Smartphones are great. They help you keep in touch with your loved ones and stay up to date on what's going on in the world. The problem is that like everything else that's useful, they cost money to use, and between calling, texting, and data plans, it can get really expensive.
Apple's exclusive chat services, iMessage and FaceTime, force many of us to stay locked into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS to communicate with other Apple users, so chatting with Android-using friends means SMS texts, third-party messaging apps, and third-party video chat services. However, Apple is breaking boundaries with iOS 15 so that we can FaceTime with Android, Linux, and Windows users.
The era of virtual meetings has been evolving every few months, with augmented reality filters leading the charge in changing the way we interact when chatting via video streams.
When you can't think of a way to respond in Messenger with words, emojis and stickers will do the trick. Since Facebook is all about the "likes," which use a thumbs-up icon, there's a shortcut to the symbol just to the right of the chat field. It's always there to send a quick like in response to something. But it doesn't have to be the standard Facebook thumbs-up sign — it can be any emoji you want.
By far the most significant development for AR in the coming months and years — the development that will drive AR adoption — will be our reliance upon the AR cloud.
We're nearly there — Apple released the seventh iOS 12 beta to developers Monday, August 13. While not totally unexpected, beta testers understand the struggle of predicting the next update, as Apple has switched haphazardly between two-week, one-week, and irregular release schedules for both the developer and public betas.
Hak5's products get a lot of attention. Popping up in popular shows like Mr. Robot, their hacking tools are bold proof of concepts with space built into the design for the community to add their own tweaks and modifications. On Friday, Oct. 27, Null Byte attended the Hak5 release event in San Francisco to check out their latest devices, including the new Packet Squirrel.
Telegram routinely boasts about its secure messaging for truly private conversations between two parties. However, default cloud chats in Telegram are only encrypted between client and server, not client and client, which means you have to be a little proactive in making sure your private conversations on Telegram are really private.
Pokémon GO made waves as the first augmented reality game to gain popular adoption. In fact, it was so popular that it only took a few days to uncover some the benefits and serious issues with combining physical and digital worlds.
Windows 10 is the most cloud-oriented version of Windows to date—yet, while this means you get some nifty new features, it also means some of your personal data is being shared with Microsoft's servers.
Unless you're someone who's terrified of social situations, chances are you love to talk. But no matter how much you want to share you life story or take over the conversation, you shouldn't. Your socially awkward coworkers that keep their mouth shut might actually have a leg up on you at work, and here's why.
The long rumored and recently leaked Amazon phone has finally been unveiled, and in the interest of branding, continues down the Fire line—the Amazon Fire Phone. You can check out the full reveal here (warning: it's long), but I'll take you through all the features that sets this device apart from the rest. Before we get into that though, let's check out the specs:
The holiday season is almost over, bringing the year to an end, and what better way to end it than with some tonsil hockey from the dime across the room on New Year's Eve?
There's a quick way to see who you or somebody else has been chatting with the most in the Messages app for iOS and iPadOS. More specifically, it shows which conversations have the most attachments, such as photos and videos, giving you an idea of which chats are the most active visually.
If you're sick of seeing some of your contacts' faces in the sharing menu every time you share photos, apps, webpages, or other content on your iPhone, or if you want to keep nearby eyes from sneaking a peek at the people you frequently share things with, you can make some or all of them disappear.
While the Reminders app has been largely ignored by Apple for years, iOS 13 finally makes it a force to be reckoned with. The app has been completely redesigned with easier navigation and more useful features that can compete with other task managers. After giving the new Reminders a shot, you may want to ditch that third-party to-do app you've been using.
One of the more competitive aspects to chat apps these days is customizability. It seems every messenger wants to offer the largest number of options for users to make the app feel like a truly personal experience. Telegram is no stranger to this customizability, offering tools where you can select backgrounds and chat bubble colors.
In recent years, unwanted calls have become a top priority for the FCC. In 2016, analysts estimated that US customers received over 2.4 billion robocalls per month. As a result, the FCC has provided carriers new tools to combat this problem.
In Telegram — as with all instant-messaging apps — threads and conversations can pile up quickly. But you don't need to stare at all of your open chats on the main screen of the Android and iOS app. Instead, you can archive any conversation you like, keeping your main chats view relevant to your day-to-day communications without needing to delete any for good.
You've probably heard of RCS messaging. The new standard has been promoted by Google as their answer to iMessage and is the backbone behind the new "Chat" features in Android Messages. With RCS, Android phones will now enjoy enhanced messaging like iPhone users have had for years — but is it really the same?
Group chats on WhatsApp are great for getting your friends all in one place, but the bigger the group, the more notifications you'll probably get. Needless to say, it can get annoying real quick. You can mute notifications for all your conversations, but that's not practical if some are important. However, there is an option to mute group chats themselves and even leave them when needed.
Apple officially released iOS 12 to everyone on Sept. 17, and while the new iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max will come with the software by default, you have a choice on whether or not to update your current iPhone model from iOS 11. There are a lot of tempting features to want to update right away, but there are also some compelling reasons to wait it out and install at a later time.
Tor is an excellent obfuscation network for web traffic, and while instant messaging over the network is very useful, it can be relatively difficult to configure. In this guide, we'll look at two synchronous communications platforms (instant messengers) which can be routed over the Tor network, Ricochet and XMPP.
If you've read any health news in the past year or so, you've probably been bombarded with headlines announcing that frequent sitters face certain death, even when you're just relaxing and watching TV at home.
The team over at Spatial isn't done innovating its way through augmented reality in 2020. Just days after adding a mobile option to its groundbreaking Spatial virtual collaboration product, the company is releasing Tele, a new app geared toward more casual, AR-powered video chats.
FaceTime has been around since iOS 4, and year after year, things stayed pretty much the same aside from a few small changes. In iOS 6, calls over cellular networks were finally possible, and audio-only calls were officially supported starting in iOS 7. But the one feature most everyone has wanted since FaceTime was a thing — group video calls — didn't show up until iOS 12.1 for iPhone.
One of Android's most glaring weaknesses is its lack of an iMessage equivalent. That is, of course, until now. There's one app that will allow Android users to experience iMessage on their non-Apple phone, complete with end-to-end encryption, message effects, and group messaging.
There's no doubt Kali has established itself as the most popular penetration distribution available. However, just because it's the fan favorite of beginners and security researchers doesn't make it right for everyone. Manjaro Linux is a beginner-friendly Arch-based distribution which can be easily weaponized with the Black Arch expansion, creating a friendlier first-time Arch experience.
When WhatsApp first came out in 2010, it quickly gained notoriety as a great way to meet new people all over the world thanks to group chats, which allow multiple admins for each group that can all add participants from their own contacts lists.
Whether scheduling meetings, events, tasks, or even keeping tabs on the weather, a good digital calendar can help you stay on top of your game in ways that a normal calendar could never do. Indeed, there are many calendars to choose from, but Google Calendar is one of the best due to Google's excellent cloud service, feature-rich web-client, and their easy-to-use Android and iOS applications.
The updated Messages app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac has some really cool new features, but the one you may end up using the most is something you're already familiar with: Tapbacks. With iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia 15, Tapbacks are improved and contain even more reactions to choose from.
It's no secret that Apple's iOS 16 update is packed with useful features, but some of them Apple never even mentioned. Not at the software's unveiling in June and not even after iOS 16's public release in September. It's actually surprising considering that one little-known new feature may actually be one of the most important upgrades iOS 16 has to offer for iPhones.
There's already some fierce competition between Snap and Facebook in the AR space, but it's about to heat up even more, with Snap snatching up a 3D mapping startup that could add some new AR capabilities to its arsenal.
When you want to brighten up your iPhone's screen, you likely use Control Center's brightness slider to increase your nits (especially if you've disabled auto-brightness). But once you max it out, it doesn't seem like the display can get any brighter. However, depending on your iPhone model, your display may be capable of getting a lot brighter based on how you use it.
Google has recently been pushing to replace the decades-old messaging technology we've been stuck with. SMS was never meant to handle the high-quality multimedia content we consume with our smartphones today, so in comes RCS, which is a universal platform that aims to change our messaging game forever.
From Farmville to selling a company to Google, Amitt Mahajan has been through the startup ringer. Now, as managing partner with Presence Capital, he's funding the future of augmented and mixed reality.
If you're an AirPods user, things are a lot better with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18. If you're not, it may finally be time to grab yourself a set of AirPods, especially if you're into privacy and gaming.
Some phone lines make it nearly impossible to get past the busy tone, whether it's a viral call-in giveaway, your state's unemployment office, your local post office during the holidays, or the repair office for a broken warrantied product you have. Thankfully, there are apps you can use to help break through the noise.
Working with people in different time zones can be difficult when scheduling a time to meet up virtually, whether it's on Zoom, FaceTime, another video chatting app, or just a good old-fashioned phone call. The time needs to be good for all parties, and trying to remember UTC offsets and doing mental math isn't easy. Luckily, there's an easier way to deal with time zones on your iPhone.
If there's an iOS app you want to hide from your iPhone's home screen, there are a few built-in ways to do so in iOS 14, but there is a clever workaround you can use in older iOS versions. Plus, it also works in iOS 14 as a way to disguise app icons instead of just hiding them, so no app is what it seems.
