Author: Softonic Product Marketing Team

One of my New Year resolutions was to meet new people. I took my smartphone, installed half a dozen apps, and dove into the world of mobile chat rooms. Let me tell you some of the funniest conversations I’ve had in my quest to beat loneliness.

There’s a time in life when you feel the need to expand your social circle. When that happens, you resort to all kind of tools. Apps are one of them, and probably the cheapest. You can meet new people from the couch, opening new chats like you’d change TV channels. It can be just as fun as real life encounters. So, I decided to give it a try.

In the last two weeks I entered virtual venues filled with complete strangers, making myself available to never ending streams of faces. I engaged in one on one conversations with people from all over the World and listened to music I never heard before, streamed by improvised DJs. I turned into a drawing of a weird creature. I even had the chance to exchange words with a robotic cat.

It was strange at the beginning, even messy at times. Some apps allow video and voice chat, others change your appearance, and some conceal your identity to generate both suspense and a feeling of privacy. It wasn’t always a cakewalk, but I quickly got accustomed to the rules of each app. When the noise and bustle became excessive, I just lowered the volume: in online chats, you are in control.

I sung in a virtual karaoke room – and enjoyed myself in the process

Paltalk is all about fun. It’s a place where thousands of people can participate with text, video, and audio from PCs and phones. There are more than 5.000 rooms on any topic you’d imagine, but music is what defined most of the good experiences I had, with many rooms featuring live songs that served as background to the conversations. Sometimes people seem to dance – virtually – whenever a good tune kicks in.

I have a nice baritone voice but, shy as I am, I seldom sing in public. Now, among all its categories, Paltalk has one named “Karaoke – Singing” (it’s under “Music”). Intrigued, I entered several chat rooms, and listened intently to various performances. What galvanized my enjoyment was the immediacy of it all. You press a button and you are the star. It’s that simple.

I waited for my turn. My heart beating fast, I pressed the mic button and delivered my own rendition of In the Air Tonight. Raised thumbs appeared on the screen. Small as it was, it was an audience. And singing for it was great fun.

I chatted with a robotic cat that sends memes

One interesting feature of Kik are its chat robots. They are always up for a silly conversation, which is great to alleviate boredom when you are struggling to find the right hashtag. The standard Kik bot, for instance, receives more than 50,000 messages per week, which it replies to with Siri-esque efficiency and wit.

My favorite is Dave the Cat. I know. Cats. Internet. Perfect match, right? Kik knows it. And Dave is exactly what I need on a bleak Monday morning. It laughs, purrs, and meows at my lines in a very convincing manner, with the sort of delays you’d expect from a human actor. More importantly, Dave is adept at sending unsolicited pictures and videos of… cats.

The fact that a virtual cat was one of most entertaining moments of my mobile socializing experiment says something about the nature of online conversations. But rather than pondering on this, I prefer to ask Dave for more kitty portraits.

I won a trivia contest thanks to a silly question

Online trivia is so addictive. Back in the days of dial-up Internet and IR, I’d spend entire nights trying to guess the answers before anybody else. Ten years later, I found the same thrill in Chatimity, a community where people join topic-based conversations. When I saw its Trivia channel, I looked no further.

In a matter of minutes I was hooked again. “How many wings does a flea have?” People tapped numbers frantically. “Zero”, I calmly replied. Then I failed at one about a song from the 60s, before a string of replies to history and science questions brought my score up. Suddenly, the match was over. I had won.

Online trivia is a different kind of conversation, one that revolves around knowledge and speed. Even if you choose not to participate, there’s still a lot of room for fun, and you can learn a lot just by reading the answers.

I turned into a cute little creature and met a fellow alien

Identity is a tricky thing. There’s so much to explain, show, or hide. Wouldn’t it be liberating to turn into something completely different, like… a tiny imaginary creature? That’s precisely what Monsterio lets you do: after asking for your gender, it generates a funny alter-ego.

I pressed the button and Monsterio immediately found a match. The unnamed critter stared at me. I only knew it was a she. I felt embarrassed: what did I look like, I asked. Her description of my impish features made me smirk. I felt compelled to reciprocate. She laughed out loud. To “Remember Her” I gave her a name, which added her to my contacts.

It was fun, but also tender. We were two humans trapped in the body of hand-drawn aliens, freed from the bounds of name, age, and place. No “a/s/l”, no pictures, just a sense of freedom and privacy.

Anything can happen in online chat rooms -like in Vegas

The experiment was a success, albeit in an unexpected way. While none of those conversations ultimately produced a new friendship, they filled many hours with funny moments —I’ll never forget my performance in Paltalk, for instance. When I opened the apps for the first time I didn’t know what would happen, but I was certain it would be exciting and safe. And these apps didn’t disappoint.

What’s the funniest moment you’ve experienced in mobile chats?

Malware has gotten a lot smarter in recent years, and they have evolved from harmless annoyances to malicious invaders that steal your data and identity. Being exposed to malware is as dangerous as letting a burglar loose in your backyard – a disaster waiting to happen. One moment you are browsing your favorite websites and the next, utter panic ensues. Your computer starts to malfunction, your data gets stolen, and your e-banking credentials get sold to pirates half the world away.

To protect you from these scary scenarios, security software have evolved with new detection tools, surrounding Windows with a variety of shields, countermeasures and roadblocks to defend your data when the bad guys strike. These complex security software have become heavy deadweights, dramatically slowing computer performance and consistently interrupting you with prompts, questions and alerts.

Not Bitdefender Internet Security 2015, the only anti-malware ninja that gives users absolute protection- stealthily and easily thanks to OneClick Security™. And you can it try it three months for free if you download the trial version from Softonic.

A stealthy and deadly anti-malware ninja

What is an antivirus these days? Clearly, it’s no longer a simple scanner. Antiviruses have become a complex set of tools that act in concert to provide security against an ever broadening circle of dangers, be it keyloggers, phishing websites or government rootkits. Orchestrating all these defenses into an easy-to-use package is an extremely challenging task.

Bitdefender Internet Security is exactly what a modern antivirus should be: Lightweight and Smart. Computer security should be simple, and Bitdefender has managed to offer the seemingly impossible ´one-click to total security´.

Bitdefender Internet Security never bugs you with unsolicited optimization requests or persistent upgrade offers. Working tirelessly in the background, the simple interface conveys a single message: ‘You are protected’.

But simple does not mean less effective. Bitdefender’s antivirus technology has consistently been awarded the best ratings in the AV-Test and AV-Comparative independent tests.

Not just function, it’s also about great design

Today´s virus protection is no longer a run-and-forget process. Antivirus software act like young children, bugging you with endless questions: “Should I do this”, “Could we do this?”. But because we are so busy browsing, working and playing, we barely have the time to answer all their questions. So instead of being a reassuring presence, Antiviruses often turn into the direct opposite: an enormous nuisance.

Bitdefender Internet Security never ever bothers you. In most situations, you won’t have to respond to any pop-ups or make any decisions. The Autopilot mode intelligently picks the best settings for each situation, and automatically adapts the amount of system resources it uses to ensure that the Antivirus does not get in the way of the computing experience.

User profiles let you pick specific scenarios. For example, ‘Movies’ turns off notifications and scheduled scans while you watch videos, and ‘Game’ take the stealth even further, so that nothing will distract you while you are immersed in a Starcraft match or dealing fatal blows to a dragon in Skyrim. Feeling lazy? Autopilot can even take care of the profile switching for you.

Stop worrying about data theft

Another great feature of Bitdefender Internet Security is Safepay, a feature that provides a safe environment for you to carry out transactions of any kind, without the fear of having your data stolen. It’s like a special browser loaded in a protected sandbox, a memory zone that no other application can access without Bitdefender’s permission. Everything that happens in Safepay stays in Safepay.

Using Safepay is like enclosing yourself in a bank vault, you even get a virtual keyboard at your disposal to prevent any program from reading your keystrokes (a common malware tactic called keylogging).

Safepay integrates with Wallet, an encrypted data manager for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, that lets you store passwords, credentials and online banking numbers. Bitdefender guarantees that no virus will be able to break through the lock. Once you spend some time to set it up, your days of keeping critical records in an unprotected text file will finally be over.

Protect your children from cyber-threats

Bitdefender Internet Security comes with all the security extras you’d expect from a premier suite. The two-way firewall, coupled with Intrusion Detection, simplifies the control over your network, ensuring that no suspicious program sends out data without your consent. This is especially important when fighting against remote control malware (RAT).

Then there’s also the excellent vulnerability scanner that checks for outdated and vulnerable versions of the most commonly used software installed on your PC, such as Adobe Reader and Java, and provides links to the latest versions. Vulnerabilities are a popular gateway for malware to get into your computer, and having Bitdefender consistently checking for updates frees you from the important, yet tedious, chore.

Last, but definitely not the least, Bitdefender Internet Security offers excellent parental controls and Facebook protection.  The theme of simplicity also extends here- Just enter your childs age and gender, and Bitdefender will restrict access to online games or web browsing during homework hours.

System optimization made simple –Finally!

System optimization is an important part of Bitdefender Internet Security. Bitdefender will never interrupt you with complex messages about the performance of your PC.

The OneClick Optimizer removes junk files and Registry errors in a single sweep. It’s fast and effective, and it only shows the most important figures. Like the rest of the suite, OneClick doesn’t need to impress you with fancy graphics or complex reports, it just does its job in the quietest, most effective way.

Another intelligent tool is the Startup Optimizer, which measures total boot time and shows the potential gains (in seconds) as you remove program from the startup list. The simplicity of this tool is a testament to the efforts that Bitdefender has put into its design.

The best user experience and the best security, all in one place

With Antivirus companies creating increasingly complex and resource hogging software, Bitdefender has managed to craft one of the best security suites of 2015. You will be impressed by its performance and range of features, but above all, you will be delighted to use an antivirus that takes the user experience so seriously.