Posts Tagged: friends

The best digital gifts to send your friends and family

There are way too many online services and subscriptions to keep track of these days, but the flip side is there’s a tool for just about everything. We’ve pulled together some of our favorite digital gifts and subscriptions, including time-tested music, video and gaming services as well as tools to clear your mental space and learn new skills. There are also a few subscriptions here that provide ongoing, IRL deliveries, if you think your giftee will appreciate the nostalgic charm of a physical object.

Disney Bundle

Super Duolingo

Headspace

Masterclass

Codecademy

PlayStation Plus / Nintendo Switch Online / Xbox Game Pass

Apple One

Adobe Photography plan

Max

Audible

Crunchyroll Premium

Twitch Turbo

YouTube Premium

The Sill

Gaia fitness

Field Notes subscription

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/holiday-gifts-digital-and-subscription-gifts-160041638.html?src=rss

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

You can now limit Instagram posts and Reels to Close Friends

Instagram is expanding its Close Friends feature from Stories and Notes to feed posts and Reels. As such, you'll be able to share Reels and feed posts with a smaller, perhaps more trusted audience instead of everyone who follows you.

The Instagram team says folks use Close Friends "as a pressure-free space to connect with the people that matter most." By expanding the Close Friends option to Reels and feed posts, the developers hope you'll have "more ways to be your most authentic self on Instagram while having more choices over who sees your content."

Sharing a Reel or feed post only with Close Friends is pretty straightforward. When you're creating one, hit the Audience button, select Close Friends and then tap Share. The post or Reel will have a green star label, so those on your Close Friends list who see it will know they're part of an exclusive club. To highlight the expansion of the feature, you might see the app's plus button turn into a green star icon today.

It's worth noting that the Close Friends list will be the same group of people across all Instagram features. However, Instagram has been looking at other ways for everyone to share things with smaller audiences. Last month, Instagram head Adam Mosseri revealed that his team was experimenting with a way to let users share Stories with different subsets of followers. Facebook users have long been able to set up many different lists of friends and choose which one to share a post with.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-limit-instagram-posts-and-reels-to-close-friends-181123680.html?src=rss

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

’33 Immortals’ first look: Defying a god is more fun with friends

Have you ever struggled to bring together four folks for an Overwatch team? Tried to figure out how you and your friends can play Destiny 2 simultaneously? 

Can you imagine assembling 33 players for a 25-minute raid? 33 Immortals plans to do exactly that.

Channeling the animation style of retro cartoons (and a little Banner Saga), 33 Immortals is a massively substantially multiplayer roguelike top-down action game, from the creators of Spiritfarer. At a session following this week’s Xbox Showcase at Summer Game Fest, five fellow spirits and I tried to escape hell. 

In this early build of the game, there were two character types in play: a swordsman who could deal heavy close-range damage and an archer who could send up to three arrows toward enemies before having to reload. I got to play as the latter. Alongside the standard attacks, I could hold the action button to charge up a heavier piercing shot. The archer, when he reloads, recalls his fired arrows back to him, meaning strategic placement can effectively double the damage dealt.

All the characters also have a dash move, while trigger buttons open your world map, emote wheel and co-op powers. These co-op powers will vary depending on your character type and often demand careful planning to pull them off. Pressing the RB trigger displays a trio of circles on the ground; two of your fellow immortals need to activate the empty circles in order to trigger the attack. For me, this rained arrows on a wide area of the map, but for the swordsman, it launched a wide-ranged healing spell.

33 Immortals§
Thunder Lotus

With plenty of enemies on-screen, especially in the more challenging portal dungeons, it’s a lot of fun just chaotically spamming attacks, helping the rest of your team finish off mid-bosses, or picking off easier foes at a distance before they coordinate their attacks.

If the sword and bow options sound a little limiting, don’t worry: 33 Immortals will offer up plenty of different character types to play with. With seven deadly sins and seven heavenly virtues, we’ll likely get to play around with seven different warriors. Outside of co-op powers and quirks, the button layouts don’t change among characters, making it easier to try out every option. To add a little more complexity, you can gather up in-game currency from monsters you kill, exchanging them for healing or trinkets to boost attack speed, defense and more.

And you’ll likely have to try, try and try again. Each raid is built to be around 25 minutes long, and you'll want to keep as many players alive (and online) as possible so you'll be able to fell the boss at the end. More players will mean it’ll take less time to shave the health bar of bigger enemies, as the game apparently isn’t built to scale with how many characters are playing. More immortals is always better.

By the way, you’re not quite immortal as a fighter, either. After taking too much damage, you’ll fall and reappear as an ethereal spirit, not able to do anything but float around until another raider can resurrect you – something that proved to be particularly frustrating in the middle of difficult fights. Naturally, it’s just better if you fight more cautiously, heal your allies and… don’t die.

33 Immortals is inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy. You're rebelling against God’s final judgment that your soul is damned, and there's a fun twist in the way God delivers his anger when you beat one of his dungeons. As you step out of the portal, the ground around you will get immolated in holy fire, and you’ll have to dodge this and spawning enemies until God chills a little.

While this was an early demo, latency was a struggle for my machine, but the team has plenty of time to stabilize – and offer demos that are not in the middle of a hectic Xbox showcase. I’m excited to play a roguelike as part of a mob, and I'm curious to see what the other character types will be.

33 Immortals is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2024.

Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest right here!

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/33-immortals-first-look-defying-a-god-is-more-fun-with-friends-190037208.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

How to share Kindle books with family and friends

Wondering how to share books on a Kindle with those closest to you? Fortunately, it’s not as difficult as you might think. Here’s how you can share your books.
Digital Trends

Watch Netflix with your friends in quarantine with this Chrome extension

You might be missing some social interaction if you’re stuck inside, waiting out the current spread of COVID-19. But you don’t have to be completely alone, and I’m not talking about spamming memes in your Discord server, either. Check out the Netflix Party extension for Google Chrome instead. Netflix Party Chrome extension This extension is […]

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Spotify tests ‘Tastebuds’ feature that highlights your friends’ favorite tracks

There's no better way to find new music than to get recommendations from someone whose taste you share. Spotify is capitalizing on that by testing out a new feature called Tastebuds, which lets you see what your friends have been listening to and dis…
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Xbox One update helps you buy the games your friends are playing

It could soon be all too easy to cave into peer pressure if you're an Xbox One owner. Microsoft is trotting out a Guide update that not only lets you obtain more info about the games your friends are playing, but buy them, install them or play them….
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Instagram’s Threads is a camera app for sharing with your closest friends

If you want to get a glimpse of Mark Zuckerberg's "privacy-focused" vision for Facebook, then look no further than Instagram's new social app: Threads. This new standalone, camera-first messaging app is an extension of Instagram's Close Friends featu…
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Recommended Reading: Taylor Swift and Spotify are… best friends?

Taylor Swift is getting friendly with Spotify ahead of her new album, 'Lover.' Times have changed. Tim Ingham, Music Business Worldwide Not too long ago, Taylor Swift shook off Spotify, pulling her entire catalog from the service and slamming musi…
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Facebook Stories test helps you invite friends to events

It's hard to make events exciting in Facebook. You can plan things down to the smallest detail, but that won't matter if people don't notice your event amid all the puppy videos and heated debates. Facebook may have a simple solution: put events wh…
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Candy Crush Friends Saga gains Santa Yeti, Christmas Maps, and other festive-themed content

If Candy Crush Friends Saga is the game you love to play, you’ll be happy to find out that there is a ton of festive-themed content dropping in the run-up to Christmas Day. The additional content includes customizable outfits for your favorite characters such as Yeti Santa or Misty Reindeer, Christmas maps, and the “Santa […]

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Facebook only checks for impostors within your circle of friends

When you go to Face Recognition in Facebook's Settings page, there's a link that leads you to more info about it that says switching it on can "help protect you from strangers using a photo of you as their profile picture." That pertains to a feature…
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Google Photos will now recognize your furry friends

Google Photos is one of Google’s most popular new products, and they’ve been steadily adding new features to the service to make it even smarter. The latest addition? It will now recognize your furry friends in addition to your human friends. You’re probably thinking that Google Photos has always recognized animals in your photos, and […]

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Got 200 friends? Video chat with them all at the same time using Line

Messaging app Line has launched a group video chat feature, where you and up to 200 of your friends can all chat together. Obviously, there won’t be 200 tiny windows on the screen though, and the view is restricted to four. And yes, there are face filters.

The post Got 200 friends? Video chat with them all at the same time using Line appeared first on Digital Trends.

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Snapchat Groups will let you chat with 16 friends at once

Even though Snapchat has quickly become a huge communication platform, there are still basic features it lacks, like group messaging. With Snapchat Groups, announced today, the app is beginning to fill those gaps. It'll let you start group chats with…
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Google hopes to crowdsource Android Wear watch face designs from you and your friends

Thanks to a new partnership between Paper and Android Wear, you’ll be able to partake in a social media competition that involves a “global search for unique watch face designs” for the Android Wear watch.

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Download these five apps to share with groups, track your friends, and more

Every week we peruse the various app stores to find let you know what’s worth downloading. This week’s top five includes an app to boost creativity, share content to your friend groups, and more.

The post Download these five apps to share with groups, track your friends, and more appeared first on Digital Trends.

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you can buy accessories for your G5 phone at the LG Friends marketplace

Looking for some new friends? While ‘LG Friends’ may not give you real friends, it will offer you some ‘friends’ for your phone. The online marketplace is aimed at offering users G5 accessories and modules.

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LG’s telling developers how to make Friends, because more modular phones may be coming

The LG G5’s modular design is exciting, but it’s going to need more than the two modules already announced if it’s going to succeed. LG’s preparing to release development kits to help other companies produce them, and outlined plans on how they’ll eventually be sold.

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Unfriending Facebook friends can be considered bullying in Australia

It's tempting to unfriend people on social networks when you're mad at them, but you may want to think twice about it when coworkers are involved… at least, in Australia. The country's Fair Work Commission has determined that an administrator's d…
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Memories abound: How to share your photos with friends on Google Photos

Google’s standalone photo service, the aptly-titled Google Photos, is the perfect tool for uploading and retaining all your favorite memories in one place. Check out our guide on how to quickly share photos using the service’s Web interface or mobile app.

The post Memories abound: How to share your photos with friends on Google Photos appeared first on Digital Trends.

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I solemnly swear that I am up to no good: Marauder’s Map Chrome extension helps you stalk friends

A new Chrome extension uses Messenger to display a map of your Facebook friends’ recorded locations, based on their Messenger usage. It’s pretty much as scary and creepy as it sounds.

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