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Twitter now lets you change who can reply to your tweets
Twitter now lets you change who can reply to your tweets even after you've already sent it out.
Twitter tests status updates and ‘ice breaker’ tweets
Last month, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that one of his company's goals is to "increase the health of public conversation" on its platform. And it's a talking point Twitter has come back to throughout the year. In March, it reached out to experts for ideas on how to promote healthy, open and civil conversations online and in September, the company sought feedback on a proposed policy that would ban dehumanizing speech. Now, the company is testing a handful of new features aimed at encouraging users to talk to each other.
Google ends its Reply smart notification experiment for Android
Google's experiment with smart notification responses is winding down... although this won't be the last you hear of it. The company's Area 120 team has ended the Android test after roughly 10 months, noting that the work "will live on in other Google products." You can still use Reply for a few months more, but you could encounter glitches or less-than-ideal suggestions. Not that there's much reason to break out the tissues -- you can already see some of the benefits.
Google team will bring Smart Replies to more chat apps
If you've wanted to use Google's canned Smart Replies in chat apps, you've been limited to using Allo or (if you're on the right carrier) Android Messages. But what if you're one of the many, many people using something else? Don't fret: Google's experimental Area 120 group is working on a Reply project that, as the name implies, will bring Smart Replies to many messaging clients (currently just for Android). Hangouts is logically on the list, but so are third-party apps like Facebook Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp and even Twitter's direct messages. You'd only have to tap a button in your notifications to confirm that you're on your way or say you're doing well.
Android Wear 2.0 uses offline AI for its smart replies
One of the new features on Android Wear 2.0 is Smart Reply, which suggests responses to messages that you can quickly tap if you're busy doing something else. In its research blog, Google explained that the feature uses on-device machine intelligence, so it works even if you don't have an internet cloud connection. While the researchers initially thought doing that would be impossible, the "Expander" AI team saw it as a unique opportunity.
Twitter accidentally killed @ names in replies on iOS today
If you use the official Twitter iOS app, you may have noticed something missing today: @username handles in replies. I wasn't a fan of the reworked style when it popped up on my Android device recently, and neither were many of the people affected by the change today. The one upside however, was that since @names no longer applied to the character count, some users created a massive "Twitter canoe" mentioning everyone they could. Anyway, it has now reverted back to normal for all users, and in a tweet, the company explained: "an experiment around replies accidentally went out to everyone on iOS briefly."
Twitter conversations now have their own pop-up window
If you participate in Twitter conversations with multiple accounts, you know that once you get past seven replies it can be difficult to keep track of the chat and your dynamic timeline. Today Twitter introduced pop-out conversations. Click on "view conversation" on a tweet on Twitter.com and the thread will appear in its entirety floating above the timeline.
Twitter @ reply's original creator uncovered, did it before it was cool
The @ reply has long been cited as an example of Twitter's organic growth, having birthed from its users rather than a San Francisco office -- but who really started it? After some in-depth sleuthing, early adopter Garrett Murray now credits the ad hoc invention to Robert Andersen, who gave kudos to an especially dedicated (and injured) compatriot on November 2, 2006. The origin day most accept as part of the common legend, November 23rd that same year, was more of a happy accident where Murray and others decided to use the now famous shift-2 keypress to clear up their conversation paths. When you see the @ reply front and center in modern Twitter apps, then, raise a glass to Andersen's unintentionally avant garde microblogging.
Google Play lets top devs reply to user reviews, smack down trolls
Are you an Android developer with an app in Google Play? Do you have a Top Developer badge? Well rejoice, because starting right now Google will let select developers reply to user reviews right from the safety, warmth and comfort of the Android Developer Console -- perfect for when you need to put the smackdown on those undeserving trolls give feedback to your beloved customers or share information about a new feature. Users are then notified by email about replies to a review and have the option to contact the developer directly. "Google continues to make investments in Google Play and we are excited to engage with our users through this new feature" said Autumn Brown, Android Account Director at EA. Google plans to extend the functionality to additional developers in the future. Isn't dialogue wonderful? Screenshot and PR after the break.
Windows Phone users report Microsoft Outlook e-mail issues with 7.5 Mango
The Windows Phones forums are aflutter with frustration this morning, with many users citing major problems with the way 7.5 Mango handles Microsoft Outlook 2003. According to these missives, replies sent from Mango-laced handsets do not include the original e-mail text, thereby leaving recipients confused and context-less. This could potentially give rise to some very awkward e-mail exchanges, so we're hoping to see a fix soon. If you're experiencing similar issues with your handset, let us know in the comments below. [Thanks, Doug]
Mac 101: In Mail.app, reply with selected text
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for the novice Mac user. I've been using the Mail app in Mac OS X for a good four or five years now. I thought I pretty much knew most of how to use it, but today I've been pleasantly surprised. I've just stumbled across a nifty little feature that I hadn't known about before, and it's going to make a small, but significant improvement to the way I do email in Mail app. In replying to an email in Mail.app, when you hit the reply button all the text from that email is inserted into the reply message (like all other email clients). However, having just been sifting through a rather complex message & trying to decipher a few key areas, I selected a specific portion of text to copy and insert into the reply message to illustrate and help clarify a few points. This is a practice I usually follow, but in haste, I selected the text I wanted to copy before I'd created the reply message. When I hit the reply button, I suddenly realized that I had a reply message with only the selected text from the previous mail present. If you select text in Mail.app and then hit the reply button, Mail.app will automatically insert the selected text into the reply message whilst leaving everything else behind. This is useful if you want to quote a specific piece of text in a reply message, but not make the recipient trawl through the previous conversations to get there (and it saves you cutting and pasting the text, too). I'm sure this is quite obvious to veteran Mac users, but that's why this is a Mac 101; for new Mac users, and those slightly less proficient with email, it's a little tip to make your email experience that much more pleasant. Let us know if you have any helpful tips for using Mail.app in the comments below.
Why too many currencies actually helps progression
Badges of Justice, Battleground marks, Marks of Honor Hold and Thrallmar, Spirit Shards, Stone Keeper's Shards, Emblems of Valor, Emblems of Heroism, and now Emblems of Conquest: Ulduar will add yet another currency item into the game and Cypruss of Draka wonders, rightfully, if it's all just too much. The good news is that since the currency system was introduced, all of this stuff is out of our bags, but wouldn't it just be easier if instead of creating a whole new token system, Blizzard just charged a lot more for the gear?Bornakk says no -- he says that if they just kept the same tokens and charged more per item, people would end up doing Naxx, Ulduar, OS, and any other instances that dropped that token every single week rather than actually moving up through the content, which is what Blizzard wants us to do. He also says that the Emblem exchange mechanic is designed to help this -- you can do Ulduar and go backwards for the gear, but you can't do Naxx ten extra times to get Ulduar gear.Which, we have to give it to Blizzard, is actually pretty smart. Yes, it does keep players from farming up the tokens (Blizzard knows that if you could run all the instances per week just to get one kind of token, there'd be lots of players who would), but it also keeps people progressing to get gear they can upgrade to. As Bornakk says, they've been trying to improve the Badge system ever since it was introduced in BC, and this method of introducing new currency to send players up the ladder is a result of their work there.
Second Life "Wonderland" scandal hits mainstream media
UK media outlets are blowing up with stories of "Wonderland", a virtual playground in Second Life where Ageplay is the go. Sister-site Second Life Insider has been following the various stages of this story over the last day, including its growing coverage by mainstream press and the reply from SL developers Linden Lab.For those who need a little background, Ageplay is when an adult roleplays a child. This need not be for sexual purposes, but to use the quote from SL Insider of Sky News reporter Jason Farrell, "Wonderland is a virtual children's playground where paedophiles cruise and kids are solicited." Even though there probably aren't real children controlling the characters, it is still an offensive community for others within SL, and a Kid Avs community representative has already spoken out about it. It is also something that SL fans wouldn't want to be mistakenly associated with -- now that it has hit the mainstream, it may be one of the first things that people remember about Second Life, akin to "Oh, wasn't that the computer game for pedophiles?".The response Linden Lab provided to SL Insider essentially says that they have found no wrongdoing after investigating the Wonderland community. I'm not sure how well the rest of the media will take this answer. Provided below is a link to SL Insider's on-going coverage of this story as it develops.
TUAW Tip: keep a Mail.app message open when replying
Today's tip involves a Mail.app hint I found that I thought was just too handy not to mention. If you use Mail.app and you open some messages in their own window, you might have noticed that if you hit reply, the original message disappears in favor of your new message composition window. Understandably, this is a source of frustration for many a user.Fortunately, Rob Griffiths over at Macworld has discovered a simple way around this: hold the option key when hitting Reply, Reply All or Forward, and the original message will stay put while a new, separate composition window opens. This makes it a little easier to refer back to the original message, especially if it's lengthy.This works on Tiger's Mail.app, but I don't have any older versions of Mac OS X to verify this on. Feel free to sound off in the comments if you've tested this on Panther or even Jaguar. My one complaint about this trick: it doesn't seem to work if you use the keyboard shortcut for Reply. Holding option when hitting cmd - r results in that Funk/hault sound, informing me that the shortcut is a no-go. Either way, this should still be a handy trick for you chronic Repliers using Mail.app.[via Hawk Wings]
