Apps

Google Play sees 47% decline in apps since start of last year

Google Play’s app marketplace is losing apps. From the start of 2024 to present, the Android app marketplace went from hosting about 3.4 million apps worldwide to just around 1.8 million, according to a new analysis by app intelligence provider Appfigures. That’s a decline of about 47%, representing a significant purge of the apps that

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Google’s NotebookLM expands its AI podcast feature to more languages

Google’s AI-based note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM is making its Audio Overviews feature available in 76 new languages, the company announced on Tuesday. Audio Overviews launched last year to give users the ability to generate a podcast with AI virtual hosts based on documents they have shared with NotebookLM, such as course readings or legal

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Spotify adds 5M premium users and hits record operating income

Spotify reported on Tuesday that its premium subscriber base grew by 5 million in the first quarter, representing a 12% increase year-over-year. This brings the total to 268 million, marking the second-highest total ever and the highest net addition of paid subs for a first quarter since 2020.  Spotify also reported a record-high quarterly operating

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Grouphug is a stealth-mode startup that plans use AI inside WhatsApp groups

Veterans of the European startup scene, who’ve launched multiple consumer apps in the past, are partly coming out of stealth Tuesday with a new app. On the face of it, Grouphug will simply generate memes from the archive of a group WhatsApp chat. However, that masks a wider play.  Grouphug is led by Felix Petersen,

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Grouphug is a stealth-mode startup that plans to use AI inside WhatsApp groups

Veterans of the European startup scene, who’ve launched multiple consumer apps in the past, are partly coming out of stealth Tuesday with a new app. On the face of it, Grouphug will simply generate memes from the archive of a group WhatsApp chat. However, that masks a wider play.  Grouphug is led by Felix Petersen,

Grouphug is a stealth-mode startup that plans to use AI inside WhatsApp groups Read More »

Google shifts Android news to a virtual event ahead of its I/O developer conference

News about Android is being relegated to a side show at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, next month. On Monday, the company announced it would share information about the latest updates coming to the Android ecosystem at an upcoming virtual event called “The Android Show: I/O Edition,” airing on May 13. The decision to

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AI animation startup Cheehoo lands $10M funding from Greycroft

Creating animation is a time-consuming process, requiring multiple steps including storyboarding, rendering, composition, and lighting to craft a single scene. If a director wants to experiment with a different take for a scene, an animation team has to go back and tweak things before the scene can be finalized. Cheehoo, a startup founded by a

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