Facebook aims Slingshot at Snapchat

This week Facebook has launched a new app in the US called 'Slingshot' to directly compete with, the picture messaging app, Snapchat. So should the makers of Snapchat be worried?

Snapchat, if you didn't already know, is a free picture and video messaging and sharing app for iOS and Android mostly used by teenagers. Users are able to send pictures and videos they take to their friends, or people who they don't know if they so wish, for a maximum of 10 seconds before the snap is gone to never to be seen again (unless it is replayed - which can be done once every 24 hours). Pictures and 15 second videos sent can have an overlay of filters, text and colourful drawings. The more you snapchat, the higher your snapchat score gets.

Snapchat, sadly, is quite unreliable; its servers have been hacked in the last year leaving thousands of user's data exposed on the internet for anyone to see, it has run into legal issues because of user's ability to screenshot snaps and it has also needed to deal with many complaints over ethics as studies show that many use the app for sexting.

Facebook had an app similar to Snapchat called 'Poke' which was retired earlier this year because it lacked engagement from users. Facebook then offered to buy Snapchat for $3 billion however the company surprisingly declined this. So, Facebook tried again to compete with Snapchat late last year when they added Snapchat like features into 'Instagram' so users could message other users with a photo or video. However this week Facebook has upped their game and have launched a stand-alone app to directly compete with Snapchat as a last effort to drag users away from Snapchat and get them using a Facebook service. This app is called 'Slingshot'.

'Slingshot' is scarily similar to Snapchat in the sense that you take pictures or videos, send them and they disappear after a specified number of seconds however Facebook has done this is an overly complicated way. The app is hard to navigate; users need to swipe all directions for different functions which, frankly, is just irritating however a price you are forced to pay for the stunning animations in the app.

The biggest issue with 'Slingshot' though is that in order to open a message, you need to send one back first which makes conversations very hard as you can't reply to someone if you don't know what they've said. Maybe 'Slingshot' isn't supposed to be a messaging app but more of a feed of temporary updates... which is fine as long as you have something to say yourself or the app will become very boring very quickly.

The only real positive I can find with 'Slingshot' is the 'select all' button which allows you to send your picture or video to all of your contacts at once. This is a feature which Snapchat addicts have been desperate for.

So will Slingshot be able to crush Snapchat - or even steal some of the 30+ million active Snapchat users? The app is very new - it isn't even out in the UK yet - and opinions haven't fully formed however it will only take weeks until we see if Slingshot's attack on Snapchat was a success.

Download 'Slingshot' here: sling.me

'Medium' blogging platform

The 'Medium' home page

Medium is a beautiful, sleek blogging platform which will makes content look outstanding. Easy to read fonts, big beautiful images and unique page design all complement each-other perfectly like how blogging websites should be to make posts look crisp and clean - with nothing to distract readers from the words.

The clean layout of posts

Medium.com was founded in Summer 2012 by a man who used to work for Twitter. Since then it has became one of the most popular blogging platforms.

Once you've signed up with your Twitter account you are presented with a simple blank page with few options. You write a heading, subheading, select a picture for the title background and then write your story. There are also various formatting tools you can use before clicking the 'Publish' button to let anyone in the world read what you've got to say. You can also submit your words into a category so there is a higher chance of more people going to read it. 

A differentiation from other blogging sites is that on Medium posts are sorted by category rather than author. This has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages: if you are a reader who wants to read up on a specific topic it is a brilliant tool and the collections are monitored by fellow users of the website. Disadvantages: all of the blogger's home page displaying only their articles can not be modified much apart from a header and profile picture. Medium is a gimmick free blogger's dream.

An example of the design language used for posts

You are engrossed in stories on Medium about whatever interests you and the site works a little like a news website with the most popular stories and your personal recommendations being displayed on the home screen. All pages follow the same design code as well. This means, unlike Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and other blogging sites, your space on Medium looks rather impersonal. So if think you can manage having a blog without widgets, advertisements and links; if you are just about the pure content, then Medium is definitely for you.

Everything on the website is simple yet powerful at the same time. Things are displayed in a very basic manor however it still gives you everything you need. For example, under the 'Stats' menu, you are not bombarded with as much information like what you might get with other sites - however it is all there and displayed elegantly.

If you are looking for a modern way to share your stories on the internet, Medium is definitely the way to go. The site seems to have an awesome community and is straight forward to use. What more could you want from a blogging website?  

Taking a photograph does not make you a photographer

Summer time: good weather and people in good spirit. Facebook is overflowing with selfies of happy people and their friends however some over-ambitions, professional photographer wannabe has uploaded some pictures that have no significance to themselves - or anyone for that matter. The photo is just of a landscape. Why have they uploaded this?

Uploading pictures of hills, fields or dunes is only acceptable if the 'photographer' has taken into consideration focus, aperture, shutter speed, lighting and other variables, or if it is taken with a SLR camera because at least then it means the quality of the pictures are high. However, if a person has just pointed their mobile phone's camera at a landscape and pressed 'capture' without thinking, the photos should no be going on Facebook or any social networking site (apart from Flickr - because nobody really uses that any-more).

The quality is low (most of the time anyway), which means that even if your view is good, you're not capturing colours correctly and when enlarged the photo can become pixelated. But most importantly, nobody cares; even the people who were with you at the time are more lightly to 'like' and comment on the photos that they are in rather than some landscape which may have well have just been found on Google Image Search. If it is a decent landscape you're photographing, there will be hundreds - if not thousands - of pictures of it which are easy to find with a simple image search - which makes the image very impersonal - however if it's not a good landscape, don't take the photo at all. And if you do take it and upload it, do not have the courage to call yourself a photographer... because your not... not even close to armature photographer!

To conclude, when having a whale-of-a-time walking through the countryside or at the beach, feel free to upload thousands of pictures of you and your friends/family however don't upload random pictures with no human subject; nobody wants to see it.

Monument Valley Review

Monument Valley is a trippy puzzle game for iOS and Android. You play as a princess named Ida and need to navigate your way though a Valley of impossible objects. There are 10 beautifully designed, colorful levels which encapture your imagination however they require lateral thinking to complete. As you progress through the addictive game platforms which can rotate, manoeuvrable columns and other creatures are added to add some complexity.

The 10 levels are sadly short and for £2.49 I would expect a lot more however all of the levels are a treat to your eyes and the sense of achievement you get once you have completed a hard level is inimitable.

The game costs £2.49 on both iOS and Android devices. It can be downloaded on smartphones however for optimal gaming experience, I would recommend you play on a tablet. If you do decide to play on your smartphone though, do not worry about the game lagging or crashing; surprisingly the heavy graphics don't take a toll on even low end smartphones.

Is there any such thing as true altruism?

Altruism, according to the Oxford English dictionary, is ‘unselfish concern for other people’. This is the concept that you can do a good deed for no reason whatsoever; not even to make you feel good about yourself or in hope you can ask for a favour back of them later. But does altruism even exist? Is it possible to do something simply for the interests of another person?

Above: Derek

Derek, from Channel 4 mockumentary series ‘Derek’, is a great example of an altruistic person. He is on a constant high and spends his simple life helping and caring for other people and animals. He is self-content and there is nothing to suggest his happiness is a side-effect of being altruistic. Unfortunately, he is fictional though.

In real life, Stephen, 19, has an incurable form of cancer — you may have heard about him and his amazing work on the news recently — and he has selflessly scrapped his bucket list and instead raised over £3 million for the Teenage Cancer Trust. This is extremely close to true altruism but surely Stephen must feel good about himself knowing that he is potentially helping hundreds, if not thousands, of other people.

A type of altruism does exist however it is not as perfect as you think. Altruism can be used as a way of dealing with anxiety. It doesn’t make the person feel any better about themselves however it distracts them from thinking about the thing which is making them anxious.

It is clear that if true altruism does exist, it is extremely rare. Philosophers and specialists who have studied altruism argue that “altruism is an impossibility”, even Jesus said “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” obviously knowing that people will always put themselves first.

I was talking to a wise person a few weeks ago about what the key to happiness is. They said not to be materialistic because wealth doesn’t make you happy, the only true thing which makes you happy is helping other people. If the apparent key to happiness is helping other people, surely altruism can’t exist, can it?

Evidence of this is theory is Baldrick, in Black Adder. He always seems happier than Black Adder himself despite being his servant (however this may also be because he is a ‘blithering idiot’ and lives in his own little world inside his head).

I refuse to live in a cynical world where people are motivated to do things only for self-interest.
So maybe there is no such thing as true altruism — but it doesn’t really matter? A consequence of doing a great thing is feeling good about it and you shouldn’t feel bad about that. To me at least, it is a win-win situation if you can help someone and feel good about doing it.

Android Wear

For the last couple of years, if you wanted a smart watch you would invest in the $249 Pebble. Pebble’s iconic story has been a dream for them since they first announced the idea; they became the most funded kick-starter project ever and since then they have been slowly expanding their range of products. This is all well and good for Pebble as a company; however the actual product wasn't anything special. The clunky design, short battery life and e-ink display not only made the Pebble impractical but also, most importantly, un-cool.

Thankfully, that all might change.

Today (18^th March 2014) Google announced Android Wear, a modified version of Android, tailor made for smart-watches. As expected, the smart-watches will connect with your Android device. The operating system, of course, has dozens of health and fitness features including the ability to send real time information about your speed, distance and time whether you’re walking, running or cycling straight to your wrist. This means that Google Maps are built in, so you’ll be able to get directions and smart location information wherever you are.

An essential feature which predecessors lacked was the ability for all notifications from all your Android apps to be sent to the smart-watch. Crucially, Android Wear does that.

Google Now is at the centre of Android Wear. Google Now means that you will be able to do voice searches and use voice commands instead of needing to touch the small screen. The commands let you reply to messages, change the music track on your phone and do other gimmicky tasks – so you can show off in front of your friends.

Google emphasizes that Android Wear is ‘glance-able’ which means the information you are seeking will just be there when you need it. The example Google uses is a jelly fish warning for some surfers who are about to ride the wave. After they've see this warning, they decide to go surfing at another beach, jelly fish free, which Google has suggested. More basic features similar to this are already built into Google Now on Android smart-phones; Google Now can detect when you are home or at work and can give you specific information and reminders if you are at a certain location, so those features also can be expected front and centre on Android Wear.

I've been known to slate smart-watches in the past and although Android Wear looks pretty cool it’s still useless for most people. Yes, it looks cool and will allow you to show off in front of your mates however, like what I've said before, why do you need a middle man for notifications? It’s just plain lazy if you can’t slide your smart-phone out of your pocket to see notifications. The only excusable reason I would give someone to purchase a smart-watch is if they get a constant flow of new notification and need to be able to immediately tell which ones are important or not. If you are into gimmicky stuff though, the potential here is astonishing. Google recently purchased the learning thermostat ‘Nest’ and I could see it help home owners loads if they could just glance at their wrist and say a couple of words if they want the temperature turning down.  

So far, Google is known to be working with phone manufactures HTC, LG, Samsung and Motorola on wearable technology however Google says that fashion brands such as ‘Fossil’ will also be producing stylish hardware for this clean, simplistic software. The manufactures can be creative, they aren't limited to size or shape; Google has advertised both circular and square watches.

The operating system isn’t ready for consumers just yet, it’s the developer’s preview which has become available today, however we can expect to hear a lot more about Android Wear during I/O at the end of June.

The Wyvern Website

Finally, the Wyvern's online presence has migrated from that boring blog of basic content which was a waste of pixels to the sparkly, sexy and brand new Wyvern Website which you can check out for yourself at www.thewyvern.org (because thewyvern.co.uk and thewyvern.com were already taken).

The Wyvern has always been keen to have an website because the internet is everywhere, can provide live updates and it is un-restricting. Yes, we all love 'The Wyvern' newspaper from the bottom of our hearts however we are limited to 8 A4 sheets of paper which can not display videos, sounds or let users have an interactive experience. Also, by the time the newspaper is printed, most of the stories are old news. This isn't just a problem with 'The Wyvern' though, every news publication faces this problem and that is why circulation is decreasing and more people are getting the news via websites.

Anyway, we wanted The Wyvern Website to look fresh, professional yet still be easy to use, and we are all confident that we have achieved that.

The home page (aka the 'Starting Page') is a cycle of beautiful pictures accompanied headlines and captions which display for 6 seconds each before sliding up to reveal another page of content. We like this because it is original, clean and allows viewers of the website to see what is in the news that week and what we think they should have a look at.

The website unfortunately doesn't have a CMS (Content Management System) for journalists to upload articles which means that everything needs to be added manually. On the plus side though, this lets us be more creative with design - like what you can see on this report for the BBC School Report Practise Day.

When setting up the website, the editorial team thought carefully about the categories of news we would cover. We recognise that when people want national news they will go straight to the BBC News website or the Huffington Post website and, to be fair, we knew we couldn't compete with them so we needed a USP (unique selling point). We are a school newspaper - so we decided to embrace that and decide that we would cover school news, local news and sometime national news - as long as it is something which will fascinate our target audience (fellow teenage pupils).

The Wyvern's new website also has a page where readers can read 'The Wyvern' newspaper online and another page where readers can watch all of the videos that we have made over the past couple of years.

The Wyvern takes pride in this website, it hasn't been easy to make but it has been fun and we just hope you enjoy the truly original articles, intriguing interviews and fascinating features that we upload.

www.thewyvern.org

'House of Cards' season 2 review

For those of you who have Netflix, and even some of you who don't, you might have heard of the Emmy and Golden Globe award winning drama named 'House of Cards'. The first series, based loosely on the 1990s British version with the same name, premièred on the streaming service 'Netflix' on the February 1st 2013. Season 1 was loved critics and regular watchers alike which meant any following seasons would struggle to continue the high standard; I'm pleased to report that season 2 did!

Season 2 of the American political thriller was released on February 14th 2014 and, like with season 1, all episodes were released at once meaning that people could spend Valentines day binge watching them.

The first episode of season 2 wraps up loose ends from season 1 in unexpected and astonishing ways which give a further glimpse into how the complex mind of Frank Underwood, portrayed excellently by Kevin Spacey, works. That episode sets the bar for the rest of the series and leaves the viewers craving more of the elegant cinematography and perfect dialogue.

I'll admit that House of Cards is very heavy on politics so chances are there will be certain twists in the plot which are over your head unless you know the subject very well however this doesn't detract from the enjoyment.

As an indication to you of how much you will love the second season of House of Cards, I managed to watch all 13 episodes in under 48 hours - so, I for one, can't wait until season 3 of House of Cards gets released on Netflix this time next year however until then there are more Netflix Originals  launching second seasons this year including 'Orange is the new Black'.

Please protect me from smoking in cars

I've always been passionate about trying to protect young people from tobacco and the dangerous effect that second-hand smoke has on us.

In 2011 I was lucky enough to go with the British Lung Foundation to Downing Street and hand in a petition on smoking in cars with children. I think that was the moment that I really felt like my voice mattered and so I continue to fight for my rights and those of other children.

Over the last few years people have been rigorously informed, through advertising campaigns and petitions, about the harm of smoke. But smoking is an addiction – that is a fact.

My father smoked since he was a teenager and stopped only last year. Thankfully, he never smoked when I was in the car with him but not everyone is as considerate.

Young people dislike the taste and smell of cigarette fumes. Friends who've been in cars full of smoke complain it makes them feel sick, often giving them a headache and they can taste and smell smoke on themselves for the rest of the day.

Cigarette smoke is also full of poisons like arsenic and there around 300,000 GP visits from children every year because of passive smoke. It can give children asthma attacks, ear infections and even cot death. You often see smokers opening their window to try to protect passengers, but much of the toxic smoke gets blown back into the car.

Despite many attempts to educate smokers of the dangers around 430,000 children are still exposed every week. That’s a shocking amount and many children are too scared to say anything, let alone complain. It is clear that education alone isn't enough.

A Mumsnet survey revealed that 83% of smokers supported the ban. So parents who smoke do care about their children's health, but maybe some lack the willpower to resist a quick fag in the car. Making it fineable to smoke in a car with a child would make sure fewer adults will light up, in the same way that more people wear their seatbelts now it's law.

Some might argue that it's not for the government to dictate what people do in private places but what about the hundreds of thousands of children's lives that are affected? Others might argue that a ban would be too hard to enforce or is illiberal. While it's true some people might ignore it, I believe most would abide with the new law and is it not more illiberal to deprive children of clean, poison-free air when they are in a car?

Something must be done and today MPs will have a chance to help put an end to children being subjected to harmful second-hand smoke in a car. I'm delighted that David Cameron has allowed a free vote in the House of Commons and I hope they will come out in force to protect us.

Liam Pape is a 15-year-old student at Darlington School of Mathematics and Science and was on the editorial team of their 'Branksome Bugle', who in March 2011 handed in a petition on smoking in cars at 10 Downing Street with the British Lung Foundation.

Android KitKat 4.4 is a smaller update than first thought

Android's latest operating system, Android 4.4 KitKat, was announced in the second half of 2013 and has slowly been rolling out to compatible devices. The flagship (and first) smartphone running the updated version of Android was Google's own Nexus 5.

'Immersive Mode' on Android 4.3 -
not on just Android 4.4.

The Nexus 5 is a standard Android smartphone with a crisp display, unpredictable battery life and a poor camera. Despite the flaws, the phone is ideal for android developers who want to update their apps to KitKat and test how well they will run. Some of the features in KitKat currently only work on the Nexus 5 which makes the Nexus 5 a more appealing smartphone however this is bad news for other Android handset manufactures. Android 4.4 KitKat is a small software update of minor tweaks anyway so making some of the features exclusive for some phones just makes the update almost pointless.

Other updates which Google claim are major in KitKat is activating a Google search in Google Now by just saying 'Okay Google', 'Hangouts' and text messages being combined in the 'Hangouts' app and a redesigned 'Quickoffice'. (Which reminds me, why does Google install both 'Google Drive' and 'Quickoffice' on all Android devices when they do the same thing?)

Anyway, all of the above are app updates which you can get if you run Android 4.1* or above! This means that when the KitKat update finally does come your way it means that most of the changes are unnoticeable.

*approximately