Twilio has announced a range of internal policy changes designed to improve workplace equality alongside initiatives to support non-profits and the most vulnerable.

Very little can get done without communication, it’s behind almost everything we do. That puts Twilio in a position which Spiderman’s Uncle Ben would say: “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Promoting equality

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson began his keynote setting out the company’s goal that, by 2023, his...

Twilio is hoping to empower developers looking to move beyond apps with Twilio Conversations announced today during Signal 2019 in San Francisco.

Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, kicked off the 2019 keynote highlighting the importance and growth of communication tools with some impressive statistics.

Developers using Twilio's communication solutions now drive 750 billion human interactions per year, a peak SMS rate of 13,000 per second, 2.8 billion unique phone numbers, and 3 billion email...

Facebook has updated three of its most important APIs to version 4, bringing some important changes to be aware of.

While the version number indicates a large release, it’s worth noting that Facebook is transitioning to major numbers for all new versions. The change in numbering aligns the version numbers of Facebook’s SDKs with the version of the API.

Graph API 4.0

Pages API – Facebook now requires one of the following permissions for an app to access the pages associated with a...

Privacy advocates Mozilla have called out Facebook’s political ad API as ‘inadequate’ and not working as it should.

Social media is a powerful tool, especially for those wanting to influence a massive number of people. The reach and potential anonymity of social media have led to huge disinformation campaigns often designed for political manipulation.

Intelligence agencies often point the finger at Russia for many of these disinformation campaigns. Infamous ‘troll farms’ use bots...

A subsidiary of Google called Wing is the first to use a new drone safety API developed by Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

Project Wing is an autonomous delivery drone service aiming to increase access to goods, reduce traffic congestion in cities, and help ease the CO2 emissions attributable to the transportation of goods.

Wing is also developing a platform enabling unmanned aircraft to navigate around other drones, manned aircraft, and other obstacles like trees, buildings, and...

Intel is putting together a new programming language aimed at simplifying development across workloads and architectures as part of its ‘One API’ initiative.

Data Parallel C++ (DPC++), naturally based on C++ but also incorporating elements of SYCL from The Khronos Group, is touted as being an ‘open, cross-industry alternative to single architecture proprietary languages.’

One...

Google has debuted Android Q beta 4, bringing with it what's promised to be the finalised APIs of the upcoming release.

The official designation of 'API 29' has been assigned for this release, for developers wanting to target Android's latest flavour.

Developers can now take advantage of Android Q features such as the system-wide dark mode, smart replies/actions for notifications, and foldable smartphone layouts. These features can be used without concern of broken functionality in the final...

Google has updated its Pay API to support new features which improve the online checkout and pass usage experiences.

Some of the features were debuted at this year’s I/O developer conference, but Google has now provided further detail of how they can be used in practice.

Going forward, the Google Pay payment sheet will display all information about the purchase – item cost, shipping options.etc will be displayed to prevent the customer from having to return to the merchant site.

The new...

Apple has completed its annual WWDC keynote for another year, so let's dive into the announcements to see if we should be getting excited.

Let’s start with how our  ‘what to expect’ predictions fared last month:

✔ iOS dark mode

✔ iPad home screen update (widget support added)

✔ Updated first-party apps (Messages, Reminders, Mail, Notes, Music, and...

A group of iOS developers who had their parental control apps pulled from the App Store are demanding a screen time API.

The apps were pulled from the App Store over concerns they violate user privacy. Protecting users is fair, but the developers want a way to provide their apps safely.

Seventeen developers have banded together with a technical proposal for implementing such an API.

The developers believe Apple is preventing competition by only allowing its built-in parental...