Author Archives: Christine

Are you thinking about sending a message through Viber or WhatsApp without touching your smartphone keyboard? Now it’s possible. Thanks to new updates introduced to Google Now (Google’s smartphone voice assistant), we are now allowed to send messages to our contacts through WhatsApp or other messaging applications like Viber, WeChat, NextPlus and Telegram simply dictating them.

By now it is a well-established daily routine: we send dozens of messages to our friends, family and colleagues to arrange appointments or just to share something with someone we care about. Starting from today we have an even easier way to do it. Today we are enabled to send messages via Android applications simply dictating them to Google Now, exactly as already happens with emails, text messages and Hangout.

To send a message via Google Now voice input you just have to say “Ok Google, send a WhatsApp message to Ann” and you’ll see a screen from where you can start dictating your message. Another method, even faster and easier, is to dictate directly to Google the whole passage, just saying: “OK Google, send a WhatsApp message to Ann: remember to pick up the laundry.”

At the moment this feature only works in English, but without territorial limits, and, in order to use it, you must first install the latest updates of the instant messaging app as well as those of Google. But the internet giant has promised that more languages will be supported soon.

This update will surely further simplify the use of instant messaging applications, as well as allow us to save valuable time. The announcement of this major update was given directly by Google in a blog post, in which Big G, among other things, states: “With all of us spending so much time in apps, we’ve been working to add new ways to surface the right content from your apps at the right time.“

More updates for those who use WhatsApp from a smartphone running with Windows Phone operating system. In fact it has been released a new beta, version 2.12.88. The enhancements introduced are quite interesting and in the coming weeks they should be added even in the stable version of WhatsApp for Windows Phone.

Let’s start with the first change, which probably is also the most important improvement contained in this new version of the app.Thanks to this update, finally users of WhatsApp from Windows Phone will have the possibility to block an unknown contact. Furthermore, Windows Phone users are now enabled to report such contact as spam directly from the chat. This one is not a new option on WhatsApp. In fact Android and iOS users are already able to use it on their devices.It is only just arrived on Windows Phone (this feature is also already present on Skype).

So now, with the addition of this simple procedure, we can finally avoid an unwanted contact also when we use WhatsApp from Windows Phone. Another nice and funny update that will surely be hugely appreciated by users of this popular instant messaging application, is the introduction of animated emoji in the chat.

Despite all the recent updates, however, at the moment, there seems to be no particular news regarding a restyling of the application on Windows Phone, which in its stable version still uses a rather dated look. It is not excluded that this will happen this autumn with the arrival of Windows 10 Mobile.

For now it seems only certain that these latest innovations introduced with the beta 2.12.88 will also be added in the stable version of the application. Remember that to be able to download this latest beta version you have to be a member of WhatsApp beta program. But don’t worry if you are not. As we said, the stable version should arrive soon on Windows Phone Store.

Recently it seems to have become rather difficult to have installed on our smartphone the most updated version of WhatsApp, since the service is repeatedly releasing updates. Just think that only during this last week, 10 updates (yes, you’ve read well, 10 updates) have been rolled out.

Just yesterday, among the many new features that the popular instant messaging app is bringing to its service, we talked about the possibility to backup our conversations on Google Drive. In fact it seems that WhatsApp is slowly reintroducing this function, earlier enabled and then unexpectedly disabled.

Unfortunately at the moment this feature is not yet available for everyone. Let’s see why. It seems that, as it is already happens with many other apps, WhatsApp has decided to gradually enable users on a server-side. The introduction of this new feature has not yet been confirmed by WhatsApp, which probably will make official the availability of this new option after enabling the users.

With the backup to Google Drive not only we can save our conversations, but we can also archive our pictures and videos safely. Of course on the Play Store we can already find many apps that allow us to save our messages, that’s why, obviously, WhatsApp could not avoid to add the ability of making backups among its services.

So WhatsApp users during the last year have seen their favourite app (now the most used in the world) changing a lot, and actually it has incredibly improved. For example with the introduction of Material Design. Or the addition of the Voice Calling Feature, which has been really a breakthrough.

On the official website of WhatsApp you can already find version 2.12.194 (which was already released as a beta version). This new update introduced a lot of interesting features. First of all, it allows you to customize notifications for single contacts and group chats. But let’s see what happened step by step.

On Google Play Store you can still find available version 2.12.176, but WhatsApp in the last week has released 10 updates, of which 5 only in the last 24 hours. Obviously the last one of these updates is the one containing more changes. In fact WhatsApp version 2.12.194 for Android, which you can already find on the official site of the service, introduces some new useful and much welcomed features.

Downloading this last version, Android users will be able to choose a particular kind of notification for each of their friends. Furthermore, if you don’t want to be disturbed by the notification ringtones, you can now mute your chat for a specific time period (8 hour, one week or one year). With the “mute” option, even if the app does not emit any sound, notifications will be displayed as usual.

Version 2.12.194 adds also another important feature already anticipated during the last few weeks: the “mark as unread“. To use this function you just have to long press a conversation and its status will switch to green (unread). This simple function will only serve as a reminder and will absolutly not affect the chronological order and the status of the other messages in the conversation.

Another interesting feature introduced with version 2.12.194 is the low data usage option for voice calls, which will allow you to consume less data (for the moment we don’t know in which measure this will affect the quality of the calls). Finally this last update also mentions again the possibility to have a backup on Google Drive, so we think that probably this function will be restored during the next few weeks.

The new survey prepared by GlobalWebIndex reveals that the growth of instant messaging apps is radically changing the way we communicate. After the massive success of social networks, now it seems that users prefer apps like WhatsApp and WeChat. The research conducted by GlobalWebIndex provides us with precise data for this change. Even if we are not very surprised by these results, an interesting overview comes to light.

Through this survey we can see that now all communications and actions that once users carried out on social networks are now performed using apps like WhatsApp. Just to give you an idea: in Italy WhatsApp is now used more than Facebook. The growth of these apps that allow you to have instant conversations has resulted in a further decline of traditional messaging services as SMS and MMS. These services, according to GlobalWebIndex, decreased respectively by 11% and 17%. We can state that this is an obvious decline, even though millions of users around the world still send their messages via SMS or MMS.

The countries monitored by the research were 33. In 8 of them WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most used instant messaging app, while they are still far behind in Asian countries. In fact in these countries one of the most used app is LINE, that in three countries wins the competition against the apps owned by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook and WhatsApp Messenger). LINE in fact is the most used instant application in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan. In South Korea, the market is dominated by Kakao Talk. In China the most used app is WeChat, used by 3 of 5 adults, while in Vietnam is Zalo.

Other interesting data of the research published by GlobalWebIndex concern the age of the users of instant messaging apps. It seems that most of them are  between 16 and 34 years old, and among teenagers Snapchat is hugely used. The use of instant messaging services decreases proportionally when the age of the users increases. Snapchat users are younger (84% are under 35 years) and among American teenagers is more widespread than Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. It also seems that people between 16 and 24 are those who spend more time on the internet through their mobile devices.

Furthermore, the research shows that WhatsApp is the app with the most active users, but Facebook Messenger is the one most addictive. As for Instagram, its users (86%) are those most likely to use instant messaging app, followed by Google+ and Twitter (82%). The research data were collected through online questionnaires between March and April 2015, to which 47,622 people aged between 16 and 64 replied.