VSCO, a popular photo editing app (and Gen Z meme), is continuing to shift its focus to video. Last month, the company finally gave its creators the ability to publish their video edits to the VSCO feed alongside their photos. And today VSCO is rolling out a more powerful and complex video editing tool called Montage.
Already, VSCO allowed users to apply photo-like edits to their videos by doing things like applying filters or adjusting the exposure, for example. But Montage is an entirely different sort of video editing experience. Now, users will be able to tell longer video stories involving scenes, where they can even stack and layer one or more videos, photos, colors, and shapes in order to create a collage-like finished product, VSCO explains.
The new feature is available from VSCO Studio, which is where all VSCO projects begin. To get started, users will pick an aspect ratio (e.g. square, landscape, portrait) as the canvas, then begin adding their multiple photos and videos from their Camera Roll to create their scenes.
As you create your “Montage,” you can also adjust the opacity of the images you add in the various layers, VSCO notes. There’s no limit to the number of scenes you add to the video, but only videos two minutes or less can be posted to the VSCO feed. The end results can also be shared outside Vimeo, if you choose.
VSCO’s investments in video come at a time when the company has seen video editing double, reflecting the younger generation’s increasing interest in video-sharing across social media, as with Instagram Stories or newly popular apps like TikTok and Byte.
Last year, VSCO signaled its intention to shift more of its energy into video when it acquired the video technology company Rylo.
The app’s new video features, including Montage, are intended to help VSCO grow its paying subscriber base. In December, VSCO said it was on pace to surpass 4 million paying users sometime in 2020 and was approaching $80 million in annual revenue, thanks to the app’s $19.99 annual subscription. In total, VSCO sees more than 20 million active users per week, 2+ million who are paying members.
Free VSCO users will be able to play with Montage, but to save and post a finished video, you’ll need to subscribe. Montage rolls out on iOS and Android, starting today.
Tilting Point announced this morning that it has acquired Star Trek Timelines, a free-to-play character collection game, from the game’s developer Disruptor Beam. It’s also hired Disruptor Beam team members to create a new studio, Wicked Realm Games.
This follows Disruptor Beam‘s shuttering of its other titles, Game of Thrones Ascent and The Walking Dead: March to War. Moving forward, the company says it will be focused on its Disruptor Engine tools for mobile game development and operations.
Tilting Point, meanwhile, had previously acquired the game Languinis and the monetization startup Gondola, but President Samir El Agili told me that this is the first time the company has acquired both a game and the development team behind it. CEO Kevin Segalla described this as an extension of Tilting Point’s “progressive publishing” model, where the company first works with developers on user acquisition, then develops a deeper business relationship over time.
In fact, Timelines — which Tilting Point says has been downloaded 8 million times and earned over $100 million — was one of the first games supported by the company’s user acquisition fund. And through those efforts, the Tilting Point team came to believe that there’s still plenty of opportunity for growth.
“We spent a good amount of time over the past year-and-a-half to two years helping the team scale the game to success, helping them bring a user to the game using our ability to do user acquisition, as well as improving the game itself in terms of our operations,” El Agili said. “What we have seen over this time is that Star Trek Timelines is a very impressive game, its users are very sticky.”
He noted that Tilting Point is increasing the size of the team working on Timelines from nine at Disruptor Beam to 19 at Wicked Realm Games, which will be led by Disruptor Beam’s former CTO David Cham.
The studio, El Agili said, will be “100 percent integrated from a financial standpoint, but they’re still going to be very independent way in the way they operate.” And while Wicked Realm will be focused on Timelines for the near future, there are “more ideas that we can build with them.”
Segalla also said that as a result of the deal, Tilting Point is essentially becoming the first Disruptor Engine customer.
“Tilting Point has been a great partner to us and have proven that they care about the game and its community and there’s no one better to take Star Trek Timelines to the next level,” said Disruptor Beam CEO Jon Radoff in a statement. “We are also excited that Tilting Point will be one of our first live customers for our live-ops technology and that we will be continuing our working relationship.”
Bookshlf has created a new way for people to recommend media — whether it’s music, videos, articles, podcasts or even tweets — to their friends and to the rest of the world.
The New York-based startup is officially launching its web and iOS app this week and announcing that David A. Steinberg, co-founder and CEO of marketing company Zeta Global, has signed on as both an investor and advisor.
The big emphasis here is curation. It’s a word that comes up a lot in the media industry, but President Andrew Boggs — who previously worked in business development at Zeta, then founded Bookshlf with Mike Abend and Justin Cadelago — argued that the major internet platforms aren’t actually designed for real curation.
“A lot of the legacy platforms have focused on quantity over quality,” Boggs said. “There’s also the nature of things being really fleeting there … For example, if you are sharing stuff about music, I have to sift through your feed to find that information.”
It sounds like this idea resonated with Steinberg, who argued, “The big social media platforms do not make a living by building small groups of very interesting people. They think, ‘How do we get as much volume as possible?'”
In Bookshlf, on the other hand, users can organize their recommendations into different “shelves” based on topic, and then easily add links using the iOS Share menu (or by just adding them directly in the app). You can also share links to your shelves via social media.
Boggs, for example, has shelves tied to topics like electronic music, humor, tech/media news and even the best burgers in New York. Steinberg, meanwhile, said, “I don’t believe people primarily go to Facebook or Instagram to consume business information,” so it’s not surprising his shelves are focused on artificial intelligence, DARPA and Zeta itself.
The paradigm of a shelf of content might seem a little quaint — Boggs compared it to the shelves of DVDs or albums that you might have shown off in the past. But in his view, the model makes sense for these kinds of recommendations, because it allows people to focus on what they’re actually interested in: “Because the shelves are a curated selection, you can jump to your profile, and if you have a music shelf, I can jump right into that.”
While it remains to be seen how people will actually use Bookshlf, Boggs said there’s a likely to be a minority of core users who are doing the most active curation and sharing. These are the kinds of people who are probably already doing a lot of sharing — whether that’s on social media or just over a group chat — and “love to send you interesting articles and interesting podcasts.” At the same time, other users will simply browse the app for interesting recommendations, and they can also use the shelves to save links for themselves.
It sounds like the Bookshlf team isn’t focused on monetization yet, but Boggs suggested that there are a number of interesting opportunities, including targeted advertising, sponsored shelves, micropayments for content and selling data about broader trends in the audience interest.
In addition to Steinberg, Bookshlf has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CAIVIS Acquisition Corp, Dalton Partners and Cambridge Way Ventures.
Bookshlf has created a new way for people to recommend media — whether it’s music, videos, articles, podcasts or even tweets — to their friends and to the rest of the world.
The New York-based startup is officially launching its web and iOS app this week and announcing that David A. Steinberg, co-founder and CEO of marketing company Zeta Global, has signed on as both an investor and advisor.
The big emphasis here is curation. It’s a word that comes up a lot in the media industry, but President Andrew Boggs — who previously worked in business development at zeta, then founded Bookshlf with Mike Abend and Justin Cadelago — argued that the major internet platforms aren’t actually designed for real curation.
“A lot of the legacy platforms have focused on quantity over quality,” Boggs said. “There’s also the nature of things being really fleeting there … For example, if you are sharing stuff about music, I have to sift through your feed to find that information.”
It sounds like this idea resonated with Steinberg, who argued, “The big social media platforms do not make a living by building small groups of very interesting people. They think, ‘How do we get as much volume as possible?'”
In Bookshlf, on the other hand, users can organize their recommendations into different “shelves” based on topic, and then easily add links using the iOS Share menu (or by just adding them directly in the app). You can also share links to your shelves via social media.
Boggs, for example, has shelves tied to topics like electronic music, humor, tech/media news and even the best burgers in New York. Steinberg, meanwhile, said, “I don’t believe people primarily go to Facebook or Instagram to consume business information,” so it’s not surprising his shelves are focused on artificial intelligence, DARPA and Zeta itself.
The paradigm of a shelf of content might seem a little quaint — Boggs compared it to the shelves of DVDs or albums that you might have shown off in the past. But in his view, the model makes sense for these kinds of recommendations, because it allows people to focus on what they’re actually interested in: “Because the shelves are a curated selection, you can jump to your profile, and if you have a music shelf, I can jump right into that.”
While it remains to be seen how people will actually use Bookshlf, Boggs said there’s a likely to be a minority of core users who are doing the most active curation and sharing. These are the kinds of people who are probably already doing a lot of sharing — whether that’s on social media or just over a group chat — and “love to send you interesting articles and interesting podcasts.” At the same time, other users will simply browse the app for interesting recommendations, and they can also use the shelves to save links for themselves.
It sounds like the Bookshlf team isn’t focused on monetization yet, but Boggs suggested that there are a number of interesting opportunities, including targeted advertising, sponsored shelves, micropayments for content and selling data about broader trends in the audience interest.
In addition to Steinberg, Bookshlf has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from CAIVIS Acquisition Corp, Dalton Partners and Cambridge Way Ventures.
TikTok, the hugely popular social media app, found a lot of early traction by giving users a way to create funny lip-synced versions of clips from well-known songs and then share them with friends (its predecessor in the West was even called Musically). Now at long last, TikTok’s owner, China’s ByteDance, is doubling down on the music connection with the release of its first standalone full music streaming app, starting first in India.
Today, the company is launching Resso, which describes itself as a “social music streaming app”: users are encouraged to share lyrics, comments and other user-generated content with each other, alongside full-length tracks of music that they can consume and also share with others. And the music begins to auto-play as soon as you open the app.
Resso is not disclosing how many tracks are on the service at launch, but it notes that it has secured licensing deals with Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, Merlin and Beggars Group, as well as big publishers specifically in the Indian market, including T-Series, Saregama, Zee Music, YRF Music, Times Music, Tips, Venus and Shemaroo, as well as Speed Records, Anand Audio, Lahiri Music, Divo and Muzik 247.
You might have clocked one notable holdout in that list: Universal Music, one of the “big three” global music publishers. Resso would not comment on why it has yet to ink a deal with Universal, but it’s notable that one of biggest investors in the music company is Tencent — an arch competitor to ByteDance in China that took a 10% stake in Universal at the end of last year that is valued at around $3.4 billion.
Unlike its sister app TikTok, which is free to use and is built on an ad-based model, Resso is following the freemium route that a number of other big music apps, such as Spotify, have taken. A free tier includes ads and limits streaming quality to 128 Kbps; a premium, ad-free tier boosts streaming to 256 Kbps, includes downloads and the ability to skip tracks and costs INR 99/month ($1.35/month) on Android and INR 119/month ($1.62) on iOS. Resso is not commenting on why the iOS price is higher.
The launch comes about two months after Resso opened up for testing in two markets, India and Indonesia (it remains in test mode in the latter). The choice to focus first on India was to tap into the country’s massive, youthful population of mobile users.
“India has the largest population of GenZ as compared to any other country globally,” Hari Nair, Head of Music Content & Partnership, Resso India, told TechCrunch. “With the core of Resso’s target audience being GenZ, it is only logical for Resso to make its debut in India. We will discuss additional markets when appropriate.”
Resso’s Nair at a briefing with media in New Delhi
TikTok is already huge in India — around 200 million users as of last October and expects to add another 100 million this year. But even without a clear TikTok connection — the app is published by “Moon Video” on Google Play, for example, and there are no obvious pushes to prioritise TikTok shares on the app — the test version has already seen some traction.
Resso has been installed by approximately 1 million App Store and Google Play users to date in India and Indonesia, research firm SensorTower told TechCrunch, with 600,000 of these installs in India, and 400,000 in Indonesia.
“All our marketing efforts are focused towards building a strong community of passionate music fans,” Nair said. “The idea is to have a digital first approach where in we identify the right set of audience groups and reach out to them.”
The market for music streaming is very competitive in India — where Resso will compete against not just Spotify, but Gaana, JioSaavn, Apple Music and YouTube Music, among others. Even so, partly because of the success of TikTok, Resso was highly anticipated. It comes after months of rumors stretching back almost a year, as well as a number of music licensing deals to expand the catalog — critical not just for Resso itself but for sister app TikTok, whose existing deals last year approached expiration.
While a lot of the currently streaming services in India offer near identical catalogs, Resso is banking on its ability to convince users to “express and engage.”
The app, by default, rolls somewhat relevant videos in the background whenever a song is playing. Users can comment and also read lyrics of songs. Resso’s user interface is designed to persuade users to share lyrics directly on other platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and of course, TikTok.
And alongside more social features wrapped around the music listening experience, Resso’s other differentiating feature is to push genre-based discovery more prominently, organising its music library by names that it says “address the tastes of today’s generation of music enthusiasts,” such as alternative, experimental, fusion, post rock and indie rock as well as more specific categories like popgaze, bow pop (I had to look this one up), indie psych pop and ambient.
As with services like Spotify aiming to build features also for artists in a two-sided marketplace, Resso is also dabbling in this area, noting that it “empowers artists to reinvent their catalog by providing a fresh way for fans to engage with their music and introduces them to new listeners.”
On the flip side, ByteDance may soon find out just how difficult it is to get Indians to pay for content. Resso’s pricing in India is in line with those of Apple Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Times Internet-owned Gaana, and Reliance Jio’s JioSaavn.
Jayanth Kolla, chief analyst at research firm Convergence Catalyst, said there still is a big room for growth for music streaming services in India. “More than half of internet users in the country are yet to join this bandwagon,” he said.
But none of these services have made significant inroads in their search for paying subscribers. Bloomberg reported in December that YouTube Music / Premium, had amassed over 800,000 subscribers in India, more than any other music streaming service.
And on top of this, according to one estimate, there is not a ton of money to be made in India currently. According to research firm Statista, music streaming services in India will clock about $244 million in revenue this year, compared to the much mature U.S. market, where they are estimated to generate $4.5 billion this year
If you’re looking for a pair of true wireless in-ear headphones, you will have noticed that there are a wealth of choices available. This can make choosing the right pair for your needs (and your wallet) a daunting task.
Whether you’re buying your first pair or upgrading, there are several things to consider before you splash the cash. We have put together a guide to help you make the right choice, covering everything from comfort to sound quality.
If you listen to a lot of music, then comfort while you do so is important. How your wireless headphones sit within your ear is going to have an effect on how you enjoy your listening experience. Poorly fitting headphones, be they too tight or too loose, are not going to make for a pleasant listening session.
It is important that the headphones that you choose come with a range of customizable options. If you have several size ear-tips included in the box, then you’re off to a good start. You can maximize your comfort by swapping out the ear tips to suit the size of your ear canal. This means they won’t put too much pressure on the inside of your ear as you listen.
Some wireless in-ear headphones also come with a securing loop. They can take several forms. For example, the Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro earbuds come with several pairs of “ear wings”. This is essentially a rubber loop that sits behind the folds in your outer ear. These need to be comfortable too; you need to be able to customize the size of securing loops, so this is also a consideration.
A great pair of in-ear headphones is likely to be a fairly sizeable investment. With this in mind, you aren’t going to want your headphones diving for the nearest puddle with every minor turn of your head. The “ear wings” we mentioned earlier assist with keeping your headphones in place—and so do the ear-tips.
A secure fit may also be provided by ear hooks. Instead of sitting inside the folds of the ear, these loop over the top, keeping them in position. The Powerbeats Pro in-ear headphones boast this feature; good job, given the $249.99 price-tag Dre has whacked on them! The hooks with these headphones are adjustable too, for maximum comfort.
You can eliminate the security issue another way. If you plump for a pair of Apple’s Airpod Pro headphones, then MinusK offers a strap to make your wireless headphones, erm, wired…
Without the benefit of a wire to deliver power, wireless headphones need to power themselves. Each headphone does this by packing its own rechargeable battery. You’ll want to use the headphones for prolonged periods of time, so battery life is a factor. Fortunately, most true wireless headphones come with a carry case that, more often than not, also charges them.
The advantage of a charging case is that even long journeys or extended use isn’t a significant problem. Lypertek’s Tevi ear-buds boast an astounding 70-hour battery life with the case. You won’t need to worry about the battery fizzing out if you’re about to jet off on a long-haul flight if you’re rocking a pair of these. You’ll probably get the return journey out of them, too!
Lypertek Tevi True Wireless Earbuds Lypertek Tevi True Wireless Earbuds Buy Now On Amazon $89.90Even without a case, though, you want to get plenty of juice out of your fully charged headphones. Apple’s Airpod Pro, for example, store up to five hours of energy in the on-board battery. Sennheiser’s Momentum headphones offer a meager four hours of playback. If you have some prolonged headphone use ahead, consider something with a little more gas in the tank. The Klipsch T5 headphones offer a whopping eight hours of battery life.
When you’re listening to music, you don’t want external noise interrupting your favorite track. Other people’s conversation, traffic noise, and many other sources of sound can spoil your listening experience. This is why noise cancellation is important. With this feature, your headphones will filter out any background sound. This will leave you with much better quality audio that isn’t muddied by the sound in your immediate environment.
Similarly, if you want to take a call, you don’t want to only be hearing half of the conversation—that’s no use to anybody. Noise cancellation ensures that you can hear exactly what your conversation partner is saying, and vice-versa. Very important when it comes to ordering in your favorite takeaway food! The Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro earbuds offer a noise-canceling feature, thanks to the built-in mics and Qualcomm tech.
Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro True Wireless Earbuds Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro True Wireless Earbuds Buy Now On Amazon $129.99
This is a pretty obvious one, right? Well, you would think so, but a lot of people are led astray by a lower price tag. While it isn’t always the case, investing more cash in your headphones will ensure that you receive great sound in return. Never buy a pair of headphones just because Travis Scott prints his signature on the side.
One tell-tale sound-quality give away is the size of the drivers the housing contains. You will generally find the size of the drivers (in millimeters) within the specifications of the headphones you are looking at. A bigger driver delivers a nice, fat bass sound, which shouldn’t sound muffled or—worse still—non-existent.
The term frequency response should also feature in any specs. The frequency response refers to the range of frequencies that the headphones can deliver. Most headphones operate at a range of 20Hz to 20kHz, which just so happens to be what the average human ear is capable of hearing. This doesn’t necessarily denote high-quality sound, but it can help you. If you struggle to hear certain frequencies, a pair of headphones that boosts those frequencies will deliver a more balanced sound to your ear.
Sound Pressure Level is another factor to be wary of. The value you see next to the SPL is a great indication of the volume your headphones can reach. It stands to reason that “the louder the better” is not a plus-point when buying headphones. However, you do want to be able to actually hear the music, so opt for something that sits around the 85-90dB mark and you shouldn’t have any volume problems.
Finally, distortion. A specification sheet will list this as THD, or Total Harmonic Distortion. This is basically the value given to the level of distortion in relation to the volume. A value of anything less than 1% will be perfect for listening to music and watching movies. This means that a sudden volume increase, an explosion in a movie, for example, won’t result in the overall sound being distorted.
Modern in-ear headphones come with plenty of additional features that can improve the quality of the sound you hear. Apps containing equalizers can allow you to customize the sound to your own ears; let’s face it, nobody hears anything the same as the next person.
If you’re stuck on what headphones are best for your needs, at a price that suits you, then check out our guide to the best wireless headphones for any budget.
Read the full article: Buying True Wireless In-Ear Headphones? 5 Features You’ll Want
Facebook has released a new version of the Messenger app, and it’s both smaller to download and faster to load. The social network has managed this feat by rebuilding Messenger from the ground up, simplifying the app in an effort called Project LightSpeed.
Facebook detailed the new Messenger in a post on Facebook Newsroom. The company admits that due to the demands for more features, since its launch in 2011, Messenger became “harder to navigate and the architecture became increasingly complex.”
This inspired Facebook to redesign Messenger from the ground up. This began after the release of Messenger 4, and the new Messenger app is now available on iOS. The app is one-quarter of its original size, and will, according to Facebook, load twice as fast.
The three principles of the new Messenger are that it’s faster, smaller, and simpler. The speed will make a huge difference to people who open Messenger multiple times a day, while the smaller size of the app will help people who use older devices.
Introducing a Faster, Smaller and Simpler Messenger https://t.co/QrLM1QCZ85 pic.twitter.com/yhagtXzcAS
— Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 2, 2020
Simplifying Messenger will help all users. The core code has been reduced by 84 percent, dropping from 1.7 million lines to 360,000 lines. This does mean some features will be temporarily unavailable, but Facebook promises to bring them back in future updates.
Those who want to delve deeper into the inner workings of the new Messenger should read this post on Facebook Engineering. The new Messenger should be available via an update over the next couple of weeks. There’s no word yet on a new version for Android.
The new Messenger is smaller, faster, and much simpler to use. All of which are positives for an app that was previously bloated, slow to load, and unnecessarily busy. Let’s just hope Facebook can resist bringing back the bloat in future updates.
This is the first stage in Facebook’s ambitious plan to merge Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The idea is to allow Facebook’s three big apps operate in the same space together. Which would be difficult without rebuilding them from the ground up.
Read the full article: The New Facebook Messenger Is Smaller and Faster
Libra is poised to transform how people transact with each other, on a daily basis and across the planet.
For most of 2019, Facebook’s Libra project dominated the headlines in the cryptocurrency world. While it may seem like just another project by a tech giant, Libra promises to have major implications at the global level.
This is the first time a technology company like Facebook has entered the financial sector. We’re talking about a field that hasn’t really evolved in the last 20 years, has had no real competition, and has been dominated by big banks for decades. Also, Facebook has the resources, know-how, and the political muscle to succeed. Understandably, therefore, the announcement of the Libra project by Facebook has left everyone worried.
The aim of this guide is to provide an educated guess about the potential effect of the Libra project on the global payments ecosystem.
Click here to download “Libra Explained In Simple Terms”
Read the full article: Free Ebook: Libra Explained in Simple Terms
Should you be using Facebook Lite on your smartphone to save data and battery power? And what can you do with an old router? This week’s show also looks at some new smartphone ranges from Sony and Samsung, while giving you tips on the best two-player mobile games to play. Plus we’ve got some great recommendations.
This week’s news highlights:
Our recommendations:
These techy tips and tricks might change your life:
We also take a look at these awesome giveaways and reviews:
Leave us a rating or review on iTunes for a mention on next week’s show. It will also help us reach more listeners! Find something useful in the show? Share the Really Useful Podcast with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.
So you don’t miss a show, subscribe for notifications:
See you next week!
Read the full article: Switch to Facebook Lite, Reuse an Old Router, Samsung Galaxy S20 Latest
Ah, teenagers and Snapchat; can you name a more iconic duo? Wait, we’ve got one. Teenagers and finding novel ways to use Snapchat on school Wi-Fi!
As you’d expect, most IT departments block access to services like Snapchat and Instagram at school. After all, there’s not much that Snapchat can teach you about trigonometry or the American Civil War.
So, if you want to unblock apps on school Wi-Fi, keep reading.
Before we dive into how to use Snapchat on school Wi-Fi networks or unblock Instagram on school computers, a word of warning…
Many schools have strict policies in place regarding their internal Wi-Fi networks and the devices they’ve issued to students. If you are found to have breached the rules, you could put yourself at risk of being suspended, or worse, expelled.
Check with your organization before attempting to follow any of the recommendations in this article.
Many schools in the US deploy cyber-nanny software. One of the most commonly used systems is called iBoss. You’ll also find it used on office Wi-Fi and other restricted networks.
From an education standpoint, iBoss has noble intentions. It’s no secret that the US has a significant problem with school shootings. iBoss aims to lets schools detect at-risk and high-risk students by alerting them to threats against other pupils, suggestions of self-harm, and other associated topics, in real-time.
It also keeps a complete history of students’ internet activity and works on all devices in all locations (regardless of whether a student is connected to the school’s Wi-Fi or a home network).
Other similar systems include Open DNS Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella, WebTitan Web Filter, Kaspersky Security for Internet Gateways, Lightspeed Systems, Symantec Web Security Service, and Citrix Secure Web Gateway. The feature sets differ, but the softwares’ underlying principles are all the same: restricting and monitoring students’ web activity.
Students can try a few different ways of bypassing iBoss (or whichever other cyber-nanny software your school uses).
Let’s take a closer look.
There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution for using Snapchat and Instagram at school. Much depends on how your IT department’s filters and port blocking.
For example, you might discover that simply switching from HTTP to HTTPS unblocks many sites. Many schools only block port 80 (the one used by HTTP), leaving port 443 (used by HTTPS) open for use. To test, just tweak the address in your browser and see if it works.
Another way to unblock apps on school Wi-Fi is to try a free proxy site. There are dozens of sites out there; a quick Google search will bring up several free public proxies.
Sadly, free proxies have a few disadvantages compared to VPNs. Most notably, they do not encrypt your traffic. That means that it’s much easier for your school to know that you’ve unblocked Snapchat on its computers—a free proxy means you’re far more likely to land yourself in trouble. Free proxies are also notoriously slow and often struggle to load images, videos, and complicated web pages.
Check out our roundup of the best free proxies to learn more.
The most reliable way to unblock sites on school computers is to use a VPN. However, you might run into a situation in which some VPNs work while others don’t.
Broadly speaking, free VPNs are less likely to work—your school has probably blocked the ports. If you want to try, some of the best free VPNs for school Wi-Fi include SurfEasy, ProtonVPN, Hotspot Shield, and Speedify. Check out the article on MakeUseOf if you need more information.
To improve your chances of success, you need to use a paid VPN. Many students agree that the most reliable paid VPN for school Wi-Fi networks (and for bypassing iBoss) is Windscribe. It offers servers in 60 countries and 110 cities. It will also block ads and trackers. A plan costs $9 per month or $49 per year.
Other paid VPNs that will let you unblock Snapchat and Instagram on school Wi-Fi networks include Surfshark, ZenMate, and CyberGhost. They cost $12/month, $10/month, and $13/month respectively. Discounts are available with all three providers if you sign up for an annual plan.
Many schools will not allow you to install extensions on the default web browser they have provided. If that’s the case, you might need to use a portable browser (on a USB stick) to circumvent the restrictions. You can then add your preferred proxy or VPN extensions and bypass iBoss.
Some of the best portable browsers to choose from include Opera Portable and Firefox Portable.
We’re confident that at least one of the four methods we’ve described will let you use Snapchat (or any other blocked app) on a school’s Wi-Fi network.
But we’re also conscious that not everyone is comfortable with using a VPN. For new users, they can be intimidating and confusing.
If you would like to learn more about the process, make sure you read our other article on whether VPNs are legal in the country where you live.
Read the full article: How to Use Snapchat on a School’s Wi-Fi Network
Are VPNs legal? You might assume the answer is a simple one—of course they are! But that’s not entirely true.
Different countries have different laws regarding the use of VPNs. The regulations can affect you if you’re a resident of those places, but can also impact you if you’re traveling there for work or pleasure.
Today, we’re going to look at whether using a VPN is legal in five key jurisdictions: The United States, the United Kingdom, China, Ireland, and the rest of Europe.
First, let’s look at some locations when VPNs are legal, and access to them is unrestricted.
Yes, VPNs are entirely legal in the United States. There are no laws that either forbid their use or restrict which VPNs are available.
Almost all the mainstream commercial VPN providers make their services available to American residents. Thousands of companies also operate their own in-house VPN servers, thus allowing their employees to access business-critical files and services when they’re on-the-go.
The freedom of choice means you can subscribe to a VPN provider from a location that doesn’t fall under the umbrella of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, or Fourteen Eyes groups. For those who don’t know, the three groups are international intelligence- and information-sharing alliances.
Like the USA, there are no British laws which prevent people in the country from using a VPN.
Given the content of the country’s Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (more commonly referred to as “The Snoopers’ Charter”), that’s excellent news. Some of the Act’s most worrisome provisions include:
A VPN is an essential tool if you want to protect yourself from the intrusion.
Again, the answer is yes, VPNs are legal in Ireland. Like the majority of the western world, the government of Ireland has not taken any steps to restrict the use of VPNs or dictate which VPN providers its residents and citizens can use.
What about the places where VPNs are either illegal or where access to them comes with caveats and restrictions?
No country in the European Union has a law that prevents VPN use in its territory. There are, however, two European countries that are not EU members where the respective governments have either banned or restricted VPN access. Those countries are Russia and Belarus.
In Russia, VPN access used to be unrestricted; users could choose from any of the usual selection of providers. That changed with the passage of a new law in July 2017.
The law made VPN usage illegal if the technology was used to access sites that the country’s censorship body—Roskomnadzor—had previously blocked. According to the BBC, VPN providers who agreed to the new restrictions were provided with a list of blacklisted sites. VPN providers who didn’t agree were banned from operating within Russia’s borders.
Interestingly, however, the law does not apply to corporate VPNs. Ergo, if you’re traveling to Russia for business and have access to your company’s servers, you will not face any web restrictions.
The law also makes clear that the onus is on VPN providers and search engines to block access to the blacklisted sites. Despite considerable misinformation on the web, Russia does not hold end-users responsible.
In Belarus, the situation is more clear-cut—VPNs (and Tor) have been outright illegal since 2015. Indeed, accessing foreign websites could land you with a fine of $120 (almost half the average Belarusian monthly salary).
Nonetheless, VPN providers still advertise their services to Belarusian residents. In an editorial blog post, NordVPN questioned whether Belarus even had the necessary technical infrastructure to uphold the law.
It’s well-known that China suffers from a heavily censored internet. Unsurprisingly, therefore, VPNs quickly established themselves as a low-cost and effective way to circumvent the blocks.
Sadly, after several years of speculation, the Chinese government forced all telecom companies operating in the country to block access to commercial VPNs in February 2018.
Today, VPNs are only available when leased directly from the government. Typically, they are only available to businesses who have cross-border operations. And although it’s never been officially confirmed, it’s safe to assume that the Chinese government’s rentable VPNs are logging all your actions. Additionally, according to VPNPro, 30% of all commercial VPNs have Chinese ownership. If true, that spells problems for privacy on a global scale.
As is the case with Belarus, most of the mainstream VPN providers continue to advertise their services to people in China. If you’re traveling to the country, however, be aware that using a VPN could land you with a fine of ¥15,000 CNY (approximately $2,000 USD).
Other countries where VPNs are illegal or restricted include Iran, Turkey, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Turkmenistan, and North Korea.
Although VPNs are legal in all North America, South America, and the European Union, you are still subject to those nations’ laws when using the web.
Anything that’s illegal when you’re not using a VPN is still illegal when you are using one. Activities such as illegal file sharing, hacking, stalking, and buying illicit items on the dark web can land you in trouble with the law.
Remember, VPNs are not foolproof. They can cut out unexpectedly, a provider might collect logs even if it claims that it doesn’t, browsers can still log device data and leak IP addresses, and so on.
Finally, you also need to consider the issue of using VPNs to bypass geo-blocking (also known as “regional restrictions”) for services like Netflix and BBC iPlayer. Using a VPN to access those services is against the providers’ terms and conditions. You could have your account shut down, be permanently banned from the app, or in an extreme case, find yourself wrapped up in a civil lawsuit.
Hopefully, you’ve now aware that VPN legality depends on where in the world you’re based and how you plan to use your connection. Because of the risk for potential physical harm, and the number of possibly compromised companies on the market, a VPN may not be the best privacy tool for usage in Belarus, Russia, China, Iran, and other nations that frown on VPN usage.
However, for use in the United States and European Union, here are our recommendations for the best VPNs to use for security and privacy.
Read the full article: Are VPNs Legal or Illegal? Everything You Need to Know
Google has released new features for Pixel phones. The new features available exclusively to Pixel owners include a way of controlling your phone without touching the screen, the ability to schedule your phone switching from light to dark themes, and more besides.
This is the second of what Google calls Pixel feature drops. The first, which dropped in December 2019, added new and improved photo controls, improved Duo video calls, and the ability to automatically screen callers. Now, Google has dropped more new features.
As well as letting you skip forward or back while playing music, Motion Sense now lets you pause and resume music without ever touching your phone’s screen. Just make a tapping gesture above the phone while listening to music to Play and Pause it.
The Personal Safety app on Pixel 4 is now rolling out to users in the UK and Australia. Already available in the US, the app can detect if you have been in a serious car crash and enable you to contact the emergency services with a voice command.
You can now use new AR effects during Duo video calls. The effects will move around the screen with you, and change according to your facial expressions. You can also create images with depth on the Pixel 4, letting you create 3D photos for Facebook.
There are also new ways to customize the look and feel of your Pixel. You can schedule your phone to switch to a Dark theme based on local sunrise and sunset times. You can also instruct your Pixel to go silent when in certain locations such as your workplace.
This is just a selection of the new features Google is rolling out to Pixel phones in the latest Pixel feature drop. You can see the full list on Google Support, alongside which Pixel devices are going to receive each one. The Pixel 4 is getting all of the above.
Even if you don’t own a Google Pixel phone, you may be due to upgrade your phone soon. So, before you choose the device you’re going to be staring at for the next 12-24 months, here’s our pick of the best 5G smartphones to buy right now.
Read the full article: Google Launches New Features for Pixel Phones
ZenMate VPN is a popular choice amongst users, which advertises a no-logging policy and additional functionality via browser extensions. If you want to find out whether it’s worth your time, be sure to read on for the full ZenMate VPN review to see our verdict.
VPNs are useful tools for protecting your privacy. While they’re not silver bullets by themselves, they can be part of a larger privacy-protection package to keep yourself anonymous online.
The reasons for using a VPN can range from protecting your traffic from state-sponsored surveillance to preventing someone from snooping on your traffic on a public café’s Wi-Fi. As such, you need to pick the VPN that suits your needs. A VPN that lets you watch Netflix in another country may not be enough to evade illicit spying agencies.
For ZenMate, its focus is very clear. It’s designed to get around geo-blocking. Second, it provides privacy when torrenting. As such, while it may provide sufficient-enough protection from low-grade threats, like family members, spouses, or internet service providers (ISPs), I wouldn’t recommend using it if you need extreme privacy. And even if you did use to protect against low-grade security threats, you’d still need to perform all searches using a proxy search engine.
Before we dive into analyzing ZenMate, it’s worth double-checking who, exactly, we’re putting trust into when using the service.
For a while, ZenMate was under the control of ZenGuard GmbH. On October 2018, ZenMate was picked up by Kape Technologies Plc.
Kape Technologies is based in London, England. The company has a few other products under their care, such as CyberGhost, DriverFix, and ReImage. CyberGhost came under fire a few years ago after ProPrivacy reported that it logged hardware IDs, and ZDNet published on how ZenMate itself suffered from privacy-revealing bugs.
It’s also good to note that Kape was once called CrossRider, but changed its name as reported by Globes. The reason for this is that CrossRider dealt in adware, as you can read about in the Malwarebytes report on the topic.
ZenMate normally costs $9.99 for one month, $3.99 a month billed at $47.88 a year, or $2.05 billed at $49.20 every two years. But as of September 2019, ZenMate VPN is running a promotional deal where the monthly price is $1.75. That price is subject to change at any time, though, so be wary.
As such, this is about the average for a VPN. VPNs typically go for around $10 a month, so you’re paying the same monthly price for ZenMate as you would for the best VPNs on the market.
If you want to try before you buy, ZenMate offers a free version; however, it only lets you choose from four locations, and caps your download speed at 2MB/s. We officially warn against using free VPNs, excepting for bypassing geo-blocking.
Unfortunately, things are looking a little shaky for ZenMate, and we haven’t even installed it yet! So, does ZenMate’s features redeem its somewhat shady background and solid price point?
You can set up ZenMate on a Windows (Windows has a few free VPNs), Mac, iOS, or Android device. It even comes with browser extensions for quick tunneling, which we’ll cover next.
As for set-up, the Windows one couldn’t be easier. Once you’ve downloaded and run the set-up file, ZenMate gives you the terms of service to read.
When you accept the terms, the installed handles everything else. It automatically downloads and installs everything it needs to run, then sets itself up on your network.
Once it’s done, the client will automatically boot up, ready for use.
Kill-switches are very important if you value your privacy. VPN servers are not infallible, and they sometimes go down. When crashes happen, your computer automatically swaps to your home connection to re-establish your connection.
This sounds useful at first, but what if the VPN goes down without you realizing? You’ll be surfing on your home network without any privacy, revealing yourself to the host!
This is where a kill-switch comes in. If a VPN with a kill-switch detects that its network has gone down, it will shut off your internet entirely to prevent your connection from “leaking.”
Fortunately, ZenMate does come with a kill-switch that’s turned on by default. When a server goes down, ZenMate locks down your internet to prevent a leak. It also displays a button to remove the block if you’ve stopped private browsing.
With my Ultimate-tier plan, I received five devices which I could use ZenMate with. This was enough to cover all my hardware. However, for two or more people, it a five-device license may feel cramped.
One of the more interesting features ZenMate has is specific geo-block evasion servers. When you look at the server list labeled “for streaming,” ZenMate will recommend servers for different services. For example, if you’re from the US and want to access the UK’s BBC service, you can select the UK-based server labeled as “optimized for BBC iPlayer.”
To test this, I tried to watch Comedy Central from my UK-based machine. Sure enough, Comedy Central didn’t let me watch its videos.
Then, I went onto ZenMate and connected to the server optimized for Comedy Central. Unfortunately, when I reloaded the page, Comedy Central still didn’t let me watch their videos.
Because the Comedy Central server didn’t work as intended, I tried the US server that was optimized for Netflix. Unfortunately, the server for Netflix was down, and it didn’t come back up for the duration of the test period.
Editor’s update: A ZenMate representative reached out to us to let us know the “Netflix server” was back online. Netflix indeed worked again over their servers.
Undeterred, I went to YouTube to see if it could unblock videos. I found a video from Russel Brand that’s blocked in the UK (which is odd, given he’s a UK-based comedian).
I logged onto the server that’s optimized for YouTube, refreshed, and voila—a result.
As such, you can use ZenMate to skirt around geo-blocking; however, some of the designated servers for services don’t work for that service, and some servers will go down for periods of time.
ZenMate also has dedicated P2P networks for torrent traffic. As such, I wanted to see how fast they would go. I booted up Deluge and tried downloading Ubuntu on my regular home network. I managed to get speeds at around 8MB/s.
When I selected a dedicated torrenting server in my home country, The speeds only went down to around 7MB/s. Again, while it was a noticeable dip, I could still download Ubuntu at a good speed.
If you’re not interested in using ZenMate to torrent or avoid geo-blocks, you’ll be pleased to know that it does have general use servers to choose from. Unfortunately, these servers are very limited; just one per country. Each server has a public load associated with it, so if other users are putting a heavy load on the server you want to use, you’re out of luck.
ZenMate doesn’t have ad-blocking within the VPN itself; however, it does have a separate extension called ZenMate Web Firewall. This featured an ad-blocker that does a good job of keeping advertisements down, as well as informing you where the ads came from and why they were banned.
ZenMate also comes with an optional Chrome extension. You need a subscription in order to use it, but once you’re logged in, it won’t pester you again.
Once installed, you can click the extension to redirect your Chrome traffic to another server. This is useful when you want to get around a single website that denies access from your country.
By default, ZenMate will choose which protocol is best for you. If you want some control, however, you can choose between OpenVPN, IKEv2, and L2TP.
Not at all! If open-source software is a primary concern for you, ZenMate isn’t your number one pick. Everything is kept locked up and away from the user, so you can’t see what’s going on under the hood.
Yes! In fact, there’s an OpenVPN tutorial on ZenMate’s website that teaches you how to set it up.
Yes! After doing some testing with the Tor browser, everything ran without problems. As such, if you like the sound of ZenMate and you want utmost privacy, you can combine the two for a secure browsing experience.
To see if ZenMate offers protection against leaks, I put it through the IP Leak test to see how it holds up while connected to their US server. Thankfully, the test came back with good results, which shows that ZenMate doesn’t “leak out” your information while you use it.
To test ZenMate’s speed, I installed it on a laptop over a Wi-Fi connection to a router in the same room. I then performed tests on SpeedTest to see how fast it went.
When I performed a speed test without the VPN active, I achieved speeds of around 70Mbps.
After swapping to a US-located server, that speed only went down to around 50Mbps. As such, while there is a notable speed loss from using the VPN, it’s not substantial. ZenMate VPN should not have difficulties streaming media on most broadband connections. However, the amount of bandwidth reduction could impact whether DSL users can reliably stream higher resolution content.
Unfortunately, my experience with ZenMate’s customer service was very underwhelming. To test it, I decided to ask about the Netflix server issues I encountered earlier.
I got an email back very quickly, but it was a simple copy-paste message that mentioned I was talking about Netflix. The email mentioned that ZenMate’s proxy servers sometimes can’t reach Netflix’s service. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the specific server-outage.
I replied stating that I was asking about their Netflix server instead of Netflix itself.
I received a reply 2 days later, which appeared to be another copy-paste email about how to optimize stability and speeds on my side of the network.
As such, I cannot recommend ZenMate if you care about good customer service. They didn’t seem to understand my original inquiry and kept sending copy-and-paste emails about my problem.
ZenMate prides itself with its “no-logging policy,” claiming that they don’t store any details on their users. If you look at their privacy policy, you’ll see that there’s no mention of the records they keep while using the VPN. Any logging they do perform is entirely done on the website, although they admit to passing on details to services such as Google Analytics.
ZenMate’s terms of service requires its customers to only use the service for legal purposes. It also mentions that their customers are responsible for any “reasonable” legal fees that ZenMate must pay on their behalf in the event that their customer gets sued.
In other words, if you use ZenMate VPN for any purpose deemed a ToS violation, you may not receive any protection from ZenMate.
The major problem I found in ZenMate premium is that it inhabits the same price point as the best VPNs available; unfortunately ZenMate doesn’t include stellar customer service. Aside from poor customer service, you have a limited number of servers to connect to, you can’t really change any advanced settings, and the “designated servers” sometimes don’t work for the service they claim to support. And to top it off, their ToS doesn’t offer its customers very much security.
Some aspects of ZenMate did impress me, such as its ease of use and its download speeds. However, these good points are marred by the negative aspects of the program, which is a big let down. It feels like there’s a lot of potential in ZenMate, but it stumbles at the finish line.
With its awful customer support, restrictive server selection, and shady company history, I couldn’t help but feel that I should be looking for a better VPN while using it—a bad sign when you’re reviewing a product.
Overall, ZenMate will make watching Netflix or viewing restricted YouTube videos a breeze (and it’s temporarily cheap at $1.75 a month). However, with its lack of advanced features, shady past, and a high price point for what ZenMate provides, you’ll definitely find better for the same price.
Read the full article: ZenMate VPN Review: Meditating on Your Privacy
