chat apps
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Twitter buys would-be Slack competitor Quill
You may not have heard of messaging service Quill, but it was positioned as a Discord- or Slack-style app for team communications that tried to be less noisy and more structured. The platform only launched this past February, but today Twitter has announce it is purchasing Quill and shutting it down this weekend.
Microsoft Teams is ready for 'friends and family'
Microsoft Teams is well-known as a competitor to Slack for workplace communications, but almost a year ago the company announced it was also getting some features geared at using it with family or friends. After a long preview period, Microsoft is announcing that Teams is now available to anyone and free for personal use.
Self-destructing chat app Wickr uses cat pics to hide photos in plain sight
Doing its part to contribute to the feline takeover of the internet, the secure chat app Wickr is now relying on adorable kitties to protect your private photo posts. The company is pulling the wraps off a new self-destructing photo feed feature for iPhone users today -- dubbed "Wickr Timed Feed" -- which lets you share photos with up to 151 friends securely on its app for 24 hours. But what makes it truly unique is that you'll also be able to link to those photos on Facebook under the guise of cat pics. Yup, it's steganography via kitty. Your friends on Wickr browsing your Facebook feed will be able to click through those photos and find their way to your private post on the service, while everyone else will just see random cats. It's not exactly perfect security -- your non-Wickr friends will probably start wondering why you've gone a bit cat crazy -- but it's a unique way for a small app like Wickr to take advantage of Facebook's social media dominance.
