Computer Era

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Whatsapp introduces new privacy settings

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Whatsapp Groups

Whatsapp became a part of everyone’s life.  There are a lot of issues people are waiting to be corrected by the Whatsapp. The company has fixed one such feature at present.

Every Whatsapp user may have been participating in at least some of the Whatsapp Groups.  Sometimes people join themselves to the Whatsapp Groups because they want to get the information from the particular group. Most of the times the contacts they saved on their phonebook, adds them into unknown groups without the prior consent of the user.

It becomes very annoying to leave from the groups people join us. Whatsapp users continue in the Whatsapp Groups for the sake of their friends even though they are not at all interested in such groups. Finally,  a solution has arrived for the issue. WhatsApp introduced new privacy settings for the groups. Now onwards there are three new privacy options available for you for the Whatsapp Groups.

The first one is, you can approve or disapprove every Whatsapp Group invitation sent by the users. If you selected this option, for example, if somebody tries to add you to a Whatsapp Group, you will get a notification immediately regarding that. You can choose whether to join or not. The second one in the Group Privacy Options is you can get group invitations from those contacts which you have already saved on your phone book. Here you must remember one thing, any contact which is there on your contacts list can join you into the Whatsapp Groups. So you need to save contacts wisely.

The final option is,  anybody can join you in whatever group it may be, as they are doing right now.  You shouldn’t select this option, to maintain the privacy. The new Whatsapp Group Privacy settings have already come to existence. If you couldn’t find the new settings, you have to wait patiently for them until they arrive for your account.

E-Books are being added by Airtel for its Subscribers

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airtel books service

Airtel is providing various digital content which includes Wync music and video streaming service, Airtel TV for its subscribers.

Now the company is planning to add another service to its digital content portfolio with the name “Airtel Books”. As per the primary information “Computer Era” got, Airtel Books shall be available only for those customers who recharged their number with higher denominations. A tuff competition is there in the Indian telecom industry, that’s why all telecom companies are adding such value-added services to retain the customers with them.

Airtel had 284.2 million subscribers in Dec 2018. The music streaming service Whyc has 120 million subscribers, and Airtel TV has 80 million user base. Compared to Reliance Jio Airtel has a few value-added services which attract the customers. Airtel is planning to add more services for free of cost to avoid the subscriber migration to other networks.

The new service Airtel Books will be available to both the Airtel subscribers, and for those who don’t have Airtel subscription also. In the beginning, Airtel Books offers nearly 70,000 books from Indian and International authors. Users can find books across genres like crime, self-help, business, spirituality, romance, history and politics.

For the non-subscribers, Airtel is going to provide a 30-day trial. Later one has to pay the subscription. For six months The Readers Club subscription is priced at Rs. 129, and if you wish to take 12 months subscription, you need to pay Rs. 199. Without having a subscription, you can also select a single book and pay the amount for it. Right now, Airtel Books has many English titles, and there are few books available in the Hindi. The company is in a plan to expand the catalogue with a more number of regional books in the coming months.

Facebook is planning to release a much-required feature

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facebook Clear History Tool

Facebook is gearing up to release a great feature which protects users privacy. A couple of days back I discussed how Facebook collects user data from the third-party applications even if they don’t have the Facebook account.

Most of the application developers use Facebook SDK ( software development kit) to develop their applications. It helps Facebook to mine the usage patterns and the interests of the user.  Using the data it collected from the users, it builds an individual profile for every person.

As per the information that leaked today,  Facebook is going to provide a feature to its users which wipes the data it collected from them. The new function will be named as “Clear History Tool”.  It accommodates the user to check, what information Facebook already gathered from them. If they wish to stop Facebook from collecting the personal information, through third party applications and websites they visit,  they can pause the history. The new feature will protect the user ’s privacy. But it is doubtful how effective Facebook is willing to implement it.

As a part of the digital wellbeing, FB already introduced, “Screen Time” feature which helps us to know the exact amount of time we spent on Facebook.  But contrary it doesn’t help us to limit the time. Facebook users around the world know that the company never dare to lose its grip on the user’s privacy.

Your smartphone comes with a new button soon

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Google Assistant dedicated button

There are a lot of changes happening in smartphone design.  We all know that Google ditched navigation buttons in the latest Android Pie builds. The company is trying to habituate gesture-based navigation to the users.

There is nothing wrong with it.  But here we lose a little functionality if we stop to use navigation buttons. Google Assistant became a central hub for all the information requirements. People used to activate it by long pressing the Home button in the navigation buttons. If there are no navigation buttons, it becomes difficult to use Google Assistant. There is an alternative for this. We can configure Google Assistant hot word such as “OK Google”  to activate it through our voice.

But using the hot word is not always preferable. There should be a dedicated button to activate the  Google assistant. So, Google has an agreement with various phone manufacturing companies to meet the issue. Xiaomi, LG and Nokia are planning to release their upcoming models with a dedicated Google Assistant button.  We can expect that other companies may follow the same trend for their newer models.

Samsung has been providing a dedicated button for it’s Bixby voice assistant for two years. There is a workaround to remap the Bixby button to  Google Assistant. The latest trend indicates the role of the voice assistants which are going to be a part of our life.

Microsoft Develops a brand new operating system for computers

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microsoft new OS

For a long time, we all know that Microsoft has been dominating the desktop operating system market with Windows OS.

As per the information we got from various sources, Microsoft is ready to release a Lite-weight operating system, which is intended for the low-end laptops and foldable devices. The OS is entirely a new one programmed from scratch. It doesn’t have any similarities with Windows 10.

It is clear that the new OS won’t pronounce as Windows 10 Lite also. That’s why Microsoft is using “Santorini” as the code name for this project. The company may name the OS when it is ready for the general public. Slowly, Google is occupying the desktop market with Chromebooks. At last Microsoft started countering Google in the low-end desktop devices by focusing on the new OS.

The new OS might be announced in the Microsoft Build 2019 conference, which is scheduled to start in between May 7 and May 9 of this year. Everything is perfect, but Microsoft needs to focus on the number of applications available on Microsoft Store. Google Chromebooks achieved popularity after they have been supporting Android Apps. Microsoft must address the gap to compete with Chromebooks. Otherwise, only a brand new operating system doesn’t do magic, and users feel helpless when there is a lack of app support. Nowadays people are expecting innovative applications to address their day to day requirements.