Technology

Opera Software today upgraded its namesake browser to version 64 and joined rival Firefox in tackling ad trackers.

"We consider ad blocker and tracker blocker to be basic privacy features," Joanna Czajka, product director, wrote in a post to a company blog. (Opera has had a baked-in advertisement blocker for more than three years; only the anti-ad tracker is new.)

Details about the ad-tracking mechanism were surprisingly sparse. Unlike Mozilla, which has repeatedly detailed its efforts to curtail tracking, Opera did not describe what kinds of trackers - there are many - it would block.

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Facebook wants to bring its Portal video display hardware to the office with the introduction of a dedicated Workplace app - one of a handful of updates to the companyenterprise social network announced at the Flow user conference in San Francisco this week.

Launched last year, Portal supports video calls between Facebook and WhatsApp users, with an AI powered &smart camera& that tracks body movements of speakers during calls. With the Workplace app, Portal can now be used to connect work colleagues, too.

"You will be able to use Workplace on a Portal device to communicate not with your friends but with your colleagues,& said Julien Codorniou, Facebookvice president for Workplace. &You will be able to call them on another Portal device, on their mobile phone if they are on the go or on their PC or iPads if they are in the office.&

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Well, gang, it's finally happened: Hell has officially frozen over.

Didja hear about this? Microsoft is making its own Android phone. Let me rephrase that: Microsoft, the once-mortal-nemesis of Google, is building a phone running Google's operating system. Microsoft, the tech giant that tried and failed to claim its piece of the mobile ecosystem pie with Windows Mobile, is now staking its mobile future entirely on its competitor's platform.

Man. What a world we live in.

Now, to be fair, Microsoft's basically been building its own ecosystem within Android for a while already: After years of providing only sparse, subpar versions of its programs for Android, the MS crew started taking Android seriously a few years back. And boy howdy, was that one heck of a shift.

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