Mitchel Broussard

Instagram today announced the launch of a new feature called "Instagram Stories," which lets its users post customized images and videos onto their profile, abiding by the ephemeral rule of rival service Snapchat: every post disappears completely within 24 hours. The company said that this lets users not have to "worry about overposting" and clogging up their profile in the process. Stories...

Twitter today revealed a change in how its "Moments" feature will work during the weeks of the Summer Olympic Games being held in Rio de Janeiro beginning August 5. A new tab for the Rio Olympics will be added to Moments -- and every platform the Twitter feature is available for -- but now users will be able to pipe news from the tab and into their own timeline for the entirety of the Olympic...

Google yesterday posted an entry on its YouTube Engineering and Developers Blog, detailing the increased encryption achieved by the company for its video streaming site. Over the past few months, Google has slowly bolstered the encryption for YouTube, and now 97 percent of the service's traffic is encrypted using HTTPS. The encryption-enforcing protocol provides "critical security and data...

Apple will no longer have to pay $625.6 million to VirnetX, which claimed the Cupertino company was infringing upon four Internet security-related patents. The decision came last Friday afternoon from U.S. District Judge Robert Schroeder in Tyler, Texas, claiming that it was "unfair" on Apple's part that two VirnetX lawsuits were aimed at the company in one trial (via Reuters). The case with...

A trio of former Apple Store employees recently delved into some stories of their tenure at various retail locations of the company's well-recognized brand. Although their names were changed to keep their identities a secret, the group which spoke with Thrillist included: Lucas, a Lead Genius with five years of experience; David, who worked part-time as a Sales Specialist for four-and-a-half...

Social media app Instagram is planning to launch a new feature that allows its users personalized control over the comments shared on each of their posts. The company has long had blanket rules for what constitutes appropriate speech on its network, but the new comment filter ability will let each user tweak specific rules to their own liking, since "different words or phrases are offensive...

Earlier this weekend, Apple began promoting book-related content with a new Instagram account centered around its iBooks digital platform. The launch of the iBooks Instagram page coincided with the release of the script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which the account posted about yesterday. Apple also wished author J.K. Rowling a happy birthday through its new verified Instagram...

In a series of tweets sent out this afternoon, musician Kanye West claimed that the schism between Apple Music and rival streaming music service Tidal is negatively affecting the music industry as a whole. West is one of the artists closely aligned with Tidal, who's also one of its co-owners, along with the likes of Jay Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Jack White, and others. In three...

The newest story set in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter universe, called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, has launched worldwide on Apple's iBooks platform. Referred to as "the eighth story," Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a script of the play of the same name, which has been in previews at the Palace Theatre in London over the last few weeks, and made its official world premiere tonight....

An update to Pokémon Go rolled out to iOS and Android devices today, bringing new features to the game along with a few slight shifts in the user interface. One of the biggest new additions is the opportunity for players to customize their avatar (which was previously only allowed when starting the game), giving the chance for added personalization in Pokémon Go. One of the longest-running ...

After announcing the discontinuation of the Disney Infinity franchise in May, Avalanche Studios and Disney Interactive Studios -- the game's developer and publisher, respectively -- remained relatively quiet on the specific timeline of the game's imminent demise. After the announcement, Disney still launched three new characters from Alice: Through the Looking Glass, and introduced its first play ...

A week after launching a new emoji-predicting keyboard, SwiftKey is now facing some pushback after a few users noticed that the main SwiftKey app was propagating suggestions related to the email accounts, phone numbers, and names of complete strangers (via The Telegraph). The Microsoft-owned app, available on iOS and Android, is widely known for its artificial intelligence and machine learning...

Popular third-party chat app WhatsApp is leaving a "forensic trace" of every supposedly deleted chat log, meaning anyone with access to your smartphone -- or another device connected through the cloud -- could potentially access data from the app. The discovery comes from iOS researcher Jonathan Zdziarski, who shared the information in a blog post after discovering the potential security flaw in...

Hinted at by the company earlier in the month, Nest recently debuted a minor, but notable, update for its iOS app, introducing a few user interface tweaks and ways to share live videos from the company's indoor and outdoor cameras. For those users with a Nest Thermostat and an Apple Watch, the 5.6.0 update should be of particular interest, since it brings with it the ability to let you adjust the ...

A collection of new photos and a video showcase a Lightning to 3.5 mm adapter, which has previously been rumored as a bundled accessory for the iPhone 7 this fall as a way to assuage users of the smartphone's long-rumored removal of the 3.5 mm headphone jack. The adapter in today's photos was reportedly obtained from a Foxconn factory in Vietnam (via Tinhte.vn) [Google Translate], and the...

Twitter today will begin rolling out its new "Stickers" feature for iOS and Android devices, which it first announced in June, letting users choose from a set of custom-made stickers in order to customize photos before posting them to the micro-blogging social network. The update brings Twitter a step closer to the comical editing capabilities of Snapchat, where users can place, enlarge, and...

Parking service company Parkopedia today announced that it will begin to provide its enhanced and detailed parking information services directly within Apple Maps. With the partnership between the two companies, that means iOS users will be able to visit Apple Maps to discover more than 40 million parking spots in 75 countries across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. The...

Microsoft today launched a new camera app for iOS devices called Microsoft Pix, which uses an artificial intelligence to adjust settings, choose the best photos, and automatically enhance each picture you take. The app will work on the iPhone 5s or newer, running iOS 9.0 or newer, with the company planning an Android release in the future. It did, however, remain curiously silent on introducing...

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi today announced a new smartphone, called the Redmi Pro, during an event in Beijing, China, where it also surprised attendees with the 'Mi Notebook Air'. As TechCrunch pointed out, the company's Redmi line of smartphone devices angle toward the low-cost spectrum of handsets, with most models costing around $150, allowing the company to move over 110 million...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today granted Apple a patent for a "Stylus with inertial sensor," equating to an advanced version of the Apple Pencil that could potentially function with the company's iMac-compatible Magic Trackpad (via Patently Apple). The patent was originally filed in November 2014, but was only recently published in May of 2016. The patent briefly mentions...