Instagram this week rolled out a new feature to users they are calling “Notes,” a way for users to leave a sort of status update – or Away Message – to their followers or to their Close Friends.

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The StoryGraph – an app that lets you track, rate, and review the books you’ve read amongst many, many other things – is something every book lover should have in their app library. Complete with beautiful analytics, personalized recommendations, and a 1.2 million-member community, The StoryGraph is everything Goodreads isn’t. We spoke with cofounders Nadia Odunayo and Rob Frelow to dig more deeply into everything we love about our new favorite book app.

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BeReal – a social media app that launched in 2020 – is quickly gaining popularity among users and generations. Touting an opportunity for people to “be real,” I downloaded the app to see if it was worth the hype, and, spoiler – it isn’t.

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About a week ago, I had Alpine’s newest version of its popular multimedia receiver – the iLX-507 – installed into my beloved nine-year-old car, providing a much-needed upgrade. Head below for more details.

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Apple doesn’t offer truly individualized customization of its products or interfaces to its users, and if anyone wants to customize the look of their Apple products – specifically their home screens – they’re in for A Time. With iOS 16 coming in September, there’s an opportunity for Apple to give consumers needed autonomy.

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When communicating with people, no matter the platform – be it iMessage, Slack, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. – we have the ability to utilize audio messaging. I get why a lot of people don’t use them (probably?), but I’m here to tell everyone why they should embrace their own voice – and everyone else’s – when messaging one another.

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Kevin Boroumand, an entrepreneur, automation expert, and TikToker, has created a free, downloadable shortcut for iOS that will help to get you out of trouble if you find yourself in an unsafe or potentially dangerous situation. Below, we look into the details of “DoorDash Express.”

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With over 380 million users and 172 million subscribers, Spotify continues to dominate the streaming music market. While there are plenty of features to love about the service (curated playlists and podcast integration, to list two personal favorites), its Friend Activity leaves a lot to be desired.

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For reasons unbeknownst to users, the ability to organize your favorite videos (into what TikTok calls “Collections”) is available to some, was taken away from others, and for the rest of us, the “Collections” feature simply never existed. TikTok users have been lamenting over the loss of – or the inability to – organize their favorite videos for months, and we all want the ability to put our favorite videos where they belong.

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Contrary to popular opinion, linguists know that texting isn’t destroying the English language, even if there aren’t hard-and-fast rules. In fact, texting is a language in-and-of itself, and like any language, it allows us to express exactly who we are.

Think of it like this: the ways in which we format our words, how we respond to our friend’s texts, and the emoji we choose when texting are the parallel versions of our inflection, our non-verbal communication, and our facial expressions, all of which are highlighted when having face-to-face conversations.

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