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Spotify Makes 'Blend' Personalised Shared Playlist Feature Available

Charlotte Henry ·

Spotify announced Tuesday that Blend, which allows two users to create a shared playlist that combines both their musical tastes, is now available. It was released in beta in June and is now accessible by both free and premium users.

The experience includes new cover art to easily identify each of your Blend playlists, taste match scores to see your listening preferences compared to your friends’, and shareable data stories that are unique to every listening pair and can be shared across social channels. Blend, which will be updated daily and adapts based on what listeners stream, combines the best of Spotify’s personalization capabilities and collaborative playlist functionality into a single shared playlist, making it easy for users to get into a social listening session that is made just for them. But creating this experience was no simple feat. There’s a massive team behind the experience, blending their own different skills and expertise to bring it to life.

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Flipboard Gives People Tools to Prevent 'Doomscrolling'

Andrew Orr ·

Flipboard is rolling out a series of personalization tools to help people cut back on doomscrolling.

The company announced this morning the launch of a new controller on the cover of its own main newsfeed, aka the “For You” feed, which now allows users to select new topics to follow and deselect those they no longer want to hear about. The feature, which Flipboard dubs “an antidote to doomscrolling,” allows users to customize their For You feed to deliver a wider selection of stories related to their various interests, instead of focusing their home page on breaking news and politics.

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Bose Launches 'QuietComfort 45' Noise Cancelling Headphones

Andrew Orr ·

On Tuesday Bose has announced the launch of its latest pair of noise cancelling headphones – QuietComfort 45.

The QuietComfort 45 maintain the hallmarks of their predecessor with amazing audio performance, all-day comfort and stability, super- simple controls, rock-solid connectivity, and an update to the iconic design that made QCs one of the most recognizable wearables ever. The QuietComfort 45 headphones will be available starting September 23rd for $329.95, and pre-orders start today at Bose.com and select resellers.

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Instagram Asking Users to Share Their Birthday

Charlotte Henry ·

Instagram announced Monday that it is asking users to confirm their birthday if they have not shared it with the photo-sharing service before. Pavni Diwanji, VP of Youth Products at the Facebook-owned app, said in a blog post that it was aiming to create better safety features for younger users.

First, we’ll start to ask you for your birthday when you open Instagram. We’ll show you a notification a handful of times and if you haven’t provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you’ll need to share it to continue using Instagram. This information is necessary for new features we’re developing to protect young people. Second, if you see warning screens placed on posts, we’ll ask you for your birthday before you can see the post. These screens aren’t new, and we already show them on posts that may be sensitive or graphic, but we don’t currently ask for your birthday when viewing these posts. Now, we’ll start asking for your birthday on some of these screens if you haven’t shared it with us previously.

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Was That a Notchless Next-Gen iPhone on Ted Lasso?

Jeff Butts ·

We’ve been hearing speculation that the next generation of the iPhone will have a smaller camera notch than current models. Through either an unintentional leak or just a post-production editing mistake, the Ted Lasso audience got a peek of a notchless next-gen iPhone in the August 27 episode. The handset looks like an iPhone 12 from the rear, but images of the screen seem to show iOS 14 wallpaper without the usual cutout from the camera notch.

Apple is notorious for its secrecy, so it seems unlikely that this is a deliberate signal that the notch is disappearing from the iPhone 13. That said, it’s been rumored for months now that the iPhone 13 would have a much smaller notch or a hole-punch selfie camera. However, a completely notchless display isn’t believed to be in the cards for this year’s iPhone.

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Examining Apple's Carefree Attitude Towards Employee Privacy

Andrew Orr ·

Zoe Schiffer, writing for The Verge, investigates Apple employees and “the blurring of personal and work accounts.”

This is how it starts: a new Apple employee is told during onboarding that collaborating with their colleagues will require them to make extensive use of iCloud storage, and their manager offers a two terabyte upgrade. This will link their personal Apple ID to their work account — in fact, the instructions for accessing this upgrade explicitly say “you must link your personal Apple ID with your AppleConnect work account.”