Set up sleep timer Spootify iOS

Music streaming giant Spotify silently rolls out an update to its iOS app which finally brings a sleep timer support for its app. No need to separately launch the iPhone’s Clock app.

Setting up a sleep timer on Spotify

To set up a sleep timer on Spotify, be sure you’re getting the latest update of the app. While your Spotify songs are playing, launch the Now Playing screen, tap the tiny three dots that sits in the upper right of your screen, and then scroll down a bit until you see the “Sleep timer” option. From there you can set a timer from 5 mins to 1 hour.

To turn off sleep timer on Spotify, just redo the above steps and in “Stop audio in“ screen, just tap ”Turn off timer“.

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As a music app, a sleep timer is a hotly-requested feature of Spotify which lets you doze to your favorite songs without draining your iPhone’s battery. It’s a feature first introduced to the Android version last year. iOS users, on the other hand, resort to the iPhone’s Clock app to stop audio playback on Spotify at a predefined time.

Spotify iOS App Gets Native Sleep Timer Support

Found this cool website that lets you generate a WiFi sign and QR code so people can easily connect on your network. The service is called My WiFi Sign, which comes in handy when you want to skip the headache of sharing your WiFi credentials at home or office.

All you need to do is head to My WiFi Sign, supply your network credentials and in seconds you get a nice-looking PDF complete with your WiFi info which you can quickly print. Additionally, you get a unique QR code which your visitors can scan to quickly connect on your network without typing anything.

How awesome is that?

So, when a visitor or your child’s friends come in, you can just quickly point them to the printed My WiFi Sign rather than awkwardly reach to your access point and find the credentials.

New QR Tagging Service Helps You Find Your Lost Stuff

Not everyone will probably appreciate this but if you host an event or you own a shop, having a scan-to-connect QR code will do you a favor.

Go, check it out!

Quickly Create Printable Wifi Signs and Scan-to-Connect QR Codes

On average, I get around dozens of promotional spam text messages in a week from different lending companies offering their loan services. Not to mention the pesky offers from my telco and its merchant partners who aggressively promote their products through SMS.

Getting 20 unsolicited SMS in a week may not sound like a lot. But I felt harassed knowing that they have access to my personal contact number and they can anytime shoot me an unwanted SMS without my permission.

Truth is, while the internet is still the most effective place to attract customers, a handful of marketers still turn to robocalls and SMS marketing as a way to generate leads. They’ll assault your iPhone’s inbox with offers and yes, even dirty texts containing links of adult websites. And the most clever part is: they’ll use a different random number to text blast; not too easy to block and stop.

Well, not until today.

How To: Block Ads on iOS, Including Facebook Ads and Youtube Video Ads (iPhone & iPad)

If you’re using the iPhone and tired of getting spam text messages from lending companies and random people, now is the time to take action and permanently block those spam messages. And nope, you don’t have to jailbreak your iPhone just to accomplish it.

Meet VeroSMS, the Best iOS App to Block Spam Texts on iPhone by Keywords

Upon hearing VeroSMS’ promise of permanently blocking unwanted SMS, I didn’t easily get excited, to be honest. First, I thought it’s not at all possible to manipulate iPhone’s SMS inbox considering the well-protected iOS ecosystem. Or, even if you can do it, you’ll have to engage in the risky business of jailbreaking.

But I was wrong.

VeroSMS works flawlessly during my test and I don’t even have to upgrade to a $2.99 premium version just to get the job done. This iOS-only app automatically blocks incoming SMS matching my custom-defined keywords.

No more nasty alerts from spammers. All unwanted SMS are automatically rejected under SMS Junk tab in the iPhone’s Messages app. Yep, the nice thing about it is while iPhone won’t alert you for incoming spam messages, the app still keeps a copy of every unwanted SMS so you can anytime check back.

How To Stop, Block Spam Text on iPhone by Keywords or Phrases

Getting started is easy. All you have to do is:

  1. Download and install VeroSMS from App Store.

  2. Launch the app. If this is your first time opening the app, you’ll be asked to Enable VeroSMS Spam Filter. Just go to Settings > Message > Unknown & Spam. Under SMS Filtering, enable VeroSMS.

  3. Navigate back to VeroSMS app. From Blocklist section, you can define your own keywords

    The paid version already comes with crowdsourced keywords so you can pretty much skip this step. However, you can also add your own, localised keywords, which makes this app really useful.

  4. Now, see your iPhone magically junks those spam text inside your iMessage app. All matching text messages will be stored in SMS Junk tab. And you don’t hear a notification when a spam text arrives.

Note: Only those SMS coming from unknown phone numbers will be filtered out by VeroSMS. If a text message comes from someone in your contacts list, VeroSMS will see it as important and it won’t tag it as spam.

How To Automatically Block Spam SMS By Keyword on iPhone (No Jailbreak)

YouTube, without a doubt, is everyone’s choice when it comes to entertainment and general info. With thousands of fun and informative videos being uploaded by the minute, it’s not uncommon for anyone to generate content out of existing YouTube videos.

How To: Watch Rated-R, 18+ Videos On YouTube Without Logging In or Signing Up

Teachers for instance can use copyright-free videos from YouTube to come up with supplemental video for their pupils. They can grab multiple, existing YouTube videos and do a bit of editing to produce a new video resource. Or if you’re a casual YouTuber like me, you may want to crop a YouTube video and get your favourite part to share as a meme.

Whatever the motivation is, trimming and making YouTube videos shorter doesn’t really have to be complicated. Truth is, there are free, online YouTube video editors that let you do basic trimming and cropping by simply pasting YouTube URLs.

5 Best Online Apps To Crop, Trim YouTube Videos

  1. YT Cutter
    This ad-supported web app lets you extract favourite scenes from YouTube videos. Using the app is pretty much straight-forward. All you need to do is to paste a YouTube link and specify start and end time parameter. Once done, you have the option to download the cropped video, audio or GIF.

  2. Kapwing Video Trimmer
    Kapwing’s Video Trimmer makes cutting YouTube video a breeze. The service offers the same video cropping capability but with a much nicer interface. After pasting YouTube video URL to crop, you can adjust which parts of YouTube videos to trim using easy-to-use, timestamp slider.

  3. YouTube Trimmer
    Yet another free tool to trim, crop YouTube videos is Youtube Trimmer. The website may look simple but it offers surprisingly fast and easy way to trim, crop favourite parts of your Youtube videos online. Just supply the YouTube video URL and specify the start and end times for the crop.
  4. YT Cropper
    And if for some reason you’re running out of options to make a YouTube video shorter, you may check out YT Cropper. Just supply the URL and adjust the handles to crop. Once done, hit “Crop” and let YT Cropper generates a custom embed code for you. Unfortunately, YT Cropper won’t let you download the cropped video for offline use. Sucks.
  5. YT Videos Cutter by odownloader
    Yet another ad-supported YouTube trimmer which lets you cut YouTube videos in seconds. The good: it gives you the option to download either audio only or full video. And you have the option to select .webm and .mp4 formats. The bad: lots of ads.

How To: Watch YouTube, Netflix on Sticky, Floating Window While Keeping Other Apps Opened

There you go! If there are other YouTube video editing apps out there that deserve a mention on this blog, just get in touch.

Top 5 Online Services to Trim, Cut YouTube Videos for FREE

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished you could get a simplified list of Google Drive files and folders in a Google Sheet?

If you’re working as a graphic designer or web developer, chances are you’ve probably gone through that occasion where you needed to juggle through multiples files and folders just to get the file you want.

Google Drive’s built-in file explorer isn’t that intuitive enough. Rummaging through hundreds of files can be too overwhelming, to say the least. Well right now, not anymore!

How To List All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

Meet Drive Explorer, it’s a tiny little add-on for Google Sheet that lets you export all (or selected) files and folders into a much readable spreadsheet format.

Drive Explorer (formerly Drive Direct Links) lets you pick folders/files from your Google Drive, Shared Drive or the files shared with you to export to the Google Sheet. Sheet columns contain metadata of the files like name of the file, containing folder, folder path on your Google drive, direct download link, etc.

How Drive Explorer works:

  1. You install the add-on and connect your Google account
  2. Once connected, go to your Driver folder and create a spreadsheet
  3. Inside your spreadsheet toolbar, click on Add-ons > Drive Explorer > Select files/folder.
  4. And finally, wait for a few seconds until your spreadsheet is automatically refreshed containing your files/folders’ meta info such as folder names, filenames, folder paths, links, etc.

When is it useful?

Being able to view your Google Drive files and folders in a list helps us save time and improve team collaboration. If you own an online store and works with VAs to manage inventories, this add-on definitely comes in handy.

In our day job, for instance, we constantly update images on our client’s websites. And our clients usually just share a large Drive folder containing all the images that need to be uploaded to their website. With Drive Explorer, we can now easily get a decent list of files in that shared folder so our team can easily collaborate rather than going back and forth on Google Drive.

5 Handy Google Sheet Tricks To Help You Work Fast & Save Time

Get A List of All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

It looks like Tim Cook doesn't want to heavily rely on traditional wireless carriers to beam internet data to its iPhone. And he hopes to see results within five years.

Bloomberg reports that Apple Inc. is hiring dozens of top-caliber engineers from aerospace, satellite, and antenna design industries in its bid to develop satellite technology that can beam internet data directly to iPhone devices.

Joining this newly-assembled team includes Michael Trela and John Fenwick, former aerospace engineers who helped lead satellite imaging company Skybox Imaging, which was sold to Google in 2014. Wireless technology messiah Matt Ettus also joins the team, along with Ashley Moore Williams from Aerospace Corp. who focused on communication satellites, and Daniel Ellis, a former Netflix Inc. executive.

Apple can pursue the costly development of a satellite constellation from scratch. Or they can team up with existing satellite makers to beam internet data direct to Apple devices.

Apple's Next-Generation Wireless Technology

The apparent goal of the said project is probably to mitigate Apple devices' dependence on traditional wireless networks across the globe, which are often confronted with issues on cost, efficiency, and privacy.

Remember that Apple's cash cow doesn't solely come from its devices' sales. Apple also gets a significant amount of revenues from other sources such as Apple TV+ subscription, Apple Music, Arcade, and who knows -- Virtual Reality experiences in the future.

Apple's New Patent Gives iOS Quick Access to Camera, Bypassing Passwords & Biometrics

Tim Cook's reign in Cupertino also requires him to fight tooth and nail in VR wars. In fact, Apple is working on its own virtual headset which is expected to debut as early as 2021.

All these TV and internet contents and VR experiences require a massive amount of internet data that needs to be fed to Apple devices in realtime. So, developing its own wireless technology is a sound decision from Apple in my opinion, as foreign companies like Apple are often held at a gunpoint when trying to penetrate a foreign market.

Developing countries, for instance, have exorbitant internet data prices and there are often data caps to deal with -- issues which Apple nor Google is unable to control, disrupting the company's goal to expand its services to foreign lands.

Satellite technology is an unchartered territory of Apple Inc., but with its massive $16 billion pumped in its research and development in 2019 alone, it can be just a matter of time when Tim Cook's reign at Cupertino surprises us with this wireless ambition.

Next-Generation iPhones May Soon Ditch Traditional Wireless Networks

Dreaming to hit Philippines’ white sand beaches this summer? Don’t book that tickets just yet! Chances are, you could be getting pricier round trip airline tickets if you’re too excited booking those tickets a lot sooner.

With just a few clicks, I’m going to show you how you can snap up the best airline deals for your upcoming trips using Google Flights.

Google Flights, by the way, is another service of Google launched back in 2011 that lets you search flights in seconds. Unbeknownst to many, Google Flights has a ‘fare alerts’ feature that notifies you in real-time through email if there are downticks (or upticks) of ticket prices from your selected flight. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do in order to get the best deals in real-time from different airlines.

Here's how to monitor airline ticket prices with Google Flights

  1. Go to Google Flights website

  2. Search for your desired flight. You may opt for a round trip or one-way ticket (there are additional filters too such as desired stop-overs, which cities, airlines, etc.) Best to leave them as is to get the best possible deals)

  3. As soon as you specify the desired departure date, the page should automatically pull a list of flights you can choose. The best flights for the chosen date will appear first on top of the page. So in case you’re happy with those prices, you can book them right away.

  4. If the best flights are too expensive for you, you can activate Track prices toggle. Basically, it will monitor the lowest price for the trip and you’ll be notified through email in real-time.

As long as you don’t omit those tracked prices, Google will automatically alert you when there are downticks of those chosen flight, as seen below's screenshot:

Both Skyscanner and Traveloka have "price alerts" functionality, but it doesn't hurt to add Google Flights into the mix to get the best possible airline deals.

How To Score Cheaper Airline Tickets with Google Flights’ Fare Alerts

After announcing the latest iteration of its flagship Android phone the Pixel 4 recently, Google introduces a new voice recorder app for Android with built-in offline speech recognition support. Well, thanks to AI.

The voice recorder app, as seen on the above demo, can transcribe audio recordings in real-time with utmost accuracy. And the best part: it works offline. You can transcribe whatever is being spoken during meetings, lectures or interviews even without internet connectivity.

YouTube Introduces AR Beauty Try-On, A Virtual Makeup Experience that Lets Viewers Try On Makeup Within YouTube App

Google’s newest voice recorder app is a massive upgrade from traditional audio recorder apps, which require decent internet connectivity to enable real-time transcription. And in most cases, the experience can be a bit clunky, unpleasant. That’s because your speech is being processed on a remote server before finally returning the transcribed text.

Search Parts of Recorded Audio by Sounds

The new voice recorder app comes with impressive search functionality too. Imagine you have this 2-hours long recorded lecture and wanted to re-visit that part of the lecture but all you can remember is a phrase or word? You can search by voice and the app will automatically highlight playback bar where those spoken phrases or words are mentioned. No more horizontal scrolling.

Google’s offline transcription technology is made possible by combining the power of real-time speech recognition and AI. And with the company’s unlimited resources being pumped in their Machine Learning department, we can expect a better and heaps clever AI-assisted voice processing in the future.

Google Maps Now Predicts Bus Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

So, next time you’re in a meeting or lecture, you can pretty much ditch writing notes and just intently listen to whoever is speaking. Let your Android phone do the note-taking.

Again, the app is initially being rolled out on the new Pixel 4, and the offline speech recognition is currently available in English. But with Google’s intention to reach as many users as possible, we can expect it to support other devices and other languages.

Google Launches New Recorder App with Realtime Offline Transcription Support

Found this really clever and evil site that lets you prank your friends and co-workers with a fake system update and thought you might like this too ;)

If seeing your friends’ worried look delights you, then, this fun website lets you do just that. The website, Update Faker, lets you select a fake system Windows or Mac update on your unsuspecting friends’ computer by simply visiting the website and selecting the “theme”. Just be sure to press F11 to go fullscreen mode on your Windows or Ctrl+Command+F on Mac.

The fake Windows update screen looks too real; from fonts, colors and even progress bars. Your target should definitely freak out upon seeing their computer screen doing the dreaded system updates. Just be prepared for possible reprisal.

Update Faker Themes to Choose From

Yet another reason why you should lock your computer when you take a quick break however short that is. Or else you could be a victim from pranksters lurking around your corner.

This is probably one of the meanest websites we’ve come across.

This Website Lets You Prank Your Friends with Fake System Updates

iphone simultaneous front back recording

Apart from the updated keyboard, new editable emojis, system-wide dark mode, and other tiny yet much-needed bells and whistles, iOS 13 also brings a plethora of enhancements under the hood.

One of them is the introduction of a new API that lets you use both front and back camera of your iPhone to simultaneously record all the action in front and back all at the same time.

We saw it from a demo at Apple’s event last week, which showed an iPhone 11 Pro with Filmic Pro installed that delightfully activates and captures both front and ultra-wide back camera.

Newer versions of iPhones will certainly get this multi-cam sessions support. At the recent WWDC event last week, Apple also confirmed that the same multi-cam recording functionality will also be supported on iPhone XS and XR. That’s pretty much good news.

Apple's New Patent Gives iOS Quick Access to Camera, Bypassing Passwords & Biometrics

Filmic Pro, being one of the biggest names to incorporate this feature on its app, is said to be releasing an update to its app later this year.

However, if you want to try it yourself right now without spending a penny and see how this front and back simultaneous recording works, then, you’ve got to check out Dualgram.

Dualgram: Use Your iPhone’s Multiple Cameras To Record Back & Front All At The Same Time

Dualgram was a brainchild of Junda Ong, who says there are so many occasions where he wished he could capture all the actions on both sides of the phone. And he’s not alone. Imagine you’re in your vacation abroad and wants to update your family back home and so you excitedly update them with your pictures and videos. Isn’t it cool to show all the sights in front of you while at the same time showing all the fun right behind you?

A multiple camera recording isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around for years on select Android devices — and it proved to be fun and more personalized.

With the latest iOS 13 and Dualgram, finally you can try it on your iPhone.

Enable Front & Back Simultaneous Video Recording on iOS 13 with this App

turn off geotagging iphone

iPhone and iPad camera has this built-in geotagging feature that automatically attaches your current location (aka EXIF metadata) every time you snap a photo. This geotagging support enables iOS to organize your photos by location, making it easy for you to browse through your past photos including personal travel photos and selfies.

Easiest Way To Play YouTube in the Background on iPhone, iPad + Auto Play While Keeping Other Apps Opened

Most iPhone and iPad have iOS camera geotagging enabled by default. You can tell if photo geotagging is enabled when you go to iOS Photos > Albums, there’s a Places folder where all your photos are displayed on a map.

A lot of people may find it cool that their iPhone detects their location and attach it on their selfies. What these people don’t realize is that they’re exposing their exact location coordinates which could turn them into easy prey from people with malicious attentions.

So, if you’re uncomfortable about unintentionally sharing your location data and want things a little bit private, it’s highly recommended to permanently disable geotagging on iPhone before finally sharing them online.

Here’s how to turn off geotagging on iPhone 6, 7, 8, XR, iPhone Max Pro & iPhone 11

  1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services

  2. Tap Camera and set Allow Location Access to Never.

    remove geotagging iphone disable geotagging ios

Preventing iOS from geotagging your photos should be that easy. Once done, it should remove geotag from photos on the iPhone moving forward.

How To: Block Ads on iOS, Including Facebook Ads and Youtube Video Ads (iPhone & iPad)

Please note that past photos with existing geotag won’t be removed. You’ll have to use EXIF remover such as Metadata Remover EXIF GPS TIFF or EXIR Purge to strip off sensitive metadata from iOS photos.

How To Turn Off Geotagging on iOS to Permanently Remove Locations from Photos on iPhone

Previously on this blog we’ve talked about how we can use Google Sheet as Wayback Machine Internet Archive alternative to automatically capture web page screenshots. In that post, we’ve demonstrated how we can use screenshotmachine.com’s free API to generate a screenshot of website using Google Sheet script and store them in a dedicated Google Drive folder Web page captures.

It worked hitherto of course. The bad news is: the script suddenly stopped working, probably because of Google’s API changes or similar. But the good news is: there’s a good alternative to do just that for a minimal fee.

PageCapture: Automatically Capture Website Screenshots Daily, Weekly or Monthly

PageCapture is a nifty web app we discovered few days ago and we thought you’ll love it too. In a nutshell, PageCapture automatically creates a screenshot of any web page URL on schedule. There are a handful of capture frequencies to choose from: hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and even custom hourly intervals. You choose.

All screenshots are securely stored on PageCapture website. However, you have the option to sync it with your DropBox or Google Drive account. And if you’re a regular Slack user, PageCapture can automatically push all web page screenshots to your Slack account.

When is it useful?

Web masters and internet marketers will surely benefit such an automated screenshot-capturing tool. Web page screenshots act as visual backup which you can turn to when you want to recover something or just want to look back how your client’s sites look like in the past.

5 Handy Google Sheet Tricks To Help You Work Fast & Save Time

Or if you’re an internet marketer, you can use it to spy on your competitor’s website and monitor SERP positions on Google search results on daily or weekly basis.

While massively popular Wayback Machine is awesome, it only crawls public pages at unknown intervals; no daily or weekly snapshots. So it’s not that totally reliable if you want a simple visual snapshot of a web page daily.

Why PageCapture is awesome

Aside from the fact that you can automatically capture web page screenshot on schedule, there are also other advance options you can explore such as the ability to choose device screen size (e.g. desktop, iPhone, iPad) and user-agents. So, web masters will definitely find this useful too especially if you’re maintaining highly critical sites that requires constant monitoring.

Go check out PageCapture and don’t forget to share this to your friends who might need this.

How To: Automatically Capture Web Page Screenshots At Regular Intervals

artyline converts sketches to interactive prototypes

The latest advancement of AI continues to offer us a whole new way to experience our digital lives. We’ve seen how Google predicts traffic delays & bus crowdedness, well, thanks to AI. We’ve also seen how YouTube enables you to virtually try on makeup and help you with your purchases decisions, thanks to its immersive AR Beauty Try-On.

With millions of power users’ growing appetite for anything automated, it’s not difficult to imagine a future where mundane, routinary tasks are being kept to a minimum. And fact is : it has already begun.

One of the coolest finds we’ve come across is Artyline, a free iOS & time-saver app that converts hand-drawn sketches into digital equivalent in realtime. All you have to do is to give a good scan on your sketches and you’re done.

Not everyone will appreciate this app, but such an app comes in handy if you’re an app developer or designer who wants to skip NinjaMock or any online mockup tools to quickly visualize your ideas.

Why Artyline is such a great app

The trouble with hand-drawn sketches is that it can potentially be misunderstood by most clients who normally aren’t adept in UX design elements. So whether it’s a simple app or not, the best way to present your idea and get their approval is to give prototypes as realistic as possible.

Excel Gets OCR Support, Lets You Snap Tables and Convert Into Editable Spreadsheet

With Artyline, generating prototypes is as simple as scanning your sketches and you immediately get an interactive version of our mockup. Think of it as an additional team member in your UX / design department where design sketches drawn from whiteboard or paper are quickly converted to digital formats. So you’d come well-prepared when meeting your client to discuss the next big app.

Artyline limitations

Because Artyline is powered by AI, it has a limited set of training to recognize basic shapes and transform them into design elements. Good thing is Artyline has this easy-to-follow guideline to make your sketches more recognizable by their AI.

Pro Tip: Use markers instead of writing pens. Don’t use pencils as they’re too illegible to recognize by Artyline scanner.

Artyline is still in its infancy and got tons of areas to improve especially in the execution side. However, I can’t easily denigrate an app idea this good just because of those hiccups. So, we are still impressed.

Give your app designs workflows an upgrade. Get this iOS app while it’s free. Thank me later!

Download: Artyline [Apple App Store]

Finally, An AI-Powered App That Transforms Sketches Into Interactive Digital Prototypes in Realtime

A once popular blogging behemoth Tumblr will soon get a new home. It’s WordPress.

Automattic Inc, the maker of world’s most popular Content Management System, is currently in talks with Tumblr’s Verizon Communications Inc for potential acquisition as part of the latter’s media overhaul.

While no definite sum floats around the deal yet, one source familiar with the matter says it will be a “well below” $20 million deal.

Automattic Inc is said to rehome Tumblr’s 200 existing employees and vowed to maintain Tumblr’s existing porn ban.

Tumblr’s Early Years

Back in the days when no Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter yet, Tumblr used to be the go-to place for people who love to share online contents such as photos, music, videos, and blogs. The free service grew exponentially, with millions of daily active users soaked in addictive, user-generated contents hosted on their platform.

With a userbase that large, that got the attention of Yahoo, which acquired Tumblr for a whopping $1.1 billion under the helm of Marissa Mayer last 2013 until Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017 for $4.8 billion.

Slack Desktop App Gets A Performance Boost — App Now Uses Less RAM, Loads A Lot Faster

WordPress.com To Acquire Tumblr for Less than $20 Million

speedier memory efficient ram slack

Popular team communication software Slack introduces a major update to its desktop app that mitigates the performance issues plaguing the app for so long. The new version now loads much faster on Windows and Mac, and eats a lot less memory, giving its millions of daily users a delightful experience when interacting the app.

Slack Drains Your RAM? It’s Time to Update Now

Slack team is rebuilding the app from the ground up, eliminating the resource-hogging bloats from its stack. The recent developments in Javascript in the past few years made it easier for team Slack to make the call and upgrade its client-side ecosystem, bringing the much-needed performance boost within the app.

“We want people to be able to run Slack alongside anything else they are using to get their job done and have that be easy, uncumbersome, delightful even. So we took a look at the environment we’re in. I think the other thing to note is that the ecosystem for client-side development has just changed a lot in the past five years. There have been some major updates to JavaScript and new technologies like React and Redux to make it easier to build dynamic web applications. We also wanted to update our stack to fit in with the modern paradigm.” — Jaime DeLanghe, Director of Product Management

Previous versions of Slack for Windows and Mac are noticeably slow for some. That’s especially true for those who have multiple Slack workplaces and channels to keep tabs on. This is due to the fact that Slack retrieves all conversations for each channel first before rendering the UI, thus, delaying your interaction to the app.

Now, Slack will only load data when needed, depending on which channel you’re on. The result: a speedier and memory-efficient user experience.

Slack is slated to release the new app in the coming weeks.

More than just Skype

Slack is a widely popular team communication tool used in a formal setting like workplace collaboration and remote communication. It got all the bells and whistles you can hope for when collaborating and working with remote team members on shared projects.

5 Handy Google Sheet Tricks To Help You Work Fast & Save Time

Slack Desktop App Gets Performance Boost — App Now Uses Less RAM, Loads A Lot Faster

reader mode google chrome

Google’s Chromium team has recently introduced a few enhancements to its beloved Chrome web browser. One of the features it added albeit hidden is the experimental “Reading Mode“ for Windows and Mac, which essentially strips off unnecessary web elements and gives you a simplified view of a web page.

Google Chrome’s Reader Mode is disabled by default. So you’ll have to enable it yourself. Here's how:

Activating Reader Mode on Google Chrome

  1. Ensure you’re using the latest Google Chrome’s Canary version
  2. In your Chrome address bar, type chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode

    google chrome reader mode

  3. Enable it and restart your browser

Now, every time you lands in a page and you want a simplified view of it, just go to Settings > Distill Page. It should declutter the page, removing background web clutters such as banners, ads, etc.

While it’s good Chromium team finally brings the long-overdue Reader Mode for desktop without installing a third-party extension, Google Chrome’s default Reader Mode is still in its infancy and begs a facelift. Currently, you can’t change the font size, styles, and colors. Such reading mode features are sure a delight once they’re made available in the next iteration of Google Chrome’s version

LOOK: Upcoming Google Chrome Feature Lets You Organize Active Tabs into Groups

So, if you spend a couple of minutes a day glued on addicting BuzzFeed articles and whatnot, then, Google Chrome’s built-in Reader Mode will do you a favor.

How To: Enable Google Chrome’s Built-In Reader Mode

Google Maps Predicts Bus Traffic Delays

Google introduces a few updates to its Google Maps iOS and Android apps that give commuters live traffic delays updates for buses as well as predictions how crowded your bus or train will be all in real-time.

The updates are welcome addition to Google Maps app that proves useful if you constantly commute your way around the city, helping you see the bus delays and how long it will be as well the recalculated time it takes to get from point A to B. With those live information at your fingertips, you can manage and plan ahead your trip; whether it’s a simple trip to your workplace or back to your apartment.

Using Machine Learning to Generate Bus Delays Forecasts

To produce the most accurate bus delays predictions, Google cannot solely rely on transit agencies real-time data. Google combines data syndicated from transit agencies all around the globe and anonymized data collected from commuters who consented to share their data.

Freshly-Minted Google Maps Now Predicts Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

Back in October last year, Google Maps began to ask its users who commute during peak hours and prompt them to rate their experience within the app. Relevant transit information such as travel time, distance, and the total number of available seats were also collected.

Long Commute? Get Power Naps and Get A Phone Call When You Arrive At Your Destination

These information collected are all valuable training data that help Google develop a model that predicts crowdedness and delays with increased accuracy, thanks to AI.

If you're curious about the technology behind all this, check this out.

So next time you’re about to leave from work, pull your Google Maps app and see if you should wait a few minutes or squeeze on a crowded ride like a packed of sardines on a hot bus or train.

Be sure to update your app to get this juicy addition from Google Maps.

Freshly-Minted Google Maps Now Predicts Bus Traffic Delays and Crowdedness in 200+ Cities

There's no way to protest that beauty regimen tutorials and makeup reviews are increasingly becoming more popular content on YouTube. Ask any of your girlfriends who are into beauty fad and you'll immediately get a nod they get most of their makeup skills from YouTube.

Thanks to thousands of YouTube content creators who regularly feed viewers with tutorials and beauty products reviews for their millions of followers.

Now, in another Augmented Reality (AR) initiative from Google, the company seeks to give YouTubers a notch higher experience when watching makeup tutorials on its YouTube app. With the launch of AR Beauty Try-On, viewers can now virtually try on makeup within the YouTube app.

Here's How YouTube's AR Beauty Try-On Works

Once available, your iOS YouTube screen will be split into two: makeup tutorial actively playing at the top, a stream from your own front camera at the bottom. And right within that screen, a palate of colors (maybe a shade of lipstick) can be tapped and virtually applied to your own lips and you'll immediately see how it looks on your lips in real-time.

It's really one powerful feature that should help you as a consumer decide what to buy next.

How YouTube's AR Beauty Try-On Benefits Brands

Other than casual customers who turn to YouTube for beauty tips and reviews, there's another real winner here: brands. Brands including M·A·C Cosmetics can easily tap YouTube's pool of influencers and launch AR Beauty Try-On campaigns to promote their products to over two billion monthly viewers.

This Augmented Reality App Lets You Create Your Own Portal, Teleport to New Places (iOS)

Google says it already tested this new, immersive YouTube experience and revealed that 30 percent of viewers activated the AR experience in the YouTube iOS app, spending over 80 seconds on average trying on lipstick virtually.

Source: Google

YouTube Introduces AR Beauty Try-On, A Virtual Makeup Experience that Lets Viewers Try On Makeup Within YouTube App