Relief for Android users: You can disable those creepy ‘blue ticks’ on WhatsApp

Last week, WhatsApp launched the ‘double blue ticks’ feature that lets users know when their messages are read that didn’t go down well with many users. With this new feature, you could no longer ignore a message or simply excuse yourself by saying, “I read it late” or “just saw your message”. Moreover, it didn’t give you an option to disable the blue ticks feature either.

However WhatsApp has quickly done some damage-control and added the feature to hide ‘Read Receipts’. Once enabled, people will not see the blue tick marks even if you have read the messages. This would definitely turn out to be a sigh of relief for many. One needs to simply go to the ‘Privacy Settings’ and enable/disable the feature.

-TechFirstpost

A messaging app that shows what your friends type, as they type it

TORONTO: Imagine if you could read as your girlfriend types, deletes or rewrites a reply to your message. With this new app, there is no hiding the emotions that you pour into your messages. 

Known as Beam Messenger, "this is the closest you will get to having a verbal conversation in a messaging app," says its download page on Google Play. 

Unlike traditional texting apps, the app developed by the Toronto-based Propulsion Lab shows both participants in a conversation what the other party is writing. 

"Beam Messenger is a first of its kind 'True Real Time' communications app. It allows for instant typing and transmission of text. Erase messages in real time or interrupt your friend to say 'you have heard the story before!'" the post of the company's website read. 

"Every character, every deleted character, every single pause, in real time. Right there in the palm of your hand," it added. 

Beam Messenger is free for Android users.

-IANS

How to find out everything Google knows about you

When you use Google, you are making a deal. You get to use Gmail and search and YouTube and Maps for free and in exchange, you agree to share information about yourself. Google gets to sell that information to advertisers. 

The more Google knows about you, the more it can match you to an advertiser who thinks you are an ideal customer. Advertisers are willing to pay more for ads served to ideal potential customers. For instance, airlines want to target people who love to travel. Children's clothing makers want to target parents. 

Google uses a lot of methods to learn about you. There's the stuff you tell Google outright when you sign up for its services, like Gmail and Google Maps or via an Android phone, like your name, phone number, location, and so on. Google also deduces information about you from watching your internet searches (what do you search for, click on etc) and from the stuff you do with Google's products. 

By visiting a site called "Ads Settings" you can see what Google knows about you.

It's not that easy to find Ads Settings. First, click on the link below or type it into your browser: https://www.google.com/settings/

Then click on "Account history."

Scroll down to Ads and click on "Edit settings."

This page shows you what Google thinks it knows about you including your age bracket, the languages you speak and ...
... your interests.

From that page, you can edit that information or "opt out" of allowing Google to share your information with advertisers.

-Business Insider

Before Orkut shuts, take a final walk through your memories

Google has announced a shutdown of its first ever social networking site, Orkut, on September 30. Launched almost a decade ago, Facebook has been ruling the social networking world, and by now people have almost forgotten about Orkut. In fact, the younger generation may not even know about the existence of such a thing called Orkut.

It was only a few days back that people were dragged down the memory lane when Google decided to bid farewell to Orkut. The news about Orkut’s shut down kind of worked as a re-wind moment for most of us who have used Orkut.

Remember how till some time back it was one of the coolest thing to be on Orkut, and it was much more cool if you had over one thousand scraps. It actually turned into a competition to have the highest number of scraps and people on your friend-list, and how can we forget the ‘testimonials’. People actually begged each other and lured their friends to write testimonials for them.

Now after years when we think of it, Orkut with itself brought in not just the idea of staying connected but also a wave of competitiveness and narcissism. If you don’t believe it, open your Orkut accounts again, and see what was your life like during the days of Orkut. Dig in to your teen days and take a final walk through your teenage and salvage those memories. (That is if you actually remember your passwords!)

When you revisit your Orkut page, download those old pictures, which you had totally forgotten, existed. You could even take screen shots and if you find something really special or close to your heart you could maybe take a print of it.

Although Google has said that it will archive the Orkut ‘communities’, but it would be a good idea to take screen grabs because once its archived, it is lose the ‘Orkut’ essence.

Since the Orkut is about to shut, there are also a lot of chances of accounts being hacked, misused. So if you have any important content (photos or any other information) that you think could be misused, make sure you erase it for good. At present, since Orkut is set to shut down by September 30, you have just three months to secure your information, so take out some time from your busy schedules and return to the good old days atleast once.

-Nandini Yadav (DeccanChronicle)