Apple has released a watchOS update that aims to avoid an issue that causes some of the Watch Series 5 & SE to stop charging. Despite the fix if there are users who continue to face the problem, they are eligible for a free repair.

The Africa Startup Initiative Programme Accelerator aims to recognize & assist early-stage African startups in the telecom & technology fields. Also, in other headlines. Google has agreed to pay US $76 million over three years to a group of 121 French news publishers.

Google has brought Pixel-exclusive editing features to Google Photos for all Android users. In other news, there's a soon-to-be-launched platform called "Tiki" that wants to monetize user data. Which means you retain the choice to decide whether you want to sell your personal data, and if so, also get paid for it.

In the UK, Google has signed partnerships with over 120 publishers for Google News Showcase. Elsewhere, a researcher claims to have managed to breach the internal IT systems of at least 35 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, & Uber by exploiting a vulnerability in open-source programming languages. 

SpaceX has started to accept pre-orders for its Starlink satellite internet service. On the other side, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spells out his vision for Twitter and social media in general in an investor conference. 

'Social Image Generator' is a WordPress plugin that automatically takes the title & image from your post & creates a shareable image for social media to advertise your blog for WordPress or product, for Woocommerce. Plus, in other news, audio-chat app Clubhouse is banned in China.

The Telegram app saw over 63 million installations in Jan 2021, which was 3.8 times the downloads in January 2020, according to a Sensor Tower Report. Another app, the audio-chat, by-invite one, "ClubHouse" has become very popular with Chinese citizens to discuss contentious issues and bypass government censorship.

Google today offered payment to Australian publishers under its “News Showcase” program but some of the big publishers have rejected it. Also, a Chrome browser extension called, ‘The Great Suspender’ has been removed from the Web Store for being malware. 

The co-founder of Snazzy.ai talks to Whats New On The Net about his startup where you can get content for landing pages, ads, and emails written by artificial intelligence. In other news, TikTok will now warn users against unverified videos that contain questionable information that can't be verified by fact-checkers. It will warn users when they go to re-share those videos that the information hasn’t been confirmed.

It was launched in beta about a year ago, and membership remains by invite only. Yet, the Clubhouse app has created a sensation, and also has a great celebrity following. Why? Listen to the story in today's podcast.