Temu, the Chinese shopping app that has been dinged for shoddy products by some, is again the most downloaded free app on the US Apple App Store. TechCrunch.com reports that the shopping app took the #1 slot last year, displacing TikTok, which is still #3, behind Meta’s Threads app at #2. The 4th most downloaded is ChatGPT, while Google’s Search App is 5th. In 6th place is Instagram, with the #7 slot being held by WhatsApp. After that comes CapCut (which is owned by TikTok maker ByteDance), then YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Shein, and Facebook at lucky (or not) 13. What about the rest of the top 20? Look for Telegram, Snapchat, Cash App, Spotify, Max, McDonald’s, and Amazon.

It won’t be for a while, yet, but Apple is working son a king-sized folding iPad that opens up to the size of a couple iPad Pros side by side. Mark Gurman of Bloomberg says we should expect it around 2028. The folder will sport a 20 inch display. Apple’s biggest issue…as is every maker’s with folding devices…is to avoid the crease down the middle of the screen when the device is open. Samsung has been trying to minimize the crease since their first folding phone in 2019…it’s a tough nut to crack. Apple is aiming for the folding iPad to look like ‘a single, uninterrupted piece of glass.’ Reports are that the crease is close to invisible now, but close might not be good enough for Apple. It is unclear if it will run some version of iPad OS or if it will be robust enough to run the MacOS.

From the ‘good luck with that’ department, Elon Musk is apparently planning to take on Google’s Gmail with an X Mail affiliated with his X platform. According to androidpolice.com, Musk replied to a user asking about an email format of yourname@x.com, Elon replied ‘Yeah. On the list of things to do.’ As for dethroning Gmail…that will be a mountain to climb for Musk…Gmail presently has over 1.8 billion active users, and Gmail is pretty deeply integrated into the Google ecosystem. Musk is apparently aiming for something more like a DM style interface, but it’s doubtful that such will work for most folks…who are used to the advanced search, seamless integration with Google Workspace, and strong security features found in Gmail. 

This is an especially timely move by Meta, with all the activity around deepfakes. CBS did a segment on 60 Minutes about so-called ‘nudity’ sites like Clothoff, (which I purposely left the suffix off of) that use AI to produce very realistic pictures of people with their clothing removed to make nude photos and videos. Well, Meta has rolled out a tool for watermarking AI-generated videos. TechCrunch.com reports that since 2023 there has been a 4 times increase in deepfakes worldwide. The tool, called Meta Video Seal, is available in open source and designed to be integrated into existing software. The tool joins Meta’s other watermarking tools, Watermark Anything (re-released today under a permissive license) and Audio Seal. DeepMind also has a tool called SynthID that can watermark videos, and Microsoft has its own video watermarking techniques. In addition to a watermark, Video Seal can add a hidden message to videos that can later be uncovered to determine their origins. Meta claims that Video Seal is resilient against common edits like blurring and cropping, as well as popular compression algorithms.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.