Year: 2017

You can now import your Instagram contacts into Messenger

Facebook and Instagram have begun testing a feature that allows you to more easily bring your Instagram contacts into Messenger. The experience, which is entirely opt-in for the app’s users, is the latest in a series of integrations between Instagram and Facebook’s properties, which has earlier included the cross-posting of Instagram Stories to Facebook as well as the ability to launch the Instagram app directly from Facebook.  This time around, the two apps are making it simpler to sync your Instagram and Messenger accounts with one another. In Messenger, you…

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Target Launches its own Mobile Payments System with Debut of Wallet

Dianne Jacobs

As promised earlier, Target launched its own mobile payments system with the introduction of “Wallet” in the Target app. Wallet, as the name implies, allows Target shoppers in-store to both check out using their smartphone as well as take advantage of their Cartwheel digital coupons and discounts with only one scan of their barcode. Already, Cartwheel savings in Target’s app had worked like this – that is, after adding the discounts on selected products to your Target account using the Cartwheel feature, shoppers could present a barcode to be scanned…

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The UK’s cybersecurity agency issued a new guidance to ministries about using Russian antivirus software

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a new guidance for how the country’s various ministries should closely manage their use of antivirus software supplied by a foreign nation, such as Russia’s Kaspersky Lab. In a letter to to heads of government ministries, NCSC CEO, Ciaran Martin said that organizations need to be vigilant to the risk that an [antivirus] product under the control of a hostile actor could extract sensitive data from that network, or indeed cause damage to the network itself. He went on to specifically…

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Gym-As-You-Go wants to let you pay per exercise

Wish you didn’t have to pay as much if you rarely went to the gym? Gym-As-You-Go wants to offer pricing based on usage rather than monthly subscriptions. The project uses NFC to let you check in at work-out machines. You’re then charged a fee for how long you use the machine, and Gym-As-You-Go keeps a percentage. Pay-as-you-go pricing could give lazy people who rarely work out a way to waste less money, and gyms a way to attract a different type of customer. Especially popular machines could be surge priced…

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Parking Insider is a mobile wallet dedicated to helping you avoid parking tickets

Parking Insider is a smart app with a mobile wallet expressly dedicated to enabling its users to quickly and seamlessly pay for parking spots by the minute. The app also invites users to earn free minutes of parking by snapping pictures of free parking spaces, photos that it will use to create a heat map that enables others users to find open parking spots. It’s the second go at this idea by two of Parking Insider’s three creators. Shruti Kuber  and Advait Kumar are both getting their master’s degrees in…

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Bitcoin Bubble Burst will warn you if the bitcoin dream is about to crash down

Dianne Jacobs

Whether you’re a bitcoin believer or a vulture waiting to have your bubble predictions proved right, you’re probably keeping one nervous eye on the charts in anticipation of the crash everyone seems to expect any second now. Bitcoin Bubble Burst, presented today at the Disrupt Berlin hackathon, lets you you focus on other things, while it watches for major price changes and news events that could affect prices and alerts you in real time. Although there are plenty of apps and services that warn you when bitcoin trading volume or…

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Bitcoin loses over a fifth of its value in less than 24 hours

Bitcoin slid to as low as about Sh900,000 ($9,000) in volatile trade on Thursday, having lost more than a fifth of its value since hitting an all-time high of $11,395 on Wednesday. The cryptocurrency fell as much as eight per cent on Thursday on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange to hit about Sh900,000 ($9,000) exactly, marking a fall of well over $2,000 in under 24 hours. It then edged back up to trade at around Sh940,000 ($9,400) in the hour that followed, still down roughly 4 percent on the day. One…

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The Age of Cash is Almost Over

Dianne Jacobs

A world without paper payments is rapidly approaching, the co-founder of the Sohn Conference Foundation said Thursday. Evan Sohn said that paying for things with traditional bank notes is increasingly dwindling as the appetite for contactless payments and digital currencies grows. “How far are we from a restaurant that says we only take online payment? If you eat here, you have to download this application and we only take electronic payment, no cash here, no check,” Sohn, who works in the payments industry, said on the sidelines of the Sohn…

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Instagram testing GIF search for Stories

Dianne Jacobs

Instagram is testing a number of new features including the ability to search for GIFs to upload in your stories, according to screenshots obtained by The Next Web. TNW also detailed a number of other new features Instagram appears to be testing: a close friends list to share with only a small group of people, an automatic archiving option for all your stories, hashtag and emoji search options, and the ability to follow hashtags to get top posts and stories on a particular trend. Granted, all of these are just…

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Google faces mass legal action in UK over data snooping

Google is being taken to court, accused of collecting the personal data of millions of users, in the first mass legal action of its kind in the UK. It focuses on allegations that Google unlawfully harvested information from 5.4 million UK users by bypassing privacy settings on their iPhones. The group taking action – Google You Owe Us – is led by ex-Which director Richard Lloyd. He estimates the users could get as much as “several hundred pounds each”. The case centres on how Google used cookies – small pieces…

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