WELCOME TO THE Weird Wide Web – where we take a look at the week’s best offerings in tech and social media news.
Emoji globe of the week
We talked about the Emoji Tracker before but now someone has pulled together all of the data from it to show the most popular emojis around the world in real time, Gizmodo reported. When we looked at the Silicon Feelings app on Friday afternoon, there were a lot of angry and crying faces over the UK and Ireland. Hopefully everyone’s feeling better now…
Nosey Facebook update of the week
As if break-ups weren’t bad enough already, now Facebook is going to let people ask their friends what’s going on with their love lives, Business Insider reports. If you’ve decided not to display your relationship status, either because you want to keep it private of because it just hurts too much, people can click an “Ask” button and begin their interrogation. And their judgement.
Dictionary additions of the week
Merriam Webster added selfie, tweep, hashtag and unfriend to its dictionary database this week. These guys will be happy.
GIF machine of the week
We’re big fans on the GIF in here so this gadget is right up our alley. The OTTO camera lets you make GIFs live from the camera, sending them straight to your phone. We see a lot of drunken GIFs in this invention’s future…
Virtual reality news of the week
Last week you saw us trying out the Oculus Rift headset at TheJournal.ie HQ. This week, we learned that Samsung is trying to get in there before Facebook’s Oculus and Sony’s project Morpheus, rushing a virtual reality headset to the market, Engadget reported. We may have a virtual reality war on our hands here.