Digital Information World

We live in the technology era with the internet the lifeblood of everything we do. However, have you ever wondered which city is the most internet-friendly? What about the least friendly?

People usually lookout for easy access to internet connections when traveling for either – leisure or travel? Are there any cities that provide travelers with free and immediate access to Wi-Fi Hotspots?

And what about 5G adoption? The fifth-generation of wireless communication technology is anticipated to take the world by storm. However, has it been launched globally?

To answer these questions and more...Business Fibre, an exclusive resource for business, finance, and technology conducted a study of 31 popular destinations around the world. They looked at various aspects of the internet in these cities including the availability of free internet, the cost of internet plans, the adoption rate of 5G technology, and the average download and upload speed.

Here are some of the key findings from their study.

London – the most internet-friendly

London was titled as the most internet-friendly city for holding the highest number of restaurants with free Wi-Fi service at 3,981. It also has the second-highest number of free Wi-Fi spots at 688,126. The city also ranks high for the work it's doing to launch 5G.

Dubai and the internet expense

Surprisingly, Dubai – the land of tourists and expats ranks as the least internet-friendly city in the world. The survey shows that Dubai charges the most for internet data – a whooping £81.09. In fact, the cost is 10 times higher than the figure reported in Mumbai.

In terms of free Wi-Fi, Dubai has 108,479 Wi-Fi hotspots and 1,209 restaurants with free internet availability.

The 5G bandwagon

Seoul, South Korea is leading the 5G train with 83 hotspots. Other cities that are also taking part in implementing the latest technology for its citizens include Los Angeles with 40 hotspots, London with 35, and Miami with 14 5G hotspots.

Asian cities offering fastest download speed

Half of the top 10 cities with the fastest download speed are based in Asia. This includes Singapore with 54.6 Mbps, Tokyo with 45.2, and Bangkok, the city of Thailand with a speed of 37.6 Mbps.

Take a look at the infographic below for more stats covering the internet and the world. As technology continues to advance, we can expect the numbers to change drastically until a new study rolls out. Till then, enjoy these findings, and don’t forget to share your views in the comments section!

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Cryptocurrencies are still a relatively new tech innovation. There is a lot about them that most people still don’t understand. For people who aren’t familiar with economics and financial theory, the question of why cryptocurrencies have value is an interesting one. Here’s a brief rundown of where that value comes from.

Exchanges And Stores

When digital currencies first started to gain prominence, many people were skeptical about the long-term prospects. In a widely-shared blog post at the time, one economist argued that in order for a digital currency to be successful, it would need to be able to act as a medium of exchange as well as a stable store of value. Unfortunately, as most people now know, Bitcoin is anything but stable.

For any currency to be an effective means of storing value, it needs to be stable. In other words, to function as a proper currency, people need to be able to agree on how much Bitcoin is worth. If the value of the currency is unstable and constantly fluctuating, then it will be hard to keep up with the most current figure.

Scarcity

Another factor that determines the value of a currency is its scarcity. If the supply of a currency is too large, it can lead to a spike in the price of goods. On the other hand, a supply that is too small leads to a range of economic problems of its own.

With regular fiat currencies, central banks can control the scarcity of money by adjusting the amount of it that they print. The supply of Bitcoin is controlled by the network protocol, which ensures that new Bitcoins are created at a pre-set rate.

Utility

For a currency to have value, holders of the currency need to be able to spend it. This is where Bitcoin is currently struggling. While it is possible to spend Bitcoin to buy everyday goods and services, and it is becoming easier to do so all the time, spending Bitcoin is nowhere near as easy as spending fiat currency.

Is It Worth Investing In?

Most people are aware that there is a lot of money to be made in bitcoin trading, but it is important to understand why traders see value in the crypto. Investors can either purchase Bitcoin in the hopes that it will increase in value over time, or they can trade it for other cryptos on a cryptocurrency exchange. Making a profit from trading is a risky undertaking, especially given how quickly the value of a cryptocurrency can change.

There are a large number of challenges facing cryptocurrencies, and it is hard to envisage them overtaking fiat currencies anytime soon. Although there have been localized examples of people using cryptocurrencies in the same way they spend fiat currency, the unreliability of existing cryptocurrencies as stores of value is holding them back. However, as long as cryptocurrencies have utility and are considered to have value by traders, then they will be worth something.

Photo: Pexels

LinkedIn initially rolled out the Stories feature in various countries including the Netherlands, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates. The feature became popular in these regions and the company is expanding the Stories feature to other countries as well.

LinkedIn updated in a support page that the company has rolled out the Stories feature for users in Australia (as reported by SMT). This means that users in Australia can now use the new temporary status update feature. The company confirmed a few months ago that LinkedIn is releasing the Stories feature. This feature is similar to Facebook Stories and Instagram Stories and it also functions pretty much the same as Stories function on Instagram and Facebook.

A Stories bar appears along the top of the main feed, and users can view Stories of various people using this bar. In the Stories feature, there are several tools and stickers available which you can use to decorate your Stories frames. The feature can be very useful for you and here we will discuss how this feature works.

When a person first accesses a LinkedIn Story, they are prompted to check their privacy settings for viewing the Stories. Creators can choose to continue viewing the Stories or they can change the visibility. This aligns with the platform’s regular capacity for its users to view who has seen their LinkedIn profile. If a user does not want people to view that they have seen their Story, they can also turn this off. Visit your Story settings to turn this off.

The platform offers 3 different options on this aspect - when a user checks LinkedIn Story, the person who created the Story will either be able to view their name and headline, private profile characteristics, or private mode (anonymous). The private profile characteristics include title, and latest education institution or company. This indicates that you can also view a LinkedIn Story anonymously.

If you want to create a Story, take an image or a video, and add stickers or text. Then, you can publish your LinkedIn Story. For the Australian roll-out, the company has also included localized stickers such as ‘G’ day.’

As the company has now expanded the Stories feature to Australia, this means that the feature is now available in 4 countries. The company is adding another region every few weeks. Considering the number of people who can now access this feature, you might be thinking that the company has enough usage insights to release this feature for all users. However, we will have to wait and see how LinkedIn decides to roll out this option to more countries.

Users have been criticizing LinkedIn Stories and they suggest that this option does not fit with the professional communications focus of LinkedIn’s platform. However, the addition of Stories to the platform does make sense. Broader engagement data have displayed that this feature is increasingly becoming popular among the next generation of social media platforms users. The users prefer Stories over the traditional News Feed.

There are a lot of LinkedIn users who will use the Stories for various purposes. The option may provide new opportunities to connect with your target audiences. It has also been reported that LinkedIn Stories are also available to some users in Germany and Qatar, however, the company has not officially confirmed this news.

Is has also been seen that the platform is developing a new design. According to a famous reverse engineering expert, Jane Manchun Wong, the company is currently working on a new design, and the new design will come with a new color palette as well as new icons. Jane Manchun Wong shared a screenshot on Twitter displaying how the new design will look like. According to the shared screenshot, the new design is similar to that of Facebook.

LinkedIn is working on a new design, with new color palette and icons pic.twitter.com/q8mCumZK6I
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) June 20, 2020

Featured photo: Shutterstock / wichayada suwanachun

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Facebook is always testing out new features and options to enhance the user experience. It has been seen that the social network is currently testing a new set of tabs as well as filter options for the news feed. The new features will allow users to filter the posts on the basis of recent posts, favorite posts, and most relevant posts.

According to a famous social media commentator, Matt Navarra, the company is currently testing out a new set of tabs for news feed. Matt Navarra posted a screenshot on Twitter displaying how the new changes will look like. In the screenshot shared by Navarra, we can see that Facebook has added three tabs to the news feed of users.

The tabs added by Facebook are the Home tab, the Favourites tab, and the Recent tab. Users will be able to choose from the options – Home, Favourites, and Recent. The Home tab will display you the most relevant content first. The Favourites tab show content posted by your favorite users. Lastly, the Recent tab will display new content posted by users.

With the new features, you will be able to view content according to your wish. These features will allow users to customize the content they see in the news feed. According to some users, the ‘most relevant’ content is defined by an algorithm that may display you the content from the same 10 or 20 users, regardless of whether you are interested in a particular topic or not.

The company is still testing the new features which mean that these features are not currently ready to be rolled out for public use. The company has not also yet confirmed that Facebook is testing new tabs and filter options for your news feed.

It is also not yet clear when the company will roll out the new options as the company has not yet made an official announcement on this aspect. We hope that the company will soon make an official announcement regarding the testing of this new feature.

The latest analysis of LinkedIn data indicates that the University of Washington is generating more recruits for tech giants, such as Facebook, Apple, and Google, as compared to any other college in the United States. SHL, a talent company, analyzed the LinkedIn profiles of various employees working for tech companies. SHL found that the highest number of people working for technology companies were graduated from the University of Washington, while the University of California, Berkeley, produced the second-highest number of graduates working for major tech companies.

SHL performed a survey on 404,068 LinkedIn profiles of employees across 17 of the most significant tech companies in the United States. These US tech companies also included Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

The data provided by SHL suggests that Google has hired more employees from Stanford University as compared to any other college in the US, and the University of California, Berkeley is Google’s second-most heavily recruited university. According to data, Apple also prefers Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley is the second.

Facebook prefers hiring more employees from the University of California, Berkeley, with Stanford University second. The data shows that Amazon hired more of its graduates from the University of Washington as compared to any other college in the United States. SHL published the report on its website.

During the survey, it was also discovered that 49% of employees working for Google and 47.5% of Facebook employees were private graduates. According to the surveyed LinkedIn profiles, 45.4%, 44.5%, and 44% of employees working for Sony, IBM, and Adobe, respectively, were private graduates. Apple was in 8th place in this list and 37.3% of Apple employees were private graduates.

SHL also discovered that 11.5% of Google employees and 11.2% of Facebook employees are Ivy League alumni, however, no Ivy League members appeared in the list of top ten US colleges that major tech companies hire from. Business Insider requested a comment from Google, however, the company did not respond. A Facebook’s spokesman also denied to comment on the SHL data.

According to the survey performed by SHL, the following is the complete ranking of the most popular universities in the United States.

The University of Washington is the top-ranked US College that tech giants hire from.

UC Berkeley is the second university among this list.

Stanford University and the University of Texas, Austin are the third and fourth most popular universities.

The University of Southern California ranked fifth in the list while Arizona State University, Tempe ranked sixth.

According to the SHL data, Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Institute of Technology are the seventh and eighth most popular universities in the US.

While the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign ranked ninth and tenth in the list.

Read next: Making Online Learning Better (infographic)

The average consumer doesn’t really hear about Microsoft all that much outside of discussions surrounding Windows, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that a lot of Microsoft’s biggest products are meant for corporate clients and the like. Even LinkedIn, the tech giant’s social media platform, is meant more for people that are looking to network and is hence geared towards corporate usage more than it would be for the average consumer that is just trying to find ways to spend their time on the internet.

With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that Microsoft Teams is now seeing a change that is announcing Microsoft’s reentry into the consumer facing market. While Microsoft has seen a lot of success and profitability from tackling a business facing approach, losing name recognition with consumers can be a really big problem. This is why Teams, Microsoft’s premier work organizing and office communication app, is now being opened up to the consumers in a really big way.

While initially offered as a simple chat app for consumers, Teams will now have a bunch of features that can make it immensely useful in a personal capacity. Allowing the sharing of documents, calendars as well as personal locations, Microsoft is bringing a lot of features that are traditionally considered to only be useful for corporate customers to the average consumer, and this is a pretty exciting development. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft is not just trying to create another chat app in the vein of WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, but is instead trying to compete with these already well established chat apps by offering features as well as an entire approach that these other apps might not conform to. This indicates a more consumer focused approach for Microsoft in the near future, and it will be interesting to see what else this approach could potentially end up leading to.

Also read: The List Of Top Ten US Colleges That, Microsoft Apple, Facebook, And Google Hire From

Read next: These are the most (and least) internet friendly cities around the world (infographic)

China has always been a tough nut to crack for a number of different tech companies, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that there are a lot of regulations that China implements that can make it difficult for companies to gain access to consumers who might be interested in the products and services that they have to offer. Games have been one of the areas where Chinese consumers are often deprived due to the reason that Chinese regulations prevent a lot of games from being sold in the country as they require licensing and these licenses are very rarely provided.

Game developers such as Rockstar Games try to get around these regulations by taking advantage of a loophole that ends up allowing app versions of their games to be available without having to acquire a license, and for quite a long time these apps managed to find a pretty strong audience in the country. However, with all of that having been said and out of the way it is important to note that Chinese regulations have now been updated and the loophole has now been closed, which means that all of the game apps as well as a wide variety of other apps that took advantage of these loopholes are now no longer able to offer their apps in the country.

As a result of the fact that this is the case, Apple is now removing thousands of apps that had been taking advantage of this loophole. Apple is a bit of stickler for the rules unlike Google, and this means that having apps that don’t follow regulations on the app store is absolutely unacceptable. While Google follows local regulations on their own Play Store, it might be possible for Chinese consumers to download the games from third party sources and this could mean that Chinese users could start preferring Android phones instead which could spell trouble for Apple in what has turned out to be a pretty enormous market.

The WeProtect Global Alliance is a multi-sector alliance that aims to end online child sexual abuse and exploitation. TikTok has announced that the company will work with the WeProtect Global Alliance to fight online child sexual abuse.

The short-video platform committed back in March of this year to encourage and support the Voluntary Principles to combat Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. It is adopted by the Five Eyes alliance which is a collaboration among intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

TikTok announced that it will now work with non-profit organizations, industry partners, government authorities, and academics to determine, implement, as well as share innovative solutions to protect kids online. Protecting children against the threat of online sexual abuse is one of those problems that requires a global response. The company stated that governments, industry partners, academics, and non-profit organizations will have to work together to combat the threat of online child sexual exploitation.

Joining the WeProtect Global Alliance is one of several TikTok’s efforts to protect kids online as well as offline. According to the company, keeping kids safe from the threat of online sexual exploitation is very important and we can only achieve this via cross-sector collaboration.

Jeff Collins, senior director of trust and safety, Arjun Manjuth, director of trust and safety in the Asia-Pacific region, and Cormac Keenan who is the head of trust and safety for Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, published a blog post. In the blog post, the stated that as an industry, it is necessary to come together to combat the harms of online child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Also read: Tiktok Reveals Why Every Tiktok User Gets To See A Different News Feed

They said that the membership of TikTok is the WeProtect Global Alliance is an extra opportunity to collaborate with the company’s peers as well as learn and share best practices with them. It will help to make critical progress towards the common goal to end online child exploitation and abuse.

Iain Drennan, executive director at the WeProtect Global Alliance also added that the advancements in technology indicate that it has never been easier for those people who want to sexually exploit kids to make contact with victims. He said that industry collaboration is essential, and the WeProtect Global Alliance looks forward to operating with TikTok as well as other industry partners toward their common goal to end online child sexual abuse.

Iain Drennan added that during their discussion with TikTok, they have been struck by the TikTok’s commitment to prioritize the safety and security of children using the TikTok’s platform. Recently, TikTok announced that the company will restrict those users who younger than 16 years to access the DM feature of the TikTok app. This decision is one of the examples of TikTok’s willingness to prioritize the safety and security of children, stated Iain Drennan.

Read next: TikTok Plays An Important Part By Signing European Code Of Disinformation

On Monday, Microsoft announced that it is killing the company’s Mixer streaming service next month. The company said that it will partner with Facebook, and Microsoft will also push users to Facebook gaming. The mixer streaming service will be shut down on July 22 of this year. Starting from Monday, Microsoft’s Mixer partners as well as streamers will be transitioned to the Facebook Gaming service.

Microsoft’s sudden move comes after the company has dumped substantial efforts into its Mixer streaming service, acquiring streaming rights to some of the most significant streamers such as Shroud and Ninja. However, the company was not able to reach the scale required for Mixer to compete with Alphabet-owned YouTube Gaming service and Amazon-owned Twitch, and even the Facebook Gaming service. From July 22 of this year, all Mixer applications and websites will automatically redirect users to the Facebook Gaming service.

Microsoft rolled out the Mixer service back in the year 2017 after the company acquired a gaming startup called Beam interactive back in the year 2016. The company has announced that after the Mixer service gets shut down, Microsoft will transition partnerships with Facebook Gaming. It will redirect existing Mixer streamers and viewers to Facebook Gaming while also moving all of Mixer’s content to Facebook Gaming.

The partnership between Facebook and Microsoft is a T-Mobile and Sprint partnership of sorts, as both, the companies were trailing far behind the Alphabet-owned YouTube Gaming and Amazon-owned Twitch duopoly. The company’s partnership with the social media giant, Facebook, goes deeper than only watching streams. It has been reported that Microsoft plans to integrate its xCloud game-streaming service into the Facebook Gaming service which will allow users to conveniently play those titles that appear inside the service.

Microsoft plans that the company will not force major streamers such as Ninja and Shroud to migrate to the Facebook Gaming service, and these streamers will also be able to rejoin Twitch if they want to, reported The Verge. During an interview, Phil Spencer, the gaming chief at Microsoft stated that the company is shutting the service as Mixer was not able to catch up with its competitors.

Spencer said that the Mixer community will benefit from the broader audience of Facebook’s platform. The Mixer community will also be able to reach gamers seamlessly via Facebook’s social platform. According to the data provided by the SensorTower, year-to-date downloads of this application on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store decreased by 23% during this year as compared to the same period of the year 2019.

This app was downloaded 3.4 million times during this year and according to the company, the provided by SensorTower indicates that the application has been downloaded around twenty-one million times in total. Microsoft’s recent announcement came during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 keynote. This suggests that the company was aiming to minimize attention on this high-profile shutdown of the Mixer streaming service.

Read next: Microsoft Makes Teams More Consumer Oriented By Adding Features for Personal Use

Apple has now launched its updates to iOS 14. The new application organizations, addition to Maps, Siri improvements, and the widgets rhymed with that the approach of Google to the Android operating system.

Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, outlined iOS 14 updates during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2020. These new updates will make it convenient for users to organize applications, add widgets, and you will also be able to easily create ‘smart stacks’ based on the time of the day. The company has also redesigned Siri with a compact approach that will improve the app.

The company has added picture-in-picture to iOS 14. Tim Cook, CEO Apple kicked off the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 digitally in a live stream. Tim Cook initially addressed the inequality issues and the Black Lives Matter movement. Apple CEO expressed his admiration for those individuals who stood up and demanded change. He also acknowledged the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic and how the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 has gone digital.

The most notable update is that the company overhauling Siri. Siri is considered to more intelligent and contextual as the app handles over 25 billion requests each month. The company has announced that Siri will now get translation improvements and integration will application through on-device machine learning. You may also note that dictation tools are also being added to Siri.

Apple announced that the company was providing the ability for users to pin essential messages and conversations. Emojis have also been updated and they will get more age options, as well as the company, is adding the ability to wear masks. Discussing the updates being rolled out to Apple Maps, the company has added more navigation improvements, features, as well as detailed maps to the application.

With the new updates, Apple Maps will be able to allow consumers to find various locations. It seems that Apple Maps aims to compete with Google Maps through Apple’s privacy policy and UI (user interface). Now wallpaper options and support for parking have been added to the CarPlay app. Apple has also introduced EV charging and food ordering to CarPlay. The iOS 14 update will provide support for digital car keys by using the NFC feature. The company has also confirmed that digital car keys will be made available to iOS 13. Automakers will also have to provide support, however, considering that CarPlay is widely adopted by users, digital car keys will likely be made available in the latest autos starting 2021.

During the WWDC 2020, the company said that App Clips will also be introduced. App Clips are snippets of application that will launch quickly and they will also be added in the Apple App Library. Users can also launch App Clips from the web, and they are similar to Android’s approach to Android hybrid applications. According to Federighi, App Clips will be very useful for businesses that already have applications.

Read next: Apple Cracks Down on Loophole Exploiting Apps on Chinese App Store

During the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company announced that Apple will now require all app developers to self-report their data collection practices in a bar for users to read. The bar should be easier to understand. The company already requires all iOS applications to include a privacy policy. But, the company now wants to make the practice easier to understand.

Apple wants all app developers to self-report their data collection practices in the same way FDA (Food and Drug Administration) nutrition face labels easily summarize the cholesterol, fat, and calories a particular food item contains. The director of the user privacy software at Apple, Erik Neuenschwander, stated during the WWDC 2020 keynote that the company thought that it would be great to have something similar to that of nutrition labels on packages foods for applications.

The new privacy labels introduced by the company will indicate the kind of information an iOS application required to collect including the financial data of a user, the location data, browsing history, and more.

According to the manager of the user privacy software at Apple, Katie Skinner, users will be able to view if an app developer is collecting a little bit of data on the user or a lot of information.

You can view these privacy labels from the product pages for applications across all the company’s application stores. The company has also announced that it is introducing this concept to Apple’s browser, Safari. A new icon will soon be added to the software, and this icon will provide users a privacy report about the site they are visiting and the tracking that takes place.

This icon will also indicate users that the Safari browser is blocking trackers from pulling the data of users. Apple will soon add the capability to control when a third-party Safari extension can collect information over the Safari browser or not. Options such as permitting the access for only one day, or a particular site, or for all sites will be available to users.

Apple is bringing similar safeguards to iOS for preventing intrusive monitoring. One of the changes Apple will soon introduce includes allowing applications to access only the approximate data location of users as opposed to the exact GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates.

The company also plans to force applications to ask permission before tracking the data footprint of users across other applications and sites. Lastly, Apple has announced that it will soon include an orange light icon to the status bar of iPhone devices.

The new orange light icon will allow users to know when a third-party application is using the microphone or camera of their smartphones to record. Apple will roll out the new set of features sometime this year, the company announced.

Read next: Apple Cracks Down on Loophole Exploiting Apps on Chinese App Store

In a new poll, 59% of respondents gave a thumbs up to Twitter’s move to add warning messages and labels to disputed and misleading content. This story is about the two most significant social media platforms and their different styles. This story is not about politics. A customer insights analysis firm, Piplsay, wanted to analyze what users think of the approach to label disputed or misleading content. This approach is taken by the two social media giants- Facebook and Twitter. Piplsay published survey results in the report released in the second week of June.

In May 2020, Twitter decided to add labels and warning messages to tweets containing disputed or misleading information. The platform also added some labels to a tweet made by the United States President, Donald Trump. However, Facebook took another approach and did not remove similar posts by Donald Trump.

So, the question arises which social media giant made the right decision? Piplsay spoke to 20,313 Americans to find out which company got it right. The respondents were aged 18 years and above, and the firm spoke to these Americans via Market Cube over the weekend of June 6 and 7 of this year.

The first question asked by the firm was ‘is Twitter right?’ 33% of respondents replied ‘yes’ to this question if the labeling program applies to all users of the platform. Another 26% of respondents said that Twitter is right, particularly if this program applies to ‘influencers.’ So, a total of 59% of people think that Twitter made the right decision to start adding labels to tweets. 16% of respondents were unsure, and 16% said that this program could be misused to benefit specific individuals or parties. Only 9% think that no one should have the right to say what they want.

However, 46% of respondents think that it is up to Facebook to ‘act responsibly.’ While 32% of respondents stated that Facebook should not regulate or verify public posts. 22% of respondents had no opinion or were unsure of Facebook’s response.

According to the survey, 46% of people think that Twitter’s labeling program will encourage other social media companies to regulate or verify content across their respective platforms ‘in a better way.’ However, 14% said that it will encourage other social media platforms to regulate or verify content ‘in a bad way.’ Another 14% of respondents stated that it will not do much to encourage other social media platforms. But we can surely say that majority of the people think that disputed or misleading content should be labeled.

Twitter vs. Facebook: Who’s winning the ideology race?

Read next: Twitter Launches Tool To Fight Domestic Violence in Asia Pacific

Scammers are everywhere on the web these days and it requires one extra effort to keep oneself safe from getting tricked. One such issue that has many website owners concerned these days is how bots are being used to increase the traffic on their website without their knowledge!

The Problem

Digital advertising needs no introduction. Several eCommerce stores these days advertise their products/services and purchase traffic in order to attract potentially interested customers and rack up the sales count.

However, scammers have found several ways — including fake clicks and bots that mimic human browsing actions — to use these tactics to their advantage as well.

If you intend on saving yourself from such scams, allow us to recommend a top-of-the-line bot detector that may prove to be helpful!

Finteza - One-Stop Bot Catcher

The developers responsible for the creation of Finteza have presented a new tech-based solution that aims to regulate the quality of traffic and spot the presence of bots. This will, in turn, help website owners against fraudulent traffic providers.

How Finteza works is that it evaluates technical traffic parameters and is well-capable of identifying 12 types of bad traffic on the basis of formal metrics (by analyzing the browsers, IP addresses, operating systems, screen resolution, etc.). You can check the results under the Quality section.

Bots can belong to either spam sending, password guessing, or malignant actions imitation group. A piece of helpful advice (keeping in mind the example of Alex) is to closely monitor the “Referral mismatch: spoofing” section. It features the traffic that attempts to forge its source (the reason why Alex couldn’t find anything wrong in the analytics report).

Now coming to the “Analyzers” - it is a group that highlights visits from “headless browsers”. It goes without saying that these browsers cannot be used by humans. However, traffic-spoofing bots can make good use of these.

Finteza then analyzes user behavior to find out if the entity in question is a human or bot. If the results lean more towards the latter, further assessment is done. When it comes to complex bots that can boost the view count of videos or emulate ad clicks, the challenge of exposing such bots becomes tougher. Finteza presents the bot traffic data under the Bot Score section.

Finteza as an Effective Bot-Identifying Tool

Courtesy of an entire variable set, every single visitor is analyzed. Some of these variables are:

Emulation of screen touches or mouse motion
Visitor’s hardware
The delay between successive user activities

In case anything unusual is observed, the user in question gets penalty points. If the variation is not severe enough, only a few penalty points are given to the user. However, the penalty gets tougher as the variation in behavior becomes more serious and apparent. These points help constitute the final rating.

When it’s all said and done, traffic is divided into five classes:

Red: Simple bots that are easily catchable
Orange: Bots that aren’t too sophisticated but can’t be caught manually either
Yellow: Intelligent bots that can mimic human actions. Even though Finteza specializes in spotting such bots, it’s quite a difficult task to draw a line between these bots and humans
Light Green: Highly advanced bots that can copy human activities smoothly. In order to spot them, a thorough evaluation of several variables including page views, behavior, origins, etc. should be performed
Dark green: Genuine users

So, now you know that you should strive for your traffic to be dark green when you get it checked on Finteza. Any other color would mean that the money you are spending on ad campaigns is going to waste. Rectifying these issues as soon as they surface is your best chance at protecting your business from substantial loss.

So, waste no time in getting Finteza and spot bots right away along with easily determining traffic sources and figuring out bot targets. All you have to do to get started is to implement the Finteza code into your website for absolutely free and begin your pursuit of tracking bots.

Let's hunt the bots.

Well, if you take a look at it the name cookies feel a bit wrong as the purpose of this took is to track user activities to online an advertiser which definitely doesn’t feel like a treat at all.

Let’s dig a bit deep into cookies, after saying yes to the cookies, the website sends a text from web page to your compute stored by your browser. Now whenever a user requests for a web page, this text is passed back to the server where the developers use it for a variety of tasks.

The cookies are not all bad at all, I mean if you take a look at the ‘remember me’ feature that you use to login to a site, cookies help you with that right? So, I guess without cookies the internet would be way much messy and annoying as people can’t just remember all the passwords all that time but along with this positive effect, cookies also tend to allow other sites and advertisers to track the users without them even knowing it at all.

So many popular brands and tech companies using cookies give unclear results on how they use cookies in terms of their services which makes it quite difficult for users to trust cookies at all.

A meme-platform Giphy stated its privacy policy that their cookies don’t contain any personal data of users but it uses cookies to detect the users via their personal data and it also stated that its privacy policy only covers the use of cookies aimed for the brand and doesn’t own the tracking of user activities by third parties via cookies.

So, you see? Cookies aren’t as delicious as they’re sounding at all. The statements made by brands regarding the use of cookies are always confusing as they claim they use cookies but also claim that they don’t control the use of third-party cookies.

So when there are third parties involved in tracking your activities then this shouldn’t be called cookies at all and that’s why the name ‘tracking beacons’ is more suited.

Types of Cookies

Not all the cookies or the newly named tracking beacons are used in bad ways. If you take a look at the ‘first-party- cookies you’ll see that they operate directly by the website and load the tracked data to the website to help with its services.

The second type also is known as ‘third-party- cookies are the ones that shouldn’t be trusted at all as they are placed by a variety of marketing companies or advertisers to track user activities across different websites and with these type of cookies, the advertisers can so easily figure out the users even if they leave the website where they allowed the use of cookies.

The cookies contain a specific string of text with a key that helps the advertisers or marketers to associate the patterns of interests in user activities without even knowing their actual name.

If you want to take a look at the cookies set by different websites, just open your Browser (including Google Chrome, Opera) and look for ‘developer tools’ in case you have windows, if you’re a Mac user then go to View, then click on Developer and then click on Developer tools. After pressing on the Developer Tools, click the ‘Application’ tab which includes ‘Cookies’ in the menu showed beneath the tab. With this, you can see the list of cookies used by sites to track your activities.

With the change in the name, way more drastic changes are needed in order to secure users from third-party cookies as its difficult to avoid without the use of ad blockers.

In the meantime, people need to understand the working of cookies in order to protect themselves from being identified by third-parties and the best way to do it is by using browsers like Apple's Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge as they already have so many restrictions against third-party cookies and it also blocked third-party cookies and trackers by default and if you’re a Google Chrome user then you better install a safe and well reputed ad blocker extension to secure your browser and ultimately yourself from being tracked at all.

As kids will not be able to attend the regular summer camps this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, YouTube is offering an online alternative with its #CampYouTube. The platform has also added new educational resources to help content creators to maximize their presence on Google’s YouTube.

This week, the company announced that parents, as well as kids, will be able to access over 1,200 hours of scheduled YouTube programming with the do it yourself (DIY) projects, virtual field trips, and campfire talks. The new #CampYouTUbe initiative announced today aims to re-create some of the most popular camping experiences through videos. Moreover, the #CampYouTube program is entirely free.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, educational institutes have been closed across the globe, and parents are looking for new ways to keep their kids entertained and educated this summer. People are searching for terms like ‘virtual summer camps’ on Google. YouTube published a blog post stating that people Google searches for terms such as virtual summer camps have increased during the last few weeks.

According to Malik Ducard (YouTube's VP of Content Partnerships, Learning, Social Impact, Family, Health, Film & TV), people are struggling during the pandemic and this is the reason, YouTube has announced the Camp YouTube program. This program offers tools that are required to create a virtual camp experience at your home.

The #CampYouTube program offers four different themes namely arts, sports, adventure, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Two curated playlists are available in each of these themes. One video playlist is specifically created for teens and the other video playlist focuses to provide educational resources to younger kids.

For instance, YouTube will redirect teens experiencing STEM to videos such as ‘Solar System 101’. Younger kids experiencing the same camp will be directed to videos on YouTube Kids, a video application designed specifically for kids.

The Adventure camp aims to teach kids about wildlife and nature, and the Arts camp will provide videos related to writing dance, music, and art history, etc. the sports theme of the #CampYouTube program provides content about various wellness topics and sports. You may also note that the Camp YouTube program has partnered with the WNBA, Jr. NBA, and the NBA. This indicates that the sports camp offers extra excitement for those who basketball.

Also read: YouTube Tests Out New Ad Options That Allow Users to Control When They See Ads

Parents are relying more on digital tools to keep their children engaged during the pandemic. A lot of people may not want their kids to spend more watching YouTube videos. YouTube’s new initiative may help to offer some level of interaction and normalcy, along with the educational element.

As kids are spending more time watching YouTube videos, this has made YouTube stars more significant to the next generation. Some kids might be aspiring to become YouTubers as YouTube celebrities are becoming increasingly influential. YouTube has also launched a new set of learning tools. These tools are specifically designed to help YouTubers maximize their presence on the platform. Currently, the company has added five learning toolkits and plans to add more over time. If you need extra information about the #CampYouTube program, visit the Camp YouTube website.

Read next: YouTube trials product stores under eCommerce advertisements

Social media is our main mode of communication and interaction with the people around the globe. However, studies suggest that social media is not as social as it is deemed to be.

Yes, you may be connected with 500 friends on Facebook or have dozens of people retweeting your post on Twitter - at the end of the day, there is an ache that can only be described as loneliness.

A Stanford University psychiatrist further sheds light on this matter and said that the internet gives us the perception of connectedness. However, he claims that the virtual connection is often at the expanse of physical relationships.

Of course, loneliness has always been the center of the human condition. And researchers are also finding it hard to tell whether we are lonely because of all the time spent online or are we spending more time online because we are lonely.

But experts do agree that technology is playing its part and making us more isolated than ever.

Cultural aspect

One of the biggest reasons for our internet overuse is the expectations set by our society.

Did our grandparents ever think they would have 338 Facebook friends?

Or did your teenager child expect 200 likes on their TikTok video?

Probably not!

The 2019 book Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter explored the Facebook-free ancestors and claimed that they too had experienced loneliness in their lifetime. However, they considered loneliness a part of being human and kept modest expectations when it came to having friends.

They were also not driven by a Snapchat-perfect society and focused more on spending time with their loved ones – instead of worrying about their next vacation pic on Insta.

Loneliness – a business

The business of technology has become more apparent in recent times when people across the world are living in fear of the pandemic.

According to researchers, hardware and software manufacturers are promising to sell us instant connection – an immediate cure for loneliness. And we can all agree that technology has helped us pass the testing times in one form or another.

But it has limited us from enjoying loneliness and boredom. Researchers say that both – can lead to self-awareness, enhanced creativity, and a deeper appreciation for meaningful relationships.

Studies also link loneliness to medical issues including linked loneliness to heart disease, diabetes, dementia, and weakened immune systems along with premature death.

A group of researchers analyzed 20,000 participants using the UCLA Loneliness Scale, a 20-item questionnaire to assess the subjective feelings associated with loneliness.

Technology and personality – a history

Of course, technology has shaped our emotions long before Instagram and Twitter came into existent.

For example, when mirrors became popular, people started to care more about their looks. With time, cameras and various forms of photography became a realm and gave the people another way to present themselves.

And now the same has been replaced by Zoom activities and social media posts.

But despite all the chaos surrounding technology and social media – people are lonely and lack meaningful interactions.

The study by Cigna found that people who have frequent in-person interactions reported less loneliness and better health than those who didn’t. Moreover, research from Oxford University found that out of 150 Facebook friends, most people could count on only four as real friends.

However, researchers say that perhaps the coronavirus may change the dependence on technology. Staying home with virtual happy hours and Zoom conference has shown that people want to connect with others in person. It has shown us how much we miss this interaction.

In fact, it may push us to be more human in the future.

What do you think? Is technology getting in way of our personal relationships or are we so lonely that social media is our only savior? Pour your thoughts in the comments!

Read next: Research Shows the Peak Times to Get Things Done (infographic)

Twitter is one of the most used micro-blogging network, popular among celebrities, politicians and other famous personalities. Having a Twitter account makes one look professional. But users were often annoyed by the unwanted messages which contains sensitive content. This has been an issue for a long time.

As this high end, social media platform is always working to give a better experience to its users, it decided to test a new feature called Top Requests in Direct Messages. By having this feature in the app, the user will not get annoying messages requests mixed by the one they really want.

If a user receives something offensive in the message, Twitter will automatically detect it and send it to a separate section called Other Requests. The receiver will have an option to either view it or not. The preview will be hidden. If the user wishes to continue, they can tap on the profile to further continue.

It is not only about sensitive content, but this feature will sift the random/unknown people too. The user won’t get messages from people they are not following back. Instead, the message will be sent to Advanced Direct Messages. Isn’t it useful? It is, right.

The use of this feature is relatively dependent on how many direct messages you get and how famous your profile is. If you have selective people only and don’t like following unknown people, you’d probably not get much message requests. On the other hand, if your profile is well known on the platform, then you are going to receive more displeasing or annoying messages. Specifically high profile female users. This feature will help you in getting rid of this situation.

This feature is also marked similarly to the Instagram feature. Instagram also facilitates its users by filtering unwanted messages in Primary and General Inboxes. People are labeling Twitter’s new feature to be identical one to that on Instagram. This development was spotted by app researcher Jane Manchun Wong in a Tweet, along with a screenshot.

The feature is in testing phase. It hasn’t rolled out publicly. People are eagerly waiting for this feature to come out.

Apart from this, a few months back Twitter launched Hide Replies Feature in the U.S and Canada. Under this feature, the user had access to hide any offensive reply. The reply gets hidden but it is still there. The user can unleash it by tapping it on the comment.

Read next: Twitter 'revamps' its List feature

Dark mode is one of the hottest features around and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that people are starting to realize the impact that blue light can often end up having on the kind of eyesight they are able to enjoy, with unfiltered blue light often leading to a lot of problems such as difficulty sleeping at night since your eyes will be used to the light and this might trick your brain into thinking that it is daytime at the moment.

While a lot of different apps now have dark mode, one app that has failed to fulfill the kind of requirements that people might have from such services is most definitely Google Maps. While Google has announced that Android 10 is finally going to provide a complete dark mode for a large number of Google apps that you might find native to your Android phone, the rollout has been quite slow and as a result of the fact that this is the case we haven’t really seen any hints of dark mode on Google Maps. With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that you often do get a dark mode if you are using the GPS navigation at night, but this won’t be enough since a lot of users might want some kind of dark mode that they can toggle on or off on their own based on the kind of usage they are expecting to see from such a thing.

However, Google Maps is finally giving a glimpse of what dark mode might look like, and this is definitely exciting a lot of users. We still don’t know when dark mode will officially be rolled out but this is definitely a sign that it will be coming sooner rather than later.

Hat Tip: AndroidPolice.

Read next: Google Will Now Add ‘Fact-Check’ Labels To Images Search Results

The entry-level VR headset Oculus Go will soon be no more available. Facebook, on Tuesday, announced that the company is discontinuing the sales of the Oculus Go this year. The tech gaint plans to go ‘all-in’ on upgrades to positions-tracking virtual reality headsets such as the Rift and Quest.

Facebook introduced the Oculus Go two years ago which is the least expensive as well as the least powerful VR headset sold by the company. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook introduced the Oculus Go back in the year 2017, which was a significant development for the company.

The company assured that the software will still be able for the Oculus Go. However, the company announced that after Dec 4 of this year, Oculus Store will not accept applications or updates. After Dec 18 of this year, those applications will not be added to the store. Oculus will continue to drive security patches and bug fixes for the Oculus Go through the year 2022. The Oculus Go is will be the last non-positionally tracked virtual reality headset sold by the company. Today, Facebook published a blog post confirming that the company will not ship any more 3DOF virtual reality headsets.

Facebook’s new move indicates that the company is responding to the feedback of users. The Quest had been very popular among users and it is still hard to find the stock. According to the Oculus team, the public made it clear that the six degrees of the freedom movement are the future of virtual reality. As a result, the three-degree Oculus VR headsets will disappear from the market. When the Quest was launched, the Oculus team decided to allow only approved software onto the Oculus Store. They were pretty aggressive in rejecting the developer’s efforts that seem to be too experimental. Some of the developers then decided to push people to ‘sideload’ the apps via unofficial means.

The Oculus team added that they were introducing a new way for app developers to distribute Quest applications outside of the company’s official store. This will not be available for users until early 2021, however, the Oculus team mentioned this now in hopes to spur development for the Quest among app developers who do not want to use the already existing channels.

It was expected that the company will discontinue the sales of the Oculus Go as it was already out of stock in various places. Those people will not be happy by the company’s decision who saw the $199 price of the Oculus Go as making virtual reality more accessible. However, it is no doubt that the Rift and Quest provide much more sophisticated virtual reality experiences as compared to the Oculus Go. The company rolled out the $399 Oculus Quest last year which became very popular among users.

Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Read next: Microsoft Will Shut Down Mixer On July 22, and The Company Will Move Users To Facebook Gaming

The social media giant, Facebook, has taken a lot of steps to completely integrate Instagram into the Facebook ecosystem in terms of advertising tools as well as branding. However, the company introduced a new feature that seems to go directly against Facebook’s plan to integrate Instagram into the Facebook ecosystem.

Facebook-owned Instagram updated that the company is adding the ability for brands and creators to create Instagram Ads without linking to a Facebook Ad account. The image and video sharing platform stated that the new feature is made available for content creators and brands in the United States and Turkey. The feature is also limited to those creators and brands who are promoting their content on the platform for the first time. Those creators and brands who are already using Instagram Ads to promote their posts have already linked their accounts on both the platforms- Facebook and Instagram.

However, Instagram explained that the new feature is not related to ‘calls to boycott advertising on Facebook’ over Facebook’s role in the spread of misleading information and hate speech posts across its platform. Instagram also added that the company has been testing this new feature for many months.

If any brand or content creator wants to continue using the Facebook Ads Manager for managing their campaigns across Facebook’s family of apps, it will still be essential for them to link their Facebook ad accounts. Facebook’s Instagram shared the details of the new feature in a ‘help center post.’ The platform provided details on how brands and content creators will be able to promote content on Instagram’s platform for the first time in the United States and Turkey.

They will be able to create Instagram ads, manage promotions, as well as see insights with the Instagram application. If you want to promote a particular post, you will have to go to your Instagram profile, and then tap on the ‘Promote’ option. The Promote option is available below the post’s image.

Also read: Instagram is testing some new shopping tags in post captions

After tapping on the Promote button, you will see details of the promotion including destination, target audience, your daily budget, and duration of the ad. The destination is the link where you want to send those users who tap on the ad. Once an advertiser has entered all the required information, they will have to tap on the ‘Next’ button. Then, click on the ‘Create Promotion’ button. At this point, Instagram will review your ad to make sure that it does not violate any of the platform’s advertising policies.

This process usually takes about an hour to complete, and once the promotion has been reviewed and approved by the platform, the promotion will go live.

Read next: Instagram May Soon Ask Users To Provide Their Government IDs To Combat Troll Accounts

These are the most (and least) internet friendly cities around the world (infographic)

London – the most internet-friendly

Dubai and the internet expense

The 5G bandwagon

Asian cities offering fastest download speed

Why Does Cryptocurrency Have Value?

Exchanges And Stores

Scarcity

Utility

Is It Worth Investing In?

LinkedIn Is Developing A New Design, And The Company Rolled Out Its Stories Feature For Users In Australia

Facebook Is Working On New Tabs And Filter Options For News Feed

The List Of Top Ten US Colleges That Apple, Facebook, And Google Hire From

Microsoft Makes Teams More Consumer Oriented By Adding Features for Personal Use

Apple Cracks Down on Loophole Exploiting Apps on Chinese App Store

To Tackle Online Child Sexual Abuse, TikTok Has Now Joined The WeProtect Global Alliance

Microsoft Will Shut Down Mixer On July 22, and The Company Will Move Users To Facebook Gaming

Apple Launched iOS 14 At WWDC 2020, Aims To Improve Siri and Provide Enhanced App Organization

Apple Is Introducing ‘Privacy Labels’ That Will Indicate How Much Data Your Applications Collect

Twitter Made The Right Decision To Start Labeling Misleading Content

Finteza: The Ultimate Bot-Tracking Tool to Determine the Authenticity of Traffic coming to your Website!

The Problem

Finteza - One-Stop Bot Catcher

Finteza as an Effective Bot-Identifying Tool

You better get used to the name ‘tracking beacons’ instead of Cookies

Types of Cookies

YouTube Introduces #CampYouTube, A Free Virtual Summer Camp For Children To Keep Children Engaged

Tech and social media: The felons of our loneliness

Cultural aspect

Loneliness – a business

Technology and personality – a history

Twitter Is Testing An Instagram-Inspired Feature To Sift Unwanted Messages

Users Are Finally Getting a Glimpse of What a Proper Dark Mode Might Look like on Google Maps

Facebook Is Discontinuing The Sales Of Its Cheapest VR Headset, Oculus Go

Brands And Creators Will Now Be Able To Run Ads On Instagram Without Having To Connect To A Facebook Ad Account