“Today, we’ll start rolling out keyword search in English and Spanish, in countries where most people post in those languages — such as Argentina, India, Mexico, the UK, and the US — on both mobile and web,” Meta said in a blog post on Thursday. But the company also said that it is “working on bringing the feature to other languages and countries as soon as we can”. Threads began testing the feature in Australia and New Zealand last month, giving users a way to search through all the posts on the platform using just a keyword.

How to use the new search feature in Threads

The new feature, which is gradually rolling out to users in supported markets, works from within the Search tab. After you have opened Threads on your Android or iOS device, follow these steps:

— Go to the Search tab, symbolised by a magnifying glass

— Type the keywords to look for associated posts and hit enter

— The first batch of results would include users related to the search term, but to look for posts, tap on “Search for” right below where your search term is

— A new screen will open with all the posts on the platform associated with your search term

Currently, it is not clear if private posts are also included in search results, but we will get a clear idea in the coming days.

The drop in Threads’ popularity

Instagram’s Threads has been in steady decline after peaking at around 50,000 daily active users globally on Android devices in early July and now stands at around 10 million. According to the digital intelligence platform Similarweb, the numbers are less than a tenth of Twitter’s user base. That is a colossal downfall for the active user base of Zuckerberg’s rival to Twitter (now known as X).

Over 10 million people joined the social media app within seven hours of its July 5 launch, according to Zuckerberg. Threads became the most downloaded non-game app on its first day in a decade, as per the market intelligence data provider Sensor Tower, and surpassed 100 million users. The report also mentioned that the users on Threads spend just 2.4 minutes a day on the app, down over 80 percent from its early July peak.

— Written with inputs from IANS

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So, what’s new in Google Chrome?

Material You design
One of the major changes that users will witness in Chrome in the coming weeks is a new look on desktop. Google said that Chrome is getting Material You design update, as a part of which it will get updated icons, new colour palettes, new themes and distinct colours for profiles. Furthermore, the company has also synced it with operating system better, which in turn will ensure that Chrome preferences can easily adapt to OS-level settings, like dark and light modes.

More accessible menus
Google also said that it is making it easier to use Chrome. To make this happen, Chrome is getting a comprehensive menu for faster access to Chrome extensions, Google Translate, and Google Password Manager among others. To access this menu, all users need to do is click the three dots in the top-right corner of the browser.

Chrome Web Store gets a new design
Google is also bringing the Material You design to Chrome Web Store.

Chrome Web Store gets new features
Chrome Web Store is also getting new extension categories, such as AI-powered extensions and Editors’ spotlight, along with more personalised. This feature will be available in public preview starting today.

Better Safety Checks
Google also said that it is expanding Safety Check to extensions so Chrome can help identify extensions in the store that were recently unpublished, in violation of the company’s policies, or potentially malicious. As far as availability is concerned, these assessments are already available in Chrome Browser Cloud Management.

Better Search features

Google is also bringing the new features that it rolled out to Search recently to Chrome, which includes the feature to access information and search tools while browse. “When you’re on a webpage, select the “Search this page with Google” option from the three-dot menu. That will open the Google Search side panel, where you can find related searches, learn more about a page’s source or start another search altogether,” Google wrote in a blog post.

SGE coming to Chrome
Last month, Google extended its generative AI capabilities on Search to web browsing experience in Chrome on desktop. Now, Google is bringing this feature to users in the US. Users can opt in to “SGE while browsing” in Search Labs to test it out.

Upgrades to Safe Browsing
Google is also making upgrades to its Safe Browsing feature. With these upgrades, Chrome will now check sites against Google’s known-bad sites in real time. “By shortening the time between identification and prevention of threats, we expect to see 25% improved protection from malware and phishing threats,” Google added. This feature will be available in Chrome in the coming weeks.

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These features, to roll out in the coming weeks, are designed to protect teens from being contacted by people they may not know in real life; provide a more age-appropriate viewing experience; and enable more effective removal of accounts that may be trying to market and promote age-inappropriate content.

In addition, Snap is releasing new resources for families, including an updated parents guide at parents.snapchat.com that covers our protections for teens, our tools for parents, and a new YouTube explainer series.

“Our latest features are thoughtful in app features that are designed to empower teens to make smarter choices, and talk openly about staying safe online,” said Uthara Ganesh, Head Public Policy-South Asia, Snap.

“We’re committed to making sure Snapchat is a place where you can be creative and stay safe and above all, the safety and well-being of our community in India, which includes over 200 million users, is our top priority,” Ganesh added.

The In-App Warnings is a new feature that sends a pop-up warning to a teen if someone tries to add them as a friend when they don’t share mutual contacts or the person isn’t in their contacts.

This message will urge the teen to carefully consider if they want to be in contact with this person and not to connect with them if it isn’t someone they trust.

It is already required for a 13-to-17-year-old to have several mutual friends in common with another user before they can show up in Search results.
“This bar is getting raised to require a greater number of friends in common based on the number of friends a Snapchatter has – with the goal of further reducing the ability for teens to connect with people they may not already be friends with,” said the company.

To help remove accounts that market and promote age inappropriate content the company recently launched a new Strike System.

“Under this system, we immediately remove inappropriate content that we proactively detect or that gets reported. If an account is repeatedly trying to circumvent rules, they will be banned,” said Snap.

— IANS

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Tune in to Duocon on Oct 11 to get a special first look 👀 https://t.co/yvaVIPn6lU pic.twitter.com/j26TFUbxVq

— Duolingo (@duolingo) September 6, 2023

The new course will allow users to learn music with bite-sized lessons. Users will be able to learn notes and tunes from the library of over 200+ songs.

“We know math and music, much like language, transcend cultures and connect people,“ said Severin Hacker, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duolingo. “Soon you will be able to learn math and music in the same Duolingo app – all with the same fun, engaging, and effective experience you know from learning languages with us.”

Duolingo says that more than 3.6 million students in the U.S. don’t have access to music education and private instruction can cost up to $400 per lesson. With this course, users are expected to get music lessons at an affordable price. However, the pricing details will be revealed only next month upon its public arrival.

Additionally, Duolingo will also announce a multi subject experience, which will offer different products in one place. It will gather music, language, and math courses together.

In other news about the app, Duolingo released a new feature for its Indian audience. The app now allows users to learn English from Telugu.  It is worth noting that the app already lets users learn languages with the help of local languages.

“Given the success of our courses for Hindi and Bengali speakers, we aspire to empower Telugu speakers with our new course, enabling effective communication and fostering opportunities that open doors to a world of possibilities,” Karandeep Singh Kapany, Country Marketing Manager, Duolingo India, said in a statement.

Other than this, Duolingo also hopped on the AI bandwagon back in March. Duolingo released the Duolingo Max paid subscription tier that offers AI features built on OpenAI’s GPT 4 model.

Duolingo Max offers two new AI features, namely, ‘Explain my Answer’ and ‘Roleplay’. The former offers feedback on your answers to help users know why and where they made a mistake. It ‘offers context-specific explanations across most exercises in the regular Duolingo app’, and the responses are generated by AI in chatbot format.

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According to the company, Zoom AI Companion delivers powerful, real-time digital assistant capabilities to help users improve productivity and work together more effectively.

Users will be able to access AI Companion from within their existing workflows such as within Zoom Meetings, Zoom Team Chat, and Zoom Whiteboard for capabilities such as Meeting summaries, Team Chat compose, and Whiteboard generation with a simple, easy-to-use experience.

“We were founded on doing what’s right for our customers, and we firmly believe that offering Zoom AI Companion at no additional cost to our paid Zoom user accounts delivers tremendous value as we all navigate the challenges facing us today,” Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom, said in a statement.

Moreover, the company said that AI Companion incorporates several new real-time AI capabilities, with additional capabilities expected to launch over the next few months.

It also mentioned that Zoom’s federated approach to AI delivers high-quality results and lowers costs by dynamically incorporating its own large language models, along with third-party models such as Meta Llama 2, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

In addition, the company announced that Zoom IQ for Sales, its conversational intelligence software, will be renamed ‘Zoom Revenue Accelerator’.

Last week, Zoom introduced a feature called Notes that allows users to create, share, and simultaneously edit a text document during video calls.

Notes allow users to create and share content within a Zoom Meeting and collaborate with others on the call for real-time inputs — eliminating the distraction of jumping between Zoom and third-party documents and tools.

— IANS

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Several Spotify users noticed that in-app lyrics, which pop up under the playing song, were locked away under a paywall.

Instead, they saw only a notification bubble saying, “Enjoy lyrics on Spotify Premium,” with a link to sign up. Spotify told The Verge the feature is currently in a testing phase.

“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests, some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning,” C.J. Stanley, Spotify’s co-head of global communications, was quoted as saying.

“We don’t have any further news to share at this time,” Stanley added.

The music streaming platform appears to be looking to build other kinds of features users might pay for, as the price of Premium, like so many other streaming services, continues to rise.

In July, Spotify announced to raise its premium subscription prices across a number of markets around the world. In the US, Spotify’s Premium Individual plan now costs $10.99, up from $9.99, and the Premium Duo plan has increased to $14.99 from $12.99.

The Premium Family plan is now priced at $16.99, up from $15.99, and the Student plan will cost $5.99, up from $4.99.

In its latest earnings report, Spotify revealed monthly users of its ad-supported tier had surged 34 per cent over the last year to 343 million.

The company’s monthly paying listeners grew 17 per cent to reach 220 million.

Spotify last month announced that it is rolling out its artificial intelligence-powered personalised music feature ‘DJ’ to more countries around the world.

— IANS

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If you are now on Threads, you probably know that the Meta-owned app has several features. The scrolling is buttery on the app the UI and animations are similar to Instagram. The app also has some security features and if you are concerned about that, here’s a comprehensive guide for you.

Threads is basically a part of Instagram and so most of its security features are similar to Instagram. And for the same reason, different Settings of Threads are present on Instagram. Although not all. If you simply want to private your Threads account or block someone, you can do that on Threads itself. However, to do things like hide likes, you have to visit Instagram.

In this article, we’ll show how you can safeguard your Instagram account by privatizing your account and muting/blocking harmful accounts. We have also listed the steps to hide likes since not everyone wants to share their likes counts on their posts.

How to make Threads account Private

Before we get started, make sure the Threads and Instagram app on your phone is updated to the latest version. Once both apps are on the newest version, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Open the Threads app on your iPhone or Android phone.

Step 2: Tap on your profile button at the bottom right corner.

Step 3: Tap on the two lines at the top right corner next to the Instagram icon.

Step 4: Open the Privacy tab.

Step 5: Now, turn on the Private profile option to make your account private.

How to block or mute accounts on Threads

Step 1: Open the Threads app on your iPhone or Android phone.

Step 2: Open the profile you want to block.

Step 3: Tap on the three dots at the top right corner.

Step 4: Lastly, tap on Block. Apart from blocking, you can also restrict or mute the account and remove its following.

How to hide likes on Threads

Step 1: Open the Threads app on your iPhone or Android phone.

Step 2: Tap on your profile button at the bottom right corner.

Step 3: Tap on the two lines at the top right corner next to the Instagram icon.

Step 4: Open the Privacy tab.

Step 5: Tap on Hide likes. This will take you to Instagram’s Settings page, where you can directly hide likes.

Step 6: Turn on the Hide likes option.

You can also hide likes by directly going to Instagram’s Settings and Privacy page > Hide likes.

The post How to make Threads account private and secure: A comprehensive guide appeared first on Techlusive.

The report also mentioned a second feature, which is a redesigned settings interface. It will give users a more modern experience when navigating through the app’s various options. The report also noted that the update also includes a redesigned profile tab right within the chat list, making it easier for users to open the settings of the app. Moreover, this new feature will also allow users to manage their conversations from multiple accounts with a single app. In addition, it will keep conversations and notifications separate and enable users to switch between accounts on the same device without the need for different devices or parallel apps.

📝 WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.18.21: what's new?

WhatsApp is widely rolling out a multi-account feature with a new interface for the app settings, and they are available to more beta testers starting today!https://t.co/AHC0v9zET5 pic.twitter.com/9nuIDvsQgR

— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) September 2, 2023

According to the report, the multi-account feature, along with a new interface for the app settings, is available to more beta testers who install the latest update of WhatsApp beta for Android, and it will roll out to even more people over the coming days. It is available to select testers on the latest WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.18.21 update. But if you cannot find it in your app, it probably is not available for your WhatsApp account.

Meanwhile, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week announced a new WhatsApp application for Mac users with a group calling feature that will connect with up to eight people on video calls and 32 people on audio calls.  The company introduced a similar experience for Windows desktop users earlier this year. According to the company, the app is redesigned to be familiar to Mac users, helping users to get more done faster when using WhatsApp on a large screen. They can now share files by easily dragging and dropping into a chat and can view more of the chat history.

— Written with inputs from IANS

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“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt,” reads a support note published by Microsoft on Friday.

The WordPad removal comes just a day after Microsoft announced it was upgrading Notepad with features like autosave and tab retraction. The Windows Notepad app in Windows 11 was updated for the first time in years in 2018 and tabs were added. But instead of giving a similar treatment to WordPad, Microsoft is discontinuing it for good. I am not sure how this decision will affect Windows 11 users. But for what it is worth, it will have a minimal impact because I have rarely seen any PC user accessing WordPad. It is either the Notepad or Microsoft Word depending on the needs.

Cortana’s going away, too

Last month, after iOS and Android, Microsoft announced to shut down its digital assistant Cortana app on Windows 11. While Cortana in Windows as a standalone app is deprecated, the support for Cortana in Teams mobile, Microsoft Teams display, and Microsoft Teams Rooms will end in the fall of 2023. Cortana’s likely replacement is Copilot, which is currently a part of the Windows Insider programme. In August, Microsoft started rolling out the Windows Copilot update on PCs running Windows 11 version 22631.2129. That was an extension to the kickoff that allowed only a handful of testers to access Windows Copilot. Now, there are more testers giving feedback on the functionality that brings AI to almost every aspect of Windows OS.

In June, Microsoft removed some of the old settings under Folder Options in File Explorer as part of an effort to reduce the number of File Explorer settings on Windows 11.

— Written with inputs from IANS

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