Snapchat Customised Lenses Announced, Oreo Gets Into The AR Action & Google Doesn't Want You To Save Images.

Create Your Own Lenses On Snapchat

Amidst all the Snapchat update drama something positive has also come from the app. Snapchat users now have the ability to create their own personalised Snapchat lenses and filters, which you can then buy through Snapchat’s website or app.

At present this feature is only available for iOS users in the U.S. but Snap is working on rolling out the feature globally and for Android devices.

By letting people create their own Lenses and Filters, Snapchat is further personalising it’s app for all sorts of usages, including special events and brand marketing.

The free lens studio launched in December for the more technically savvy creators out there to build 3D visuals (think dancing hot dog). As of today the studio will now let users choose from 150 templates which you can personalise with text and emojis.

We’re not sure this announcement is going to drive people’s attention away from the negativity surrounding Snapchat’s most recent design overhaul but at least it gives people something to look forward to when it eventually rolls out worldwide.

Oreo Is Getting In On The AR Action

Oreo is the latest brand to get in on the success of AR mobile gaming. “The Great Oreo Cookie Quest”, is a virtual scavenger hunt that gives users clues to find virtual Oreos in the world around them.

Using object recognition technology, the app can detect whether an object is correct and reveal hidden Oreos. For example a clue might be “What puts hands on your wrist?” which, if you’re a riddle master, should lead you to scan your watch, revealing an Oreo on your phone screen.

Each virtual cookie is assigned a point value based on how difficult the clue is and you can compare your scores on a leader board that will accumulate your Facebook and Twitter friend’s scores.

Users can also scan real Oreos to enter a sweepstake to win a trip to either Google’s headquarters in CA or a trip to Africa.

“The Great Oreo Cookie Quest” has come from Oreo’s partnership with Google. Prizes are randomly attached to virtual Oreos and many are Google related. For example users can win Google Play points or Pixel phones.

With the success of Pokémon Go and the already much talked about Harry Potter version soon to come, Oreo are hoping this will be a huge success and place the brand among some of the most tech savvy and up to date brands around.

Google Is Making It Harder For You To Save It’s Images

Internet users everywhere better be prepared to go the extra mile to try and get images from Google has announced the removal of the view image button!

Yes, you are hearing this correctly, while only a small change to the search engine, it will have a big impact for users everywhere as this button was extremely useful for users when searching for an image and wanting to save it for personal use.

The change, while frustrating for users, is one Google has been forced into making as it has been long under fire from photographers and publishers who felt that image search allowed people to steal their images, and the removal of this button has been made in response to complaints.

The intention seems to be either stopping people from taking an image altogether or driving them through to the website where the image is found, so that the website can serve ads and get revenue as well as people being more likely to see any associated copyright information.

It's great news for publishers, but it’s an annoying additional step for someone trying to find a picture. Now you’ll have to wait for a website to load and then scroll through it to find the image and in addition to this, websites sometimes disable the ability to right click, which would make it even harder for someone to save a photo they’re looking for.

However there is a simple solution to the issue and it’s so simple it makes you wonder whether Google really needed to make this change in the first place...

To get around having to scroll through a website to find the image all you have to do is right click the image and select “open image in new tab” or “view image” (or whatever your browser equivalent is) and you will once again be able to save the image to your device

Instagram Now Lets Users Know When Others Screenshot Stories

Is Instagram slowly morphing into not one, but two, of the biggest social media apps out there?

First of all it borrowed the (albeit very annoying) non chronological algorithm from Facebook’s news feed and then it released Instagram stories, which follows exactly the same premise as Snapchat.

Well Instagram hasn’t stopped there. This week it was revealed that Instagram is borrowing another feature from Snapchat. Alerting you if someone screenshots your story.

Stories are confessional and disposable by design, so it makes sense, but there’s nothing to keep someone from taking a screenshot of this private form and sending it to their friends or posting it online.

So without an easy way to block people from using the screenshot function—which is controlled by a phone’s operating system—Instagram is borrowing from Snapchat and doing the next best thing, alerting a user to it.

So, if you don’t want the world to find out you have stalker like tendencies then we recommended you think twice before screenshotting a story.