Author Archives: Christine

Yes, that’s true. According to EU judges now employers can monitor employees’ private messages on WhatsApp, Facebook and other messaging services. This decision was ruled today and certainly will open a huge debate.

So you are worned: pay attention when you use messaging services for personal reasons while working, you risk to be fired. That’s what Europen Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has decided, allowing employers to read employees’ private messages sent via chat and webmail accounts during their working hours.

What is the origin of this decision? It all started with the sacking of Bogdan Barbulescu, a Romania worker, in 2007. Barbulescu was fired after his employer found out that he was sending private messages during working hours. Subsequently, Mr Barbulescu made an attempt to obtain a favourable rule by the court, stating that the employer had breached his right to confidential correspondence (in fact he used the app to chat not only with professional contacts, but also with his brother and his fiancee).

But things didn’t go as he wished as he lost his case in Romania’s domestic courts. At this point Mr Barbulescu had decided to appeal to the ECHR. Today the surprising decision finally arrived: judges have ruled that it was Mr Barbulescu who had actually breached the company rules that forbidden the use of the messaging app for personal reasons, so his employer had every motive to check on him.

The most important part of this ruling is that it applies to every country that has ratified the European Convention of Human Rights. That’s what the ECHR judges stated: “The employer acted within its disciplinary powers since, as the domestic courts found, it had accessed the Yahoo Messenger account on the assumption that the information in question had been related to professional activities and that such access had therefore been legitimate. The court sees no reason to question these findings.”

Judges have also added that unregulated prying on employees is not acceptable too, therefore they suggested that employers draw up a set of polices which clarify what information they can collect and how they can do it.

It seems that using WhatsApp is a common habit that won’t change over the new year. On the contrary. With its 900 million monthly active users, this popular app gets better and better with more new features and improvements. If you often use this instant messaging app to get in touch with your friends, family and colleagues and struggle to keep track of all your chats, you might consider using Chat Helper.

What is Chat Helper for WhatsApp? It is a new app created by an independent developer that through a widget shows you your unread messages. How does it work? You can see the widget while chatting with someone of your contact and, simply clicking on it, you’ll be able to see on a full screen the list of all your unread messages. Useful, isn’t it? If you need to go back to your current chat, you just have to tap on the “X” button.

Furthermore, it is also quick to move from this screen and start a chat with any other contact. And that’s not all, because this app is really extremely easy to use. In fact, if while you are chatting with one of your contacts you need to access again to the previous chat, you simply have to tap on the back button. Where can you find Chat Helper for WhatsApp? We have already seen a couple of alpha versions of Chat Helper during the last few weeks, but now it has been officially released and it is available for the download on the Google Play Store.

Developed by a member of XDA (jagan2), this new app seems really helpful. For those using a device running with Android Marshmallow, there is a particular procedure to be followed in order to use Chat Helper correctly. In fact you need to remember to click “Always Allow” when the app asks the authorization to create widgets.

So, if you are convinced and you want to give it a try, click here and download Chat Helper. If you prefer to collect first more information about the app, you can join the development thread over XDA by clicking here.

Try to think what will happen if our teens will be allowed to use social media like WhatsApp or Snapchat only if they have permission from legal guardians such as parents. This scenario seems to be quite close, if the new amendment to European data protection rules becomes law. So this could be far more than an hypothesis.

What’s happening? According to the current EU Law, people under 13 already need that kind of permission, and now Europe intends to further raise the age of digital consent to 16. Obviously this proposal is quite controversial and has even generated a petition and a lot of debate. In fact many campaigners are convinced that you can not limit the amount of information that our kids can find online, because they could miss important knowledge. We know that today many of the major sites already require that their users are at least 13, and others even 18 (for this purpose they require that you sign up with a credit card) but honestly it’s really difficult to check the real age of users, and the rule can be easily eluded.

But what is the real reason for the change in this direction? It seems that the need of this new draft law lies in a dispute between Europe and USA, and specifically the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, according to which the digital age of consent is 13. On the other hand, that’s what the new draft law says on the matter: “processing of personal data of a child below the age of 16 years shall only be lawful if and to the extent that such consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child”.

This new draft law will be voted this week after negotiation between member states. It goes without saying that, if the law passes, there will be repercussions in the field of social network but not only. It’s especially teens who use social media and they represent a great market for Mark Zuckerberg & co., so it’s easy to imagine that this important quarrel between Europe and USA will have more developments.

If you own a Nokia Asha or other devices that run on Symbian 40 such as Nokia Asha 201 or Nokia C3, there is a new updated version of WhatsApp available for you. This new WhatsApp version 2.13.26 for Nokia Asha devices brings, as usual, bug fixes and also improves the performances of the app.

Even if over 830 files have been modified, unfortunately this new 2.13.26 version of WhatsApp for Nokia Asha doesn’t add any new features. This time also the installation (jar) file has not been increased. We know that many users are quite disappointed because Nokia Asha devices haven’t yet received important features such as Voice Calling, or even the new emojis, and that these options are already available on other platforms like Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10 and iOS. But still, it’s useful to have this instant messaging app installed on your Nokia Asha device.

So now, let’s focus on what to do to upgrade your device and finally install this latest version 2.13.26 of WhatsApp for Nokia Asha. It’s really not that complicated, you need to be just a little bit patient. In order to install this new version of WhatsApp, it is essential that you first uninstall the current WhatsApp that you have on your Nokia Asha device. This step is essential, so pay attention not to skip it.

Once you’re done, you have to open the browser from your Nokia Asha and go to whatsapp.com/s40. From this page you can download this latest version 2.13.26 of WhatsApp and install it on your Nokia Asha device. Once you’ve completed the installation, remeber that there is another final important step to do. In fact, in order to log again into your WhatsApp account, you have to get your phone number verified by using it. Now you have version 2.13.26 of WhatsApp for Nokia Asha installed on your device.

The last couple of weeks have been particularly intense for WhatsApp developers. In fact we’ve seen that the app has been updated more than usual. More features were added to the Android version of the app, and also the Windows Phone version has received three updates in a week. And we can easily anticipate that WhatsApp developers are already working hard to bring something new to the users of iPhones, BlackBerry or Symbian devices.

Today let’s focus on Nokia devices, which don’t receive upgrades very often. A new Beta version 2.12.266 has been released and brings some nice changes. First of all the new racial emojis have finally been added to the SIS (installation) file. Even if it is a good news eagerly awaited by Nokia users, we are afraid they must wait a little bit more until they can finally use them since the emojis have not yet been activated.

Along with some usual bug fixes, the stability of the app has been improved too and also the SIS file has been increased by 35KB. Another novelty is the introduction of a new browser_edge.png file, which probably means that we won’t have to wait too long to have WhatsApp Web working on the Microsoft Edge browser. Now that we’ve seen what’s new, let’s see how to install this new Beta version 2..12.266 of WhatsApp for Nokia devices.

The first necessary step is to uninstall the current WhatsApp version from your Nokia. Once you’ve done that, from your device you need to open the following browser: whatsapp.com/nokia. Done? Well, now that you are here you are ready to download this new 2.12.266 SIS file. Once that the download is completed, you simply have to head to where you’ve stored this latest Beta version of WhatsApp and, in order to install it on your Nokia device, run it. When the installation is complete use your mobile phone number to get verified and then log into your WhatsApp account. Now you have the new version 2.12.266 of WhatsApp installed on your Nokia device.

The last couple of days have been quite difficult for those who use WhatsApp through Windows Phone devices. The week began very well with the new version 2.12.212 of WhatsApp for Windows Phone, which introduced the Starred Messages feature and new interfaces for camera, photos and video. Immediately after that arrived another updated version, 2.12.222, which created some chaos between users because it had disabled the ability to hear voice messages (though it was still possible to send them).

And now, luckily, version 2.12.226 has been released and fixes this important issue. You can find this new updated version on the Windows Store. So, it’s been a rather stressful week, isn’t it? But it seems that the story is not completly ended because the update is being released gradually, so it could take a few more hours before you have WhatsApp running as usual on your Windows Phone devices, but it’s just a matter of time. So, we think we can finally say, all’s well that ends well.

If you are reading this article, you obviously are a frequent user of WhatsApp (but who isn’t?). But do you really know all the rules about messaging? Here is the surprising result of a study carried out by a team of researchers at Binghamton University in New York. The researchers followed the activity of 126 volunteers and they found out that text messages ending with a full stop sound less sincere! Professor Celia Klin, who conducted the research, also states the importance of adding emojis and some ‘deliberate mispellings’ to your messages.

That’s what she said: ‘Texting is lacking many of the social cues used in actual face-to-face conversations. When speaking, people easily convey social and emotional information with eye gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, pauses, and so on. People obviously can’t use these mechanisms when they are texting. Thus, it makes sense that texters rely on what they have available to them – emoticons, deliberate misspellings that mimic speech sounds and, according to our data, punctuation.’

Great news for Windows Phone users: their favourite instant messaging app has been updated and now, among other novelties, they too can use the Starred Messages feature! Bad news: it seems that not every Windows Phone user that updated WhatsApp to version 2.12.212 has received the new features. What’s happened? For the moment we are not able to tell you the reason, probably they have decided to roll out this new version gradually.

Anyway, let’s see what changes with version 2.12.212 for Windows Phone. First of all, there isn’t a change-log, which usually means that this latest one isn’t a major update, but fortunately brings some useful new features. The first one, as mentioned above, is the Starred Messages option. How can you ‘Star’ a message on your Windows Phone device? It couldn’t be easier than this: when you are on the message you want to star, you only have to press and hold on it and choose the ‘Star’ option.Once you’ve starred your messages you can view them going to Menu > Featured Messages.

The other update involves the camera: some users have noticed that it now has a new interface. Furthermore, as usual, this new version comes with several bug fixes and performance improvements, so the app should run smoothly on your Windows Phone. If you want to install this new version 2.12.212 of WhatsApp for Windows Phone you can download it from the Windows Store and it is free. This latest version 2.12.212 supports Windows 8.1 or later.

WhatsApp, and social media in general, is certainly changing our life and our way to communicate. What we appreciate of  WhatsApp, which is the most used instant messaging app in the world with its 900 million monthly active users, is that it helps us to stay in touch with people around the world and is so versatile that can be used for several purposes.

For example: did you know that doctors use it to communicate with their patients? It seems that particularly Brazilians doctors are very active: 87% of them uses WhatsApp to send messages to their patients. The percentage is quite high in Italy too, where 62% of doctors communicate with their patients through WhatsApp. The percentage plummets dramatically in the UK, where only 2% of doctors use WhatsApp to get in touch with their patients.