Computer-mediated communication

Social media app Bluesky has picked nearly a million new users just a day after exiting its invitation-only beta and opening to everyone. In a post on its main rival — X (formerly Twitter) — Bluesky shared a chart showing a sudden boost in usage on the app, which can now be downloaded for free for the iPhone and also Android devices. Bluesky added that since broadening the availability of the service yesterday by coming out of beta, the app has seen more than 850,000 new signups, expanding its community to more than…

Google makes it easy to unsubscribe from mailing lists, but spam or phishing emails can still slip through. If you need to block an email address on Gmail, do the following: Open an email from the sender you would like to block. Click on the Dots icon in the upper right-hand corner. Select Block. Blocking a particular email address through Gmail means you will no longer receive messages from that account in your inbox. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing. If you want to receive certain messages from…

If you’re looking to take control of your Kik account or your child’s account, you’re probably wondering how you can permanently delete Kik from your device. Some apps make it difficult or impossible to delete your account, but what about Kik? What kind of hoops do you have to jump through to get rid of the app from your phone? In this guide, we’ll show you everything you need to do to permanently or temporarily deactivate your account on this popular messaging app. Looking for a Kik replacement? Check out…

screenshot / DigitalTrends.com Google is now making efforts to ensure users understand the meaning of Incognito Mode on its Chrome browser following a class-action lawsuit that cost the company $5 billion. The publication MSPoweruser discovered Google tested a Canary build of Chrome with an updated definition of Incognito Mode that more clearly spells out the stipulations of what is hidden when you enter the browsing state. The new disclaimer includes an added line in the first paragraph that reads: “This won’t…

Meta Threads — Meta’s rival to X, formerly Twitter — has just launched in the European Union (EU), a market with nearly half a billion people. The app launched in the U.S. to much fanfare in July, with Meta hoping to attract X users disillusioned with the turbulence on the platform since Elon Musk acquired it for $44 billion 14 months ago. The app, which bears many similarities to X in both looks and usage, got off to a flying start five months ago, picking up more than 100 million users in the first week, though…

Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends The inevitable has happened, it seems. Beeper Mini, the reverse-engineered app that brought iMessage to Android with a blue bubble hack, has apparently run into an official Apple roadblock. Within the past couple of hours, multiple users have posted online that Beeper Mini texts are not passing through. Well, it appears that Apple is somehow blocking server access. When asked whether Apple was responsible for the outage, founder Eric Migicovsky said it was likely the case. “Yes, all…

If you’re on WhatsApp and regularly make use of the view once feature for photo and video messages, then you might be interested to learn that the feature has now been expanded to voice messages. WhatsApp’s view once feature does what it says on the tin, deleting a message after it’s been viewed a single time. It’s been available for photos and videos since 2021, but now you can also send voice messages that can only be played once before they, too, disappear from the app. WhatsApp announced the self-destructing…

Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends The impossible has happened. Beeper set out to unify chat platforms into a single bundle, but has ended up solving the iMessage-on-Android conundrum in a terrific fashion. In fact, it has even fixed the revolting green/blue bubble problem in one fell swoop. Say hello to Beeper Mini, an app that puts iMessage on your Android phone and also kills the green bubble for good. And it doesn’t sacrifice functionality either. All that happened without a shady hack, something that Sunbird or…

Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends What was supposed to be an iMessage redeemer for Android smartphone users has quickly been consumed in a chaos of security and utter negligence. Merely days after the Nothing Chats app was removed from the Play Store, the tech at its foundation provided by Sunbird is also taking an unspecified leave, intensifying suspicions of something being seriously wrong. Sunbird appeared on our radar late last year, promising blue bubbles for Android-to-iPhone messages. It also promised to bundle…

Andy Boxall / Digital Trends Earlier this week, Nothing did the unexpected and launched the “Nothing Chats” app for the Nothing Phone 2. The premise? Let anyone with a Nothing Phone 2 send and receive texts via iMessage. Nothing partnered with Sunbird to make Nothing Chats work, with Nothing essentially using Sunbird’s own messaging tech to bring iMessage to Android. It was a bold idea … but one that was short-lived. That’s because Nothing Chats is already dead (for the time being) due to a shocking number of…