WhatsApp
WhatsApp Messenger is an instant messaging app for the smart phones that operates under a subscription business model. The proprietary, cross-platform app enables users of select feature phones to use the Internet to transmit communication service with their needed persons... In addition to text messaging features of the audio, image, video are also used for the transmissions and the receiving from their users. Locations can also be shared through the use of integrated mapping features.
After months at beta stage, the application eventually launched in November 2009 exclusively on the App Store for the iPhone as based of model. In January 2010, support for BlackBerry smart phones was added, and subsequently Symbian in May 2010 and Android in August 2010. A month later support for Windows Phone was added, and then BlackBerry was also included.
On November 18, 2014, Open Whisper Systems announced a partnership with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption by incorporating the Text Secure protocol. As of 21 November 2014, only the latest version for Android is alleged to include the encryption, and only for text messaging, excluding group chats, and media. WhatsApp confirmed the partnership to reporters, but there was no announcement or documentation about the encryption feature on the official website, and further requests for comment were declined.
Competing with a number of Asian-based messaging services (like We Chat, LINE, and Viber), WhatsApp handled ten billion messages per day in August 2012, growing from two billion in April 2012, and one billion the previous October. On June 13, 2013
Download your WhatsApp Contacts
You can now use the WhatsApp messenger on your Mac or Windows PC provided you have the WhatsApp app running on a mobile phone that is not an iPhone. Go to web.whatsapp.com on your desktop, scan the QR code on the screen with WhatsApp on your phone and you can instantly send or receive messages to any of your WhatsApp contacts from the computer.
WhatsApp supports desktop notifications in Google Chrome so you can read your messages even if the WhatsApp web app is open in some background tab. The other benefit is that you can send pictures from your desktop or the DSLR SD card without having to transfer the bulky file to your mobile. There’s no support for sending audio or video files though. The other limitation is that your mobile phone should be connected to the Internet for you to use WhatsApp on the web.
Save your WhatsApp Address Book
The WhatsApp app on your mobile phone does not offer an option to download the profile images nor is there an option to export your WhatsApp Contacts for uploading into other address books like Google Contacts or LinkedIn. However, the contacts data can be easily extracted, or rather scraped, from the WhatsApp website in less than a minute with the help of a bookmarklet.
WhatsApp Contacts
To get started, drag the WhatsApp bookmarklet to the toolbar of your Google Chrome. Next open web.whatsapp.com on your computer, wait for the website to load and then click the bookmarklet in the toolbar. You can either choose to have a CSV list of your WhatsApp contacts or create a print-ready addressbook of your WhatsApp network. This will have the high-res profiles pictures, the names and the telephone numbers of all your contacts.
The WhatsApp image URLs are session-based and thus cannot be shared. You can however press Ctrl+S or Cmd+S on Mac to download the entire web page created by the bookmarklet and it will permanently download the profile pictures to your computer as well.
