Using Telegram Secure Message App

Working with Telegram Secure Messages

When you have a group of people it’s nice to have somewhere to chat all together. There are a number of applications you could use to do this. I have used WhatsApp with a group in the past. I had to leave the group and stop using it because I was getting annoyed with all the noisy bleeping. A couple of members of the group were posting silly stuff frequently and it made me grumpy. A niece was re-posting pictures of unicorns or something like that. WhatsApp is great for general use but it can be abused.

So for my choir group I looked at other secure messaging applications. I decided that Telegram would be the most suitable. I’ve been testing it with a couple of the more tech minded members of the group. I’m pleased with the test and the responses from the testers. This morning however, I was trying to add a person to the group and failing miserably. He says he has installed the application and created an account. I have sent him a link to directly join the group chat. I’ve tested the link on my own iPhone and it works. I sent him a link to directly connect with me. I have a username within Telegram which means I can use this type of link. None of this seems to have worked. I don’t know what he is doing or what he isn’t doing and so I’m a little bit disappointed.

Update: Later in the day he appeared in the chat. I still don’t know what the hold up was.

Within the application it’s possible to add members to the group. The person you want to add has to be in your list of contacts. So I go to invite friends. I find my friend’s name in there, select it and then tap on Share Telegram. The screen goes a little bit darker and a Cancel button appears. Nothing happens however long I wait. Kind of frustrating and it might be the app or it could be something else. Who nows, it should be easier than this.

What do I like about Telegram?

First of all it has a pleasant and useful interface. It’s easy to use for sending messages on a one-to-one basis. It also does a good job of being therefore a group chat. Within a group you have extra facilities such as creating a poll. Ask your question and have as many as 10 different options. You can send photos, videos, files and your location. The location can be a current location as a one-time share or a live location for up to 8 hours.

Today I created a small video on my iPad showing how to share files. I recorded it and edited it on my iPad. In the video also showed how it is possible to download the shared files. The shared media is divided up into Media: photos and videos, Docs: such as PDFs and word Documents, Links: Internet URLs and Audio: whatever sort of audio files. Until now the files have been shared through Dropbox. I have seen one or two people struggle with this method of file sharing. Mostly due to versioning issues. Changes were made to choir files and no one knew to get rid of the old one and use the new. The wrong lyrics were sung.