Facebook Testing Reactions Globally and Other News

With so much happening in the tech world today, here’s a daily mashup that’ll make your day!

Facebook Testing Reactions Globally

After a 7-year-old long stint by which the social network is usually associated with, Facebook has decided to take it a step further. In about 12 countries that include Japan, Spain and Ireland, Facebook has been testing Reactions, a new way to ‘like’ a post with emotions such as "love", "haha", "wow", "sad" and "angry".

How did Facebook make the choice amongst all the emoticons in the world? The company studied comments and emoticons used on the social network and shortlisted the popular ones. Then, based on popularity, the company narrowed the choice down to 5 emotions.

This is a smart move by Facebook because if someone posts an update that relates to a loss or someone’s death, liking the post isn’t appropriate. It is much better to have emotions associated with a post as it is much more relevant to the update.

Microsoft Acquires Xamarin for Mobile App Development

After successful partnerships down the road, Microsoft has acquired Xamarin for an undisclosed amount to further its mobile app development initiatives. In the past, Microsoft has been focusing on mobile and cloud acquisitions which include Adallom, Wunderlist, Talko and Acompli.

Xamarin started in 2011. After receiving a $54 million funding round, the company has 350 employees and more than 15,000 customers across the globe.

“With today’s acquisition announcement we will be taking this work much further to make our world class developer tools and services even better with deeper integration and enable seamless mobile app dev experiences. The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure delivers a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything a developer needs to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device. We are really excited to see what you build with it,” Scott Guthrie, EVP at Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Group.

Apple to Make Encryption Stronger to Not Allow Anyone to Unlock a Locked iPhone

According to insider reports, Apple has started developing tighter a security system to not allow anyone, even the government, to unlock a locked iPhone. Since Apple refuses to cooperate with the FBI, according to experts the only way left is if the Congress intervenes. Furthermore, even if this case is resolved and the FBI do manage to crack Apple’s encryption, Apple is making sure that they do not succeed in the future.

The FBI recently produced a court order that stated that Apple must assist the FBI in unlocking the said iPhone.