Google kills Talk so Hangouts may live

Google has a frankly absurd ecosystem of chat, messaging and texting apps. In theory, the company would like enterprise users to get on board with Hangouts while directing people to Allo for their day-to-day personal chats and texts. In practice, however, you’ve got Hangouts (in both Meet and Chat flavors) on desktop and mobile, Android Messages or Google Voice for texts and SMS messages, Google Talk living inside Gmail and no dedicated app for Allo on the desktop. Although we already knew Google was dropping texts messaging from Hangouts, the company also announced the end of Google Talk today, signaling the end of the little chat app’s 12-year lifespan.

Starting in the next few weeks, Gmail users who still use Google Talk will start getting alerts to switch to Hangouts, and after June 26th you’ll be dropped into Hangouts whether you like it or not. The old Google Talk app for Android will also stop functioning.

And speaking of messaging on Android, Google is trying to clean up that messy experience as well. Removing SMS messaging from Hangouts was the first step in that process, and those messages will be completely turned off starting on May 22. For your texting needs, Google is now directing users to its new Android Messages app, which will be getting additional features like read receipts, group chat and hi-res photo sharing. The changes do not, however, affect anyone using Hangouts as their SMS messaging app for Google Voice or Project Fi.

Finally, in some related housekeeping news for Google’s various messaging platforms: Google+ functionality will also be disappearing from Gmail in the next month or so, and a few experimental Gmail Labs items are getting rolled into official Gmail Add-ons.

Source: G Suite Blog

Facebook tests GIFs in comments like it’s 1995

It’s time for Facebook to fully embrace the animated GIF. The social network is about to start testing the ability to add GIFs to comments and your feed will never be the same.

This isn’t the first foray into animated GIFs for Facebook, of course — it’s been possible to use them as posts since 2015. Letting users comment on posts with this hot form of visual expression just shows how ubiquitous they have become. Love them or hate them, animated GIFs are everywhere, showing up in major messaging platforms like Apple’s Messages and Facebook’s Messenger. Heck, even Twitter has them, letting users of the short-text service express themselves in looping animations instead of just letters, numbers and emojis.

“Everyone loves a good GIF and we know that people want to be able to use them in comments,” a Facebook spokesperson told Engadget in an email. “So we’re about to start testing the ability to add GIFs to comments and we’ll share more when we can, but for now we repeat that this is just a test.”

Facebook should begin testing comment GIFs next week with a small percentage of users. It will work similarly to the way GIFs work in Messenger right now, with some sort of search interface. Whether it rolls out more broadly to everyone at some point will of course depend on how well the test goes. If you’re one of the lucky few that gets the ability to comment with GIFs, though, we may blame you when they take over all of Facebook.

Via: TechCrunch

Tesla starts taking solar roof orders next month

Compared to successfully launching a private rocketry business and an electric vehicle brand, Elon Musk’s quest to line your roof with solar cells is a less flashy endeavor. He pitched it last August as Tesla’s preamble in its eventually successful attempt to acquire SolarCity, a part of his greater goal to wean society off fossil fuel dependence. We haven’t heard much else about it since. But in typical fashion for his announcements — that is, in a tweet responding to a random question — Musk told the world that folks can start placing orders for solar roofs in April.

@HolsMichael Start taking orders in April

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2017

It’s still unclear exactly how much they’ll cost or when the orders will be delivered. Musk did mention in an investor call back in October that a full set of power-generating tiles would likely cost less than a roof made of shingles, but we’re still in the dark about, well, everything else.

Via: VentureBeat

Google app test makes editing photos more social

Right on the heels of killing off Google Talk, the company has admitted it’s working on a new app for group photo editing and sharing. While Google already has the chat app Allo and video calling app Duo, it may be feeling pressure from its competitors’ similar offerings. Facebook has a similar social photo sharing app called Moments, for example, while Apple just announced its AI-powered movie editing app, Clips.

In an email, a Google spokesperson told Engadget that this is an experiment — just one of many that the company runs at any given time and that there are currently no plans to launch.

According to TechCrunch, the new app will allow a group of friends to edit photos together and then organize them to look at later. This potential app sounds a lot like Moments with added editing features, as users will be able to create groups to share and edit their photos collaboratively. TechCrunch’s sources believe that the app would also bring Google’s image search ability, which would let you identify objects in photos for future searches within the app.

Google seems to be trying the “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” approach to its social media strategy. If more people are indeed using social apps like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat instead of searching the web, Google needs to find a way to keep people engaged in its own mobile ecosystem.

Via: TechCrunch

Netflix thinks people still like Adam Sandler movies

Adam Sandler’s recent output has been… well, it’s probably best not to talk about it. Regardless of how you feel about his work, Netflix and its viewers seem to be fans and as such the streaming juggernaut has inked another four-movie deal with the Saturday Night Live alum. The first, romantic comedy Sandy Wexler, debuts April 14th and stars Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson, and Sandler’s usual suspects: Kevin James, Terry Crews, Nick Swardson and Rob Schneider among others.

Netflix says it’s set in ’90s Los Angeles, but aside from that, details are scarce. Same goes for anything regarding the other three movies. But, maybe that lack of information is a good thing. Who knows, Sandler could surprise the cynics with another Punch-Drunk Love, Reign Over Me or Funny People. Stranger things have happened — especially on Netflix.

Source: Netflix