On this podcast, we talk about: The new Oculus Quest headset and whether it’s a big leap for virtual reality. Why you should wait for the iPhone XR. NASA turning 60, and how it’s reinventing itself. The 5G revolution. The 3:59 gives you bite-size news and analysis about the top stories of the day, brought …
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Facebook’s Oculus Quest could be the Honda Civic of VR
If price is keeping you from buying virtual reality gear, Mark Zuckerberg has a new headset for you. The Oculus Quest, a $399 VR headset that Facebook’s CEO unveiled Wednesday and that’s due out next spring (the company typically announces new prototypes months before they go on sale), is designed to address several nagging complaints early VR users have had about …
Read More »Facebook’s mission with Oculus Quest is all about VR games
I’ve gone on a lot of adventures in virtual reality, from staring down a Tyrannosaurus rex to scuba diving a shipwreck with a blue whale to sculpting neon colored statues in the air with a magic paint brush. But by far the most compelling experiences have been games, while piloting a spaceship in an epic dogfight or holding my ground …
Read More »Google and social networks sign code of conduct to tackle fake news
Google and a group of other tech giants, including Facebook and Twitter, have signed a code of conduct on how they will tackle the spread of fake news, the European Commission said on Wednesday. With major European Parliament elections approaching in 2019, the EU is keen to minimize the influence of fake news on social media. The aim of the …
Read More »Zuckerberg still wants to get 1B people into VR, but it’ll take a while
A year ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stood on a stage and said he wants to get 1 billion people to try virtual reality. This year, he said he’s not even 1 percent there. “We have a saying at Facebook that the journey is 1 percent finished, and in this case not even quite,” he said at his company’s VR …
Read More »Facebook Stories hit 300 million daily users. Here come more ads
Facebook Stories, a timeline of photos that disappears after 24 hours, has hit a milestone of 300 million people using it every day via its namesake social network and messaging service Facebook Messenger, the company said Wednesday. At a presentation in New York on the sidelines of Advertising Week, Facebook also said that it’s opening up advertising in Facebook Stories to all …
Read More »Use of ‘distracted boyfriend’ meme in recruitment ad is sexist, watchdog rules
Sweden’s advertising watchdog slammed a company for using the “distracted boyfriend” meme in a recruitment ad. The meme, which rose to popularity in 2017, shows a man checking out a passing woman as he walks with his girlfriend, much to the girlfriend’s irritation. Bahnhof, a Stockholm-based internet service provider, used the image in a recruitment ad seen on Facebook. The boyfriend …
Read More »Oculus Quest standalone VR coming spring 2019 for $399
Standalone VR is about to ramp up in a big way. Mark Zuckerberg, at the Oculus Connect keynote, announced on Wednesday that the Oculus Quest next-gen headset is coming next spring, for the aggressive price of $399. The headset, previously demoed as Project Santa Cruz, is a mobile device that adds full-room tracking and PC-like motion controls. The Oculus Quest …
Read More »Oculus Connect 2018: Everything that was announced
The fifth Oculus Connect developer conference is underway in San Jose, California this week. Besides being a place for VR developers to meet up and discuss the future of immersive technologies, Facebook — the owner of Oculus — laid out its next steps for where VR (and AR) will head. And yes, that includes new hardware: the $399 wireless Oculus …
Read More »VR’s missing link? A killer app that convinces us to buy in
Chika Umeadi could be the poster child for what’s wrong with virtual reality today. At a glance, he seems like the perfect candidate to buy a VR headset. He’s an app developer and techie. He loves video games. He’s 30, unmarried and says he has the means to splurge when he wants to. Yet even though the Chicagoan has tried …
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