our excitement either.
SWTOR Senior Community Manager responds to high-res texture concerns
Many keen-eyed Star Wars: The Old Republic players noticed that, while there were "low," "medium," and "high" options for the game's texture quality settings, there seemed to be only two different sets of textures, and neither of them includes the high-resolution textures seen in the game's cutscenes and conversations. As it tends to go with the MMO community, the forums were soon filled with cries of "WTFM8?" And thus did BioWare's own Senior Community Manager Stephen Reid appear on the scene to clarify what exactly was happening. The low-medium-high texture quality scale is, he says, a bug, and the medium choice was never supposed to exist. So yes, the game has only two sets of textures, low- and high-resolution, but even the high-resolution textures don't look as shiny as the ones featured in SWTOR's cutscenes. And so the chorus repeated, "WTFM8?" Reid drops a ton of technical information to explain why players can't run around with conversation-quality textures 24/7, but the fact of the matter is that an MMO could potentially have anywhere from one to who-knows-how-many people on-screen at any given time, and BioWare "discovered that using [...] 'maximum resolution' textures on in-game characters during normal gameplay could cause severe performance issues, even on powerful PCs." That's the short of it, but if you'd like the full, unadulterated technical breakdown, just head on over to the official forum post for more info and screaming.
Guild Wars 2 devblog highlights cinematic conversations
"One of the things we game developers always have to struggle with is reconciling our ambition with the reality of a production environment," begins today's Guild Wars 2 dev blog. That principle of balance comes into play in the case of the game's cinematic conversations, as the blog notes. James Boer goes on to detail many of the unique strategies used in Guild Wars 2's dialogue scenes in order to ensure that precious balance between ambition and pragmatism. For instance, characters are designed in such a way that they don't look terribly good during close-ups, and there is no easy way to integrate facial animation. As a result, the team settled on a compromise, pushing the characters farther into the background. This, combined with the painted backgrounds utilized during conversations, lends a unique style to GW2's cinematic dialogues. For the full details, just head on over to the ArenaNet dev blog.
Leaderboard: SWTOR vs. GW2 cinematic cutscenes
OK, you knew that sooner or later there'd be a face-off between Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2 in this column, although today's poll might not be what you were expecting. Instead of getting into "Which game that hasn't released is better than the other game that hasn't released?" let us examine each title's approach to cinematic cutscenes. Both titles plan to pull players out of the game world proper and put them into a personal dialogue session, but that's where the similarities end. SWTOR uses BioWare's patented movie-style approach, where the camera angles change dramatically and often during the conversation. Guild Wars 2, however, looks to have more of a stylized throwback to older RPGs where the characters are sliced out of the world and placed on a conversation window for a private one-on-one. It's almost as if SWTOR is 3-D while GW2 is 2-D, but not quite. So which is more effective as a storytelling device? Which do you think will tug at your heartstrings and beckon you to lean in and pay attention? Only your vote can tell us how you truly feel, so hit that jump like you mean it!
New Android trojan can record phone calls, expose your embarrassing fantasy baseball talk
Mobile malware is nothing new, especially for Android users who have trained themselves to navigate the sometimes shady back alleys of the Market. The fine folks at CA Technologies came across an interesting new trojan though, that does something slightly more unnerving than max out your credit cards -- it records your conversations. There's no evidence that this has actually found its way into the wild yet, but it's entirely possible that some nefarious developer could capture your calls and upload them to a remote server. Obviously, this wouldn't hold much interest for your traditional cyber crook, but suspicious significant others and corporate spies could have a field day with such capabilities. All we can do is suggest you remain vigilant and maintain a healthy dose of paranoia about any apps on your phone.
Christian Bale loves video games, lost sleep over Super Mario
Taking time out of his Terminator Salvation press tour to sit down with Conversations, Christian Bale spoke about his childhood love for our lifetime passion, video games. When the interviewer brings up Roger Ebert's review of the film (video game reference in tow), he then asks Bale if he played video games "in his younger years," to which Bale replies, "I played video games in my entire growing-up years. One of my favorites is Super Mario. I wouldn't sleep until I finished the game, you know."Not quite the drug-addled gaming experiences of Alec Baldwin, but sleepless nights in front of the television are something we can all relate to regardless. Not everyone can be a Jack Donaghy, ya know?
