Technology - Google News

Telegram has created a whole new social experience for you to dread with 1,000 person video calls - Android Police
Mastodon now has an official iPhone app - The Verge
Google Meet is now a simple PWA on Mac, Windows, and Chrome OS - 9to5Google

Telegram has created a whole new social experience for you to dread with 1,000 person video calls - Android Police

Posted: 30 Jul 2021 02:15 PM PDT

It was just a couple of days ago that we first got our hands on Telegram's latest beta, adding screen sharing, video speed controls, and new options for clearing out your chat history. If you gave that version a spin only to find it seemed a bit buggy, you're in luck. Telegram 7.9 is already making its way out to users today, and it's got all of those beta features and a whole lot more.

This update is jam-packed, with a clear focus on improving all things video within the app. Group video calls and video messages have both been upgraded to "2.0" status, with the former adding up to 1,000 viewers in a call with 30 simultaneous broadcasts. Telegram is threatening to continue increasing that limit until every single person on Earth can join a single call, and we're starting to think it's a serious claim. As for video messages, they're now recorded in a higher resolution with a tap to expand option.

Screen sharing is the other major addition here, working with your device's sound in 1-on-1 calls. AP's Rita El Khoury had some difficulty getting the feature to work consistently in this week's beta, so hopefully, all of its bugs have been ironed out for this release.

A couple of other additions round out the video-centric stuff. Playback speed is here — another option first seen in this week's beta — as are quick-copy timestamp links, allowing for fast and easy sharing of any timecode.

That's far from the only new content, of course. Telegram's Android app picks up some snazzy animation for sending messages, initially added to the iOS client in the previous update. If you use a passcode, it also has improved animations for smoother transitions between displays. Speaking of which, password resets and two-factor authentication both receive some improvements, with options to restore your account even without a recovery email address. All that, plus auto-delete options for your chat threads and new animated emoji for good measure.

This update is undoubtedly chunky, so make sure you head over to Telegram's full patch notes to see everything in action. Grab the newest version of the app using the Play Store link below, or install the latest APK from APK Mirror.

Price: Free

Adblock test (Why?)

Mastodon now has an official iPhone app - The Verge

Posted: 30 Jul 2021 03:24 PM PDT

Decentralized social network Mastodon now has an official iPhone app. The nonprofit behind Mastodon launched the app on iOS today, supplementing an existing web version and several third-party apps for iOS, Android, and other platforms. The app is free and offers a similar feature set to Mastodon's core service, although it doesn't include Mastodon's broad local and federated timelines.

Mastodon describes the app as particularly geared toward getting new users on board the nontraditional social platform. As we've outlined before, Mastodon looks similar to Twitter but is built around independently run communities (and the ActivityPub protocol) rather than a single central network. You can create your account on a community of your choice while following and messaging people in other communities as well. It's an unusual design among modern social platforms, and offering an official iOS entry point could help ease people into it more smoothly. CEO Eugen Rochko confirmed plans for a comparable Android app, but there's no timeline for releasing it.

Mastodon's iOS app supports features like polls and sensitive content filters, and the app page subtly highlights its differences with bigger services like Twitter by mentioning Mastodon's "ad-free, chronological timeline." As mentioned above, however, you won't find a section for local and federated timelines — Mastodon's firehose of all public posts from your home community and the communities of people linked with it, respectively.

Rochko tells The Verge that those timelines were a "suboptimal" way to discover new content, and excluding them also reduced the potential for conflict with Apple, which has required some social networks to limit what users can find through their apps. (Reddit's iOS app, for instance, makes you opt into NSFW content through the web.) For a different feature set, you can keep using one of the existing iOS apps — or just log in through the web.

Adblock test (Why?)

Google Meet is now a simple PWA on Mac, Windows, and Chrome OS - 9to5Google

Posted: 30 Jul 2021 08:14 AM PDT

Like Chat, Google Meet now has a Progressive Web App (PWA) that allows for quick dock, taskbar, or launcher access.

The Google Meet PWA is meant to simply provide users with an icon that launches the same landing page but with a blue app bar up top instead of a tab strip. The date and time are conveniently listed above alongside settings. Your Google avatar remains in the top-right next to the launcher that opens apps back in your main browsing window.

This Progressive Web Application (PWA) has all the same features as Google Meet on the web, but as a standalone app it's easier to find and use, and it streamlines your workflow by eliminating the need to switch between tabs.

Elsewhere on the page is a prominent "New meeting" button with three options for starting a call and the text field to enter a meeting code.

Like other PWAs, you must be running Chrome 73 or newer with support for macOS, Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. It's widely rolled out today with the "Install" prompt appearing at the right of your address bar.