New Twitch Stories like you View Instagram Stories

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

On October 16, 2023 Twitch launched a new feature Twitch Stories, a feature available only on Twitch mobile app that allows you to connect with your community when you are not live. It’s similar to Instagram stories. Now it’s easier for you to connect with your audience directly on Twitch through short posts that expire in 48 hours.

You have loyal followers on Twitch and they likely follow you on other social media platforms. Trying to connect with people on multiple platforms may limit your reach on Twitch. Twitch Stories make it possible for you to quickly create and share content and connect with your audience, regardless where they are, using your mobile device.

From now on, all Twitch users having the latest version of the app on their mobile devices will see the New Stories section at the top of the Following page.

Twitch Stories

Only the Partners and Affiliates having at least one stream in the last 30 days will be able to create stories on Twitch for now. Access to eligible streamers will be rolled out gradually on an ongoing basis. More details about the eligibility requirements are here.

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Reach your Community Easily

One of the benefits on the Twitch Stories is that it allows you to reach your followers easily. Say, you are going to stream 1 hour late than usual. You can let your followers know about the same via a Twitch story. Your followers will be notified via the Push notifications about the new story you publish. Your audience can control how often they will be notified about the same via story-specific notification settings. Viewers will be able to see your stories alongside that of the other streamers they follow. So, streamers are advised to create stories regularly to keep their audience up-to-date between the streams. Viewers can show their support by reacting to the stories with emotes supported by Twitch. Viewers will see the reactions and total views for each story even after one expires, giving a better idea about the user-engagement.

Personalize Twitch Stories

Twitch Stories let you share emotes, pictures, clips, text and backgrounds. If you want to share a great moment from your stream, you can clip it from the stream and share with your viewers as a story. You can also share something as simple as the photo of your pet or your meal, not necessarily anything about your business, and spark conversation among your followers. It’s all about bringing people together and strengthening your bond with your audience.

Subscribers-Only Twitch Stories

Streamers with at least 30 subscribers will have the option to create subscribers-only stories. These subscribers include gift subs too. This adds more value to your followers’ subscriptions through exclusive content.
You can share a subscriber-only giveaway, hint on when the next merch drop will be, ask them about the game that they want you to stream next, exclusive behind-the-scenes content that is not available anywhere else etc. The use-cases are endless.

Twitch Stories are Safe

Twitch Stories are rolled out with keeping the idea of user-safety in mind. That being said, there are automated scanning measures in place to prevent any harmful content from being uploaded. Content created via Twitch Stories will be held to the same community guidelines to which all the other content on Twitch is held to. After that, people can report any content they find violating these guidelines, within the app.

So be sure to refresh the Twitch app and make sure you are using the latest version of the same.

Why IoT Devices should not have the Default Passwords?

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

What are the IoT Devices?

IoT stands for Internet of things which describes the devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect over internet and share data with other devices. This includes hardware such as smart TVs, smart mobiles, smart refrigerators, Smartwatches, smart fire alarms, smart door locks, smart bicycles, fitness trackers, smart security system and anything that could be controlled remotely over Wi-Fi, bluetooth. Most of the devices that we use daily fall into this category and may require a password to authenticate us on setting these up when we use these first time. These devices come with default password to allow its access to the owner. This might pose security threats and give access of these devices to an unwanted person.

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What’s the Risk of keeping the Default Passwords?

IoT Devices

Today hacking methods are much advanced than these used to be years ago. Brute-force attacks can be automated that try most common username, password sets until the working one is found. There are millions of these devices being used and if these have the default password that was setup initially, these are at the risk of being hacked.

Default passwords are usually easier to guess like, 1234, 007, 0000, admin, user, pass, password. According to one of recent cyber security researches, some of the most common pairs of username and password were

username : knockknockwhosthere
password : knockknockwhosthere

and

username : user
password : 1234

As these passwords and usernames do not have numbers, special characters, uppercase letters, these can be easily guessed via brute-force methods. These passwords have least entropy. Password entropy rises as you include the previously mentioned elements in the password.

A hacker could guess these passwords without even using advanced tools for the same.

Which IoT devices have passwords?

It is anticipated that there will be approximately 30 billion IoT devices worldwide by the year 2030. According to the best practice in cyber security, most of these connected devices should have password protection, especially if these collect and exchange personal information. As you keep the software updated on your smartphone for better protection ad performance, so you should change the default passwords on IoT devices too. If you don’t, cybercriminals could infiltrate your home’s network and the connected devices.

Another research shows the manufacturers of IoT devices often only recommend the buyers that they change the default passwords to unique credentials but do not require it. No matter what smart device you use, whether a smartphone connected to a Wi-Fi or a smart TV, always change its default password to a unique credential and do it before connecting it to a Wi-Fi network.

Change the Default IoT Password

Default passwords are convenient as these are easy to remember but note that these are also easy to hack. Fortunately, these passwords are easy to change and take only a minute or two.

How to Download Songs on Spotify?

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

Spotify allows you to download up to 10,000 songs on five different devices that you can play even without internet. This article explains you in simple steps how to download songs on Spotify.

Can I Download Songs on Spotify?

You can download songs only if you are a Spotify Premium user. If you are a free user on Spotify, you cannot download songs and can play songs only when you are online. To download a song, album or playlist, you can simply tap these until the context menu appears where you can choose download.

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How to Download Albums and Playlists on Spotify?

Follow these steps to download albums and playlists on Spotify.

  1. Open Spotify app in your mobile device
  2. Search for the album or playlist you want to download
    How to download songs on Spotify - Search
  3. Tap the Download icon on the right of the Heart icon below the title of the playlist as shown in the screenshot posted below
    How to download songs on Spotify - Download Albums and Playlists on Spotify

How to Download Individual Songs on Spotify?

If you want to download an individual song, you must add it to a playlist first as described in the steps mentioned below

  1. Open Spotify app in your mobile device
  2. Search the song that you want to download
  3. Tap the three dots in the right side of the title of the song as shown in the screenshot posted below
    How to Download Songs on Spotify - Search Song
  4. Tap Add to Playlist in the menu
    How to Download Songs on Spotify - Add to Playlist
  5. In the following menu, tap New playlist to add the song you want to download
    How to Download Songs on Spotify - New Playlist
  6. Navigate to Your library
    How to Download Songs on Spotify - Your Library
  7. Find the playlist you just created and tap it
    How to Download Songs on Spotify - Playlist
  8. Tap the download icon to download the song
    How to Download Songs on Spotify - Download Song

How to find downloaded songs on Spotify?

All the songs you download will appear in the Your Library section. Here are the steps to find the same.

  1. Open Spotify app in your mobile device
  2. Navigate to Your library section from the menu at the bottom of the screen
  3. Here you will find all the songs you have downloaded in the past along with your playlists. All the downloaded songs will have a green arrow indicating the offline status.
  4. Similarly, you can navigate to the Downloaded folder by swiping the filter row or use the search box to locate the downloaded songs.

Can I download the songs from Spotify to my computer?

The steps to download the songs from Spotify to the computer are same as for the mobile app.

  1. Login to the Spotify desktop app in your computer using the Spotify premium account
  2. Search the song, playlist or album you want to download.
  3. Click the Download icon to download the same.

How to Use File Lock in Google Drive to Secure Documents?

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

Google Workspace and Google Drive users have a new feature File Lock that allows them to prevent others from messing with their documents. There are times when you do not want the others to make comment or edits to the documents that you shared with them. This feature could be useful to the companies that regularly share documents among their employees.

Why do I Need File Lock?

Sometimes you share a document with your teammates or colleagues that contains sensitive information only to be viewed by them. In this case, they won’t be able to copy, download or print the document without your permission. You can also prevent others from editing that document.

Related: Gmail Storage Full? How to Free up Space in Gmail

How to Use File Lock in Google Drive?

Till now you could prevent others from downloading, printing and copying the shared document in the Google Drive by clicking Share button in the top-right, then clicking the Gear icon and unchecking the Viewers and Commenters can see the option to Download, Print and Copy checkbox as shown in the screenshots posted below

Google Drive Share
Google Drive - File Lock Settings
File Lock - Prevent Download Print Copy

But now there is an easier method to achieve the same. You can lock files in simple steps as mentioned below

  1. Login to your Google Drive account in your desktop browser. File Lock is not available in the Google mobile app.
  2. Right-Click the file that you want to lock.
  3. Select Lock in the File Information menu as shown in the screenshot posted below
File Lock - Google Drive

Previously, you could lock a document while sharing from Google Drive or using the Google Drive API. The new File Lock feature makes it easy to lock files by right-clicking and selecting Lock in the File Information menu.

Let me know what you think about this new feature in the comment section below.

Gmail Storage Full? How to Free up Space in Gmail

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

Is your Gmail storage full? Today we will explore how we can free up space in Gmail. Gmail gives 15 GB of free space for email and Google Drive. Once it’s full, you can’t receive emails and store any files in Google Drive. To fix this, you can subscribe to Google One plan which starts from 130/month or you can delete emails and files from Google Drive to clear some space. However, finding and deleting unimportant data in this sea of emails and files is not going to be easy. Following tips can help you clear space in Gmail account.

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  1. Delete Unread Emails: Over the time unimportant unread emails accumulate in your inbox that you didn’t delete back then. This might be the right time to find these and delete. You can search the Unread emails by clicking the checkbox dropdown and selecting Unread. See the screenshot posted below
    Gmail Storage Full - Unread Emails
    You can also type “is:unread” in the search bar to search the unread emails.
  2. Delete Old Emails: You can find and delete the old emails that you no longer find useful. After searching these emails, you can select these by checking the checkbox in front of these and hit the Delete button.
    You can also use the search bar to find emails before a certain year. Say, you want to search all the emails you received before the year 2023, you can type before: 2023 in the search bar. Then delete the emails you don’t want to keep.
  3. Delete Large Emails: Another way to clear storage is by deleting the emails that are contributing the most to the unwanted storage. In this scenario, your 3-4% emails might be occupying the 20-30% of your total gmail account storage.
    You can use the search bar to find the emails having the attachment size you specify. Say, you want to search the emails having the attachment size larger than 7 MB, you can type has:attachment larger:7M in the Search. Then you can select and delete the unwanted emails.
  4. Delete files from Google Drive: You can navigate to Google Drive and delete the unwanted files. You can sort the files based on their size using the Arrow in the header of the column File size as shown in the screenshot shown belowGmail Storage Full - Google Drive
    You can also use the Search bar to list the files of the size specified. Say, you want to list all the files larger than 7 MB, you can type size:larger:7M in the Search textbox. Then you can select and delete the unwanted files.
  5. Delete Google Photos: There might be unwanted old pictures in the Google Photos that might be adding to the storage of your Gmail account. You can navigate to the link mentioned and login to your Google account if not logged in already. You can select and delete the unwanted photos and videos here. Items deleted here will be moved to Trash that you can recover within the 30 days.
  6. Gmail storage full? Use Google One: If you are running out of space even after trying all the options mentioned above, you can increase the storage capacity by purchasing the suitable upgrade plan from Google One. After navigating to Google One and logging into your Google account, you can choose the storage upgrade plan that suits your needs.

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  7. Third Party Apps: Besides this, there are several apps that can help you delete the unwanted data from Gmail storage. Following are some popular apps that can help you cleaning up your Gmail storage.
    Gemini Photos
    KeepSafe
    CCleaner
    Disk Drill

    Here are the features of these apps that help you clear space in your Gmail storage.
    1. These apps scan your Google Drive, Google Photos and Gmail account for large, duplicate and unnecessary files. Then you are shown a summary of the unwanted data and you are prompted to delete the same with a single click.
    2. These apps can also help you declutter your photos by removing blurry and similar photos.
    3. These apps encrypt your photos and videos so these are not accessible to anyone else. These also help you back up your data to the cloud so you can access the same from anywhere.
    4. These apps can help you clean up your system’s storage drive by deleting cookies, temporary files and other unnecessary data. It can also help defragment your hard drive to improve performance.

Is your Gmail storage full? I hope you find this information useful to clear up space from Gmail storage. Let me know in the Comments section below if you know of any other method or tool for the same.

How to See who Blocked you on Instagram?

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

I used to visit a profile on Instagram everyday and admire their content. Then one day, all of a sudden, when I visited their profile, got a message “user not found”. I thought this user was here yesterday, what happened. Then, I visited the same profile logging into another Instagram account. To my surprise, I didn’t get that “user not found” message and that profile was there. I concluded, they have blocked my Instagram account. Another case when you might see this “user not found” message is when that person has deactivated or deleted their account.

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There might be many reasons for being in someone’s blocklist, such as spying on them, messaging explicit content or if you are a clingy ex. Unfortunately, you don’t get a notification when someone blocks you on Instagram. There are ways you can figure out if someone has blocked you on Instagram.

How to find out if someone has blocked you on Instagram

  1. You cannot find this person on Instagram from your Instagram account but other Instagram accounts can see their profile and interact with them as well. In this case, you see a message “user not found” when visiting the account of the person who blocked you.
    Note: If an account is private, you will see a message “This account is private. Follow them to see their content”, which is different from being blocked.
  2. If you search for their Instagram handle in the Instagram Search section, you won’t find them.
  3. You have been removed from their Followers list or Following list
  4. If you had a conversation via DM with them previously, you won’t find it in the Messages section
  5. When you try to tag that person in a post and search for their Instagram handle, you won’t find it

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How to Avoid being Blocked on Instagram

Create Useful Content

If you bring something valuable to the community, you will gain respect and lessen the chances of being blocked on Instagram.

Be Kind

Spread positivity through your content, your conversation. Avoid engaging in hateful conversation against others.

Be Supportive

Collaborating with others can be a powerful way to build meaningful relationships on Instagram. Look for opportunities to join forces with the accounts sharing similar interests.

Communicate with Empathy

In this fast-paced world of social media, it’s easy to misunderstood people. So, communicating with empathy is important to resolve any conflicts which could lead to blocking.

How to View Archived Emails in Gmail?

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

So, how to view archived emails in Gmail. Why would you archive emails in the first place? You can archive the old unimportant emails that you can delete later. Archiving the emails hide them from the default inbox view.

How to Archive Emails in Gmail

Select the emails you want to archive using the checkboxes in the left side. Then click the Archive icon as shown in the picture below.

View Archived Emails in Gmail

Archived emails will disappear from your inbox even if you have assigned a category to any of these. However, you will be able to view these in the specific folder if you have assigned any labels to these.

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How to View Archived Emails in Gmail

As archived emails disappear from the default view, one way to view archived emails in Gmail is to switch to the All Mail view. This will list all your emails including those you have archived. This All Mail option in located in the left side. You might need to click the More label in the left sidebar to see this option if you have a lot of menu items. See the pictures below.

View Archived Emails in Gmail - More
View Archived Emails in Gmail - All Mail

To do the same in the Gmail app, tap the hamburger menu icon in the top-left corner, scroll down until you find the All Mail label. See the picture below.

View Archived Emails in Gmail - All Mail Mobile App

This will list all the emails in your inbox. You can use the Search feature to find the archived emails.

View Archived Emails in Gmail using the Search box

There is no Archived label to use when using the Search box. You need to know the Subject, Sender or any words in the archived email to search for the same. You can use “-in:Sent” in the Search box along with any keyword to search that email in the Sent folder. See the picture below.

Gmail Search

You can use “-in:Draft” and “-in:Inbox” to search in the Drafts and Inbox folders respectively. You can use “has:nouserlabels” to search the emails that do not have a category label. If an email is categorized, you can view it in that labelled folder even if it’s archived.

Alternatively, you can use the Advanced Gmail Search Filters to search for the specific email if it’s not in the Sent, Drafts or any other specific folder.

Could Instagram’s Threads App be the Twitter Killer?

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

After the release of the Threads app on Wednesday 5 July 2023, it’s already surpassed 30 million sign-ups within a day. Could this app end up being the Twitter Killer? Threads was the top free app in Apple app store the next day this app was released and it secured a spot in the Top trends of Twitter this morning.

It seems, Threads could end up being a serious threat for the Twitter as it’s a strong start for the app. Twitter is already facing backlash after Elon Musk bought Twitter and recently introduced a temporary limit on the number of tweets that can be viewed by users per day.

What is Threads App?

The Threads app is quite similar to Twitter, a feed of text-based posts with the feature to upload pictures and videos. Here people can engage in real-time conversations. Message that could be posted to the Threads has a limit of 500 characters. Users can reply to, repost and quote others’ Threads posts. It also offers the feature to share the posts from Threads directly to the Instagram stories.

You can list your Threads account as public or private. Your verified Instagram account will appear verified on the Threads app automatically.

According to the Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the vision for Threads is to create a friendly public space for conversation. The app experienced glitches as 30 million people joined it within just a day after its launch which is common when a new app launches and gets a lot of traffic in a short duration.

How to Join the Threads App?

You sign up to the Threads using your Instagram account and keep the same username, password and account name. You can edit the bio though to keep it different from that of your Instagram account if you prefer. Accounts you follow on Instagram can be imported to keep the set up quick and easy. Leaving the Threads app is not easy apparently. While you can temporarily deactivate your account but to leave, as per the privacy policy of the app, “your Threads profile can only be deleted by deleting your Instagram account”. Threads app may collect your data, such as location, contacts, search history, browsing history and contact info.

Threads app is available in 100 countries and in more than 30 languages via Apple’s iOS and Android, according to the company.

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Could Threads App be the Twitter killer?

Threads app has just launched with a strong start in hopes of giving Twitter a tough competition. A lot of Twitter users are looking to join other similar social media platforms since Elon Musk took it over and a lot of changes in the policies. Some uses have already switched to similar platforms like Truth Social. So, it seems the right time for a new similar app to go viral. As you can sign up to the Threads app via your Instagram account, Meta already has an active user base of more than 2 billion which is a huge plus for this app to takeover the Twitter having a user base of 250 million.

In a recent tweet the CEO of Twitter Linda Yaccarino has acknowledged the rival app calling the Twitter Irreplaceable. According to her Twitter community can never be duplicated. Meta’s existing scale and infrastructure is a big advantage. Whereas other newly launched similar social networks require users to join waitlists or require invitations to join them, joining Threads is remarkably easy comparatively.

But the challenge for the new social media platforms is not just gaining the new users but also to keep them engaged for long. So, Meta got to do a lot of work like preventing spam, harassment, conspiracy theories, false claims on threads. These issues have already caused a lot of stir on Twitter. And then Meta had laid off more than 20,000 workers starting last November, which included employees in the departments of user experience, well-being, policy and risk analytics. As the campaign season for the 2024 US Presidential election approaches, there is a probable incoming wave of misinformation.

A Good Opportunity for Meta

It’s a good opportunity for Zuckerberg to use it’s huge user base to make Threads app the Twitter Killer and best his rival Musk, with whom he has in recent weeks been making plans to engage in a cage fight. There is also an opportunity to generate revenue from the ads.

Let me know what you think about this new app in the Comments section below.

Twitter Showing Rate Limit Exceeded Message

Posted on by Rajat Varlani

Since the last couple days, the social media giant owned by Elon Musk is prompting its users “Rate limit exceeded” or “Cannot retrieve Tweets at this time”. Apparently, Twitter has temporarily limited the number of tweets a person can view per day. This limit is different for paid and free users. This is done to prevent the programs that scrap the tweets to extract useful data. AI bots like ChatGPT rely on data, mostly scraped from the internet. It’s not clear how long the limit will last.

Verified accounts are limited to viewing 10,000 tweets per day and unverified accounts are limited to viewing 1,000 tweets per day. New unverified users joining Twitter after this announcement will be limited to viewing 500 tweets per day. In addition to this, the tweets cannot be viewed without logging into the Twitter.
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We are not sure how the audio conversation platform spaces will be affected by these changes. However, following this announcement many users began sharing the screenshots showing the message “rate limit exceeded” preventing them from seeing the tweets.

Users get to know about this limit imposition on Saturday 8 a.m. and continued throughout the day. These restrictions represent the latest changes by Elon Musk who purchased the social media company in October for $44 billion. After taking over, Musk restored many banned accounts and stripped verification badges from public figures and instead offered the blue check mark to anyone willing to purchase it for $8 USD per month.

Advertisers have been raising questions about how the company will make money amid all these chaotic changes. Musk, in May appointed Linda Yaccarino, formerly NBCUniversal’s chairman of global advertising and partnerships, as Twitter’s CEO.

These drastic changes have led users to switch to other similar social media platforms like Mastodon, Truth Social and Bluesky. Bluesky is owned by the former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. These social media platforms are experiencing record high traffic after Musk’s decision to impose limit on users.