TechBooky

Instagram is testing a new method of navigating posts – just by tapping through them, rather than scrolling. First spotted by an Instagram user Suprateek Bose recently published a screenshot of a feature Instagram is testing in the app that allows you to “tap through posts, just like you tap through stories.” The feature, which is apparently only available to a small number of users, would effectively replace the scrolling feature that lets you see posts. [xyz-ihs snippet="IG-tap"] The tap-to-advance feature was first introduced by Snapchat, reducing the user-effort of repeatedly using thumb strokes, thus creating a more relaxing browsing experience. The new change indicates that instead of using your finger to scroll up and down through the Instagram posts, you would now tap on either side of the interface to move forward and back. It’s a navigation method that was first implemented by Snapchat, a platform that rivals Instagram. This test of Now Tap Through Pos...

GIFs can now be added to messages on Instagram Direct. In a blog post , Instagram announced that tapping the new GIF button in the composer bar in any message thread will bring up a library of trending GIFs, powered by Giphy.  It’s already part of the Instagram toolkit by way of Story Stickers, which allow you to put moving images on top of your Story posts. So the inclusion of it in the DMs isn’t too drastic of a change. Starting today, Instagram Direct will have a GIF button on the composition bar. When you click on it, you’ll be shown a library of the latest trending GIFs, as determined by Giphy itself. If “trending” doesn’t really suit your needs, you can also search for the exact reaction you want. If you’re feeling lucky, you can just type the general search term and hit “random,” meaning Giphy will send your friend the GIF it deems most appropriate for the scenario. There’s also a ‘random’ button which s...

If you’re a fan of Apple’s photo printing service, you won’t like this shocking news one bit. According to a new message popping up in the Photos app , and After 16 years, Apple is killing off its Photo Print Products service, a service that has been part of iPhoto and subsequently Photos. Apple Photo Prints Products grew from just supporting simple prints to producing albums, calendars, and photo books. The message, first spotted by 9to5Mac , instructs users of macOS 10.13.6 to make their “final purchases” by September 30 of this year. MacOS Mojave’s Photo app has already scrapped any mention of the service. The message also encourages users to download the Photo Project Extension from the Mac App Store to get access to a range of third-party printing services. These services include Mimeo Photos, Wix, GoodTimes, WhiteWall, and Shutterfly. Following the news, shares of Shutterfly and Wix were up 2 and 3.1 percent, respectively. Here’s the messa...

Instagram has doubled its user base in the last two years. As announced at a company event the company now has 1 billion users worldwide. This makes Instagram the fourth Facebook-owned application to reach the 1 billion milestone, the prior three being WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook itself. It in fact is a great achievement for the photo-sharing social media application, knowing that it is only seven years old. Instagram seems to have grown a lot in the last few years. The company has been getting 200 million users on an average for the past two years. This has allowed the photo sharing platfrom to double its user base from June 2016, when it only had 500 million users. The company has got 200 million users more from September 2017, when it was 800 million users. To give you some perspective, the company only had 40 million users in 2012, when it was acquired by Facebook. Instagram launched on October 6, 2010, and was only available on iPhone. Two years later, it was rolled out onto ...

iOS 12 is here. Apple announced the latest in its iOS mobile operating system series at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2018 in San Jose, California today. Apple also announced version of tvOS. The new iOS 12 will run on devices that support iOS 11 The iOS 12 for the iPhone and iPad has been released in developer beta and here’s what to expect; Apple says iOS 12 doubles down on performance iOS 12 will be supported on all iOS 11 devices Apps launch 40% faster, keyboard can appear 50% faster, and slide to take photo can be up to 70% iOS 12 can make share sheet and apps launch twice as fast CPU performance can ramp up instantly when needed, then ramp down to preserve battery life Apple working with Adobe, Autodesk, others for new 3D object features with AR iOS 12 includes a new ARKit-powered Apple app called Measure Feature icons for performance, ARKit 2, Photos, Siri, an unknown icon, Voice Memos, iBooks (Apple Books?), Apple News, Stocks, Do Not Distburb, ...

Instagram is bringing the “Mute” feature to its users, a feature which has been available to twitter users for years. Like Twitter, users will now be able to mute users without necessarily unfollowing them. In addition to its block and report features in feed and comments, users will now have an additional tool to control what they see in the feed without having to unfollow or block users. This feature was already available to Instagram Stories users but is now being extended to the feed where you can now exclude photos and videos you don’t want to see from certain accounts. “When you mute an account, you can still see posts on their profile page and get notified about comments or posts you’re tagged in. The accounts you mute will not be aware that you’ve muted them. You can always unmute an account to get their posts back in your feed.” That said, if you turned on notifications from muted accounts, you still get informed of their activities in...

Facebook is launching a slew of updates to its Stories feature. The social media giant will now let users save photos and videos to the Facebook cloud, archive Facebook Stories and share voice messages with friends. The first feature is called Voice Posts. The feature will let Facebook users quickly share voice messages between one another. This is just as similar to that of WhatsApp, which means it will allow users make calls within their Facebook messenger instead of using normal calls to keep in touch and it sounds like these will be designed to be quick and easy to share. The other feature is the ability to archive Facebook Stories before they expire in the standard 24 hours. This is a similar feature to what Facebook introduced with Instagram last year, so it isn’t too surprising to see it pop up in the Facebook app proper. And the experience might be same or even better.  Finally, the marquee and mind blowing feature is cloud storage for photos and videos that are tak...

Need to add colour to those old-time black-and-white photos? Google Photos has you covered. Colouring old black-and-white photos is just one of the new AI-powered features for Google Photos and with a button away you can magically turn an old photo into something new. Google Photos is one of the easiest and best ways to backup all of the images you take with your phone. At its annual I/O developer conference, the company announced new AI features for Google Photos, its platform for storing and sending images. The company CEO Sundar Pichai talked about all the different ways in which artificial intelligence can help with its products and also to breathe some new life into vintage family pictures. The most interesting of the new features is the ability to utilise artificial intelligence to automatically colourise old black-and-white photos. Presumably, you’d take a picture of the old photo with your phone, and then Google Photos will analyse it and produce a colourised file of it. T...