WhatsApp launch video call on Android, iOS and Windows 10 platform

WhatsApp has just announced video calling for all users starting November 15.The feature will roll out to all users over the next few days. WhatsApp was launched in 2009 as a rich messaging service and is now one of the world’s largest OTT messaging platforms with over 1 billion users,. It added voice calls in early 2015.Here is how the new video calling feature works. The Video calling will work on all devices with Android4.1 and above. The rollout is happening at the same time for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, thus covering the top mobile operating systems across the world. Users will need to upgrade their app for the feature to show show up. When you click on the call button, you will start getting a new video calls options along with the existing voice calls.
Once the call connects, you will be able to choose either from or back camera of the phone for the video. You will be able to choose if the preview of you video is the main image or the incoming video. Also, the location of the smaller window can be moved to anywhere on the screen.
WhatsApp says it does not assume anything about the quality of the network from which the video call is being made. So the video call quality will improve as the system recognises that the network quality is good. The video calling feature has keep kept really simple so that engages everyone without confusing them. The one additional feature is the ability to multi-task by minimising the video and using other apps on the phone. User will be able to return to the call by tapping on the green band that appears across apps.
At the moment the video calling feature can be used synchronously between two users and not to whole group.

GoPro recall Karma Drone

The company announced it was recalling around 2,500 Karma drones. A  number of the drones lost power during operation. Customers can return the item to its place of purchase for a full refund.
Safety is our top priority, GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said. "We are working in close coordination with both the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration. "We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible."bFor the moment, GoPro is not offering any replacement drones, which they've been selling since Oct 23.
The company said they will only resume shipping once "the issue is resolved. "The recall comes at a bad time for the public camera and drone company, which just took a big hit in its third-quarter earnings.
GoPro lost a whopping $84 million over the past three months, at the time, although Karma drone sales were not included in the report.

Google: Two Billion Chrome Installed

Google announced a new milestone for its Chrome browser today:2 billion active installs between desktop and mobile since its September 2008 release. The news was made public onstage at the Chrome Dev Summit conference by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher. Of course, this stat differs from active use — just because you installed Chrome doesn’t mean it’s your primary daily browser. That’s especially true of mobile, where a company like Apple makes it easer to use its built-in Safari browser even after you’ve defaulted to mobile Chrome.
Still, 2 billion installs is a first for a Google product. The company announced last year during its I/O developer conference that it has more than 1 billion users of Android, Chrome, YouTube, and search. And last April, Chrome passed the 1 billion active user mark on mobile. That means, between its active install pass and growing mobile presence, Chrome could be the first Google product to hit the 2 billion user mark.
Though it is of course contending with Android. As of last September, Google’s mobile operating system was installed on1.4 billion active smartphones around the world. So for Google, it looks like a never-ending race with itself.

YouTube new System give Creators more Control

YouTube has rolled out several new features for its comments section to help creators interact with their fans more personally. “We realize that comments play a key role in growing this connection,” said Courtney Lessard, Product Manager at YouTube. The new features include the ability to pin comments, highlight creator usernames, as well as new hearts icon.
YouTube has also introduced a new beta feature that will allow creators to hold potentially inappropriate comments for review. The company plans to roll out the same in the coming months. According to Lessard, the new features will help grow stronger communities and have more constructive conversations in comment sections.
YouTube’s pinned comments allows creators to post (or pin) a specific comment at the top of their news feed. However, users will only be able to pin a single comment at a time on their news feed. YouTube has also rolled out creator hearts that can be ‘given’ to favorite comments. “This is a new and easy way to acknowledge comments from your community,” says Lessard. Up next is change in the way creator usernames appears. Creator’s usernames will now appear with a pop of colour around it, whenever they comment on their channel. Verified users will still have the verification checkmark besides their names, along with the new look.
YouTube already gives creators an option to choose moderators who can remove public comments from their videos. Now, it plans to roll out a new feature that holds potentially inappropriate comments for review. Lessard explains how it works, “If you choose to opt-in, comments identified by our algorithm will be held and you have the final decision whether to approve, hide, or report these comments.” Creators who’re interested in trying out the feature can do so by submitting their channel information.

Android Chrome to get new Design

Google might be testing a redesigned Chrome browser for Android smartphones that places search bar at the bottom. The move is aimed at users with big smartphone screens, allowing them to use Chrome with one hand. According to a report in Android Police, the feature is unfinished as the space where the search tab is ideally placed (top) is empty as of now. “A new flag in Chrome Dev and Canary, only described as ‘Chrome Home,’ moves Chrome’s address bar to the bottom of the screen when enabled,” the report adds. In a screenshot put out by the site, we see controls including search tab, to add tabs as well as to switch tabs at the bottom.
While Microsoft has had browser controls for mobile versions of Internet Explorer and Edge for a couple of years now; Google might be on the verge of doing so pretty soon. Also, Safari for iOS has select select browser controls at the bottom such as switching tab, forward and backward. However, it looks like Google is only testing the feature for now and will roll out the same eventually for mobile users.
Google Chrome has been made 15 per cent faster on Windows. Google Chrome’s Sébastien Marchand, in a blogpost said, “Starting in Chrome 53, Chrome has started using Microsoft’s Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) technology to make Chrome up to 15 per cent faster on Windows.” ” PGO uses data from runtime execution that track which functions are most common to guide optimization,” he added.

Google reject EU antitrust charge

Google on Thursday formally rejected European Union antitrust charges of unfairly promoting its shopping service and blocking rivals in online search advertising, paving the way for EU regulators to rule next year on these issues and potentially impose hefty fines.
The US technology giant’s rebuttal in the shopping case came six years after the European Commission opened an investigation prompted by complaints from rivals such as Microsoft and a host of European and US rivals. The EU regulator followed up with an anti-competitive charge against the company in April last year and added more evidence in July this year. It also issued a separate charge sheet against its online search advertising product AdSense for Search at the same time. Google’s general counsel Kent Walker said on a blog that the accusations had no factual, legal or economic basis, and that the company’s actions were driven by its users rather than any plan to squash rivals.“We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we displayed.
On the contrary, we improved it. That isn’t ‘favouring’ – that’s listening to our customers,” Walker said. He said the Commission had failed to take into account competition from Amazon, merchant platforms, social media sites, mobile web and online advertising by companies such as Facebook and Pinterest.
The EU executive said it had received Google’s response. “In each case, we will carefully consider Google’s response before taking any decision on how to proceed and cannot at this stage prejudge the final outcome of the investigation,” Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said in an email.
Google may find it difficult convincing the EU regulator with its latest arguments, said Michael Carrier, professor at New Jersey-based Rutgers Law School. “Google has a point that its search results help consumers by allowing them to directly buy the item. But the Commission worries about the effect on rivals. This likely will outweigh the consumer point,” he said. Google also rejected a Commission proposal which would let the company charge rivals for displaying their services prominently, with the amount corresponding to its operating cost or a nominal amount based on the lowest reserve price for AdWords which is currently 0.01 euro per click. In the advertising case, the company said it had already scrapped the exclusivity clauses and other provisions identified by the regulator as anti-competitive.
The Commission plans to hand down hefty fines to Google if found guilty of breaching EU rules, the charge sheet seen by Reuters showed. The penalty could reach $7.4 billion or 10 percent of the company’s global turnover for each case. Walker said Google would respond in the coming days to a third EU charge of using its Android mobile operating system to hinder competitors. The Commission has given it until Nov. 11 to do so.

Vine founders create Hype

Two of Vine's original founders have teamed up on a new video app called Hype, which is centered around live video broadcasts.
Out now on iOS (its founders say they're working on an Android version), Hype has many of the features you've come to expect from live streaming services.
Users can stream live broadcasts to followers within the app, who can comment and interact with broadcasts in real-time. Videos can also be replayed after the fact or shared to Twitter. But you aren't limited to sharing only video from your smartphone's camera. Hype also allows you to add photos, video, music, GIFs and other elements to your broadcast and broadcasters can feature comments they like so they appear higher up on the screen during the video streams. Though the app's core functionality is more like Twitter-owned Periscope than Vine, its interface, which allows you to add animations and big chat bubbles to your video, is far quirkier than the increasingly polished Periscope. That, of course, is likely due to the app's founders who know a thing or two about quirky video apps. Hype was created by Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll who, along with former Vine CEO Dom Hofmann, founded the six-second video app in 2012. (Hoffmann, who has two new apps of his own, appears to not be involved with Hype.) Yusupov and Kroll took to Hype Friday to memorialize Vine in a lengthy livestream in which they shared some of their favorite clips and reminisced about their time working on the app."It was kind of a surprise to us," Yusupov said about the news of Vine's imminent shutdown.
Quirky features aside, Hype already faces a  much more competition than Vine did early on — particularly from Facebook and Twitter, who each have their own live video service — but, at the very least, its relatively simple interface and the ability to overlay your own photos and video onto your broadcasts make it the perfect place to memorialize your favorite Vines.

Twitter kill-off Vine

Twitter is killing off Vine, the short-form video app it once hoped would complement its text-based network with a vibrant community of independent creators. The mobile app will be discontinued “in coming months,” the company said.
The company said it would not delete any Vines that have been posted — for now, anyway. “We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way,” the company said in a Medium post. “You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. ”Twitter bought Vine, which had yet to launch, in late 2012. It launched in January 2013, and its looping 6-second clips gradually became a popular format for sports highlights, visual effects, and comedy. A number of Vine stars improbably became popular recording artists after clips of themselves singing went viral, most notably Shawn Mendes.
And yet Vine never became the destination that Twitter had hoped for. Its co-founders gradually quit, and Twitter was slow to invest in the property. The launch of video on Instagram in 2013 blunted its growth, and as with the rest of Twitter, its product added features at a glacial pace.
The end of Vine comes as Twitter tries to overhaul its core product, which has been slow to add users or grow revenue. The company said today that it would lay off 9 percent of its workforce, or about 350 people, as it attempts to find a sustainable path forward. A recent effort to sell the company failed when no one would meet Twitter’s asking price.

Samsung Pay available Worldwide early next year

Samsung Pay users around the world will soon be able to use the service to buy items online. The company announced today that it has signed a deal with Mastercard to use Masterpass, a digital payment system already supported by hundreds of thousands of online retailers in 33 countries, starting early next year. In addition to buying goods online, users in the US will also be able to use Samsung Pay for in-app purchases, and find money-off discounts for local stores from November, as Samsung makes its payment service more of a fully featured online wallet.
Online payments were already possible through Samsung Pay, but only in the company's native South Korea, where they counted for 25 percent of the 2 trillion won in payments processed by the service. In expanding the new feature to other countries from early 2017, Samsung Pay users be able to make online payments from their phones, tablets, or computers, and use express checkouts that automatically fill in payment data based on information saved in Samsung Pay wallets.
In-app payments and discounts will arrive sooner than online payments — in the US at least — in November this year. Wine app Hello Vino and restaurant booking service Velocity are among the first apps to enable Samsung Pay in-app purchases, letting users buy wine or book tables through the service.
It's not clear exactly what kind of discounts US customers will be getting through the service's new "deals" feature, but as the company rolls its digital wallet out to even more countries, they could help make Samsung Pay a more attractive payment option in a crowded market it shares with Apple and Google's digital wallets.

Student sparked internet craze after he tweeted a selfie "giving himself a high-five".

Seth Schneider's post has so far been re-tweeted 170,000 times, liked over 430,000 and opened the door to the next internet craze of people posting their very own attempts at a 'self congratulation selfie'. The South Carolina University student tweeted: "Today is the proudest day of my life. I successfully took a picture of me high fiving myself".The engineering student told student website Fresh U how he came to have this selfie game-changing epiphany:"I was sitting around my house waiting for football games to start and I thought to myself, 'I wonder if I can do this.' It took about a maximum of 20 tries. I wasn't really counting."
https://twitter.com/samsingletonn/status/785544761813852161 | twitter And so the next selfie trend was born - although some people have been quick to point out the move is really just a clap. Seth has warned others who want to earn the high-fiving selfie accolade that caution must be taken and added a disclaimer to his Twitter profile: "I am not responsible for any broken phones".But that hasn't deterred people from attempting to claim adulation from the online selfie community, some have been more successful than others.
https://twitter.com/Hannahkemling/status/785664633369534464
| twitter https://twitter.com/brax_mac/status/785694272980869120 | Others have put their own spin on the trend, abandoning the self high-five in favour of something more adventurous such as dancing, reading a paper or even disappearing from the shot all with the hashtag #NoHandSelfie.
https://twitter.com/Bryansoftwell/status/785665338360885248
| twitter https://twitter.com/glover____/status/785576847857680384 | twitter
One tip the high-five selfie king has for anyone attempting this feat in a bathroom mirror is to place a pillow over the sink before throwing your phone in the air.