Novelvibes

Google  announced today  that its URL shortening service, goo.gl, will be shutting down starting in April.  Existing links will still function, but on April 13, users who haven't used the site (or have only used it anonymously) will no longer be able to create short links. Users who have already created goo.gl links will still be able to do so from the accounts they've previously used up until one year from today—March 30, 2019. Developer projects that haven't used goo.gl before today will be unable create short links with the service starting May 30 this year—those that have can keep using goo.gl up until that same March 30, 2019 cut-off. Google says it's winding down support for goo.gl in favor of  Firebase Dynamic Links , single links that can lead to different destinations depending on the type of device they're accessed from. But Firebase Dynamic Links aren't a replacement to goo.gl short links; they're not something non-developers will hav

One of the things that most annoyed me when switching from Gmail to Inbox as my main email client was how you could no longer mark emails as read.  My email workflow had always consisted of manually marking emails as read before archiving them, and I didn't appreciate the change. It might just be my unhealthy obsession with being unreasonably neat and organized — it probably is — but it really irks me to think that there might be an unread email hiding somewhere in my archive. In an ideal scenario, email notifications from the Gmail and Inbox apps would have something like an "Archive and Mark as Read" button for those cases when you know right away that you can archive an email without having to read it. A decent alternative is what we already have in Gmail, where you can select a bunch of emails and, in two taps, mark them as read and archive them. However, this still requires opening the app every time, and if you use Inbox like I do, you don't even have t

It's been a rough month for Facebook. Following news that millions of users' personal data had been  collected without permission  by a third party, the social media giant caught some flak for the way it handled metadata collection on Android.  In an effort to assuage public ill will, Facebook  announced today  that it's making user settings—especially ones dealing with account data and privacy—easier to access and more transparent. Historically, Facebook's settings have been convoluted. By its own admission, prior to today's announced update, settings in the mobile app were "spread across nearly 20 different screens." In a blog post, Facebook says it's cleaned up the settings section to make it easier to understand; the changes also emphasize users' control over their data and privacy. "Most of these updates have been in the works for some time," Facebook says, "but the events of the past several days underscore their imp

I have some bad news—people will never stop shooting vertical video. This battle is lost, guys. It's time to move on. Google is moving on by making the YouTube app a little less awkward when watching such a video. In the next update, YouTube will dynamically adapt to different video shapes and sizes. Let's say someone shot a video vertically. Right now, you get black bars on either side unless you switch to full-screen. However, that also hides most of the app's UI and controls. When the new version of YouTube rolls out, the player window will resize to fill as much of the screen as possible with video—square, 16:9, vertical, whatever. Google didn't go into detail about how the controls will work, but the GIF above shows the app UI popping over the video while it's still playing. Even that is dynamic, though. It can cover just a little of the video or most of it depending on what you're doing. We don't know when this change is rolling out, only

Since its been reported that Facebook sells users data, its necessary for you to check your Data and see your history on Facebook. Step 1: Log in to Facebook on your computer and access Account Settings: click at the top right of any Facebook page and select Settings. https://www.facebook.com/settings/ Step 2: Click General in the lefthand column. Step 3: Click Download a copy of your Facebook data at the bottom of the General Account Settings page. Step 4: You’ll be taken to a new webpage to confirm that you really wish to download your Facebook information. Click the green Start My Archivebutton to continue. Step 5: “It may take a little while for us to gather your photos, wall posts, messages and other information,” reads a prompt that appears. To continue, click the blue Start My Archive button. Step 6: You must now verify your identity by typing your Facebook password in order to help protect the security of your account. Step 7: A confirmation messa

Android's permissions system used to be more permissive than it should have been, and according to  Ars Technica,   Facebook was taking advantage of that little loophole to harvest call and SMS data. By exploiting the fact that pre-4.1 Android permissions could be requested by apps on the Play Store up until last year, and that those earlier permissions automatically granted call and SMS access together with contacts, Facebook was able to collect and store metadata associated with each from those that gave the app contacts access.  This is on the heels of the larger  Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal —which we haven't really covered because, up until now, it hasn't really applied to Android specifically. The much-abridged version is that a company called Cambridge Analytica reportedly harvested data from some 50 million Facebook users, against Facebook's terms of service. Some of that data was ostensibly deleted after Facebook privately contacted the company

We keep an awful lot of personal information on our mobiles these days and, as a direct result, these devices know quite a lot about us. From our location and contacts to our favourite hangouts and hobbies, we happily exchange some of this information for “free” services from the likes of Google and others, but there are plenty of less scrupulous people and businesses out there that would also like to get their hands on this valuable asset. These days, it makes a lot of sense to look after the data stored on your smartphone and fortunately there are plenty of handy tools available within the Android ecosystem to help keep your data private. Use the lockscreen Using a basic PIN, password or swipe gesture really is the bare minimum level of security that everyone should put on their smartphone. As shocking as it might sound, data from a reputable survey in early 2016 suggested that 34 percent of all Android users don’t even make use of the basic lockscreen feature that is built into