Tag Archives: messages

How To Add Facebook Chat To The Mac OS X Messages App

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Both the Facebook app itself as well as the dedicated Facebook Messenger app allow you to chat with your Facebook friends on your smartphone, giving you two very easy ways to keep in touch with them. When it comes to OS X though, despite Facebook’s integration in Mountain Lion, no native chat feature exists in the OS itself that would allow you to connect with your Facebook friends. If you would like to integrate Facebook chat with OS X itself without having to resort to a third-party app, you need look no further than the Messages app in OS X that is more than capable of acting as a chat client for Facebook. Here’s how you can set the app up to send and receive chat messages from Facebook, Read More

Swipe To Switch Between Messaging Threads In iOS With MessageSwiper

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Those of you who like sticking to stock iOS apps unless there is a supremely better third-party alternative available are sure to have been tempted to ditch the Messages app in favor of biteSMS or GO SMS. Having said that, a lot of tweaks in the Cydia store let you improve the stock SMS app on your iPhone. With ImmediateSend and Messages, you can revamp the app and give it a completely new look. Not every tweak has to be as feature-rich as MessageSwiper in order to be useful though. MessageSwiper has just one purpose, but the feature it is offering is sure to come in handy in a lot of situations and for a variety of users. The tweak lets you navigate to different messaging conversation simply by swiping across the screen. This basically means you aren't forced to go to the Messages app’s main screen, from any conversation screen, and can continue going through your texts in a very convenient manner. Read More

Cross Greeting Cards With Time Capsules & You Get Keepster For iOS

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It is an emotional moment for most people if they lose their text messages, but times are changing and a lot of our important conversations now reside on the cloud, thanks to services like iMessage, Facebook, Skype and the like. However, if you are the kind of person who likes to keep or share mementos and souvenirs from the past, a simple Facebook message might appear to be a bit too casual for the purpose. Keepster is an iPhone app that makes sure you express the right message at just the right time or situation. The app connects with your Facebook account to let you send visually rich greeting greeting cards, time capsules or location-triggered messages to your friends. You can also use Keepster to send a message (or photo) to your future self. Read More

Hide Sensitive Call Logs & SMS From Stock Android Apps With Shady Contacts

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We all have those moments where we know our friends will play around with our phone, and a major concern in such scenarios is them checking out your information you want to keep confidential. If a friend is borrowing your phone for making a call or sending a text, it's nearly inevitable that they will come across your call logs and text messages. If you have an Android phone and don't want that to happen, you can now hide your call logs and messages with a simple and effective tool called Shady Contacts from Droid Mate.  The app does so without arousing suspicion, as it hides call logs and messages from selected contacts. To add to its prowess, it has some very strict security measures, and can itself can be hidden to silently operate in the background as well. Let's take a closer look at its features and how well they function. Read More

How To Disable And Delete Chat History In OS X Messages

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iChat, OS X’s stock chat client, became Messages when Mountain Lion rolled out. For the most part Messages is the same as iChat with one major difference; it now saves your chat history and given someone has iOS 6 on their iOS device, you can make / receive FaceTime calls from them in Messages. Chat history was welcomed by many users given old conversations can be revisited, images and files can be sent, and reminders can be created from date and time mentioned in chat. Though chat history is a good feature, there's nothing to say that users wouldn’t like to disable it or occasionally clear their history. The process is extremely simple and detailed below. Read More

Orange’s Libon: Free Messages, VoIP Calls & Visual Voicemail For iPhone

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An iPhone might cost a lot more than feature phones, but the presence of apps like Viber, Skype and Tango makes the investment worthwhile in the long run. If you are often connected to the net, or are on 3G/LTE, VoIP services can really help you in saving on calls and texting. There are already some pretty good messengers available in the App Store, but Libon from the popular European carrier Orange is a much more refined choice as compared to most. The app also offers visual voicemail that can be associated with your phone number, and will record messages for you when you are busy. You will not be charged anything for interacting with other Libon users, but making calls to other numbers requires in-app purchases (much like “credits” in Skype). Read More

Reply To Texts From Anywhere On iPhone Without Opening Messages App

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GO SMS for iOS shed its beta tag just a few days ago, and I have been using it as the default messaging client on my iPhone ever since. While the app is still full of bugs, the interactive pop-up notifications it offers are extremely handy. So, won’t it be great if notifications like that came without the added baggage of a buggy and rather slow app? That’s what ImmediateSend is all about. This new Cydia tweak for iPhone works with the stock Messages app without messing with any of its existing functionalities. It displays a pop-up whenever you hit a banner notification for a received text message, or tap a message alert from the Notification Center or lock screen. In short, every button or notification that will normally route you to the Messages app brings up the quick reply text box. You will still have to go to the app to create a new message or read old conversations, but replying becomes a breeze. Read More

Add Events To OS X Calendar Directly From Conversation In Messages App

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OS X is a very smart operating system and you don’t really realize that unless you start paying attention to the minor details and minute functionalities it has at the system level. One of the intelligent functions you might have observed if you use the stock Mail app is that it detects date and time. It creates a connection between the Mail and the Calendar app and allows you to record an event on the said date directly from the Mail app. This same functionality exists in the Messages app; should you find yourself talking to friends and family deciding dinner, a co-worker discussion a meeting time, or just someone reminding you to take your dog to the vet, if the date and time of the "event’ is mentioned in the conversation, you can create a Calendar event from it within Messages. Read More

Use Keyboard Shortcuts To Tweet, Update Facebook & Send Messages In OS X

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The major difference felt when updating from OS X Lion to OS X Mountain Lion is the obvious iOS-ification of the system. In addition to integrating several features that were previously iOS-exclusive, Mountain Lion adds greater convenience for social media enthusiasts with Twitter and Facebook integration, making it easier to share links, images or updates with your network. At the same time, you can consolidate your Contacts to include emails and phone numbers from Facebook friends and Twitter followers. The integration is seen throughout all stock apps and in the Notification Center, but what’s been left out are keyboard shortcuts. Mountain Lion lets you tweet or update Facebook regardless of which app or folder you’re working in, but for some reason, you have to always access the two using their respective widgets in the omnipresent Notification Center. Introducing Eggy, a free OS X app that lets you define keyboard shortcuts for posting to Facebook and Twitter, and sending an iMessage through the Messages app. It runs silently in the background without so much as adding an icon to the Menu Bar. Read More

GO SMS Comes To iPhone With Themes, Emoji & Quick Reply Pop-Ups

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GO SMS is among the most popular SMS apps for Android, and has successfully turned many people away from the stock messaging app in Android devices. The app offers everything you could ever want in a messaging app, and its integration with GO Messenger is the icing on the cake. Due to Apple’s strict App Store policies, the GO Dev Team hasn’t been able to bring their famous SMS client to the iOS Store, but that’s where Cydia comes into play. The official GO SMS client for iOS has just been released in the Cydia store, and you can start using it on your iPhone right now if you happen to be running iOS 4. We know that most of you have upgraded to iOS 5 and won’t be able to use the app, but GO SMS for iPhone gives the impression of being in a really early phase of development, and we might see major improvements (and the addition of iOS 5 support) in the app in the near future. However, the app is fully functional even now, and has the full potential of becoming a complete replacement for the stock Messaging app for iOS 4 users. Read More

Lalo.li: Create & Share Short Text-To-Speech Messages On Twitter & Facebook [Web]

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Only a few days back, we covered Audiolip, a service that allows you to record micro-podcasts and share them with your buddies on different social networks. Lalo.li is a similar web application that lets you create short voice messages, which can then emailed or shared on Facebook and Twitter. Lalo.li is basically a free text-to-speech tool that transcodes typed messages and generates a unique URL, which changes with every character that you input. This URL can then be shared with anyone through various platforms. When the recipient visits this link, the voice message is automatically played. Lalo.li does not require any login or sign up; all you have to do is type your message, adjust the Amplitude, Pitch, Speed and Word Gap settings, and share it with others. Read More

BurnNote: Send Private Messages That Are Auto-Deleted After A Defined Time [Web]

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Not long ago, we covered DUE.IM, a text message service that allowed you to send one-time readable, private messages to others. BurnNote is a similar web application that offers you the same functionality, but with additional options. The service lets you send private messages to others that can only be viewed once and are deleted after a set amount of time. Deleted burn notes are completely erased from the BurnNote servers, so it is impossible for anyone to retrieve them. All you have to do is enter your message (password, number, link, note etc), and the service will instantly generate a private URL that you can share with your buddies. Once the message has been read by the recipient, BurnNote will automatically ‘burn’ it, ensuring that it remains private. That’s how simple it is! Read More

Share One-Time Private Messages With DUE.IM [Web]

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DUE.IM is a secure text message service that you can use to send one-time readable private messages to others. When we send private information, such as passwords or sensitive links to someone via email or chat, the messages are saved, but with DUE.IM, the information can only be viewed once, which decreases the chances of the info falling into the wrong hands. All you have to do is enter your message, password, number or a private link, and the service will instantly generate a unique URL that you can share with others. The message can be only read once, so the next time they visit the same URL or refresh it, the message won't be there any longer. Read More

Quickly Delete Individual Or All Facebook Messages With One Click [Chrome]

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When we click the cross icon to the right of a Facebook message, it simply hides the message and adds it to the archives category. These archived messages then reappear when the same user sends us a new message on Facebook. When Facebook introduced the chat history feature, many people might have been thrilled that they would no longer have to remember what they were talking about yesterday. The slight problem is with where Facebook decided to save the history to - in our messages! Now, deleting the simplest smiley face message means selecting and deleting it.  This leaves important messages mixed with smiley icons. This whole process can not only take forever, but can be a real pain particularly if you’ve got tons of messages in your Facebook inbox. This is where Facebook Fast Delete Message, a Chrome extension, comes to the rescue. The extension adds a direct delete button to message threads, next to the useless Archive button, and allows you to instantly delete messages, without having to deal with confirmation prompts. Additionally, you can delete multiple messages from different people at once by clicking the Delete All button. Read More

FanMix: Social Media Manager That Auto-Prioritizes Conversations By Keywords

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Keeping up with loads of Facebook messages, tweets and comments from your blog can be a difficult task. If you have multiple social media accounts, it can be fairly easy to lose track of a conversation, which is where FanMix jumps in to provide assistance. This free web app helps you manage conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs, using a single inbox. Signing up for the service takes only a few seconds, after which all you need to do is connect your accounts with FanMix. With it, you can instantly reply to all your social media conversations, mark items as starred, and access all your contacts from various networks. More after the break. Read More

[Giveaway] Decipher TextMessage: Save iPhone SMS & iMessage Threads To PC

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Back in the days of using Symbian ‘smartphones’, before threaded messaging perhaps even existed, I was a huge fan of text messaging. The biggest bummer than dumb phones posed at that time, at least from my point of view, was their limited message memory. When I got my hands on my first iPhone, the biggest relief was the fact that it was able to store virtually unlimited number of messages. Then, over time, the SMS craze diminished, until text messages remained only a form of communication that my phone was capable of doing – until recently. For some reason, I needed to save some messages off my iPhone, and that’s when I realized there was no way to do it (well, no easy way, at least). The hard way involved manipulating the sqlite database that stores iPhone’s messaging threads manually, while the easy way required shedding off some bucks for outstanding results. Decipher TextMessage is one such cross-platform paid application that will allow you to view and export all your iPhone’s messaging threads (SMS, MMS and iMessage) as text or HTML files and save locally, along with a few other, highly useful options, such as recovering deleted messages. Read More

Search, Caption & Share Photos With Blurtt For iPhone

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Most of us spend more time texting, or using messengers, than we do making phone calls. Writing words has become an important medium of sharing, specially since the advent of SMS. There are occasions, however, when the complete spirit of what you are trying to say cannot be conveyed fully with mere words. In scenarios like these, you just wish that there was some way to tell your correspondent the way you meant to say something. The easiest method of doing so is via photos, and that’s why so many people like to use emoticons with their texts. Blurtt is an iOS app which takes things a step further and using this app you can choose any picture, add a caption to it and then share it with your friends via Email, SMS, on Facebook or through Twitter. Read More

Real-Time Photo, Text & Voice Sharing App Coco Voice Comes To Android

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Coco Voice is a free cross-platform IM client for Android and iOS-powered devices that allows users to share text, photo and voice messages with each other in real-time over the internet. Initially available only in the iTunes App Store, the app has just made its way into the Android Market, sporting all the cool features that we get to see with its iOS counterpart. Using Coco Voice, you can initiate a conversation session with other app users to share voice messages in real-time, just like a walkie talkie. Each shared voice message is played almost instantly in high quality, and gets stored as an individual audio clip within the conversation history. In fact, the app supports saving your entire conversation sessions, so that you can take a glance at your recent chats with friends, and listen to their messages as many times as you like. The app also lets you natively post status updates on the Coco Voice network, Facebook and Twitter. It also supports sharing text as well as email messages from within the app. Real-time status bar notifications keep you apprised of any friend/chat requests, as well as other activities from the network that involve you in one way or the other. All in all, a fast, simple and fun way of interacting with your buddies via your smartphones/tablets. Read More

MailWidget: View Number Of Unread Messages In Mail App On Dashboard [Mac]

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If you were to name a few things you always want to keep on your screen, they would probably be the time, Wi-Fi status, Mail alerts and the Mayan Calendar so you always know how many days are left until the world ends. While users may add a lot more to this list, this is the bare bone of it. MailWidget is a Dashboard widget for Mac that puts the number of unread messages in Apple Mail on Dashboard. The widget lets you choose which account you would like to view unread messages from (supports only one), and how frequently it should check for new messages. While you will need to configure an email account with Apple Mail, you do not necessarily have to keep it running for the widget to work. Read More