Sandhya Gupta

Telegram adds voice-to-text for video messages

A new update to Telegram has been released, bringing some new functions for Premium customers as well as some universally accessible visual updates. The new feature of voice-to-text for video messages is now accessible to Telegram Premium users.

Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, said last month that users may now use Fragment to purchase and trade usernames on the site. The most recent version of Telegram now includes a number of new features, including interactive emoticons and reactions, voice-to-text for video conversations, and more.

Prior to the recent upgrade, members could convert any voice message to text. With the update, users now can also transcribe a video message to text. If one routinely participates in video conferences and meetings or conducts interviews over video calls, the newly added function will be especially helpful to them. However, this new feature is only available for Premium users.

Admins of Telegram groups can now enable “Topics in groups.” Users can create separate places for various topics using the new feature, which can be activated in groups with more than 200 members. Similar to individual conversations, the “Topics in groups” feature has its own multimedia and alert options.

Users will also be allowed to utilize bots, vote in polls, and pin remarks on the subject. For those in big groups, where it can be difficult to follow conversations, it is quite helpful. Group admins can turn on the feature in the “Group settings”. In “Permissions,” they can specify who is permitted to manage and create topics.

The new update gives Android users additional options to resize text via the Chat settings, including link previewing and reply headers. iOS users will notice that the Night Mode has been improved with more balanced colors and improved blur effect as users navigate through chats.

Collectible username, another intriguing new feature added in the update, makes it simple for others to get in touch with Telegram users or locate their public groups in channels. Users of Telegram can now give each individual account and public chats multiple unique usernames in addition to a standard one.

Additionally, users can sell them or buy them through the recently unveiled site Fragment, which is safeguarded by the TON network that Telegram built internally. These names cannot be more than 5 characters in length.

The most recent update also includes 12 new emoji packs, some created especially for Halloween, that are only available to Premium subscribers. A fresh effect for swiping left to reply has also been implemented, along with some small design tweaks like flickering placeholder chat bubbles when conversations are loading.

Telegram apologized for the upgrade’s delayed release and noted that “Apple took two weeks to review the update.” Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, in a post, revealed, “Apple claims they review apps within 24 hours, but, in our experience, it takes at least 7-10 days for any meaningful product update to reach the App Store.”

Durov has previously accused Apple of delaying upgrades for weeks and blocking the option for iOS users to generate pay-to-view posts because of Apple’s strict App Store policies. This isn’t the first time Durov has publicly attacked Apple.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Musk suspends comic Kathy Griffin’s account for impersonation

The comedian Kathy Griffin is the most recent Twitter casualty after CEO Elon Musk announced that accounts that participate in “impersonation” without explicitly stating “parody” will be permanently suspended.

The actor and comedian Kathy Griffin’s account has been permanently suspended by Twitter for “engaging in impersonation” after she altered her Twitter display name to Elon Musk and urged people to vote for Democrats in the US midterm elections.

According to reports from Fox News, Kathy had changed her Twitter profile name to Musk after which she appeared to have been immediately removed from the social networking platform. However, her handle displays her own username, @kathygriffin, the name by the blue tick.

According to Elon Musk, this violates the company’s anti-impersonation policy. Kathy Griffin account being suspended caused controversy, and many people accused Musk of repressing free speech. Elon Musk responded to a post by stating, “Actually, she was suspended for impersonating a comedian.”

Elon Musk stated via several tweets on Sunday that any Twitter account discovered engaging in “impersonation” without explicitly stating “parody” will be permanently suspended. He said, “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended.”

He said that the verified checkmarks would temporarily disappear if any names were changed. He also noted, “Previously, we issued a warning before the suspension, but now that we are rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning. This will be clearly identified as a condition for signing up to Twitter Blue.”

Musk recently disclosed that the platform would charge 8$ per month for a subscription service on Twitter that would grant users priority in mentions searches, and replies. Musk noted in a tweet, “Twitter’s current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit. Power to the people! Blue for USD 8$/month.”

Musk believes that the $8 verified Twitter accounts are his strategy for making the service more accessible. Users who “sign up now” for the new “Twitter Blue with verification” can obtain the blue checkmark next to their names exactly like the celebrities, companies, and politicians.

It was stated that the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. would be the first countries to offer the service.

Musk’s choice to impose the blue tick fee, however, did not sit well with everyone. Even some advertisers retracted their advertisements from the website.

The Twitter Blue membership became publicly available over a year ago as a means of accessing articles from some authors without ads and making other changes to the app, such as changing the color of the app’s icon on the home screen. Along with the “blue tick fee,” Musk has been facing a lot of backlash on Twitter for firing staff members.

Musk defended his decision to remove employees by claiming that Twitter was losing over 4$ million every day and the firings were necessary. He said employees were granted three months’ pay as severance when they lost their jobs, but he did not go into specifics about Twitter’s daily losses.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Elon Musk’s first Hyperloop tunnel in California is no longer there

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has dismantled the Hyperloop tunnel prototype in California and constructed a parking lot in its place.

Musk’s first Hyperloop tunnel prototype is no longer in existence. According to Bloomberg, the approximately one-mile-long white steel tunnel, close to the SpaceX headquarters in California, has been taken down and will be replaced with a parking spot for employees.

In 2016, Erik Wright was overjoyed when his company was chosen to assist with a challenging technological project: the prototype tunnel for Elon Musk‘s Hyperloop. The project was intended to serve as a test run for a modern transport network that would use levitating pods traveling through tubes at high speeds.

The test tunnel’s dismantling represents a wider retreat. Although Musk still claims he intends to construct a Hyperloop, the project’s work has been put on hold indefinitely.

Erik Wright noted in the memory of the project, “The Hyperloop is quite a badge of honor for us. It even helped the company land several non-transportation contracts, such as an 8,000 square foot climbing gym.” The tunnel’s steel tube and base were developed and constructed by the construction engineering company Aecom.

Everything within the tube, along with the concrete sub-track and joints, aluminum track, and interior illumination, was completed by Precision( Erik’s company).

Musk’s Hyperloop system was intended to carry passengers via low-pressure tubes in pods at top speeds of 760 mph. The ambitious idea would reduce the travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco to 35 minutes.

The Boring Company, Musk’s civil engineering firm, was in charge of the project, although not much progress was made over the years. The LA Times noted that the tunnel caused complaints from both drivers and pedestrians until the city intervened to have it taken down.

Musk acknowledged the attempt to create a functional Hyperloop to ease traffic congestion “in the coming years” in a tweet in April. A similar tunnel called the Vegas Loop is currently being built by The Boring Company in Las Vegas. Despite the occasional enticing tweet from Musk, there hasn’t been any indication that the ambitious idea of speedy pods will ever materialize again.

Wright, who believes that the Hyperloop system will eventually develop, hasn’t given up hope and praises the Boring Co. for moving things in the correct manner.

A hyperloop is a proposed high-speed system for both passenger and goods transportation. Tubes, pods, and terminals are the three fundamental components of hyperloop systems. The idea for the hyperloop originated with George Medhurst in 1799, and it later went by the titles pneumatic railway, atmospheric railway, and vactrain.

After bringing up the hyperloop in a 2012 speech, Elon Musk expressed a renewed interest in the technology. Musk further popularised the idea by releasing a white paper in 2013 that imagined a hyperloop route from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

In his original design, compressed capsules rode inside reduced-pressure tubes on air bearings powered by axial compressors and linear induction motors. Transportation experts disputed the white paper’s cost projections, with some estimating that a realized hyperloop would cost several billion dollars more than expected.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Why Toon Finance is top ICO in the Crypto Market

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

With their brand-new concept having launched only a few days ago and already receiving massive attention, Toon Finance is currently the top ICO.

One of the finest methods to make a terrific early investment with the potential for huge profits is through ICO presales. With the company and community working together to generate over $20 million for the cryptocurrency‘s new DEX, Toon Finance is currently one of the most popular, if not the greatest presale of the year.

This is unquestionably the ICO that is now receiving the most attention. Currently, in its early phases, the ICO is selling out quickly. Stage 1 sold out in less than two weeks, and Stage 2 begins in just a few days. For meme coin enthusiasts, this is fantastic news. When DOGE joined the crypto ecosystem in late 2013, meme coins caught everyone by surprise.

One of the most popular NFT airdrops this year is being released by Toon Finance; it features a collection of really special NFTs with exquisite artwork. Over 10,000 NFT Cartoon characters are part of the Toon Finance collection. Since Toon Finance outperformed Big Eyes and Tamadoge during the first stage of its presale, it has been on trading watchlists.

When a cryptocurrency business offers tokens to investors in a bid to raise money, this is known as an “ICO,” or initial coin offering. This resembles an initial public offering, or IPO, on the conventional stock market. ICO investors can trade these tokens on crypto exchanges.

Although they are a relatively recent phenomenon, ICOs have swiftly gained popularity as a means of funding blockchain-based companies. There were around 200 ICOs in 2017 that raised a combined $3.8 billion. ICOs are comparable to how Wall Street uses ISOs and the Stock Market. However, cryptocurrency is decentralized.

This explains why numerous users trade cryptocurrency and use it to buy common products online. Cryptocurrency is now accepted on Amazon.com.

In order to take part in this ICO simply download a multichain crypto wallet to get started. This will serve as your cryptocurrency bank account. Add Ethereum to your account’s wallet. The next step is to link your wallet to the website by going to the Toon Finance buy page. All that is left to do is type in the number of tokens you desire in ETH and tap “Buy.”

The presale for Toon Finance’s initial coin offering is trading out like hotcakes. Investors in the meme coin world have been steadily buying TFT coins while they await the major debut. Additionally, the Toon Finance team is airdropping 10,000 adorable NFTs to the Toon Army’s first 10,000 members.

One billion tokens are available for presale via Toon Finance. With six stages left, 50 percent of the total tokens would be sold during the presale. The remaining 50% will be allocated to the liquidity pair DEX LP.

Major players in the cryptocurrency market have been studying the venture that is surprising everyone. These “earlier” and less advanced meme coin initiatives with no utility are being overtaken by this project. Toon Finance is already featured on popular cryptocurrency platforms like Crypto.com and CoinMarketCap.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Who is Joe Belfiore? The Face of the Windows Phone

Leave a Comment / Story, Tech Story / By Sandhya Gupta

Joe Belfiore is an American corporate executive. He has served in a variety of positions at Microsoft, primarily in the area of user experience. He presently holds the position of Corporate Vice President for Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices division. Joe Belfiore is a prominent speaker who has attended numerous Microsoft conferences and frequently performs live demos for the company’s products.

Joe Belfiore will be leaving Microsoft after serving the company for over 32 years. His internal email to staff (via ZDNet) announcing his retirement plans was eventually made public on Twitter. Belifore is best known as the face of Windows Phone, From 2009 until 2013, under his co-leadership of that division, Microsoft acquired Nokia. After that, Belfiore oversaw the Windows 10 division for over five years.

“Today I shared with my team that after 32 fantastic years, I will be retiring from Microsoft. I’m staying on until summer to help with the transition, then focus on the two kids still at home and the 1 who just started college”, Belifore wrote in a tweet on Friday.

Belfiore began working on the Windows Phone in 2009 and oversaw the creation of the Metro user interface, for which the platform is most known and which eventually appeared in Windows 8. With Windows 10, Joe Belfiore shifted to overseeing platform development for all types of consumer devices, namely Windows 10 PCs, tablets, and Windows 10 Mobile.

One may easily recall Microsoft’s initial promises and eventual disappointments while discussing Windows Phone. The platform for Windows Phone has always been a little shaky. Belfiore initially promised that Windows Phone 7 handsets could be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, however, this fell short, disappointing many users at the time.

The bulk of Nokia Lumia devices was also left behind during the switch from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile, despite Microsoft having initially said that most or all of the current Windows Phone 8.1 devices will be supported. Microsoft originally owned Nokia’s Lumia mobile phone division, which it acquired in 2013 for $7.6 billion.

However, the experiment was a failure, which caused the corporation considerable embarrassment. Belfiore eventually acknowledged in 2016 that Windows 10 Mobile would only continue to receive security updates going forward, with no new features. Windows has since turned its attention mostly to desktops.

Belfiore, who was born in Florida, fell in love with computers as a young child after using a Timex Sinclair 1000 that belonged to the father of a neighboring kid. He completed his schooling in 1986 at Clearwater Central Catholic High School. Later, he enrolled at Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s in computer science in 1990.

Joe Belfiore’s career and method of product design have both been motivated by empathy. Products must be created with the actual user in mind if they are to truly affect people’s lives. At Microsoft, Belfiore promoted a useful story-based strategy that invites customers to engage in product design and testing which completely altered interface and product design operation.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Amazon provides Prime Members access to 100 Million Songs and more features

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

When Amazon Prime first came out, it was a service that offered customers cheaper or free access to options for faster shipping. As the Prime members increased, the company also began introducing new features like access to its streaming video and music services.

Amazon revealed a new perk for its Prime members that may tempt some users away from competing services like Apple Music or Spotify.

There is good news for Amazon Prime members. Amazon will now provide 100 million songs in shuffle mode to Amazon Prime subscribers. Although Amazon Prime members do not have unlimited access to music on demand, shuffle mode does provide access to the whole collection.

Users can make playlists that are customized to their individual listening preferences and the songs are ad-free. Any artist, album, or playlist can be put on shuffle. This suggests that users must repeatedly skip through a huge number of tracks before finding the ones they want.

Amazon noted that “Prime members will now be able to stream more music than ever before. We’ve expanded the Amazon Music catalog for Prime members to include more than 100 million songs—up from 2 million—entirely ad-free.

Prime members can explore music and podcasts based on their likes; shuffle play any artist, album, or playlist in the catalog; and stream a collection of All-Access playlists tailored to personalized listening preferences on demand and available to download for offline listening.”

The company revealed that it will now provide Prime members with a complete music catalog with 100 million songs, as opposed to the earlier, more constrained selection of just 2 million songs, and will make the majority of the most popular podcasts on its site available without ads.

The move is a direct jab at rivals in the streaming music industry, particularly Spotify, which has been entering the podcast sector in an effort to increase revenue. However, despite paying for the service, Spotify’s paying subscribers are growing impatient with the fact that they still have to listen to podcast advertisements.

Amazon believes that the combination of a full music catalog and the promise of ad-free podcasts from Amazon Music will make it a strong substitute. Moreover, the Amazon Music app is getting a makeover, and a new “Podcast Previews” feature will enable users to listen to brief snippets in order to find new podcasts they might enjoy.

Recently, the company announced the availability of auto-generated, synced transcripts on a few podcasts for US users. For certain Amazon Originals podcast episodes, transcripts are available.

This is an excellent move by Amazon, given both Apple and Spotify indicated that they would look into raising the prices for its streaming services.

Amazon runs the online music store and streaming service known as Amazon Music. In January 2008, it became the first music store to offer music from numerous independent artists as well as the four major record labels (EMI, Universal, Warner, and Sony BMG) without digital rights management (DRM).

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

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