WhatsApp announced the new Communities feature, which is designed to let people bring together separate group chats with a structure convenient for them. They support a range of new handy tools such as file sharing, group audio calls, reactions, and enhanced administration and moderation tools.

WhatsApp Communities will allow organizations, clubs, businesses, schools, and other local communities to create groups for their members to share news and updates and stay in touch within the broader Community structure. Communities will include smaller discussion groups. For example, for individual members of a certain organizational project.

Administrators will be able to link an existing group chat with the new feature or create a new group from scratch to get started. Notably, only administrators will have the right to share messages with all community members. Its members will only be able to communicate in small groups created or approved by administrators.

Communities are also encrypted, so you can safely engage in conversations you choose, without that information being shared publicly. The phone number of Communities’ participants will be hidden except from admins and the people who are in sub-groups with you.

WhatsApp also announced a bunch of improvements for groups on the messenger, whether or not they are a part of Communities. They include reactions, the ability to share files up to 2GB, one-tap voice calling for up to 32 people, as well as the ability of group admins to delete problematic messages. These features will be rolling out in the coming weeks.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai officially announced the dates for the upcoming Google I/O event on his Twitter. This year, the annual developer conference will take place on May 11-12.

Google I/O is Google‘s largest annual event, during which the company presents big software and platform updates across its various products, as well as showcases new technologies and products, including hardware. Traditionally, Google unveils a new version of its Android OS at the event. Therefore, it is expected that Android 13 will be unveiled on May 11, the first day of the conference.

Other possible key announcements are a new version of Wear OS as well as the presentation of the mid-range Google Pixel 6a. The company might also announce the foldable Pixel Notepad.

This year’s conference will be a fully online affair that is entirely free to watch. The I/O 2022 keynote will be live-streamed from Shoreline Amphitheatre, a frequent Google I/O venue, via YouTube. Registration will be open later this month.

However, the tech giant notes that the conference will be broadcast in front of a limited live audience, which includes Google employees and some partners.

You can find more details and some frequently asked questions about the Google I/O 2022 conference here.

Out of safety and health concerns caused by the coronavirus pandemic that ravaged the world, Google I/O was canceled in 2020. However, the conference returned as an online event in 2021, revealing a new Material You design for Android 12 and details of the Workspace services update, and announcing the merging of Wear OS and Samsung Tizen into one platform.

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CD Projekt RED has officially announced that it is working on the new installment in The Witcher series of video games, kicking off a new saga of the franchise. This is the first official confirmation that another full-fledged single-player role-playing game is being developed as part of the The Witcher series. The last installment, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was released in 2015 and has more than 250 awards.

This marks the beginning of a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games, the creators of Unreal Engine 5, because the new game is being developed on Unreal Engine 5 instead of the previously used proprietary REDengine (it was used to power Cyberpunk 2077 and will be used to create the game’s forthcoming expansion).

The partnership covers not only licensing, but also the technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where appropriate, reads the official announcement from CD Projekt RED.

CD Projekt RED PR director Radek Grabowski noted on his Twitter that the new game is not The Witcher 4 – it will more likely be a spin-off to the series with other main characters.

There are no plot or gameplay details about the project yet. The studio will share other details later.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the final part of The Witcher trilogy, based on a series of novels of the same name by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. The game tells about the adventures of a professional monster hunter, Geralt of Rivia.

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