Yes, Slack Was Down

It wasn't you or your hangover

January 5, 2021 It's January 5, 2021. In case you need something sweet today, it's National Whipped Cream Day: Go crazy—top everything with whipped cream!     ⏰ Today's Big Stories... in 30 Seconds Today We Watched, Read, and Listened to (so you don't have to): 582 articles, 9 podcasts, 18 press releases, 489 tweets, and 7 YouTube videos 1. Slack Outage Messes With First Day Back To Work  If you had trouble using Slack yesterday, you aren't alone. Apparently, the massively popular business communications tool was down for most of the morning, though it did seem to come back around 2pm Eastern Time. Yay? 2. Samsung Set To Show off New Phones This Month It's that time again: Samsung is set to offer up new phones on January 14th, just after the big CES virtual event. The announcement itself is low on details, but we can expect a new Galaxy S21 and maybe some new earbuds. Hooray! 3. Apple's iOS 14 Notification Issues Continue  An iOS 14 bug that caused people to not receive iMessage notifications is apparently still affecting a large number of users, even after patch iOS 14.3 was said to fix it. If you're one of the users still dealing with the bug, hang in there; Apple is usually pretty good about fixing these types of things. 🦑 Go Deeper A new type of augmented reality headset aims to help blind people better navigate daily life by using artificial intelligence to identify text and objects and describe them to users. Sascha Brodsky has all the details on this incredibly useful technology.      🎱 By the Numbers Outages don't help, either Data: Business of Apps Salesforce purchased Slack for $27.7 billion last month, which could possibly help the company compete with Microsoft Teams' meteoric rise as the latter has positioned itself as the all-in-one businesses need during the pandemic. Slack has a long way to go to catch up, however. Best of luck!     🔥 Today's Hot Deal Samsung's Q90T is one of the best 4K TVs on the market in terms of panel quality and you can get it on sale for $500 off the regular price of $2,500, bringing it down to $2,000. Not bad at all! Don't Miss This Deal 🤓 Nerd Out "I could watch this all day. Don't tell my boss." -Bob Schulties, Senior Editor Watching machines do their thing is a pretty compelling watch, as fans of the popular series How It's Made can attest. This Twitter account shares gifs of all sorts of machine tomfoolery, and we are here for it. (Share on Twitter) 💎 You Know You Want It  Wow, that thing is tiny. Image: Rob LeFebvre/Lifewire If nothing else, you need a backup drive for your laptop. This super fast, super tiny, super rugged external SSD unit from OWC fits the bill in so many different ways, you should probably just go and get your own right now.  🙈 Wait, What? You can leave your toaster plugged in, too. No matter what you've heard, it's safe to use your phone while charging it. How else would we make it through long airport delays? Modern cellphones have built-in battery management software that prevents overcharging and overheating. So plug it in!     🗞 Extra! Extra! We've got you covered with the best in daily tech news! See the latest on our site or follow us on Google News. Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here. Have something you'd like us to write about? We're always open for suggestions, too. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the Tech Today newsletter. If you wish to unsubscribe, please click here .   Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links. A Dotdash Brand 1500 Broadway, 6th Floor, New York, NY, 10036 2020 Dotdash • All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.   [View in Browser]