BardTech

The post Wish, Netflix, Uber and ~100 others testing WhatsApp’s new Business API appeared first on BardTech . Earlier this month, WhatsApp announced the launch of its first revenue-generating enterprise product, the WhatsApp Business API. The API allows businesses to respond to messages from WhatsApp users for free up to 24 hours, then charges for any responses after that point on a per message basis. Though still in a limited preview, the company is now supporting around 100 businesses directly on its API platform, including airlines, e-commerce companies, banks, and others like Uber and Netflix , and plans to onboard many more in the months ahead. Because businesses have to first apply to gain access the API, there’s some misinformation floating around on backchannels about how to get approved. For example, some industry sources have been telling partners that no U.S.-based businesses are being onboarded to the API at this point. This is untrue, WhatsApp says. In fact, there’...

The post Spotify is now testing Friends Weekly on Android appeared first on BardTech . Earlier this year, Spotify began testing a new Friends Weekly playlist for users of the iOS app. Several months later, the Friends Weekly playlist was made available to a larger audience of iOS users. Now, it seems that users of Spotify’s Android app will soon be getting the Friends Weekly feature. Friends Weekly is a personalized playlist of your friends’ recently played songs. The playlist is made to make Spotify a more social experience by letting you see what songs your friends are interested in and react to them with emojis. Judging by the screenshots we were sent, this is a story-like view of your friends’ listening activity. You can listen to the same music synced up with your friends. You can click on your friends’ names and start listening to what they’re listening to. How to access Spotify’s new Friends Weekly playlist feature Method 1 This feature has been hinted at in code for...

The post SmartBear expands software testing market reach with Zephyr acquisition appeared first on BardTech . When a couple of long-established players are competing hard in any given market, one easy way to expand that market is to simply combine forces. That’s what SmartBear Software did today when it bought Zephyr , a fellow software testing firm with deep reach into the Atlassian Marketplace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Zephyr gives SmartBear a tool that includes Zephyr for Jira. Jira is the popular issue tracking software from Atlassian favored by many developers. In fact, Zephyr is the top grossing app in the Atlassian Marketplace, boasting over 18,000 teams using the tool to execute over 40 million tests, according to information supplied by the company. That kind of reach appealed to SmartBear CEO Justin Teague. The company claims the combined organizations will give them one of the most complete software testing product portfolios in the market. “The acquisit...

The post HP is ‘printing’ drugs for the CDC to speed up antibiotic testing appeared first on BardTech . At least 2 million people in the U.S. become infected with so-called “super bugs” and at least 23,000 people die as a direct result of these infections each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Now, HP’s Biohacker technology is working with the CDC on a pilot program to “print” and test antibiotics in an effort to catch these antimicrobial resistant strains from spreading faster. The HP D300e Digital Dispenser BioPrinter technology works by using the same set up as a regular ink printer, but instead dispenses any combination of drugs in volumes from picoliters to microliters to be used for research purposes. Part of the reason these bugs spread so rapidly often comes down to mis-use of antibiotics, leading the bacteria to develop a resistance to the drugs available. The CDC hopes to give hospital providers access to the technology nationwide to cut down on ...