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How to upload HD photos and videos on Facebook

One of the more annoying things about Facebook has got to be the diminished quality of photos and videos you upload to the service, be it via iOS's Facebook integration integration or through the official mobile app for the iPhone and iPad, a free download in the App Store.

For whatever reason, Facebook's mobile app defaults to low-resolution photo and video uploads, likely in an effort to minimize bandwidth usage in this digital age of capped cellular data.

Fortunately, there is an easy yet not immediately obvious way to configure Facebook for iPhone and iPad to record and upload videos and photos in glorious high-definition.

Facebook working on a ‘Dislike’ button

Facebook is working on a 'Dislike' button, reports CNBC. CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the news himself during a public Q&A session on Tuesday. "People have asked about the 'Dislike' button for many years ... and today is a special day, because today is the day that I actually get to say we are working on it and are very close to shipping a test of it."

Google and Twitter target Facebook’s Instant Articles with ‘accelerated mobile pages’

Internet giant Google and the micro-blogging platform Twitter have joined forces as they gear up to launch their own take on Facebook's quick-loading Instant Articles for mobile users, according to Peter Kafka and Mark Bergen of Re/code.

Launching this fall with a small group of publishers, these articles should appear on mobile phones almost instantaneously without the annoyingly long loading times.

Facebook hits one billion users in a single day for the first time

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that the social network passed a significant milestone this week. On August 24, more than 1 billion people used Facebook in a single day for the first time ever.

"When we talk about our financials, we use average numbers, but this is different," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post this afternoon. "On Monday, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook to connect with their friends and family."

Facebook testing new ‘M’ digital assistant feature within Messenger

Facebook on Wednesday began testing a new digital assistant feature called 'M.' As explained by Facebook Messenger lead David Marcus, the feature, which lives inside Messenger, is powered by artificial intelligence that can complete tasks and find information on a user's behalf.

The artificial intelligence is both trained and supervised by real live humans, and unlike other AI-based services available today, it can do things like purchase items and deliver gifts. Of course it can handle normal chores too, such as booking restaurants and logging appointments.

Facebook Moments is now available outside US with new features

Moments, a Facebook-made app that lets you “get the photos you didn't take”, is no longer confined to the United States, thanks to a 2.0 update that went live in the App Store earlier this morning.

For starters, Moments is now available in a total of 34 different markets such as Japan, Russia, China, Germany and Italy, to name just a few.

The app also comes with an interesting new feature that appears to be borrowed from Google Photos, which automatically creates a movie from your photos, while providing bug fixes, performance improvements and improved upload performance.

Facebook said to be developing Twitter-like app for breaking news

Facebook is working on a standalone mobile news applications, Business Insider reported on Tuesday. The site says the app looks similar to Twitter, in that it will allow publications to blast short, 100 character push notifications to their "followers" when they have urgent news to share.

"Business Insider has reviewed screenshots of the new product and spoken to a source who has been playing around with the Facebook for Business platform." The outlet believes the app is part of Facebook for Business, but different than the Facebook at Work initiative we saw last year.

Facebook launches live video streaming for celebrities

Facebook on Wednesday announced a new video streaming feature for its Facebook Mentions app called Live. The feature allows Mentions users, which is currently limited to "verified public figures using Pages," to quickly and easily share live video.

With Live, Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik explains, celebrities can take fans behind the scenes, host Q&As, share announcements and more. And the social network says that The Rock, singer Luke Bryan and many others have already signed on to participate.

Facebook steps up advertising on Instagram

Before today, advertising on Instagram was mostly limited as media buyers had had to contact an Instagram sales representative directly. But things have just changed for the better (or worse, depending on your point of view) as Instagram's parent company, Facebook, has officially switched on Instagram's advertising application programming interface (API) to allow brands to buy ad slots on Instagram in a more automated fashion, Business Insider is reporting.

Because there's a lot of pent-up demand for targeted ads on the popular mobile photography service, this major move practically spells an end to Instagram's light ad experience as Instagram is poised to make big bucks by shoving more and more ads down users' throat.

Mozilla blocks Flash in Firefox as Facebook calls on Adobe to kill it off completely

Remember when Steve Jobs published an open letter calling for Adobe to kill off Flash and minced no words, saying Flash was “the number one reason Macs crash”? Five years later, the prospect for Adobe's proprietary multimedia plugin is looking increasingly grim as opposition is mounting against Flash.

Early in the year, Google stopped using Flash on YouTube after rolling out an HTML5 video player. Last week, Facebook’s chief security officer slammed Flash on Twitter and now the non-profit organization Mozilla has added every version of Flash to Firefox browser's default blocklist.

Facebook reportedly building ‘Moneypenny,’ a personal assistant for Messenger with a twist

Facebook is working on a personal digital assistant of its own, designed specifically for use with its popular Messenger mobile software.

Referred to internally as “Moneypenny” after Miss Moneypenny, a secretary to M in the James Bond films, it will reportedly allow Facebook Messenger users to perform tasks like checking the weather, buying products and more.

According to a report by The Information, hidden behind the paywall, one crucial difference will set apart the James Bond-inspired digital assistant from the likes of Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Google's Google Now, Amazon's Echo and others: it will be human-powered.