Visa buys a stake in rival Square
Visa has purchased a 10 percent piece of Square, according to documents seen by the WSJ. Square is best known for its smartphone-attached readers that make it easy for merchants (and even panhandlers) to accept credit cards. The company was started and is still headed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. It’s a surprise that Visa bought a piece of Square now, because it recently launched Visa Developer, software that will help merchants accept Visa payments more easily. At that point, it seemed like Visa wanted to take on rivals like Square and PayPal, not buy pieces of them.
Ironically, Visa SVP Mark Jamison recently decried efforts by Google, Apple and other tech giants to enter the payment market. “No other company in this space has yet to deliver the customer density, global reach and scale that will be available through Visa’s open platform,” he affirmed. However, those companies have clearly invaded Visa’s turf, so it seems to be hedging its bets by acquiring part of Square.
Source: WSJ
American Airlines teams up with Uber for door to door travel
American Airlines has jumped into bed with Uber in order to create a service that’s as “door to door” as the pair can make. The idea is that fliers who can afford not to take the airport shuttle will get a “seamless travel experience.” For instance, if you’re flying with AA, you can set a reminder for an Uber pickup the moment you buy your ticket. Then, when you land, the app will guide you through the terminal and point you to your nearest Uber pickup location. That is, assuming that you’re landing at one of 11 locations in the US that AA has added maps to its app, which include Chicago O’Hare, Dallas Fort Worth or LAX. So, uh, good work on that one.
Source: American Airlines
All your Netflix streams now come straight from Amazon
The closure of Netflix’s last data center might not be news, but who’s picking up the slack on the outside might be. The firm has revealed that it’s now moved its entire online business to Amazon Web Services, the retailer’s cloud computing division. In a blog post, Netflix VP Yury Izrailevsky reveals that Netflix began closing its homegrown data centers back in 2008 after a server issue brought the (then) DVD-rental business to its knees for three days. Since then, it’s been slowly moving over to Amazon’s world-renowned servers which offer far more power, scale and reliability. It should go without saying that the fees Amazon charge per-stream are significantly smaller than what Netflix was shelling out when it was going solo.
By this point, you’re probably shouting at your screen wondering when we’re going to mention the elephant in the room. Amazon, of course, owns AWS, but also has its own competing video streaming service that’s trying to beat Netflix into the dust. First up, Netflix’s success is Amazon’s as well, with the former encouraging people to ditch cable, which Amazon can piggy-back onto into people’s homes. Secondly, the company must be making some serious bank from Netflix’s vast user base, so it’s win-win for Jeff Bezos.
It’s not as if we haven’t seen co-operation like this from other tech companies, either, with Samsung both a rival to Apple and also one of its key supply partners. Same goes for Samsung’s relationship with Qualcomm, since both are competing chip manufacturers, but the former also helps the latter build its hardware. Then there’s Sony, which sells its smartphone image sensors to plenty of other businesses in the smartphone pantheon. Yeah, folks, co-operation and loving thy neighbor is all the rage, and long may peace and love reign throughout the world.
Via: Fortune
Source: Netflix
UK police arrest teenager over recent US government hacks
UK authorities believe they’ve caught a teenage hacker who was part of the recent wave of attacks on US government officials. A 15-year-old boy who goes by the name “cracka” was arrested earlier this week for his part in a number of security breaches. He’s part of the group “Crackas with Attitude” who made news back in October for breaking into the personal email of CIA head John Brennan. The group went on to access several accounts owned by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last month.
What’s more, “cracka’s” associates told The Daily Dot that he was also responsible for leaking personal info of nearly 30,000 Homeland Security employees and FBI personnel this week. The group “Crackas with Attitude” typically posts news of breaches with a Pro-Paletinian message. They’ve said the hacks won’t stop until the US government breaks ties with Israel. “cracka” was arrested on suspicion of three cyber crimes related to the hacks on Tuesday, but he was reportedly released on “unconditional bail.”
Source: The Daily Dot
UK police arrest teenager over recent US government hacks
UK authorities believe they’ve caught a teenage hacker who was part of the recent wave of attacks on US government officials. A 15-year-old boy who goes by the name “cracka” was arrested earlier this week for his part in a number of security breaches. He’s part of the group “Crackas with Attitude” who made news back in October for breaking into the personal email of CIA head John Brennan. The group went on to access several accounts owned by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last month.
What’s more, “cracka’s” associates told The Daily Dot that he was also responsible for leaking personal info of nearly 30,000 Homeland Security employees and FBI personnel this week. The group “Crackas with Attitude” typically posts news of breaches with a Pro-Paletinian message. They’ve said the hacks won’t stop until the US government breaks ties with Israel. “cracka” was arrested on suspicion of three cyber crimes related to the hacks on Tuesday, but he was reportedly released on “unconditional bail.”
Source: The Daily Dot
Clocks is a dead-simple yet attractive game (review)
Overview
The mobile game market tends to have emphasis placed on opposing ends of the spectrum. On one end you have the very (and sometimes extremely!) grand, detailed, and complex works of artistic and scientific wonder. These games are constantly out developing each other with their intricate world designs, control schemes, and processor-eating technical requirements.
On the opposite end you have a very different expectation. These are games where simplicity rules, and both ease-of-play and addictiveness by design can quickly decide the success of a title. There are plenty of options at both ends.
One such option on the simpler end of things is the title “Clocks”, by the Saskatchewan, Canada-based studio Noodlecake Games. They first hit the mobile game market with their possibly familiar “Stickman Golf” and “Super Stickman Golf” games.
Setup
You can grab the game for free from the Play Store, and startup is as easy as pressing the app icon on your device.
The game does connect with your Google Play Games account, though I’ve never personally used that so I cannot speak to it’s worth here.
Gameplay
The idea of “Clocks” is simple enough. There are two modes, ‘Quest’ and ‘Survival’, though you are forced to start with ‘Quest’. In this mode, in each level you are presented with a different arrangement of clock faces, each with a single hand spinning either clockwise or…you guessed it.
Each clock’s hand is also spinning at a different speed. The only control is a large ‘shoot’ button taking up the bottom of the display; about the size of the Android screen dock on a typical home screen. At the beginning of each level, one clock is highlighted as the one you are in control of.
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The idea is to press the ‘shoot’ button as the spinning hand lines up with another clock of your choice. This action shoots a small dot, or BB, at the clock you’re aiming at. If you hit it, the previous clock disappears and you are now in control of the clock you just hit; ready to shoot the next one of your choosing. You repeat this until you have cleared all of the clocks off the screen, when you are congratulated on-screen and taken to the next level. If you miss, a quick “oh darn”-type message pops up; you’re given the option to try again and again until you complete it.
There are two levels of victory in each stage: you receive a *star* if you complete the stage before the stage’s countdown timer gets to zero, or simply a ‘passable’ score, with the option to move to the next stage or retry for the star.
Once you clear the 10th level, a message displays that you have unlocked access to the ‘Survival’ option of the game. This is an untimed version of the game. You begin with a similar screen of randomly placed spinning clocks, one highlighted as the one in your control, ready to stop and shoot upon your button press.
The difference here is when you accurately shoot a clock and take it over, the old one disappears and a new one randomly appears guaranteeing you never run out of clocks to shoot. The object here is not to clear the screen, but to see how many clocks you can accurately hit before finally missing, which becomes your high score. Successive attempts at this game option are solely to break your record and get a new personal high score.
Summary
Overall I do enjoy this game; the design is simple, but colorful and with good visual contrast, so it’s easy on the eyes when staring at a 5” screen. The gameplay is a matter of simple timing, which makes personal investment a minimum. You can pick it up and put it back down equally easily, which is nice in a typical hectic day. Sometimes you just want to challenge yourself, or while away the minutes in the doctor’s waiting room on something not called Facebook.
Download from the Play Store.
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Popular Fitness App Runkeeper Acquired by Sportswear Maker ASICS
Athletic apparel company ASICS today acquired popular running app Runkeeper for an undisclosed amount of money. Runkeeper founder Jason Jacobs announced the news in a blog post on Medium, in which he promised that the merger of a “digital fitness platform and world class physical products” will be one that should benefit fans of both companies.
Partnering with ASICS to fulfill this vision together makes a ton of sense. We both have deep roots in and focus on running as a core component of the fitness experience. There is strong alignment between our brands and core values. And from people using our Shoe Tracker feature in the app, we know that ASICS shoes are by far the ones that Runkeeper users run in the most!
Jacobs promised that Runkeeper users won’t see many changes to the core app experience due to the acquisition, but thanks to ASICS’ resources, the app should be able to expand and grow at a faster rate. The specifics of the integration into physical products for the two companies has not yet been disclosed, but an automatic run-tracking shoe seems to be in the cards with Runkeeper’s mentioning of the popularity of ASICS shoes among its users.
Runkeeper offers a free experience, but power users can spend $9.95 on a more premium version of the service. Last summer, Runkeeper announced that it cut 30 percent of its staff to shift focus “from purely attracting lots of users to wringing more revenue from those users,” which ASICS’ acquisition should help contribute to as well.
Fitness clothing companies have been making acquisitions in the digital space for a while now, in the last year alone Under Armour purchased MyFitnessPal and Adidas purchased Runtastic. One of the first technical integrations of digital fitness into a wearable was the Nike+ step counter, which you could insert into a tennis shoe to sync with the company’s running app.
Runkeeper is available to download from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
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AT&T to Begin Testing 5G, 10-100 Times Faster Than 4G LTE
AT&T has announced that it will begin trialing 5G wireless technologies this year, including lab tests in the second quarter and outdoor tests over the summer. The carrier anticipates 5G speeds to be 10-100 times faster than today’s average 4G LTE connections, with reduced latency.
Customers will see speeds measured in gigabits per second, not megabits. For reference, at one gigabit per second, you can download a TV show in less than 3 seconds. Customers will also see much lower latency with 5G. Latency, for example, is how long it takes after you press play on a video app for the video to start streaming on your device. We expect 5G latency in the range of 1 to 5 milliseconds.
Worldwide standards are still lacking for 5G technologies, but the 3GPP group aims to complete the first phase of that process in 2018. The widespread rollout of AT&T’s 5G network will likely take until 2020, but the carrier plans to provide wireless connectivity to fixed locations in Austin before the end of this year. The carrier joins Verizon, who will also be field testing 5G solutions this year.
AT&T’s 5G network will be based on technologies such as millimeter waves, network function virtualization (NFV), and software-defined networking (SDN). The carrier has already migrated 14 million wireless customers to its virtualized network, and it says millions more will be added this year. AT&T plans to virtualize 75% of its network over the next four years in the lead up to 5G.
It remains too early to predict Apple’s roadmap for 5G connectivity. Apple was quick to support LTE-Advanced, a faster standard of 4G LTE, on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus or later, but 3G and LTE wireless technologies were both available for years before Apple adopted them. Based on AT&T’s and 3GPP’s timelines, a 5G iPhone may not be released for at least three to four years.
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AT&T Expands ‘Buy One Get One Free’ iPhone Deal to New Customers
AT&T has announced that its “Buy One Get One Free” promotion for iPhones and select other smartphones is now available again for both new and existing customers.
The limited time offer requires both smartphones to be purchased on AT&T Next with a qualifying plan. The first device can be a new line or an upgrade, while the second device must be a new line and purchased on AT&T Next 24.
After three bill cycles or less, AT&T said customers will start to receive up to $650 in bill credits spread out over 30 monthly payments. The first payment will be a lump sum of any AT&T Next payments to that date. Tax is still due on both smartphones, which must be from the same manufacturer, upon purchase.
Last month, T-Mobile announced a similar “BOGO” promotion that offers qualifying Simple Choice customers half off all iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus models, or any iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, with the purchase of another iPhone of equal or greater value. The savings are applied instantly at the point of sale.
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[Deal] Play Music subscriptions 50% off for Valentine’s Day
Looking for a great Valentine’s Day gift for a loved one? Google has you covered with 50% off on subscriptions to Play Music!
Play Music subscriptions regularly cost around $10 a month, but Google’s is discounting that price by 50%. Not only that, but you can also get 50% on a three-month subscription as well as a six-month subscription. Instead of paying $30 for three months, you’ll pay $15. Or, instead of paying $60 but for six months, you’ll pay $30.
Google is offering some other great Valentine’s Day promotions as well.
It’s worth nothing that you don’t have to gift the subscription to someone else, but can gift it to yourself as well. As a side note, while this is a good deal as is, it gets even better. Google is throwing in free access to YouTube Red and YouTube Music as well.
Keep in mind that you have only about three days to take advantage of this deal, as Google says it expires on February 15.
Anyone plan on picking up a subscription for yourself or a loved one?
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