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Weird Wide Web: Twitter blocking blunder, learning languages and a typo solution

All of your essential tech and social media news for the week in one byte-sized portion.

WELCOME TO THE Weird Wide Web – where we take a look at the week’s best offerings in tech and social media news.

Twitter blunder of the week

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(Image: Chris Ison/PA)

There was outrage among Twitter users when the social media site snuck in changes to its block function overnight. This meant a person you blocked would be unaware and would still be able to follow you, and see and interact with your tweets – you just wouldn’t be able to see what they say about you anymore. Well, needless to say, this didn’t go down too well and Twitter’s Vice President of Product Michael Sippey quickly rolled it back on Friday, DailyEdge.ie reported.

Learning languages app of the week

This project, which throws traditional language-learning practices out the window, funded in less than three days on Kickstarter. Software, based on some solid research, will first teach you the pronunciation of a language – often the most difficult part – in just two weeks. Then, in theory, it should be much easier for you to learn the rest.

Typo solution of the week

If there’s one thing you miss about those old brick-sized phones you used to carry around, it’s probably the physical keyboard. No one types better on a touch screen and one company, backed by Ryan Seacrest funnily enough, has decided to bring buttons back, with a keyboard similar to that on a Blackberry, which clicks onto the bottom of an iPhone. They’re currently working on rolling them out for every type of smartphone, The Daily Mail reports.

(Video: Alok Tiwari/YouTube)

Facebook feature of the week

We’ve all felt the uncertainty while pressing the ‘like’ button on a status about someone’s cat dying or their terrible night spent in the Emergency Department because they fell off their bike. Unless they’re one of your foes (or you’re just a bit sadistic), you don’t actually like that those things happened to them. So with this in mind, Facebook is developing a “sympathise” button, though there are no immediate plans to  launch it.

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(Image: Shutterstock)

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Michelle Hennessy
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