Apps

Spotify lets you blend your music tastes with K-Pop stars

Mix and match with BTS

Published

on

Last year, Spotify introduced an all-new feature for music discovery. Blend takes your and your friend’s music preferences and melds them into one shared playlist. The feature can ultimately bring two people closer together by introducing one to the other’s music. Now, Blend is getting a major update: a K-Pop expansion.

And no, it doesn’t just mean a sudden infusion of K-Pop songs for your Blend playlists. Users, especially K-Pop fans, can now blend their music preferences with those of popular K-Pop groups, including BTS, AB6IX, ENHYPHEN, NMIXX, Stray Kids, and TOMORROW X TOGETHER.

As always, using the feature on these groups will create a playlist combining your songs with their favorite artists. You won’t just get a helping of their songs; you’ll get the songs of the ones they like.

Further, you’ll get a share card saying how much your preferences match up to theirs. Users can share these cards directly to social media platform. Use them as badges of honor to proclaim how alike you are with your favorite group.

Blending with artists isn’t totally new, though. Earlier this year, Spotify also unleashed the feature to cover Western artists like Charli XCX, Lauv, and Megan Thee Stallion, among others. Expanding this feature taps into a huge market that Spotify has, the K-Pop fanbase.

SEE ALSO: Spotify launches new recommendation feature, Enhance

Apps

YouTube improves guidelines against medical misinformation

Taking the fight to the next level

Published

on

Google is taking its fight against medical misinformation on its streaming platform to the next level.

YouTube has started streamlining its existing medical information guidelines, categorizing them into “Prevention”, “Treatment”, and “Denial” for a solid foundation for developing guidelines as other medical data arises.

Prevention will remove any information that contradicts prevention and transmission of health conditions.

This includes content around harmful substances, practices, or prevention methods, as well as claims that there is guaranteed protection against diseases like COVID-19 or other cases such as videos saying that MMR vaccines cause autism.

Treatment, meanwhile, deletes content that contradicts treatment of health conditions. For example, a video that promotes the use of caesium chloride (cesium salts), Hoxsey therapy, and coffee enema, among others, for cancer treatment shall be banned.

Lastly, Denial erases content that disputes the existence of a health condition. A popular instance would be videos denying that there is COVID-19, or that people have not died from the contagious disease.

Apart from these improved guidelines, YouTube plans to make playlists of cancer-related videos, partnering with Mayo Clinic for informational content.

Continue Reading

Apps

WhatsApp might soon let you chat with Telegram, other apps

Beta is ongoing

Published

on

The European Union’s effect on Apple is well documented. The region is forcing the company to adopt USB-C as a standard. However, Apple isn’t the only target of the European Union’s ire. It is also targeting companies that it deems a “gatekeeper” in the world of technology. Meta is one of those companies. In response to the European Union, Meta is working on a WhatsApp update which allows cross-platform messaging.

Currently, WhatsApp does not allow users to interact with users on other messaging platforms like Telegram and WeChat. According to an ongoing beta spotted by WABetaInfo, Meta’s messaging app might soon allow users to message these third-party platforms straight from the app. Recipient users won’t need a WhatsApp account to use the feature.

After naming the world’s biggest tech companies as gatekeepers, the European Union is forcing them to enable interoperability with competing brands. WhatsApp’s new beta is an effort to comply with these new rules. Meta is required to implement the update by March next year.

The report does not reveal much about how the third-party chats will work. For example, will chats between platforms have the same features as chats between those on the same platform. If anything, WABetaInfo believes that WhatsApp will still retain the end-to-end encryption enjoyed by the main platform.

There is no word on when WhatsApp plans to implement the feature for all users.

SEE ALSO: WhatsApp now lets users share photos in HD

Continue Reading

Apps

Pick.A.Roo Wholesale announced for small, medium businesses

Improving the supply chain

Published

on

Pick.a.roo Wholesale

Pick.A.Roo is introducing an innovative feature called Pick.A.Roo Wholesale which shall help the supply chain for small to medium-sized enterprises, including independent restaurants and bars.

This will let such business owners have direct access to the industry’s biggest suppliers and outlets, like S&R Wholesale, SuySing, Tiptop Distribution Inc., Farmer’s Market, Boozy, and more.

The collaboration between Pick.A.Roo and suppliers will allow the app to deliver to 40 key cities from a catalogue of about 400,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs), improving the way small and medium businesses can conveniently access supplies.

The streamlined approach eliminates the challenges of supply and stocking while giving owners flexibility for their orders, which can be delivered in a matter of hours.

Pick.A.Roo is available on the App Store and Google Play.

Continue Reading

Trending