Author: Anderson Sawyer
Apple said today it is opening up its catalog to let users build mix sets by integrating the platform with a number of tools. These tools include Algoriddim’s djay Pro software, hardware platforms AlphaTheta, Serato, inMusic’s Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ. This will possibly attract DJs to explore Apple Music’s catalog of over 100 million songs and also give aspiring DJs an opportunity to play around with some of these tools. The company is also launching a new DJ with an Apple Music category page, which features DJ-friendly editorial playlists, curator pages highlighting DJ software and hardware partners, and mixes for inspiration or…
Character AI, the startup that lets users create and chat with different characters, is today rolling out new parental insights features to increase user safety. This is after a string of lawsuits and criticism against the company over failing to protect children from harm. The new features primarily give a summary of teens’ activity on the app to parents or guardians through a weekly email. In the email, the company shows the daily average time spent by the teens on the app and on the web, time spent on each character, and top characters teens interacted with during the week.…
In recent years, Meta has introduced many AI features and capabilities to its apps, even going so far as experimenting with AI-generated characters complete with unique profiles and personalities, before scraping them after they were deemed creepy and unnecessary. In yet another move that may not be received well among users, Meta wants to use AI to facilitate interactions between friends by helping them write comments on Instagram. X user Jonah Manzano, who often tests new social media features, spotted a “Write with Meta AI” prompt on Instagram that allows people to get AI-generated suggestions for comments to users’ posts.…
Google is rolling out a new Gmail update that is designed to help you find the email you’re looking for more quickly. The company announced on Thursday that it will now use AI to consider factors like recency, most-clicked emails, and frequent contacts when surfacing emails based on your search query. Up until now, Gmail has simply displayed emails in chronological order based on keywords. “With this update, the emails you’re looking for are far more likely to be at the top of your search results — saving you valuable time and helping you find important information more easily,” the…
Anthropic’s AI-powered chatbot, Claude, can now search the web — a capability that had long eluded it. Web search is available now in preview for paid Claude users in the U.S., Anthropic said in its blog, with support for free users and additional countries coming soon. Users can toggle on web search in their profile settings from the Claude web app, and Claude will automatically search across sites to inform certain responses. For now, web search only works with the latest Anthropic model powering Claude, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, Anthropic said. “When Claude incorporates information from the web into its responses,…
Meta’s social network Threads, an X competitor with more than 320 million monthly active users, is now rolling out new features related to topics, reply controls, and video playback in the app, among other things. It’s also making political content suggestions more personalized to the user, the company says. Combined, the features aim to make the app more relevant to users and keep them engaged with the network’s content, at a time when X is no longer Threads’ only competitor. Today, Meta faces the rise of alternative networks like Bluesky, which now has over 33 million users and a platform…
Social network Bluesky, an open source X rival, has made a change that will allow publishers to better track the referral traffic originating from posts on its platform. According to a comment from Bluesky employee Emily Liu, the company is now sending referral traffic through Bluesky’s “go” subdomain to make it easier for publishers to track when visitors to their site came by way of a link shared on the social network. When you click on a link shared on Bluesky, you’ll notice that it briefly displays as a “go.bsky.app” URL before landing you on the publisher’s own domain. This…
On Wednesday, Spotify launched a new personalized playlist designed to help listeners discover upcoming concerts in their area. The playlist, titled “Concerts Near You,” is updated every Wednesday with 30 songs from artists performing nearby, along with full event details and ticket links. Spotify partners with ticketing platforms like AXS, DICE, Eventbrite, and Ticketmaster. Like other personalized playlists on Spotify, such as “Daylist” and various “Mixes,” “Concerts Near You” is tailored to users’ listening habits, allowing them to discover artists they love. To receive the latest show updates, listeners should ensure they’re sharing their location through the “Live Events” section,…
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Over the last few years, developers have increasingly complained about paying fees to Apple or Google for App Store or Play Store distributions. App makers have often said that both companies make it difficult for them to earn money outside of their systems. New York-based app revenue management platform Adapty wants to change that with its new offering called FunnelFox, which helps acquire customers through websites or web apps. The idea behind FunnelFox is simple: It helps app makers create quizzes or experiences on the web to acquire or onboard customers. And once the customer pays, they get a link…