Category: Tech

 

World’s most popular messaging app, WhatsApp has some tough decisions and it’s really bad news for many people.

The Facebook-owned company, WhatsApp announced that its mobile app will be no longer supported on millions of phones, the old ones, by 2017. As changes in technology mean it has to phase out compatibility with older phones – WhatsApp said

The company set a deadline for these changes to take place by June 30 2017. Whatsapp advises people with old phones to upgrade before they lose access to Whatsapp, as the service will no longer be supported after that date.

In a statement, WhatsApp said: “As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.

“So, by the end of 2016, we will be ending support for WhatsApp Messenger on some mobile platforms [Updated to June 30, 2017]

“While these mobile devices have been an important part of our story, they don’t offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app’s features in the future.

“This was a tough decision for us to make, but the right one in order to give people better ways to keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones using WhatsApp.

“If you use one of these affected mobile devices, we recommend upgrading to a newer Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone before the end of 2016 to continue using WhatsApp.”

Phones that will be affected by the new changes

iPhone
WhatsApp will stop working on any iPhone 3GS, most importantly, the messaging app will also stop being supported on any device running iOS 6. That means, potentially any iPhone 4, 4S, or 5 that hasn’t been updated to the newest version of iOS, will be affected too.

Android
Any phones or tablets running Android 2.1 or 2.2 won’t be supported. This covers devices released between May 2010 and November 2011 from many different manufacturers.

Windows Phone
Windows Phone 7 was released worldwide in October 2010 and Microsoft itself stopped supporting the system in 2014. So it’s not really a surprise to see WhatsApp dropping support for it as well.

BlackBerry and Nokia
WhatsApp will drop support for BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10, Nokia S40 and Nokia Symbian S60.

Cairo, November 24th, 2016 — Careem has announced a new collaboration with the “WATER TAXI” service today, offering a new “car-type” that allows clients to travel across main suburbs in Cairo via the River Nile.  The new “car-type”, named “WATER TAXI”, is now the 5th transportation option alongside Careem’s Business, Economy, Engezny, and Taxi “car-types”. The first test-run for the service is currently available on Careem’s application platform.

“We are incredibly excited about the integration of the “WATER TAXI”, to our system. As the fastest growing startup in the MENA region, Careem is committed to supporting the local ecosystem in Egypt,” said Wael Fakharany, Managing Director of Careem Egypt and Careem’s Global Senior Vice President of Government Relations; “One of Careem’s missions over the last year has been to reduce congestion and traffic across the city. By offering trips via the Nile River, Careem is strategically utilizing a vast expanse of space across Cairo, linking the most populated areas of the city to one another. ”

Hany El-Messery, former Governor of Alexandria and co-founder of the WATER TAXI Company in Egypt, also said “that the demand for stress-free, fast transportation that bypasses daily congestion ensures that the Water Taxi’s collaboration with Careem is set become a successful and effective means of transportation. It will also offer an aesthetic alternative to being stuck in traffic—passengers can behold Cairo in all its glory from the Nile River away from noise and exhaust fumes, and our predictions is that it will be the number-1 favored means of transport.”

The new water service offered by Careem will function as a dispatching service through the Careem mobile application, and operates with a fixed fee of EGP 100. “The pricing is not only per ride, but also per boat — passengers order an entire boat for themselves when they select the “WATER TAXI” car-type through the application. They simply pin their pickup point, and select their destination port, and our “WATER TAXI” certified Captain will pick them up and take them to their destination, ” says Hadeer Shalaby, Careem’s General Manager.

Careem’s WATER TAXI is currently operational and launches to and from 5 ports along the banks of the Nile:

· Zamalek Water Taxi Port: In front of Mcdonalds Abo El Feda (Mashtal in front of Mcdonalds)

· Maadi Water Taxi Port: Cornich El Maadi in front of Mandarine Quoidar and next to TGI Fridays.

· Platform Water Taxi Port: In platform Maadi.

· Mohamed Ali Club Port: Cairo Aswan Road, Giza, Giza Governorate

· Nile Towers Port: Across the street from The North tower.

“The addition of water-travel to Careem’s application places the company ahead of the curve when it comes to localization. Every day, we try to sync with the Egyptian people, and serve their needs with new additions to our operations, ” says Shalaby.

The addition of water-travel to Careem’s navigation options comes in the wake of recently announcing the extension of their operations into Damanhour. Careem now officially operates in 5 cities across Egypt, and now also across Cairo’s River Nile, making it the fastest and easiest way to move around Cairo.

Since floating the pound, Egyptians are more eager to know the dollar exchange rates everyday. But it’s really annoying to open different banks’ websites to get the best rates or even follow up on exchange rate.

eldolar.live is an aggregation service that provides a real-time table for EGP/USD exchange rate in all Egyptian banks.

The site was founded by Abdullah Diaa and Amr Sobhy, in an attempt to aggregate the USD/EGP exchange rate data in different Egyptian banks and turn them into rich visual data after float the pound.

They’ve also launched a mobile app to track updates on the go, available now on Google Play under the name El Dolar Live.

One of the world’s most popular means of communication, WhatsApp, is adding fully encrypted video calling to its messaging app on Monday, a move that comes as privacy advocates worry about the potential for stepped-up government surveillance under a Trump administration.

WhatsApp, which boasts more than a billion users worldwide, adopted end-to-end encryption early this year, making it technically impossible for the company or government authorities to read messages or listen to calls.

The new video calling service will thus provide another means for people to communicate without fear of eavesdropping though WhatsApp does retain other data such as an individual’s list of contacts.

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum said in an interview that video calls will be rolled out to 180 countries within hours after the feature is introduced at an event in India.

“We obviously try to be in tune with what our users want,” Koum said at the company’s unmarked Mountain View, California headquarters building. “We’re obsessed with making sure that voice and video work well even on low-end phones.”

Koum told Reuters that improvements in phone cameras, battery life and bandwidth had made the service viable for a significant proportion of WhatsApp users, even those using inexpensive smartphones.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) offers its FaceTime video calls to iPhone users, and Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) Skype offers video calls on multiple platforms. But WhatsApp has built a massive installed base of mobile customers and has been steadily adding more features to what began as a simple chat applications.

PRICE OF ALLEGIANCE

WhatsApp has operated with some autonomy since Facebook bought it in 2014. Koum and co-founder Brian Acton, longtime Yahoo (YHOO.O) engineers who started the company in 2009, now have 200 staff, mostly engineers and customer support, up from 50 when Facebook bought it.

Koum said Facebook has allowed WhatsApp to use its servers and bandwidth around the world for voice and now video. That support will help spread the souped-up WhatsApp much farther and faster, he said.

But the corporate allegiance also has a price. After years of pledging that it would not share information about users with Facebook, which already has digital dossiers on its own 1.7 billion users, WhatsApp revised its privacy statement in August to say it would do exactly that. That means Facebook knows whom WhatsApp users contact and their phone numbers.

Some users complained, but Koum said that he had not seen a shift in behavior.

“In terms of security and privacy, what people care about the most is the privacy of their messages,” he said.

The video service is well integrated and adds a few twists. Users can move around the thumbnail video showing what their correspondent sees and flick a video call in progress to the side to minimize it while checking texts or email.

Koum said WhatsApp remained committed to security after the U.S. election of Donald Trump as president last week heightened fears of increased surveillance.

Trump, along with some leading congressional Republicans and FBI Director James Comey, has advocated requiring tech companies to turn over customer information in many circumstances, a position which, if put into law, could require companies including WhatsApp to completely redesign their services.

Other countries including China and the United Kingdom also take a dim view of encryption.

But Koum said he not see a major threat to his service, noting that diplomats and officials use WhatsApp in many countries.

“It would be like them shooting themselves in the foot.”

We’ve talked before on how conversational Twitter is, and how brands can join and create more conversation using Twitter Conversational Cards, that being said, for many brands; keeping up with the conversation can be costly job if you really serious about doing proper social listening.

On June 18, 2016 Twitter introduced a new web tool & mobile application called “Twitter Dashboard” that can be a free solution for your social listening tasks.

What is Twitter Dashboard?

Dashboard by Twitter is a free app/website from Twitter itself, to stay on top on your brand’s mentions as well as your competitions’ as well. Dashboard also help brands connect with their customers in seamless way.

Many marketers haven’t used it yet due to the fact that the application part of it is available only for US and on iOS devices only.

Dashboard has three main objectives

• To help brands engage with their audiences by creating custom feeds by tracking / listening to keywords that are related to the brand itself. That kind of tracking / listening will display the right content for your brand with priority so brands can always stay connected with what matters to them.
• Help brands easily schedule tweets using their powerful draft system and scheduling calendar
• Help brands with tweet ideas, Dashboard will actually provide tips and ideas right next to the composing tweet box

It is not just an application

Dashboard is more than just an application, in fact, the important part of it is done over a website – the configuration part- dashboard.twitter.com

Before you install the application on your mobile device, you need to head to Dashboard Website to configure your brand’s type, number of employees, search keywords and mentions, as well as your competitions’

Getting started

As soon as you head over to dashboard website, you will be asked to login to your twitter account – click the try Twitter Dashboard to get started

Once logged in; you then will be asked to setup you ONE TIME account info – NOTE: this cannot be edited, so be very careful with what you select

Select your brand’s category and number of employees your brand have then hit next

As soon as you setup your brand’s category, you can now setup the “About You” section

The ‘about you’ section

Is basically the custom feed we talked about earlier, a timeline with all mentions of your brand’s name and mentions or anything that is related to your brand

Editing your custom feed

For example; I’ve added list of keywords that mentions my name and the hashtag I usually use

You can also add keywords that you don’t want to appear on that custom feed by filling the lower line (What’s not related to your business?)

Once you’re ready, hit the save feed button on the top right and you will be redirected to your custom feed showing all keywords related to your brand

Scheduling tweets

Tweeting in the right time have always been a very important factor in the success of your brand on Twitter – many tools provides such service, like buffer and hootsuite, but my personal favorite has always been Twitter’s own advertising dashboard. With the new Dashboard app, you can easily schedule tweets from both desktop or mobile (iOS)

Tips and help from Twitter directly

Dashboard will suggest tips and help as well as tweet ideas based on the selection you made while setting up the account

Twitter Dashboard mobile App

Now that you’ve setup everything on desktop, you can now download the mobile application to “really” stay connected with your customers

The application is available only on iOS for now, and also you need to have “US” based account to be able to install it.

How can brands use Twitter Dashboard effectively? 

Dashboard app comes with very important feature (I personally think it’s amazing) – an on-the-go analytics dashboard for brand’s engagement and account performance.

Measuring performance

With this analytics section – brands can always stay on top of what they have shared and how well are they performing in terms of tweet numbers, media shared, profile visits and tweet impressions as well.

The analytics periods are changeable, so you can review what your brand have been sharing recently or go as far as two months back.

Brand engagement on Twitter (Tweets Performance)

This section gives your brand a quick overview of your tweets engagement, you can always click the Tweet Activity Icon for more detailed data

Wrap up

Use the FREE and POWERFUL Twitter Dashboard to stay on top of your social mentions on Twitter.