Author: Smart Megwai

Google Meet has added 360-degree virtual backgrounds for mobile users to use during video calls. This is on top of the library of immersive backgrounds that the service already has. This new feature, which uses your phone’s gyroscope to follow your movements, was announced by the company last month and…

YouTube is currently testing an update to its YouTube Studio app that will let users upload and manage podcasts. This is part of its continued expansion into the podcasting space, which the video service introduced last year.  We’re running an experiment that lets you create a podcast or set an…

Chipper Cash, an African platform for international payments, laid off another 12.5% of its workforce last Friday, just ten weeks after laying off the previous 12.5%. (affecting its engineering team the most). Chipper Cash’s VP of Engineering, Erin Fusaro, revealed that many of her close friends and colleagues in the…

WhatsApp has started rolling out picture-in-picture mode for iOS video calls. The new feature, first spotted by 9to5Mac, was introduced in December last year as a beta test and allows you to use other apps while your WhatsApp video call is on. Similar to other apps, WhatsApp will minimise your video call to a small window allowing…

Is this the Twitter 2.0 Elon Musk promised? The company seems to be developing in ways that nobody anticipated. Perhaps there is some underlying logic to their actions that we’re missing. Elon and his team’s most recent announcement says that users who are not also signed up for Twitter Blue will no…

Mark Zuckerberg, on Thursday, announced the launch of Instagram’s new broadcast channels, a move that can be seen as a copycat of an already existing feature on the Telegram app. Now, users who choose to subscribe to a channel can receive updates and messages from their favourite creators. Similar to Telegram Channels,…

Twitter CEO Elon Musk says he may resign by the end of 2023, a year after millions of Twitter users voted for him to resign, a poll he said he would honour. Musk said in a video uploaded to YouTube, “I need to stabilise the organization and just make sure…

Even though 5G is much easier to get to now than it was before, its performance and dependability will probably keep you on LTE for a while. There’s hope, though, with the new Snapdragon X75, the world’s first modem-RF system by Qualcomm. Snapdragon X75 has been tagged, “ready for 5G Advanced…

The National Bank of Rwanda has told all financial institutions in the country that they can’t do “any crypto-related activities” until a regulatory framework is put in place. The East African country has followed the examples of Zimbabwe and Nigeria by making it illegal for banks to handle transactions in…

Meta announced on Tuesday that it will shut down its live shopping feature on Instagram. The company, which made the announcement on its support page, noted that this move “will help us focus on products and features that provide the most value to our users.” So, beginning March 16th, creators…

Treepz, a leading mobility startup in Africa, has just announced the official launch of its operations in Kenya. This comes after the company made strategic investments to raise an additional $1.2 million over the past year. GIIG Africa Fund, MoAngels, Roselake VC, Unpopular VC, Goodwater Capital, and BKR Capital have…

YouTube has announced that Creator Music is now live. This is a new and easy way for creators who are part of the YouTube Partner Program to use music in their videos while still being able to make money. The online hub, which was first announced last September, provides a…

Tizeti, the first Internet service provider (ISP) in West Africa that runs on solar power, said today that it will cover ten more states in Nigeria with 4G LTE. This is part of its mission to help more people on the continent get online by making broadband connections more affordable,…

Opera is betting the company on AI, short for artificial intelligence. A new feature called “Shorten” will use ChatGPT to summarize articles and web pages. This is the first step in the company’s plan to add generative AI to its web browser. Once the feature is made available to the…

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is rumoured to be cutting even more jobs in the coming weeks. The Financial Times says that the tech giant has slowed down its operations because it plans to lay off more people. Meta will likely make the restructuring announcement in March, after it has finished…

Samsung is unrivaled when it comes to large devices—extraordinarily sized phones that can do it all. A dozen years ago, the company that brought the idea of a “phablet” to the forefront of popular culture has never given up on its lofty goals for the size of mobile devices. In…

Uber has introduced Apple’s CarPlay support to the iPhone, giving drivers the ability to control the app directly from the vehicle’s dashboard display. TechCrunch confirmed an email was sent by the ridesharing service, reporting that the feature is rolling out to drivers across United States and hopefully will be available…

Twitter has given more information about upcoming changes to its API that will require most developers to pay to keep using its developer tools. This comes one week after the microblogging site announced that it would be ending free API access. The company recently announced “a new form of free…

Twitter is rolling out the ability to write longer tweets to Twitter Blue subscribers. Towards the end of Wednesday, February 8th, the company made the announcement that Twitter Blue members in the US can now “type all the way up to 4,000 characters.” Twitter, however, expressed that longer Tweets could…

Besides Apple, Zoom has joined the list of other major tech companies that have been laying off staff recently. It is laying off about 15 percent of its workforce, or about 1,300 people. According to a note from CEO Eric Yuan to employees, the company tripled in size within two years…