Your Tech Story

Team YTS

WhatsApp on Desktop: What You Can and Can’t Do With it?

News, Social media, Tech tips / By

Checking WhatsApp messages at work, without peeking into your phones every now and then away from the prying eyes of the bosses, is easily possible thanks to the launch of WhatsApp Web: the desktop version of the popular mobile-messaging app.

 

“Today, for the first time, millions of you will have the ability to use WhatsApp on your web browser,” read the announcement on company’s blog much to the elation of millions who are most of the time working on the desktop for work and other purposes.

 

Before you jump to install the desktop app, you should know the strengths and limitations of the app. The web client currently supports Google Chrome browser only and works with Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry device (not iPhone).

 

To Install WhatsApp on Desktop, all you need to do is open https://web.whatsapp.com in your Google Chrome browser and scan the QR code that you see there inside of WhatsApp on your mobile phone. The new service will be launched on your desktop and you can freely chat with your friends and colleagues on your desktop.

 

Points to be kept in mind

The first thought that might have come to many minds after hearing the announcement was- Can I now use WhatsApp only on desktop, independent of mobile phone. Sorry, that isn’t the case.

Your phone has to stay connected to Internet. The two devices- mobile and desktop- are paired. So, if by any chance you lose the internet connection on your mobile phone or switch it off, the desktop version will shut down as well.

 

Secondly, you have to ensure you are using the latest version of WhatsApp on your phone in order to use the web client.

 

What You Can Do With WhatsApp Desktop Version

Send and Receive Messages on Desktop: Since the web client is an extension of your phone, you can easily chat with your friends on desktop. All the messages between your smartphone and desktop are synced. Which means all messages sent and received on desktop are automatically available in your mobile phone too.

 

Chat with your colleagues: If your colleagues are on your WhatsApp too, you can quickly exchange messages or any other work related information with them via WhatsApp web client. That way, WhatsApp can promote productivity at workplace too!

 

Participate in Running Group Chats: You can chat in the groups that were started on your mobile.

 

What You Can’t Do With WhatsApp Desktop Version

  1.  Can’t use it on your iPhone: The service doesn’t work with iPhone at present. WhatsApp gave the following reason for the same on its blog, “Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations.” We guess iPhone users have to wait a little for the service since they plan to support this in coming time. For the time being, users have to keep checking their mobile phones to check every message you get on WhatsApp. Just make sure you don’t do that too often at work; it doesn’t cast a good impression.
  1.  Can’t use it on Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.: As we told you in beginning itself, the service works on Google Chrome only at present. Surprisingly, Google’s own product- Google Hangouts will now suffer with WhatsApp latest release since Hangouts were most commonly being used to exchange messages at workplace.
  1.  Can’t use independently of your mobile phone: Like we said before, your mobile phone needs to stay connected to internet in order to use the service on your desktop.
  1.   Can’t create new groups, leave old ones or block users: WhatsApp users can’t create a new group using the desktop version. Neither can you leave old ones. To block users spamming you, you have to use your mobile phone too.

This was a long awaited feature since other messaging platforms like Facebook, Google Hangouts and Wickr already synced messages between smartphone and computer. Other popular mobile messaging apps, including Line, WeChat, iMessage, Viber, etc. also already had desktop versions. Over 700 million users use WhatsApp and the desktop version will expand the use of this platform. It only gets better for WhatsApp with each passing day. Give WhatsApp Web a try and tell us how you like it.

Automatic rotimaker, Rotomatic- Rotis at a click of button

Leave a Comment / how to, News, Tech tips / By

Rotis (puffed unleavened bread) made from flour has always been an important part of staple food in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and even other parts of the world like South Africa, Fiji etc. Since time immemorial people have been making Rotis manually by kneading the flour, flattening the small dough-balls and heating them on Tawa (griddle).
Image via https://rotimatic.com/
While it takes some practice to make a perfect roti, it also requires time and effort. So those who don’t know how to make a roti (Chapati/Phulka) has to order it from restaurant or food outlet which doesn’t tastes as good as freshly made Roti.

But now you can have freshly cooked Rotis in your home without going into hassle of kneading, flattening and heating. With Rotimatic you can have perfect Rotis and that too with the speed of one Roti per minute. Rotomatic has been designed by Zimplistic, a Singapore based company and will be launched worldwide soon.

Google Ad Sense Policy violations- How to avoid from being banned?

Leave a Comment / Ad manager, Adsense, DFP, Google, how to, Tech tips / By

If you are a AdSense publisher, you must be aware of AdSense program guidelines. AdSense program guideline comprises of content policy and rules to detect  fake, fraudulent clicks on Ads.

Any violation of any of these guidelines can result in either a ban on your AdSense account or stopping Ad serving on the website violating the policy guidelines. AdSense publishers are supposed to run ads on a website which has family safe content (no porn or obscene content, images or videos) with no copyright infringement.

Google ads aren’t permitted on sites that contain harassing or bullying content, or on content that incites hatred or promotes violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity. Additionally, Google ads may not appear on content that incites or advocates for harm against an individual or group.



Off late Google has gone quite aggressive in implementation of AdSense policy guidelines. Google has been disabling Ad serving for any website which has nude or porn content. If you’re using AdSense and have such content which violates AdSense policy, don’t wait for warning notification from Google.  Either remove ads from such content or remove such content from your website. Now a days Google instead of disabling AdSense account, disables ads on domain itself. In such scenario you won’t be able to runs ads even if you have another AdSense account.


Steps to follow if your AdSense account or website is banned

In case Google has already disabled ad serving on your website or blog, do following in order to get Ads enabled-

  • Take steps to remove violation- either remove such content or remove Google Ads
  • Disallow such URLs and keywords for AdSense bot in Robots.txt.
    Example- User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
    Disallow: /*xxx
  • Make internal process comprising automated as well human resources to check content quality including that of images and videos
  • File an appeal with Google using this form

Google AdSense policy review team would review your website for violations and if they find everything fine, Ad serving would start.  Normally this process takes around 5 to 6 days before you get to hear from policy team. See it as an opportunity to improve content quality on your website or blog which will not only earn you more from Ads, but also good ranking in search engines.

 

If you are using Google DFP, you might find it difficult to get AdSense Ads enabled since most of the time policy team fail to find AdSense code in HTML sources of your pages. If your account is eligible you can send an email to AdSense support as well using this page.

 

If your account is disabled due to some unethical activity or clicks, file an appeal here.  For more details on AdSense policy guidelines visit AdSense support page.

Set up a viral Social Media campaign with Pay with a Tweet

Leave a Comment / Facebook, how to, Marketing, Social media / By

Pay with Tweet is a free tool which lets you set up a social media campaign to promote your content on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ in a jiffy. It’s kind of social payment system where users get something in return for a tweet or post like. Make sure you provide users access to something exclusive so that they are motivated enough to take action. Reward or payment could be some e-book, some market research report, song, coupon, product or anything which could worth for a tweet or like.
Pay with a Tweet – An overview from Leif on Vimeo.
Pay with a Tweet also offers premium subscription if you are interested in advance stats and more than 2 campaigns running simultaneously.

Buy PowerPoint templates and diagrams for $3.99

Leave a Comment / start-up / By

Online presentation sharing website authorSTREAM has launched a marketplace for PowerPoint templates and diagrams where different templates providers are offering high quality templates and diagrams at very competitive prices. Any template or diagram costs just $3.99 in comparison to stand alone templates websites where this price varies from $9 to $300.

 

Currently the marketplace has 60,000 professionally designed slides under more than 40 categories which means there is a template for all the occasions and business needs. With this launch authorSTREAM wants to bring PowerPoint templates industry together at one platform thus providing more business opportunities to template companies and high quality affordable templates to presentation creators. On the lines of iStockphoto if authorSTREAM extends this marketplace to individual template designers who today have no way to showcase and sell their PowerPoint templates, that would be a game changer and win-win for everyone involved.

 

Defy Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm with terndify

Leave a Comment / Facebook, Social media, Tech tips / By

Social media has evolved greatly in last few years and today it is as important as SEO. With Google changing its search algorithms every now and then, social media has become an important place to channelize traffic and generate leads. Brands are keeping a big chunk of their marketing budget for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, for start-ups and small brands it’s not possible to spend thousand of dollars for social media promotions. They are merely depended on in-house social media teams who post and engage with audience or use scheduling tools like HootSuite or Tweet-deck for round the clock posting. Despite all these efforts and round the clock posting they couldn’t reach all of their fans or friends due to different algorithms in place. One such algorithm is EdgeRank algorithm.

If you are a social media buff, you must be aware of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm. Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm which works on factors like Affinity, weight and time, decides which posts of yours would appear on your friend’s timeline or news-feed. In most cases the reach would limit to 16% or may vary between 16 to 20%. There are so many suggestions over the web to increase your Facebook reach like keeping your posts short, using pictures or videos, engaging via QnA, relevancy or selecting the best time for your posts.

If you have tried all these suggestions and are still not getting traction, try Trendify this. Trendifythis uses a algorithm that studies the social graphs to understand how they are inter-connected and uses a combination of posting on friend’s news-feed or notify them via message to ensure that 80% of your friends get the post.  You would need to download Trendifythis Chrome extension as well in order to automate Facebook posting.