Popular messaging service WhatsApp has today announced its first desktop client for Mac OS X. The launch of a desktop Mac client comes a few months after the Facebook-owned service launched a web interface and a month after it rolled out end-to-end encryption for all communication.
Although the battle over encryption between the FBI and Apple has currently subsided, the issue of privacy and security in technology continues. Today, WhatsApp is announcing that all messages, photos, phone calls and videos sent over its messaging app will be encrypted end-to-end. This means that no one can access any communications apart from the people in the conversation. This means if WhatsApp is subpoenaed by government for information, WhatsApp will not be able to help them as it simply cannot help them.
Civil rights organizations have expressed strong support for Apple’s resistance to a court order instructing it to create special firmware that would allow the FBI to break into an iPhone – with tech companies doing the same, albeit in a weaker fashion.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a statement in which it said that it applauded Apple for standing up for the rights of its customers, and would be making its views known to the court.
Essentially, the government is asking Apple to create a master key so that it can open a single phone. And once that master key is created, we’re certain that our government will ask for it again and again, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacity to offer strong security […]
EFF applauds Apple for standing up for real security and the rights of its customers. We have been fighting to protect encryption, and stop backdoors, for over 20 years. That’s why EFF plans to file an amicus brief in support of Apple’s position.
The Verge notes similar support from both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty International …
Today, WhatsApp has announced a pretty major shift in its business model. The popular chat client is going completely free. Facebook-owned WhatsApp used to run on a trial model: users could use the app for free for a year. Subsequent years would cost $0.99 cents each. The paid model notably made WhatsApp stand out from the crowd, as almost every other social networking is free to use from the customer perspective. Although WhatsApp will stop charging customers from today, it will take a few weeks for the payment UI in apps to go away as app updates roll out to the store.
WhatsApp says although a 0.99 cent charge is not onerous, it prevented growth as a lot of customers do not have access to credit cards. This is its major motivation for taking out the annual revenue model. Naturally, users of WhatsApp will wonder how the application plans to monetize going forward ….
The highly popular WhatsApp messaging service owned by Facebook appears to be adding a new feature that allows iPhone users to chat in the browser using a web app. The feature is called WhatsApp Web and became available on various platforms including Android and Windows Phone earlier this year, but the feature was absent for iPhone users at the time “due to Apple platform limitations.” Using the chat service on the web requires running WhatsApp on a corresponding smartphone.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Facebook Messenger is a beautifully designed messaging app available on both Android and iOS, and now you don’t even need to a Facebook account to use it.
WhatsApp Messenger, the popular cross-platform chatting service, released a major update to its iPhone app today introducing some long-rumored features and new ways to share content with friends and family…
Expand
Expanding
Close
Adobe is out with an update to its Photoshop Express photo editing app for iPhone and iPad today. The latest release of Photoshop Express for iOS, version 3.5, adds integration with the WhatsApp Messenger app for sharing edited photos directly to the chat service. The update also includes the usual bug fixes including some for issues for iOS 8 users specifically.
Adobe is also giving Photoshop Express users access to some premium features within the app for free. Photoshop Express users with a free Adobe ID (you can sign up here) can use paid features like Premium and Custom Looks as well as noise reduction without paying. Adobe says this promotion will only be available for a short time.
For several months we’ve followed the U.S. government’s attempts to work around encryption in chat apps, even taking the hyperbole to an illogical extreme at one point, but we haven’t yet seen similar threats from other nations… or at least, we hadn’t until today.
British prime minister David Cameron said today that unless the government is given backdoor access to encrypted messaging services, he’s just going to outlaw them:
First launched on iPhone earlier this year, Dropbox announced today that it’s launching its Carousel photo and video gallery app for iPad users. The company is also bringing the experience to the web at carousel.dropbox.com.
Part of making the best home for your photos is giving you a fast, simple, beautiful way to engage with your pictures, however and wherever you want. Today, we’re excited to announce big steps towards that goal: Carousel for web, iPad, and Android tablet.
In addition, the iOS apps add the ability to share to Instagram and WhatsApp with today’s update.
The Carousel app offers easy sharing of one or multiple photos to contacts or email addresses and allows users to get around many of the upload limitations usually associated with sharing photos. With everything backed up in full resolution directly to Dropbox, the app is essentially a standalone experience for managing to photos and videos stored in Dropbox.
A look at the Carousel UI for web is below:
The Carousel for iPad app is available on the App Store now for free.
What’s New in Version 1.7
We’ve updated Carousel with one of your most requested features: support for iPad! Now, view your photos and continue conversations on a bigger screen.
Plus, we’ve added support for posting to Instagram and WhatsApp!
Huge news for frequent WhatsApp Messenger users: the app will no longer look huge on the latest iPhones.
If you bought an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus between now and September when they were released, you’ve probably been waiting for WhatsApp to update with optimization for the bigger displays and that update is finally out. The Facebook-owned messaging app released version 2.11.14 today with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus support and will “fix bugs and crashes” according to the release notes.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Although this isn’t an actual update to the app, WhatsApp is now sporting a nifty new feature that—although small—might make a big difference in how users of the messaging app stay in touch with their friends. The Facebook-owned app, which would previously show double check marks if a sent message had been received, now goes one step further and turns those check marks blue if the message has been read.
The latest update to the popular, Facebook-owned WhatsApp Messenger app for iPhone hit the App Store with a long list of new features for users including the ability to share slow-mo videos from the iPhone 5s and trim clips down right in the app without having to edit the video in the Photos app.
Chatting with photos also received improvements with the ability to add captions and snap and share photos even faster added. Improvements and changes to location sharing, app wallpapers, and new notification tones are included. The latest version also allows users to move chat logs and contact groups away to an archive. Complete list of changes below…
Expand
Expanding
Close
Yes, another secure and ephemeral messaging app. There’s Wickr, Snapchat, Confide, so what makes Wiper Messenger different? I’ve had the chance to play around with the new free chatting app on iOS, and it seems to act as a fusion of WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Wickr. The app prompts you for your email address or phone number in order to create your account, and then you are brought to a fairly simple interface with three tabs across the bottom: Chats, Contacts, and More. Let’s go tab-by-tab:
A few years ago, Skype was the rockstar of the messaging world, but now with smartphones and mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage, Skype’s iPhone feature-set and application have begun to stagnate. However, the Skype development team has not been standing still. The Microsoft-owned company is revealing today that it is nearing the launch of a completely revamped Skype application for the iPhone and iPod touch. I met with lead Skype designer Guilherme Schneider last week for an exclusive preview and an interview regarding the new software, and the application certainly seems impressive…
Just a week after Facebook added group management to its Messenger app, the social network is out with yet another update to the messaging service: free calls for everyone.
The feature allows you to call your Facebook friends who also have the app over WiFi for free (you can call over cellular as well, but this uses data, of course). Free calling is especially beneficial to users who communicate internationally as calling rates tend to get pricey in that area.
Messaging threads now include a phone icon for prompting calls from the app, and the actual phone user interface resembles the native iOS Phone UI prior to iOS 7.1 introducing a tweaked design to the Phone app.
Facebook-owned Whatsapp is poised to introduce VOIP support in an upcoming update as well. Screenshots of Whatsapp in-app calling leaked earlier this year.
Facebook Messenger 4.1 is available for free on the App Store.
Whatsapp, the popular messaging client for iOS and Android, announced today on Twitter that it had reached a new record for messages sent in a single day. With 20 billion outgoing messages and 44 incoming messages handled in a single 24-hour period, the grand total came out to 64 billion.
[tweet https://twitter.com/WhatsApp/status/451198381856014337 align=’center’]
Here’s a little perspective on that number: Instagram recently announced that its users had posted 20 billion photos to the service. You’ll notice that’s not a statistic for one day. It’s the total number of photos shared in the history of the network.
That means that in one day, Whatsapp handled over three times as many requests as Instagram has since it launched three years ago. Not too shabby.
Shortly after being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion dollars, WhatsApp announced that it was planning to integrate VOIP into its messaging app in the coming months. Today, iPhoneItalia has picked up images of what it claims are screenshots of the VOIP feature in action.
In line with the iOS 7 redesign the app received in December, the VOIP functionality closely reflects the design of iOS 7’s native phone interface. The interface uses the same circular buttons and blurred background image; even copying the circular ‘end call’ button from iOS 7.1.
Reeva Steenkamp, shot dead by Oscar Pistorius (photo: India Times)
The International Business Times reports that three detectives investigating the killing of Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp have flown to Apple’s HQ in Cupertino to seek assistance in accessing the athlete’s iPhone.
Prosecutors want to access its SMS and WhatsApp messages as evidence for the trial.
South African police have been struggling to gain access to the phone for months, one of several handsets found in the double-amputee athlete’s Pretoria villa on the night he shot girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Pistorius has claimed that he cannot remember the passcode …
Expand
Expanding
Close
Just about everyone in the tech industry is talking about the $19B Facebook/Whatsapp deal, so what better time to announce new features coming soon to the service. TechCrunch reports that WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum announced at Mobile World Congress today that the app will gain voice calling functionality sometime in Q2 of this year:
“We use the least amount of bandwidth and we use the hell out of it,” he said. “We will focus on simplicity.” Voice will come to Android and iOS first and then following on some Nokia and BlackBerry phones, he added.
The report adds that WhatsApp will also soon be working with some carrier partners:
While WhatsApp, as an OTT service, may appear like one of the companies that is attacking carriers, it is also working with them. The first partnership will be with e-plus to offer special tariffs to access the app, Koum said today. Interestingly, disrupting the current mobile communications economy has put WhatsApp right back into the kinds of services that built out that economy in the first place — in today’s case, voice.
Facebook of course already offers voice calling in some countries, but it’s unclear if the new WhatsApp feature will be integrated with the Facebook voice features. WhatsApp already offers users the ability to send short recorded voice messages as pictured above).
Despite the plans for new features, Koum reiterated that, “There are no planned changes and we will continue to do what we set out to do, even after the acquisition closes.” That, he said, includes “no marketing.”
In line with my report from earlier this month, Facebook has announced that it will be revamping its Android and iOS Messenger apps. As we previously noted, the new apps have an entirely new design that is flatter and distinct from the standard Facebook application on Android and iOS. The Verge was given a preview of the Android version has some new features besides the new design:
In terms of functionality, there are a host of under-the-hood improvements to make sending and receiving messages faster, says product manager Peter Martinazzi. There are also some front-end tweaks that makes the app faster — especially on Android, where the SMS texting feature, which let you text friends who don’t have Facebook, has been removed.
The highlight feature, however, of the new apps is phone number integration. The repot summarizes the functionality as a WhatsApp competitor:
While Facebook won’t let you text a phone number from Messenger, the company plans to use phone numbers in a new way: to identify its users, just like in WhatsApp. Upon opening Messenger for the first time, it will ask you to provide your phone number. Then, the app can match you with people whose numbers you have, but whom you aren’t Facebook friends with. Facebook guarantees your messages will reach somebody’s inbox if you have their phone number.
The Android version is available as a test with a limited number of users beginning today and iOS in the near-future. Also incoming, we previously reported, are updates to the main Facebook app that integrate Graph Search, but Facebook has not confirmed this as of yet.
Image: wallpaperage.com
The Boston Consulting Group’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies has again named Apple as the leader of the pack, a position it has held since the survey began in 2005.
The list is based on a survey of 1500 senior execs across a range of industries, with five criteria applied:
The report singles out five factors that lead to strength in innovation: senior-management commitment, the ability to leverage intellectual property, customer focus, innovation portfolio management and well-defined and governed processes.
BCG also created a second list of up-and-coming companies that it feels to be innovative without having yet hit the big time. These companies include Groupon, Pinterest, Spotify, Rakuten, Netflix, Alibaba, Xiaomi Tech and WhatsApp.
Back in March, Apple retained the top spot in the JD Power phone satisfaction survey, also for the 9th year running, and earlier this month did the same for PCs in the American Customer Satisfaction Index for the 10th year in a row.
Popular chat app whatsapp now allows iPhone users to exchange voice messages with a push-to-talk style function. The feature is also being pushed out simultaneously on the app’s other platforms: Android, Blackberry, Nokia and Windows Phone.
We spend a lot of time at WhatsApp thinking how we can make keeping in touch easier, and we know there’s no substitute for hearing the sound of a friend or family member’s voice. So today we are introducing a new feature we are truly excited about: Voice Messages
While there are other push-to-talk apps out there, whatsapp has introduced a number of features which it says makes the functionality particularly easy to use …
Expand
Expanding
Close
App-based messaging has overtaken SMS messaging for the first time, according to new figures released by research company Informa (via BBC News).
Informa said almost 19 billion messages were sent per day on chat apps in 2012, compared with 17.6 billion SMS texts … It has projected that nearly 50 billion messages will be sent per day using these apps by 2014, compared with just over 21 billion traditional SMSs. However, it said that despite the growing gap between the two, SMS will continue to remain a key player in the sector.
Chat apps like WhatsApp may be dominating on smartphones, but around half the global market still uses featurephones, and of course there are less tech-savvy smartphone users who remain oblivious to alternatives. Businesses remain keen on SMS too, said Informa spokesperson Pamela Clark-Dickson “as it can be used on all mobile phones and they do not need smartphones to use it.”
Informa thus predicts that SMS revenue will continue to grow, from $115bn in 2012 to $127bn by 2016.