Browsing Tag: Mobile Smart Phones

Sage is giving reviewers, chefs and other experts and publishers a central place to share all their content.

To do this, the startup has created a new product called Sage Plus for Experts, which isn’t open to the public yet, but is accepting signups from those aforementioned travel experts — the kinds of experts who can share content around things to do, food, drinks, experiences and shopping.

Founder and CEO Samir Arora (who previously led Mode Media/Glam Media) suggested that a Sage profile can serve as the center of a creator or publisher’s online presence. And eventually, it could become the foundation for them to build their own personal direct-to-consumer brand.

In the announcement, Arora said the product was designed to answer a simple question: “Why does the internet not offer a simple way to show recommendations by real experts or the authentic experiences and products by the brands we trust and love?”

Back in 2017, when he first told me about his vision for Sage, Arora said his goal was to create a reliable source for location data. In an interview earlier this month, he said the plan to focus on verified sources eventually led him to this new product.

“We started to say that the only way to have verified information is to go backwards, to verify the sources of information — the journalists,” he said.

To do that, Sage starting curating a list of trusted experts, and it started working with those experts, who Arora said were asking for something like this. He showed me how someone could come onto the Sage service and quickly connect their social media accounts and author pages —after that, the profile updates automatically.

So there’s no technical expertise required, and after the initial setup, no additional work — though if they want to, experts can also post reviews and lists made specifically for Sage. They can even publish their Sage profile as a separate mobile app, and start monetizing through things like bookings and merchandise sales.

In some cases, the profile will already exist, and the expert simply needs to claim it.

“We’ve been manually curating sources while training an AI to reliably go out into the world to find people who are professionally in this business,” Arora said.

He added that Sage’s list has already grown to 5 million experts, with 200,000 active profiles. The active experts include food critic Masuhiro Yamamoto (whom you may know from “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”).

Ultimately, all expert content goes back into the broader Sage platform, and it will allow the startup to recommend trustworthy publishers and provide travel recommendations on what to do and where to go.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Sage Plus for Experts gives travel experts a central place to share their content

European fintech startup N26 is now accepting customers in the U.S. The company is launching a bank account with a debit card that should provide a better experience compared to traditional retail banks.

If you’re familiar with N26, the product that is going live today won’t surprise you much. Customers in the U.S. can download a mobile app and create a bank account from their phone in just a few minutes. It’s a true bank account with ACH payments, routing and account numbers.

A few days later, you receive a debit card that you can control from the mobile app. Every time you make a transaction, you instantly receive a push notification telling you how much money you just paid. You can set up your PIN code, customize limits, turn on and off online payments, and make ATM withdrawals or payments abroad.

And that’s about all there is to know. But what about fees? Basic N26 accounts are free. There’s no monthly fee and no minimum balance. There’s no fee on transactions in a foreign currency and you get two free ATM withdrawals per month.

N26 is going to progressively roll out signups over the summer as a sort of beta program. If you’ve signed up to the waitlist, you’ll get an invitation over the coming hours, days and weeks. There are currently 100,000 people on the waitlist. N26 will then open signups to everyone later this summer.

When N26 rolls out its final product in a couple of months, the company says that it plans to automatically find and reimburse fees the ATM operators are charging. N26 cards in the U.S. work on the Visa network instead of Mastercard.

Just like Chime, N26 will also try to let you get paid up to two days early if you get paid via direct deposit. Instead of waiting a couple of days to clear those transactions, N26 will go ahead and top up your account.

White label

Behind the scenes, there are a few differences between N26 in Europe and N26 in the U.S. While N26 has a full-fledged banking license in Europe, the company has partnered with Axos Bank, which is acting as a white-label partner in the U.S.

Axos Bank essentially manages your money for you, and N26 acts as the interface between customers and their bank accounts. As a result, you get an FDIC-insured account.

N26 first partnered with a third-party company in Europe, as well. But it was a costly deal that wasn’t meant to stick around. The startup got a banking license in Germany that was good for Europe at large. In the U.S., it’s a different story, as the market is not as unified as in Europe — it’s complicated to get a license to operate in all 50 states.

“We looked at 30 players, we did some due diligence and we’re happy to partner with Axos Bank. The deals that you get in the U.S. for white-label banks are much more favorable than in Europe,” N26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf told me. “It’s a setup for the longer term. It’s good for a couple million customers,” Stalf added later in the conversation.

Just a start

N26 is already planning more features for the U.S. The company plans to roll out two premium plans — N26 Metal and then N26 Black.

And it sounds like there will be some changes when it comes to perks for premium users. “We took that to a separate level,” Stalf said.

And shared Spaces are finally arriving in the coming months. Spaces are sub-accounts designed to put money aside. You can swipe money from one Space to another or you can set up automated rules.

Eventually, you’ll be able to share a Space with other people so that you can save money and spend money together. It’ll work “like a WhatsApp group,” Stalf said.

N26 currently has 3.5 million customers in Europe and has raised more than $500 million in total so far. There are now a thousand people working for N26 in Berlin, 60 employees in New York, 80 people in Barcelona and a small team of five to 10 people starting soon in Vienna.

“It went from being a small company to being an international company,” Stalf said.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | N26 launches its challenger bank in the US

Apple has disabled the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie app due to an unspecified vulnerability that could allow a person to listen to another customer’s iPhone without consent, the company told TechCrunch this evening.

Apple has apologized for the bug and for the inconvenience of being unable to use the feature while a fix is made.

The Walkie Talkie app on Apple Watch allows two users who have accepted an invite from each other to receive audio chats via a “push to talk” interface reminiscent of the PTT buttons on older cell phones.

A statement from Apple reads:

We were just made aware of a vulnerability related to the Walkie-Talkie app on the Apple Watch and have disabled the function as we quickly fix the issue. We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and will restore the functionality as soon as possible. Although we are not aware of any use of the vulnerability against a customer and specific conditions and sequences of events are required to exploit it, we take the security and privacy of our customers extremely seriously. We concluded that disabling the app was the right course of action as this bug could allow someone to listen through another customer’s iPhone without consent.  We apologize again for this issue and the inconvenience.

Apple was alerted to the bug via its report a vulnerability portal directly and says there is no current evidence that it was exploited in the wild.

The company is temporarily disabling the feature entirely until a fix can be made and rolled out to devices. The Walkie Talkie App will remain installed on devices, but will not function until it has been updated with the fix.

Earlier this year a bug was discovered in the group calling feature of FaceTime that allowed people to listen in before a call was accepted. It turned out that the teen who discovered the bug, Grant Thompson, had attempted to contact Apple about the issue but was unable to get a response. Apple fixed the bug and eventually rewarded Thompson a bug bounty. This time around, Apple appears to be listening more closely to the reports that come in via its vulnerability tips line and has disabled the feature.

Earlier today, Apple quietly pushed a Mac update to remove a feature of the Zoom conference app that allowed it to work around Mac restrictions to provide a smoother call initiation experience — but that also allowed emails and websites to add a user to an active video call without their permission.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Apple disables Walkie Talkie app due to vulnerability that could allow iPhone eavesdropping

Alphabet’s Waymo autonomous driving company announced a new milestone at TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility on Wednesday: 10 billion miles driving in simulation. This is a significant achievement for the company, because all those simulated miles on the road for its self-driving software add up to considerable training experience.

Waymo also probably has the most experience when it comes to actual, physical road miles driven — the company is always quick to point out that it’s been doing this far longer than just about anyone else working in autonomous driving, thanks to its head start as Google’s self-driving car moonshot project.

“At Waymo, we’ve driven more than 10 million miles in the real world, and over 10 billion miles in simulation,” Waymo CTO Dmitri Dolgov told TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec on the Sessions: Mobility stage. “And the amount of driving you do in both of those is really a function of the maturity of your system, and the capability of your system. If you’re just getting started, it doesn’t matter – you’re working on the basics, you can drive a few miles or a few thousand or tens of thousands of miles in the real world, and that’s plenty to tell you and give you information that you need to know to improve your system.”

Dolgov’s point is that the more advanced your autonomous driving system becomes, the more miles you actually need to drive to have impact, because you’ve handled the basics and are moving on to edge cases, advanced navigation and ensuring that the software works in any and every scenario it encounters. Plus, your simulation becomes more sophisticated and more accurate as you accumulate real-world driving miles, which means the results of your virtual testing is more reliable for use back in your cars driving on actual roads.

This is what leads Dolgov to the conclusion that Waymo’s simulation is likely better than a lot of comparable simulation training at other autonomous driving companies.

“I think what makes it a good simulator, and what makes it powerful is two things,” Dolgov said onstage. “One [is] fidelity. And by fidelity, I mean, not how good it looks. It’s how well it behaves, and how representative it is of what you will encounter in the real world. And then second is scale.”

In other words, experience isn’t beneficial in terms of volume — it’s about sophistication, maturity and readiness for commercial deployment.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Waymo has now driven 10 billion autonomous miles in simulation

Snapchat just announced that it’s making shows with big names like Serena Williams, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Hart, as well as online stars like Emma Chamberlain, Loren Gray, Rickey Thompson, Baby Ariel and FaZe Banks.

Snapchat launched its original content efforts two years ago, and today it’s unveiling a new program called Creator Shows. As initially announced in the Hollywood Reporter, these will be first-person shows designed around individual creators.

For example, Schwarzenegger will be providing motivational advice in a show called “Rules of Success,” while Thompson will weigh in on fashion and lifestyle trends on “Trend or End” and Gray offers beauty advice on “Glow Up.”

The shows will begin airing this month. They’re all exclusive to Snapchat, and many of them come from creators who have a substantial following on other platforms — Chamberlain, for example, was just described in The New York Times as “the funniest person on YouTube.”

“Snapchat has always been my favorite platform to post random and funny things on because it’s so relaxed,” Chamberlain said in a statement. “My favorite part about it is that I get to watch my own Snapchat Stories a few hours after I post them for entertainment… kind of embarrassing, I know…”

Snap isn’t sharing viewership numbers around its original shows, but it does say that daily time spent watching those shows tripled over the past year.

And as media giants funnel more and more money into original video content, this might be the strategy that Snapchat needs to compete — rather than trying to find the next big-budget hit, it can focus on personality-driven shows from creators with large followings.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Snapchat announces new shows from Serena Williams, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others

Starbucks’ mobile ordering app has proven wildly popular for the company, with reports indicating that it had more users than the likes of Apple Pay or Google Pay last year. The convenience is just too alluring. When you’re late for work and forgot to eat, being able to order up a drink and a sandwich with a tap or two and have it ready for pick up by the time you pass the store seems sort of like magic.

But how can smaller coffee shops compete? Building and maintaining an app of your own is a massive endeavor — and that’s before you start trying to convince customers to install yet another app.

Cloosiv is aiming to take that simplified, tap-of-a-button mobile ordering approach and make it work for local coffee shops by bringing them all to one place. It highlights the nearby coffee shops that are part of the service, presents their menus and lets you tweak your drink to your liking before sending your order on its way. Tipping is handled through the app, and there’s a built-in rewards system to encourage people to keep coming back.

Cloosiv’s network of coffee shops isn’t huge yet; it’s up and running at just a couple of locations in San Francisco right now, and a quick glance at the in-app location map pins the nationwide total at a little shy of 200. The more that number grows, though, the more the concept makes sense. It becomes an everyone-versus-the-giant sort of thing.

As with Starbucks’ mobile ordering app, Cloosiv encourages users to pre-load money into a built-in wallet — the idea being that pre-loading means fewer credit card charges, which cuts back on processing fees for everyone. Unlike the big competition, however, users can make a one-off purchase without pre-loading the funds. There’s a 40 cent fee tacked onto those charges to cover processing, but the option is there.

I gave the app a spin in San Francisco last week, and it worked exactly as promised. I found a coffee shop (Coffee Mission) near BART, punched in my order as the train approached, and my drink was waiting for me by the time I made it out of the station.

Cloosiv’s Merchant app

As many (most?) coffee shops already have a tablet on the counter acting as the point of sales terminal, Cloosiv is focusing on integrating into what’s already in place. When an order comes in today, a sound plays as a notification banner drops down from the top of the screen; when an employee taps the banner, they’re bumped over to Cloosiv’s Merchant app where they can acknowledge orders or mark them as complete.

The next step for the company is tying all of this directly into the merchant apps that coffee shops are already using — they’re focusing on Square first, with plans to tie into things like Clover and Micros.

Cloosiv charges vendors a percentage of each sale, with that percentage going down as the number of orders goes up. The first 50 orders each month, for example, are charged a 12% fee; after 150 orders, that fee drops to 8%.

Cloosiv founder Tim Griffin tells me they’ve processed more than 35,000 orders so far, making up over $250,000 in revenue for the coffee shops they work with. He estimates that orders and gross volume are both growing by about 40% monthly. The company recently closed a small round with investors, including Lachy Groom (previously head of Issuing at Stripe) and Laura Behrens Wu (CEO of Shippo), and is part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 class.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Cloosiv gives local coffee shops a mobile ordering experience on par with the mega chains

Fintech startup Bunq is announcing a handful of new features today, such as a way to track group expenses without creating a joint account, a web app and better Siri integration.

If you usually track vacation expenses and group expenses from your phone, chances are you’ve been using two different products — a mobile app like Splitwise to track group expenses with your friends, and a peer-to-peer payment app to settle up balances.

Bunq is essentially bundling these two features with Slice Groups for owners of the Bunq Travel Card. Given that the Bunq app already lists all your transactions, adding transactions to a group is easier than with your average group payment tracking app.

After adding other people to your Slice Group, each person can add expenses to the group. You get a list of your most recent Bunq transactions and you can add them to a group. You also can add manual transactions in case you paid for something using cash, for instance.

This is just a group accounting feature. When you add a transaction to a Slice Group, your money remains in your account. But you can see who has a positive balance and who has a negative balance.

When you settle up a group, people who owe money get a push notification. They can then tap on the notification and send money from their Bunq account to your friends’ Bunq accounts.

This feature will work particularly well for groups of people who all use the Bunq Travel Card. But it doesn’t fundamentally change how you manage your money with groups.

Bunq now has two tiers of users. Free users get a travel card with an account that they can top up. Paid users get a full-fledged bank account with banking information.

Multiple paid users can already create joint accounts with their roommates or partner. You can then associate your Bunq card with a joint account and spend money from that joint account directly.

So if you have a Bunq Travel Card, Slice Groups are for you. If you have a Bunq bank account, joint accounts are for you.

Revolut doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, either, as you can only split individual card transactions with other users. It could take a while to settle all transactions after a long vacation. Revolut also lets you create Group Vaults. Those are sub-accounts to put some money aside and invite other people to contribute. But only the admin can withdraw and spend money from those vaults.

N26 has promised Shared Spaces so that you can create sub-accounts and share them with other people. But the feature isn’t live yet.

Lydia’s take on group expenses works more like Bunq’s joint accounts. You can create sub-accounts and share those accounts with other people. Everyone can then top up that account and attach a payment method, such as a payment card or a virtual card in Apple Pay or Google Pay. You also can move expenses from one sub-account to another. When you’re back from vacation, you can associate your card with your personal Lydia account again.

In addition to Slice Groups, Bunq is launching a web interface to access your bank account. It works a bit like WhatsApp’s web app. You scan a QR code with your phone and you can then control the mobile app from a desktop web browser.

Bunq should also work better with Siri. You can now send money using your voice or change card settings. Finally, the startup has also made improvements to its business accounts with a few new features. For instance, you can now automatically put money aside to pay back VAT later down the road.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Bunq lets you track and settle up group expenses

Mobile marketing company AppLovin is announcing that it has acquired SafeDK.

While AppLovin started out as a mobile ad business, it now bills itself as “a comprehensive mobile gaming platform,” offering tools for game developers around user acquisition, monetization, analytics and (through Lion Studios, launched last year) publishing. SafeDK, meanwhile, allows developers to manage all the different SDKs on which their apps rely.

Palo Alto-headquartered AppLovin says that by incorporating SafeDK technology, it will help its publishers ensure GDPR compliance and brand safety.

It also says SafeDK will continue to support existing customers, while its headquarters in Herzliya, Israel will become AppLovin’s first office in Israel. Co-founders Orly Shoavi and Ronnie Sternberg will remain on-board as the heads of SafeDK and general managers of AppLovin Israel.

The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal, except to say that it was all-cash. According to Crunchbase, SafeDK has raised a total of $5.8 million from investors, including Samsung Next Tel Aviv, Marius Nacht, StageOne Ventures and Kaedan Capital.

“We are delighted to be working with the AppLovin team to help mobile game publishers grow their businesses,” Shoavi said in a statement. “AppLovin has been a trusted partner for the biggest mobile game studios around the world and SafeDK’s technology will strengthen that trust.”

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | AppLovin acquires SafeDK to improve brand safety

Nintendo’s latest mobile game is now available for iOS devices, a day before its official target launch date. The game is based on the Nintendo game created in 1990 for the NES and Game Boy, and re-released/re-made a bunch of times over the years for various Nintendo consoles.

Dr. Mario World, the iOS game available now, is, like its predecessors, a matching puzzle game in which you as Dr. Mario (or maybe you’re just a colleague of Dr. Mario? It’s somewhat unclear) cure “viruses” by matching pill colors to the little jerks. This version has a number of additional gameplay features compared to the first, which was pretty Tetris-like in play. It also focuses on drag-and-drop mechanics, instead of manipulating pills like Tetris blocks as they fall.

For instance, you have other doctors from the rich Mario fictional world to call upon for help, including Dr. Peach and Dr. Bowser, as well as assistants, including Goomba, Koopa Troopa and others who apparently never either attained or aspired to professional medical doctor status. These have different skills that can make virus busting easier, and Nintendo plans to update the game with fresh doctors and assistants regularly.

Multiplayer is also part of Dr. Mario World, and you can go head-to-head or work together. Predictably, if you’ve followed Nintendo’s foray into mobile titles, this one is free-to-play, with in-game purchases for unlocking more play time and unlacing additional characters and upgrades.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Dr. Mario World now available on iOS

You can get access to Uber’s controversial Quiet Ride button that lets you ask your driver for silence if you’ll pay a 20% to 40% premium atop the UberX price. Today the Uber Comfort tier launches in 43 cities and smaller states in the U.S. plus Ottawa, offering those willing to pay the premium access to newer mid-size cars with more legroom, higher-rated drivers and Rider Preferences for requesting specific climate control or no talking.

Before users hail an Uber Comfort car, they can request “quiet preferred,” “happy to chat” or leave the default of “no preference,” as well as warmer or colder temperature settings. These Rider Preferences launched in May as part of Uber’s pricier Black and SUV cars alongside a way to request help with luggage, but now they’re becoming more affordable.

The move allows Uber to charge more for slightly better vehicles and higher-rated drivers that used to be lumped in with its budget UberX tier. This also lets Uber compensate drivers better if they’re willing to forgo the small talk or crank the air conditioning. “Uber Comfort should result in fares for drivers that are at least 20% higher than UberX (not including surge or promotions) for a trip with the same time and distance,” an Uber spokesperson tells me. 

Some critics consider the Quiet Ride button an affront to the dignity of Uber’s contractors, saying it makes them act like robots when their jobs will soon be threatened by self-driving vehicles. But others just see it as enhanced customer service that’s reasonable to request, given riders are paying for a driver’s professional services.

“The reception to Quiet Mode has been generally positive among drivers and riders,” an Uber spokesperson tells me. “Riders appreciate the consistency and control they have over the type of their travel; business travelers in particular have shared how rider preferences have helped them be more productive en route to the airport, important meetings, or other work-related destinations. Drivers have shared how these new rider preferences have helped take the guesswork out of riders’ expectations, and helped them provide the best service possible.” They also noted that Quiet Mode is described in app as a “conversation preference” rather than a firm mandate to be silent.

To qualify for Uber Comfort, drivers need a car that meets higher and consistent vehicle make, model, year and legroom requirements, like the Toyota Camry, Honda Odyssey or Chevy Tahoe. They also must maintain a 4.85 or higher rating to be eligible. If these drivers don’t want to receive Rider Preferences requests, they can opt out of being classified as Uber Comfort.

Uber Comfort is now available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Charlotte, Dallas, Fresno, Hampton Roads, Houston, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Madison, Memphis, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, Omaha, Orange County, Palm Springs, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Tucson and Wichita, plus Ottawa, Canada, as well as the full states of Connecticut, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Here’s the breakdown of Uber’s tiers from cheapest to most expensive:

• Uber Express Pool – The least pricey shared rides where you have to walk a few blocks
• Uber Pool – Cheaper shared rides
• UberX – Private rides without extra Rider Preferences or better vehicles
• UberX Diamond – Better-rated drivers and occasionally nicer cars but no Rider Preferences for top Uber Rewards loyalty members for no extra cost
• Uber Comfort – 20% to 40% more than UberX for Rider Preferences like Quiet Rides plus better-rated drivers, nicer cars and minimum legroom requirements
• Uber Select – Even more expensive for high-end cars but no Rider Preferences
• Uber Black & SUV – The highest price for Rider Preferences, including luggage help and premium town cars or big vehicles

Back in December, I recommended Uber add a Quiet Ride option that can be nice if you’re trying to work or rest during your trip. Users told me it was awkward having to ask drivers mid-ride for quiet, as some would become offended or even hostile.

That’s especially problematic for women, some who said their male drivers’ probing questions would escalate to unwanted flirtation. Uber needs to do better at training drivers that this is unacceptable and weed them out of the system. But the reactive approach of waiting for negative ratings to come in after drivers have annoyed passengers can be augmented by allowing riders to ask for quiet ahead of time.

Bringing Rider Preferences to a wider swath of its vehicles could help Uber differentiate itself from competitors like Lyft and squeeze more cash out of passengers by training them to use its upgraded tiers as it tries to maintain momentum in the public market. Two months after its IPO, it’s finally recovered and exceeded its opening price.

Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | If you’ll pay more, new Uber Comfort offers Quiet Rides