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“ I'm still waiting on my job at Spotify… Cuz I know y’all loved my playlist,” riffed Obama at an intimate White House reception last week. He didn’t have to wait long. Call it a hunch, but a new job listing on Spotify’s website seems like a perfect fit. CEO Daniel Ek just so happened to have a role the President seems qualified for: President of Playlists.  Ek took to Twitter  to make the listing known to the departing President before he leaves office in a few days. Who you are: Have at least eight years experience running a highly-regarded nation. Familiar with the Spotify  platform, with experience in programming playlists at a federal level. Anything from an eclectic summer playlist, to a celebratory, “I just found my birth certificate” playlist. Have good relationships with a wide range of artists and musicians. Ever had Kendrick Lamar play at your birthday bash? We’d love to hear about it! Can speak passionately about playlists at press events. Let us be clear,

AFP/File / Stan Honda WhatsApp temporarily crashed in an array of countries from the US to India, potentially affecting hundreds of millions of users This was revealed during Deilon Makoppa and Kurt Bosman’s bail application, both alleged members of the ‘Spotbouers’ gang. A WhatsApp group chat has revealed behind the scenes dealings of Port Elizabeth gangsters who appear to have easy access to firearms. This information came to light during a bail application at the city’s magistrate’s court where two men from a notorious gang applied for bail on Monday. Deilon Makoppa and Kurt Bosman applied for bail following a so-called revenge mission in which at least two people were killed and another was kidnapped during December last year. A third accused Damian Kammies has abandoned his bid for bail and still has two pending cases of murder against his name. The men who are reportedly affiliated with a notorious gang the ‘Spotbouers’, are facing charges of murder, assault with t

Uber executive and former Obama aide  David Plouffe  has joined Facebook founder  Mark Zuckerberg  and his wife Priscilla Chan's philanthropic group. Plouffe, who managed President Obama’s 2008 campaign, announced Tuesday that he would lead policy and advocacy work for the nonprofit Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. “My job will be to find creative ways to lift the voices of those who want to build a better future – no matter where they live, their background or their ideology,” Plouffe wrote in a Facebook post announcing the move. Plouffe had most recently been serving as a chief adviser at Uber. He said Tuesday he will remain on the board for the ridesharing company. Zuckerberg and Chan are also forming a public policy advisory board composed of former government officials and experts, a move to beef up the couple’s Washington presence and expand their philanthropic impact. Kenneth Mehlman, who managed President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign, will lead the boar

WhatsApp's ability to send GIFs in different forms and ways has been rolling out super slowly. First we could  convert videos and share them as GIFs , then the beta app let us  share GIFs saved on our devices , then the Web client added support for GIF search and insertion, and now finally the last piece of the puzzle is here: we can now search for, choose, and send GIFs from the WhatsApp app on our Android phones, no need for a separate Giphy client, the GBoard app, or to have the GIFs saved on our phones beforehand. The function shows up when you tap the emoji button in WhatsApp's text box. There's a new bottom bar that lets you switch between emoji to GIF. You can then scroll through popular GIFs and insert them right away or search Giphy for a keyword to find the appropriate animation for your current state.   Regardless of how late this feature has been implemented, it is positively awesome. Case in point:   Another change showing in the WhatsApp app is t

Messaging services such as WhatsApp,  Facebook  Messenger and Gmail will face tough new rules on the tracking of users under a revision to the ePrivacy Directive proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday. The new legislation seeks to reinforce the right to privacy and control of data for European citizens, with messaging, email and voice services – such as those provided by Facebook, Google and  Microsoft  – forced to guarantee the confidentiality of conversations and metadata around the time, place and other factors of those conversations. Listening to, tapping, intercepting, scanning or the storing of communications will not be allowed without the consent of the user, unless it is critical for billing or other purposes. Companies will have to ask for the explicit consent of users before being able to use their data for advertising purposes, which most use to fund services provided for free to end-users. Andrus Ansip, vice-president for the digital single market sai

Google makes  some amazing doodles , but every so often they go beyond a drawing. Some doodles include games or an informative piece about the person or holiday they’re celebrating. Now, Google can give you a notification whenever there’s a cool new one. The notifications are mercifully opt-in, so you don’t have to ruin your productivity the next time  Google wants to celebrate PAC-MAN . However, if you’re interested in them, you can enable notifications by following these steps: Open the Google app or swipe to the Google Feed portion of your home screen. Slide out the left-hand navigation panel. Tap Settings. Tap Notifications. Enable the Doodles toggle. After this, you’ll get a notification from the Google app whenever there’s a new interactive doodle. Presumably, this won’t bother you when the doodle is just a piece of artwork over the Google logo, but you’ll be notified of anything special.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, a device that practically invented the smartphone genre in itself, but, over in China, a modern bellwether of the mobile industry rolled out its own vision of the future. Tencent, the $240 billion Chinese internet giant, introduced its take on mobile apps — apps within WeChat, its blockbuster chat app with  846 million monthly users . Tencent launched a beta program for the apps last year, and they are essentially more-basic, stripped-down versions of iOS and Android apps that downloaded instantly, and run and can be stored within WeChat. They look and feel like apps, but Tencent is calling them ‘mini programs’ because Apple won’t let it use the term ‘app’. Mini program builds on the phenomenal success of WeChat, which is far and away China’s top app for iOS and Android —  Tencent said  in December the app has 768 million daily users, half of whom use it for 90 minutes each day. Already, developers can use official accounts and