Facebook In The Future

Mark Zuckerberg has big plans for his company – and big predictions about the future. Sarah Dobbs checks out what’s in store for Facebook (and us)

When you’re running a company as enormous as Facebook, it might be easy to rest on your laurels. Facebook is so ubiquitous that it’s become easier to use it than not to use it, whether you’re a grandparent wanting to see what your grandkids are up to, an up-and-coming musician wanting to promote your work, or, you know, just a person who likes to keep in touch with their friends. So it’d be hard to blame Mark Zuckerberg and co if they just sat back and let things carry on as they are. However, as Zuck’s presentation at the F8 Facebook Developer Conference proved, that’s not the plan.

Actually, Facebook has got a pretty detailed and ambitious ten-year vision for what comes next. 2026 might sound like a date from a science fiction movie, but Facebook’s head honcho has grand plans for what he’ll be doing by then, and it includes all kinds of equally sci-fi sounding technologies, which Facebook will adapt to, profit from – or maybe even develop. Ready to peer into Zuckerberg’s crystal ball and see what the future has in store? Yes? Let’s go…

Guide to GitHub

David Briddock explains how to take advantage of this cloud-based development repository

GitHub was created to act as a cloud-based development source code repository for individuals, established companies and startups. Despite appearing only six years ago, today GitHub (github.com) is an essential resource for the open source community.

Did you know its appeal extends far beyond software development, though? In fact you can store any kind of textual document, spreadsheets, presentations, images and other media files using it’s resources. For example, visit the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s GitHub repository (github.com/raspberrypi) and you’ll find a wide assortment of files including firmware, Linux and NOOBS software, the complete HAT specification and a full set of official documentation.

In this guide we’ll explain why GitHub is so popular, highlight some of its key features, then show how to get involved by creating your own GitHub repository.

Top 10 Tips For Cortana

Cortana is one of the biggest new features in Windows 10. Roland Waddilove shows how to make the most of this personal assistant

1 Hey Cortana!

Cortana has some useful settings that can improve the way it works and the results it produces. Click Cortana on the Start menu or click in the search box on the taskbar. Click the Notebook icon just below the home button on the left, and a long list of topics, plus Settings, are displayed. Click each one and enable all the options.

In Settings, turn on Hey Cortana, and Cortana listens all the time. When you want information or to perform an action, just say “Hey, Cortana!”, followed by whatever you want. You can choose to have Cortana respond to anyone or just you. If you select the ‘To me’ option, Cortana asks you to speak several sentences so it (she?) can learn to recognise your voice and distinguish it from other people’s.

The Big Gaming Peripheral Guide

From mice and keyboards to headsets and more, we look at some performance peripherals that have caught our eye…

For as long as it’s been possible, people have used computers for more than just serious work. Sure, plenty of users learned to code on Spectrums and Commodore 64s, but it’s a safe bet that many people just used them to play Pac-Man or Paperboy. And as these games became more sophisticated and gamers began to demand better graphics and sound, more powerful hardware was needed. Thus gaming became one of the key forces driving progress in computer hardware.