Twitter’s 280 character limit upgrade now live for all users

What your timeline could possibly look like now with longer tweets

Watch out world, tweets are about to get longer. Or will they? Well, the option is there now officially. Twitter announced after its “successful” trial run in September, the update from 140 characters to 280 is now live for all users around the world—except for those that tweet in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, though. The change is said to be the company’s response to feedback it’s been getting to users. You should be able to tweet longer now or check if your app is the latest version.

The move though comes at a time when the service continues to be under fire for everything from the harassment users experience on its platform, to how it let propaganda that illegally influenced the US’s 2016 presidential election, and then there’s the tirade of said US President. The release of the 280 character update is said to be a diversion of sorts against the larger issues the platform faces, at least according to Kelley Heider, a crisis communications expert at SSPR, a public relations firm that often works with tech companies. "They change their narrative in the news cycle by responding to user feedback," she told CNET

IFTTT decentralizes Google Drive service, splits actions into Docs, Sheets, and Drive

IFTTT (or If This Then That) is an automation platform that works across a variety of services over the internet. You can use it to do things like save Instagram photos to your Google Drive, have it cross-post social media posts on various platforms, turn on the lights at home when it detects you’re in the area, and so much more. A new update coming to the platform though relates more to Google Drive. IFTTT is splitting up its Google Drive “applet” into the more specific Google apps, namely Drive, Sheets, and Docs.

This time, any applet that deals with spreadsheets will become linked to the Sheets channel, same goes for Docs and any created or uploaded document. Meanwhile, any applet that makes use of the file upload action will remain part of Drive. IFTTT is setting up these new services now and warns its users their might be some service interruptions on November 9. Some of you might already see the two new channels and have your applets migrated there.

Source: Android Police

Netflix acquires rights to ‘The Open House’ starring ’13 Reasons Why’ actor Dylan Minnette

It might be safe to say that 13 Reasons Why is a breakout role for actor Dylan Minnette. It also drew a lot more attention to Netflix than what it already gets. The two will be working again in a sense as Netflix just acquired worldwide rights to Minnette’s newest film, a thriller called The Open House. It’s written and directed by Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote. It follows a teenager (Minnette) and his mother (Piercey Dalton) into a new house where they find themselves attacked by threatening forces. The film is set to premiere on the streaming service on January 19, 2018.

Source: Variety

Tech4SickKids fundraising initiative hopes to raise funds for SickKids

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is launching a new initiative to upgrade its facilities to meet the needs of its patients. Called #Tech4SickKids, the initiative is calling on the help of the tech and innovation community of Toronto to help raise $25 million for the improvement of child healthcare at SickKids. They will be hosting a launch event on November 15, which you can purchase tickets for from this link. A panel discussion will be held with SickKid experts entitled “SickKids: The other Canadian tech hub.”

The fundraising effort will help with things such as support for the first Chair in biomedical informatics and artificial intelligence in Canada; make SickKids the first children’s hospital in Canada to make use of data intelligence to improve efficiency of health care delivery and help cut down patient risk; as well as provide the funds to build a new campus complete with a state-of-the-art Emergency Suite. SickKids is currently housed in a 1949 building, which isn’t the best facility for furthering modern day, cutting edge child health care.