Technology

San Francisco, May 9 (IANS) After launching the ability to pay businesses within a chat in India and Brazil, Meta-owned WhatsApp is now launching the service to users in Singapore.

Stephane Kasriel, head of Commerce and Financial Technologies at Meta, on Tuesday, announced this on Twitter. "@WhatsApp Singapore users can now pay local businesses for goods and services seamlessly and securely right within a WhatsApp chat".

According to TechCrunch, Meta has partnered with Irish-American financial services and SaaS company Stripe to roll out the feature in the region.

WhatsApp created this payment feature with Stripe Connect and Stripe Checkout solutions, allowing in-app payments to be made both online and offline.

Customers can pay businesses with credit cards, debit cards, or the PayNow fund transfer system in Singapore, the report said.

"Most people I know in Singapore use WhatsApp to chat with each other. Now, they can pay local businesses using the app as well. The speed and convenience of payments through WhatsApp will help businesses expand their revenue streams with new channels and access a wider customer base," Sarita Singh, regional head and managing director for Southeast Asia at Stripe, was quoted as saying.

According to Meta, the feature to accept payments through WhatsApp is available only to a few businesses at the moment, but the company plans to expand the availability to more merchants over the coming months, as per the report.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has announced that users will now be able to use the same WhatsApp account on more than one phone via its multi-device login feature.

Users can now link their phone as one of up to four additional devices.

--IANS
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San Francisco, May 9 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp has started beta testing the Wear OS app for Android smartwatches such as Pixel Watch, Galaxy Watch 5, and other devices, which will let users stay connected and access their chats and messages directly from their smartwatch.

Wear OS is an Android operating system designed for smartwatches.

According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp will ask users to link their account to a Wear OS device.

When the smartwatch app is linked to the user's WhatsApp account, an 8-digit code will appear on the watch, prompting the users to enter the code on their device.

After entering the code, the chats will safely be synced across users' devices so that they can start using WhatsApp on their smartwatches.

By downloading the latest update of WhatsApp beta for Android from the Google Play Store as a beta tester, a user can now use WhatsApp on a smartwatch, the report said.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature called 'admin review' on Android, which will provide group admins with tools to help them better moderate their groups.

When the feature is enabled, group members will be able to report specific messages to the group admin.

If an admin believes that a message is inappropriate or violates the rules of the group, it may choose to delete it for everyone in the group when a member reports it.

--IANS
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San Francisco, May 8 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new "channels list" feature on iOS, a new one-to-many tool for broadcasting information from people users wish to get news from.

According to WABetaInfo, the new feature will be listed within the Status tab, which is now called "Updates", where both status updates and channels are shown.

In particular, status updates will always be displayed horizontally in order to provide more space for the channels list.

Channels will instead be displayed in the section where status updates are listed, the report said.

Moreover, the company will give users complete control over which channels they follow, and when they do so, the action will be kept private.

In addition, the report mentioned that channels will support handles, allowing users to easily search and access preferred updates.

The channels list feature is under development and it will be released in a future update of the app, the report stated.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has announced two new updates around 'Polls' and 'Sharing with Captions' on its platform to make chats a little more fun and productive.

In the Polls feature, the company has introduced three options -- Create Single-Vote Polls, Search for Polls in Your Chats, and Stay Updated on Poll Results, while, the company introduced the 'Sharing with Captions' feature, which will now let users forward media with captions.

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New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) The government has asked the Indian Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) and the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) to make sure that FM Radio is accessible on all mobile phones to help people during natural calamities and emergencies.

In an advisory, the IT Ministry said that it should be ensured that wherever the mobile phone is equipped with an inbuilt FM Radio receiver function or feature, that function or feature is not disabled or deactivated but is kept enabled/activated in the mobile phone.

"Further, it is advised that if the FM Radio receiver function or feature is not available in mobile phones, it may be included," MeitY told ICEA and MAIT, asking them to circulate the advisory among all the mobile phone manufacturers/brands on priority basis.

The move will help people get access to information through radio service in remote areas during natural disasters.

The IT Ministry said that during the last 4-5 years, there has been a drastic fall in mobile phones with FM tuner feature, thereby affecting not only the ability of the poor to get free FM Radio service, but also the government's ability to disseminate real-time information during emergencies, disasters and calamities.

"The FM broadcast is a robust and reliable communication system. FM stations serve as important communication links between the local authorities and people in times of natural disasters (in catastrophic situations)," the ministry added.

As per the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in times of emergencies and disaster, radio broadcasting is one of the most powerful and effective ways of delivering early warnings and alerting the public to save lives.

Further, there is need for speedy, timely, and reliable communication via FM-enabled mobile phones (apart from regular standalone radio sets and car receivers) during disasters as this can save precious lives, livelihood and also prepare us better to deal with disasters.

"The availability of a vast network of FM transmitters and FM radio in the country played a key role in India's fight against the Covid-19 pandemic," said the ministry in its advisory.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) Leading online travel company MakeMyTrip on Monday said it has collaborated with Microsoft to make travel planning more inclusive and accessible by introducing voice assisted booking in Indian languages.

The new, in-platform tech stack powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Cognitive Services, will converse with the user to offer personalised travel recommendations based on their preferences and curate holiday packages.

"We have pioneered offerings at the intersection of e-commerce, travel, and technology, and are proud to introduce a feature that breaks down the barriers of language, literacy, inability to navigate complex app environments, physical impairments, etc," said Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder and Group CEO, MakeMyTrip.

"This Generative AI integration through our collaboration with Microsoft involves simple visual cues and voice commands in native Indian languages that will alter the landscape of travel bookings hereon forth," he added.

Currently, the beta version of this integration has been introduced in English and Hindi for flights and holidays customers.

The next stage of voice assisted booking flow will cover other transport offerings. The feature has been embedded into the landing page of the platform and can be activated with a single click, said the company.

MakeMyTrip's latest offering uses the power of AI and Machine Learning to make travel-related solutions all pervasive, no matter the use case or scenario.

Microsoft's large language models and Indic language speech models, coupled with MakeMyTrip's natural language understanding capability and travel domain content creates the base for users to interact with the platform in any Indian language.

"The new update will elevate the user experience and make our platform more inclusive, accessible, and easy to navigate. The beta phase will offer us learnings to further fine-tune all use cases before rolling it out to users at scale. As such, we'll do a very controlled roll-out of this feature with a subset of our customers," said Sanjay Mohan, Group Chief Technology Officer, MakeMyTrip.

The intuitive interface powered by Azure OpenAI Service's GPT technology, will analyse specific user requirements and sift through thousands of options, to recommend, customize and book holiday packages, transforming what has been a time-consuming process into a quick and hassle-free experience.

It will also summarize hotel reviews, extracting unique traveller impressions, that is cohort specific - whether a solo traveller, business traveller, couple, family, etc.

"Bringing together MakeMyTrip's expertise with Microsoft's AI capabilities, including Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, our collaboration will help make travel more inclusive and accessible for travelers across India, with trust and security at the core," said Sangeeta Bavi, Executive Director, Digital Natives, Microsoft India.

--IANS
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San Francisco, May 6 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature called 'admin review' on Android, which will provide group admins with tools to help them better moderate their groups.

According to WABetaInfo, when the feature is enabled, group members will be able to report specific messages to the group admin.

If an admin believes that a message is inappropriate or violates the rules of the group, it may choose to delete it for everyone in the group when a member reports it.

According to the report, the new option will be available within the group settings section in the future.

Moreover, the report mentioned that the reported messages will only be visible to group admins within a new section of the app, located within group info.

The ability to report messages to group admins is in the works and will be available to beta testers in a future app update, the report said.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly rolling out a new 'side-by-side' feature on Android tablets for some beta testers.

This feature will allow users to switch between conversations without losing track of their ongoing chats, providing more control over the WhatsApp interface on their Android tablets.

Users can also disable the side-by-side view by toggling the option available within -- WhatsApp Settings > Chats.

--IANS
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San Francisco, May 6 (IANS) Microsoft has announced that it has created a new and large collection of animated backgrounds (or virtual backgrounds) for Teams that have started rolling out worldwide.

The company said this is the biggest update to the virtual backgrounds in Teams since the original collection launched in 2020.

"Featuring all-new images, the re-imagined visual library for Teams has been thoughtfully designed to represent the people that use them and how they work best," Microsoft said in a blogpost on Friday.

The tech giant has added six new categories to Teams backgrounds to cater to millions of different users.

"By mapping out a series of user needs and meeting types, the Teams crew applied a fresh lens to craft and organise the new backgrounds into six categories," Microsoft said.

The new six categories of Microsoft Teams backgrounds include -- ones that focus on wood and light, others that have contemporary backgrounds, and some that are colourful clouds or mountains.

"We aim to drive progress for everyone, and we're excited to create more avenues for representation and allyship in our products,a said Director of Global Brand Marketing Aleksey Fedorov.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has rolled out 'Avatars' in public preview for its proprietary business communication platform Microsoft Teams.

"Avatars for Microsoft Teams offers an alternative to the current binary option of video or no video," the tech giant said in a blogpost.

"Avatars for Teams gives you that much-needed camera break, while still allowing you to collaborate effectively."

Users can represent themselves the way they want with customisable avatars and reactions.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) Twitter on Wednesday backtracked on its decision to put its application programming interface (API) behind a paywall, and will allow emergency and transportation service providers to access its APIs for free.

Twitter in February announced to stop offering free access to its API and instead launch a paid version for developers worldwide.

After the controversial decision, Several emergency and transportation accounts encountered issues posting alerts to the platform.

The US Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) also experienced disruptions to their API access.

Now, the Elon Musk-run platform has reversed its decision for some users.

"One of the most important use cases for the Twitter API has always been public utility. Verified gov or publicly-owned services who tweet weather alerts, transport updates and emergency notifications may use the API, for these critical purposes, for free," said the company.

What the platform means by "verified" is still unclear.

MTA responded: "Glad that Twitter got the message. We're happy that they've committed to making API access free for the MTA and other public sector agencies. In light of this reversal, we're assessing our options for service alerts going forward".

Other affected services, including the NWS, United States Geologic Service, and the US Forest Service, had directed users to other ways to receive real-time alerts.

With the free version of Twitter's API, users can only post 1,500 automated tweets per month.

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 3 (IANS) Samsung has reportedly blocked the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT on company-owned devices as well as non-company-owned devices running on internal networks.

According to TechCrunch, the decision has apparently been taken after sensitive data from Samsung was accidentally leaked to ChatGPT last month.

According to earlier reports, soon after Samsung's semiconductor division started allowing engineers to use ChatGPT, workers leaked secret info to it on at least three occasions.

Now, the company has banned ChatGPT and other AI services like Microsoft's Bing and Google's Bard on computers, tablets and phones in the company.

The rule would only apply to devices issued by Samsung to its workers.

Consumers and others that own Samsung phones, laptops and other connected devices would not be impacted.

Samsung did not immediately comment on the report.

According to a memo seen by Bloomberg, the restriction would be temporary, lasting until it builds "security measures to create a secure environment for safely using generative AI to enhance employees' productivity and efficiency".

In the aftermath of the data leak, Samsung also asked staff using generative AI tools elsewhere "not to submit any company-related information or personal data", which could disclose its intellectual property, according to the memo.

ChatGPT's data policy states that, unless users explicitly opt out, it uses their prompts to train its models.

Samsung is said to be developing its own in-house AI tools for "software development and translation".

--IANS
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New Delhi, May 2 (IANS) In a unique collaboration to safeguard the misuse of location-tracking devices, Apple and Google on Tuesday said they have jointly submitted an industry specification to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth location-tracking devices for unwanted tracking.

The first-of-its-kind specification will allow Bluetooth location-tracking devices to be compatible with unauthorised tracking detection and alerts across iOS and Android platforms.

Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee have expressed support for the draft specification, which offers best practices and instructions for manufacturers.

"Apple launched AirTag to give users the peace of mind knowing where to find their most important items," said Ron Huang, Apple's vice president of Sensing and Connectivity.

"This new industry specification builds upon the AirTag protections, and through collaboration with Google results in a critical step forward to help combat unwanted tracking across iOS and Android," Huang added.

The specification has been submitted via theAInternet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a leading standards development organisation for review and comment over the next three months.A

"Bluetooth trackers have created tremendous user benefits, but they also bring the potential of unwanted tracking, which requires industrywide action to solve," said Dave Burke, Google's vice president of Engineering for Android.

"Android has an unwavering commitment to protecting users, and will continue to develop strong safeguards and collaborate with the industry to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth tracking devices," he added.

In addition to incorporating feedback from device manufacturers, input from various safety and advocacy groups has been integrated into the development of the specification, said Apple and Google.

--IANS
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