Tip Trick Here: 06/19/18

19 June 2018

Facebook launches gameshows platform with interactive video

Rather than build its own HQ trivia competitor, Facebook is launching a gameshow platform. Today the company announced a new set of interactive live and on-demand video features that let creators adds quizzes, polls, challenges, and gamification so players can be eliminated from a game for a wrong answer. The features could help Facebook achieve its new mission to push healthier active video consumption rather than passive zombie watching that hurts people’s well-being. Creators and publishers who want early access can sign up here.

Gameshow launch partners include Fresno’s What’s In The Box where viewers guess what’s inside, and BuzzFeed News’ Outside Your Bubble where contestants have to guess what their opponents are thinking. Plus, Facebook is testing the ability to award prize money with (Business) INSIDER’s Confetti, where viewers answer trivia questions and can see friends’ responses, with winners splitting the cash.

“Video is evolving away from just passive consumption to more interactive two-way formats”, Simo tells TechCrunch. “We think creators will want to reward people. If this is something that works will with Insider and Confetti, we may consider rolling out payments tools.”

When asked if Facebook was inspired by HQ, Simo repeatedly dodged the question and avoiding mentioning the startup’s name, but relented in saying “I think they’re part of a much broader trend that is making content interactive. We’ve seen that across much more than one player.”

Facebook won’t be taking a share of the prize money in this test. For now, it’s also forgoing its cut of its $4.99 per month subscriptions option that lets fans pay for exclusive content, which rolls out today to more creators. Facebook also just launched its Brand Collabs Manager that we scooped in May, which helps brands browse creators by demographic and portfolio so they can set up sponsored content and product placement deals.

Initially Facebook is not taking a cut there either. For all three of these features, though, Simo says “that doesn’t mean we never will.” Creators can sign up for these monetization options here.

The new interactive video features will be available to all publishers and creators, alongside the global launch of the Android version of Facebook’s Creator app for web celebs. The tools range from offering basic in-video polls to creating a full trivia gameshow. Creators and will be able to write out their trivia questions and designate correct answers, as well as “write down the logic of the game” says Simo.

While polls will work for Live and on-demand videos, gamification that impacts the outcome of the broadcast is only for Live. Brent Rivera and That Chick Angel are two creators who will be testing the features in the coming weeks. Facebook already found that fans enjoyed polling on its Watch show Help Us Get Married, which let viewers influence the wedding planning decisions about themes and the venue.

Facebook’s last attempt at original video, its Watch hub, saw mediocre adoption as the content felt also-ran rather than something special or must-see. That’s why Facebook is expanding Watch to offer a broader range of shows for more creators, including potentially longer or non-episodic content. That includes bringing Facebook videos originally only hosted on Pages into the Watch destination.

Facebook’s family of apps will get another chance at an original video home run when Instagram launches its long-form video hub tomorrow, according to TechCrunch’s sources.

Instagram plans to launch Snapchat Discover-style video hub

What we’re seeing here is positioning that diverges Facebook and Instagram’s video efforts. Facebook’s might be more interactive, about playing and watching with friends, and embrace more novel new formats like mobile gameshows. Instagram, with its history of polished photos, could house more traditional high-end entertainment content.

“We’re not trying to do one show or one trivia game. We’re trying to get every creator to create such gameplay. The beauty of the creators space is that they each have a unique audience” Facebook’s VP of video product Fidji Simo tells me. With 2.2 billion users, making an in-house one-size-fits-all game may have been impossible.

Instagram plans June 20th launch event for long-form video hub

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Verizon stops selling customer location to two data brokers after one is caught leaking it

Verizon is cutting off access to its mobile customers’ real-time locations to two third-party data brokers “to prevent misuse of that information going forward.” The company announced the decision in a letter sent to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who along with others helped reveal improper usage and poor security at these location brokers. It is not, however, getting out of the location-sharing business altogether.

Verizon sold bulk access to its customers’ locations to the brokers in question, LocationSmart and Zumigo, which then turned around and resold that data to dozens of other companies. This isn’t necessarily bad — there are tons of times when location is necessary to provide a service the customer asks for, and supposedly that customer would have to okay the sharing of that data. (Disclosure: Verizon owns Oath, which owns TechCrunch. This does not affect our coverage.)

That doesn’t seem to have been the case at LocationSmart customer Securus, which was selling its data directly to law enforcement so they could find mobile customers quickly and without all that fuss about paperwork and warrants. And then it was found that LocationSmart had exposed an API that allowed anyone to request mobile locations freely and anonymously, and without collecting consent.

When these facts were revealed by security researchers and Sen. Wyden, Verizon immediately looked into it, they reported in a letter sent to the Senator.

“We conducted a comprehensive review of our location aggregator program,” wrote Verizon CTO Karen Zacharia. “As a result of this review, we are initiating a process to terminate our existing agreements for the location aggregator program.”

“We will not enter into new location aggregation arrangements unless and until we are comfortable that we can adequately protect our customers’ location data through technological advancements and/or other practices,” she wrote later in the letter. In other words, the program is on ice until it can be secured.

Although Verizon claims to have “girded” the system with “mechanisms designed to protect against misuse of our customers’ location data,” the abuses in question clearly slipped through the cracks. Perhaps most notable is the simple fact that Verizon itself does not seem to need to be informed whether a customer has consented to having their location polled. That collection is the responsibility “the aggregator or corporate customer.”

In other words, Verizon doesn’t need to ask the customer, and the company it sells the data to wholesale doesn’t need to ask the customer — the requirement devolves to the company buying access from the wholesaler. And there were 75 of those.

These processes are audited, Verizon wrote, but apparently not an audit that finds things like the abuse by Securus or a poorly secured API. Perhaps how this happened is among the “number of internal questions” raised by the review.

When asked for comment, a Verizon representative offered the following statement:

When these issues were brought to our attention, we took immediate steps to stop it. Customer privacy and security remain a top priority for our customers and our company. We stand-by that commitment to our customers.

And indeed while the program itself appears to have been run with a laxity that should be alarming to all those customers for whom Verizon claims to be so concerned, some of the company’s competitors have yet to take similar action. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint were also named by LocationSmart as partners.

Sen. Wyden called on the others to step up in a press release announcing that his pressure on Verizon had borne fruit:

Verizon deserves credit for taking quick action to protect its customers’ privacy and security. After my investigation and follow-up reports revealed that middlemen are selling Americans’ location to the highest bidder without their consent, or making it available on insecure web portals, Verizon did the responsible thing and promptly announced it was cutting these companies off. In contrast, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint seem content to continuing to sell their customers’ private information to these shady middle men, Americans’ privacy be damned.

AT&T actually announced that it is ending its agreements as well, after Wyden’s call to action was published.

The FCC, meanwhile, has announced that it is looking into the issue — with the considerable handicap that Chairman Ajit Pai represented Securus back in 2012 when he was working as a lawyer. Wyden has called on him to recuse himself, but that has yet to happen.

I’ve asked Verizon for further clarification on its arrangements and plans, specifically whether it has any other location-sharing agreements in place with other companies. These aren’t, after all, the only players in the game.

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Google injects Hire with AI to speed up common tasks

Since Google Hire launched last year it has been trying to make it easier for hiring managers to manage the data and tasks associated with the hiring process, while maybe tweaking LinkedIn while they’re at it. Today the company announced some AI-infused enhancements that they say will help save time and energy spent on manual processes.

“By incorporating Google AI, Hire now reduces repetitive, time-consuming tasks, like scheduling interviews into one-click interactions. This means hiring teams can spend less time with logistics and more time connecting with people,” Google’s Berit Hoffmann, Hire product manager wrote in a blog post announcing the new features.

The first piece involves making it easier and faster to schedule interviews with candidates. This is a multi-step activity that involves scheduling appropriate interviewers, choosing a time and date that works for all parties involved in the interview and scheduling a room in which to conduct the interview. Organizing these kind of logistics tend to eat up a lot of time.

“To streamline this process, Hire now uses AI to automatically suggest interviewers and ideal time slots, reducing interview scheduling to a few clicks,” Hoffmann wrote.

Photo: Google

Another common hiring chore is finding keywords in a resume. Hire’s AI now finds these words for a recruiter automatically by analysing terms in a job description or search query and highlighting relevant words including synonyms and acronyms in a resume to save time spent manually searching for them.

Photo: Google

Finally, another standard part of the hiring process is making phone calls, lots of phone calls. To make this easier, the latest version of Google Hire has a new click-to-call function. Simply click the phone number and it dials automatically and registers the call in call a log for easy recall or auditing.

While Microsoft has LinkedIn and Office 365, Google has G Suite and Google Hire. The strategy behind Hire is to allow hiring personnel to work in the G Suite tools they are immersed in every day and incorporate Hire functionality within those tools.

It’s not unlike CRM tools that integrate with Outlook or GMail because that’s where sales people spend a good deal of their time anyway. The idea is to reduce the time spent switching between tools and make the process a more integrated experience.

While none of these features individually will necessarily wow you, they are making use of Google AI to simplify common tasks to reduce some of the tedium associated with every-day hiring tasks.

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Facebook launches gameshows platform with interactive video

Facebook’s family of apps will get another chance at an original video home run when Instagram launches its long-form video hub tomorrow, according to TechCrunch’s sources.

Instagram plans to launch Snapchat Discover-style video hub

Instagram plans June 20th launch event for long-form video hub

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Pew: Social media still growing in emerging markets but stalled elsewhere

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s (so far) five-year project to expand access to the Internet in emerging markets makes plenty of business sense when you look at the latest report by the Pew Research Center — which shows social media use has plateaued across developed markets but continues to rise in the developing world.

In 2015-16, roughly four-in-ten adults across the emerging nations surveyed by Pew said they used social networking sites, and as of 2017, a majority (53%) use social media. Whereas, over the same period, social media use has generally been flat in many of the advanced economies surveyed.

Internet use and smartphone ownership have also stayed level in developed markets over the same period vs rising in emerging economies.

Pew polled more than 40,000 respondents in 37 countries over a roughly three month period in February to May last year for this piece of research.

The results show how developing markets are of clear and vital importance for social behemoth Facebook as a means to eke continued growth out of its primary ~15-year-old platform — plus also for the wider suite of social products it’s acquired around that. (Pew’s research asked people about multiple different social media sites, with suggested examples being country-specific — though Facebook and Twitter were staples.)

Especially — as Pew also found — of those who use the internet, people in developing countries often turn out to be more likely than their counterparts in advanced economies to network via social platforms such as Facebook (and Twitter).

Which in turn suggests there are major upsides for social platforms getting into an emerging Internet economy early enough to establish themselves as a go-to networking service.

This dynamic doubtless explains why Facebook has been so leaden in its response to some very stark risks attached to how its social products accelerate the spread and consumption of misinformation in some developing countries, such as Myanmar and India.

Pulling the plug on its social products in emerging markets essentially means pulling the plug on business growth.

Though, in the face of rising political risk attached to Facebook’s own business and growing controversies attached to various products it offers, the company has reportedly rowed back from offering its ‘Free Basics’ Internet.org package in more than half a dozen countries in recent months, according to analysis by The Outline.

In March, for example, the UN warned that Facebook’s platform was contributing to the spread of hate speech and ethnic violence in crisis-hit Myanmar.

The company has also faced specific questions from US and EU lawmakers about its activities in the country — with scrutiny on the company dialed up to 11 after a major global privacy scandal that broke this spring.

And, in recent months, Facebook policy staffers have had to spend substantial quantities of man-hours penning multi-page explanations for all sorts of aspects of the company’s operations to try to appease angry politicians. So it looks pretty safe to conclude that the days of Facebook being able to pass off Internet.org-fueled business expansion as a ‘humanitarian mission’ are well and truly done.

(Its new ‘humanitarian project’ is a new matchmaking feature — which really looks like an attempt to rekindle stalled growth in mature markets.)

Given how the social media usage gap is closing between developed vs developing countries’ there’s also perhaps a question mark over how much longer Facebook can generally rely on tapping emerging markets to pump its business growth.

Although Pew’s survey highlights some pretty major variations in usage even across developed markets, with social media being hugely popular in Northern America and the Middle East, for example, but more of a patchwork story in Europe where usage is “far from ubiquitous” — such as in Germany where 87% of people use the internet but less than half say they use social media.

Cultural barriers to social media addiction are perhaps rather harder for a multinational giant to defeat than infrastructure challenges or even economic barriers (though Facebook does not appear to be giving up on that front either).

Outside Europe, nations with still major growth potential on the social media front include India, Indonesia and nations in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Pew research. And Internet access remains a major barrier to social growth in many of these markets.

“Across the 39 countries [surveyed], a median of 75% say they either use the internet occasionally or own a smartphone, our definition of internet use,” it writes. “In many advanced economies, nine-in-ten or more use the internet, led by South Korea (96%). Greece (66%) is the only advanced economy surveyed where fewer than seven-in-ten report using the internet. Conversely, internet use is below seven-in-ten in 13 of the 22 emerging and developing economies surveyed. Among these countries, it is lowest in India and Tanzania, at a quarter of the adult population. Regionally, internet use is lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, where a median of 41% across six countries use the internet. South Africa (59%) is the only country in the region where at least half the population is online.”

India, Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa are also regions where Facebook has pushed its controversial Internet.org ‘free web’ initiative. Although India banned zero-rated mobile services in 2016 on net neutrality grounds. And Facebook now appears to be at least partially rowing back on this front itself in other markets.

In parallel, the company has also been working on a more moonshot-y solar-powered high altitude drone engineering to try to bring Internet access (and thus social media access) to remoter areas that lack a reliable Internet connection. Although this project remains experimental — and has yet to deliver any commercial services.

Pew’s research also found various digital divides persisting within the surveyed countries, related to age, education, income and in some cases gender still differentiating who uses the Internet and who does not; and who is active on social media and who is inactive.

Across the globe, for example, it found younger adults are much more likely to report using social media than their older counterparts.

While in some emerging and developing countries, men are much more likely to use social media than women — in Tunisia, for example, 49% of men use social networking sites, compared with just 28% of women. Yet in advanced countries, it found social networking is often more popular among women.

Pew also found significant differences in social media use across other demographic groups: Those with higher levels of education and those with higher incomes were found to be more likely to use social network sites.

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These 15 Popular Android Apps May Be Leaking Your Mobile Data

Use Eversign’s Chrome Extension for Easy Digital Signatures

Signing documents over the internet is a pain. Who wants to print out a document just so they can sign it, scan it, and email it back to the other party?

That’s where eversign, the best digital eSignature manager, comes in. The service is now even better thanks to a convenient new Chrome extension. Let’s see what this extension offers for eversign users.

A Refresher on eversign

We’ve already covered Eversign in detail, but we’ll summarize the service here if you aren’t familiar with it and how powerful it is.

eversign is an electronic signature manager that lets you easily create, send, and collect documents that need signing. Your account lets you easily create documents with drag-and-drop signing fields, send them out, and keep track of who’s returned them to you.

It’s handy for freelancers who send a handful of documents per month all the way up to larger businesses who send hundreds. Most importantly, it makes electronic signatures easy by allowing you and your clients to type your name, write on a touchscreen, or add a photo. This works on any device, not just desktops.

Signatures created with eversign are legally binding. The service offers powerful security, and even integrates with common business apps for ease of use. You can start using eversign with a basic free plan, and upgrade if needed.

Now that you know the basics of eversign, let’s take a look at the service’s newest feature.

eversign’s Chrome Extension

Head to the Chrome Web Store in Chrome and search for eversign, or just visit the eversign Chrome extension page directly. Click the Add to Chrome button to install it to your machine, then accept the security prompt. After a moment, you’ll see the yellow icon for the extension in the top-right of your browser.

Click the extension’s icon on a page with no supported files, and you’ll get a basic overview of how it works. As it mentions, you can use the extension to sign and send documents from four locations:

Gmail
Google Drive
Google Docs
PDFs in Chrome

Eversign-Extension-First-Run

Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

Signing in Gmail

Open Gmail in Chrome and sign in if needed. Navigate to an email with an attached PDF, then scroll down to the bottom of the email. You’ll see the attachment, which looks like a page. Mouse over it and you’ll see a new eversign icon next to the Download and Save to Drive buttons.

Click this, and you’ll see a prompt to sign into your eversign account if you aren’t already. Once you sign in, you’ll see prompts similar to what you’d see on the service’s website. Choose who needs to sign the document: Me Only, Me & Others, or Others Only.

From there, you’ll use eversign’s convenient form editor. Simply drag and drop fields from the right, including Signature, Initials, Date Signed, and more. You’ll need to add at least one signature field to complete a document. Everything else is optional, but every field you add must be filled out.

Eversign-Extension-Document-Editor

Once you’re done, click Finish in the top-right. Agree to the terms, and you’re all done. This adds the document to your eversign account and sets you up to easily respond with the signed copy in Gmail.

Signing in Google Drive

To sign a file directly in a Google Drive folder, simply right-click it and choose Open with > eversign. From there, you’ll see the prompts to sign. From there, the steps are almost the same as above.

Google-Drive-Open-With-Eversign

Signing in Google Docs

On a supported Google Docs document, you can click the eversign Chrome extension icon. This will open the Files on current page dialog and allow you to click Sign on your document.

From there, you’ll proceed through the same steps as above. Choose who will sign the document, add fields, and send as needed. If you need others to sign the document, you’ll need to add the name and email address for each. You can set each as a signer or a CC, require them to enter a PIN for security, and change languages.

Speaking of languages, in addition to English, Eversign’s extension supports French, German, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and more.

Eversign-Send-to-Others

Finally, add a message, configure reminders, and decide when the document expires before sending it.

Signing Any PDF

If you don’t use Gmail, Drive, or Docs often, you can still take advantage of eversign’s extension. Open any PDF in Chrome, and you can sign it using eversign. You can do this either by locating a PDF file online, or dragging and dropping a PDF from your computer into Chrome.

With a PDF open, move your mouse to the bottom-right corner of the screen to find the Eversign icon. Click it and you can go through the eversign process as above.

Eversign-Any-PDF

Don’t forget that you can click the eversign extension icon anytime and click the Sign button next to your current document to open it that way.

eversign’s Extension Makes Digital Signatures Easier

If you work with eSignatures and don’t use eversign, you’re missing out. It’s a super easy way to create and modify documents for collecting signatures, as well as keeping track of all your documents. And now, and the Chrome extension lets you sign without even opening the eversign website.

Give eversign a try now if you haven’t already. It’s free to try, so see if it’s right for you!

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Apple CarPlay Quick Guide: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Useful

Lyft’s app code reveals unlaunched bike or scooter feature

Lyft hasn’t acquired a bike-sharing startup or gotten a scooter permit yet, but it’s already preparing its app for them with a feature codenamed “last mile”. Code and screenshots dug out of Lyft’s Android app reveal a way to search a map for last mile vehicles, and scan a QR code or enter a pin to unlock them.

These materials come to TechCrunch from Jane Manchun Wong, who’s recently established herself as a prolific app code investigator. Her work has led to TechCrunch scoops on Instagram video calling and Usage Insights, Twitter encrypted DMs, and Facebook’s personalized emoji Avatars that were confirmed by the companies.

Lyft’s entrance into last mile vehicles could win customers looking for quick, cheap, and exciting transportation beyond the longer car trips it already offers. Renting scooters or bikes from the same app as its car rideshare options would allow it to compete with dedicated last mile provides like LimeBike and Bird that don’t benefit from the customer cross-pollenation. It would also help it keep up with Uber, which recently acquired electric bikeshare startup JUMP.

The screenshots show a map you can browse to find nearby vehicles plus a “Scan to ride” button. That brings up a barcode scanner for unlocking the vehicle, though there’s also an option to enter 4-digit pin code on your phone for unlocking. Code reveals that vehicles can have status of ‘Idle, Unlocking, In Ride, Locked, or Post Ride’.

Lyft is one of a dozen companies the SF Chronicle reports have applied for five dockless scooter permits from San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Regarding these new in-app materials, a Lyft spokesperson told TechCrunch “As has been reported I can confirm that we’ve submitted an application to the SFMTA but we aren’t sharing any further details at this time.

Lyft is vying for a permit alongside Uber, Spin, LimeBike, Bird, Razor, Scoot, Ofo, Skip, CycleHop, Ridecell, and USSCooter. SF recently banned scooter rentals after an unregulated invasion by several of these companies saw the vehicles strewn in sidewalks, obstructing pedestrians.

Lyft’s Android code includes new “last mile” features

Meanwhile, The Information reports that Lyft is in talks to acquire Mobike, offering $250 million or more for the startup that operates NYC’s Citibikes, and SF’s Ford GoBikes. But Axios reports Uber is trying to muscle in with its own bid, which could block Lyft or at least force it to pay a higher price. Lyft already offers bike rentals in Baltimore, but only through the Baltimore Bike Share app, not its own.

Some might see all this premature, with scooter rentals existing in few cities and considerable backlash from some citizens. But given the alternatives are either slow walking, or ridesharing that can increase traffic congestion, create more carbon emissions, and be quite expensive for short trips, many who give scooters a shot are finding them quite pleasant.

A driver displays Uber and Lyft ride sharing signs in his car windscreen in Santa Monica, California, U.S., May 23, 2016. About a half dozen ride-hailing firms have rushed into Texas tech hub Austin after market leaders Uber and Lyft left the city a little over a monthago in a huff over municipal requirements that they fingerprint drivers. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/Files

Hopefully, cities will focus on giving permits to dockless bike and scooter companies willing to incentivize proper parking, bike lane riding, and helmet usage, and that build reliable hardware that doesn’t end up broken or out of battery on the streets. Given Lyft’s more cooperative brand in comparsion to Uber’s more confrontational style, it could leverage its public perception to gain access to markets with these vehicles.

If those permits or acquisitions come through, Lyft clearly wants to move fast to get last mile transportations in customers’ hands and under their feet.

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PAX introduces Session Control to let novice users control their intake

PAX Labs, makers of the popular PAX 3 and PAX Era vaporizers, have today updated their app to offer a new feature called Session Control.

The idea here is based around the fact that people can sometimes overindulge when using a vaporizer for the first time, as the effects of cannabis oil can take a minute or two to kick in, leading people to continue puffing.

With Session Control, users can control their intake by selecting micro, small or medium puffs. Once the user has maxed out their session by puffing, the PAX Era will lock for 30 seconds, stopping users from overdoing it.

PAX launched an app called PAX Mobile in 2017 to give vape users even more control over their experience. From temperature control to different color schemes, the PAX Mobile app lets users fiddle with the PAX 3 or PAX Era on the fly.

While temperature control makes sense for more experienced users, Session Control lets newer users control their intake without making the process overly complicated.

“We want the tech to get out of the way,” said PAX Labs CEO Bharat Vassan. “A big part of what we want to do is to not have people staring at their phone. That’s why we use firmware so that the device updates itself. This way, users can set it and forget it.”

Session Control is available for the PAX Era, which vaporizes oil, and Vassan said they’re thinking of ways to introduce something similar with the PAX 3, which is a floral vaporizer.

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IRL wants to get people together offline

Social planning apps are a dime a dozen, but none have risen to become a mainstay in our digital lives. IRL, founded by Abe Shafi and Scott Banister, is looking to break the pattern, focusing on positivity to get people excited about hanging out offline.

When users first sign up, they’re asked a series of multiple choice questions about their friends: “Who is the best at building pillow forts?” or “Who has the best style?” with four of your contacts as possible answers. These ‘nominations’ are meant to catalyze making plans with those friends. Those nominations stay anonymous.

From there, users can choose from a wide variety of interests like “Netflix and Chill,” “Grab Burgers,” or “Watch the World Cup.” Once they’ve chosen an interest, they can mark the time (today, soon, or pick a date) and send an invite to friends, at which point the group comes up with the right time and place for the plans.

According to cofounder and CEO Abe Shafi, the structure of IRL is meant to take the pressure off of any one person from being the ‘host.’

“We designed IRL so that people could send out lightweight invitations,” said Shafi. “We want people to be able to say ‘hey, I want to do something’ and send it out to a larger group of friends, letting people opt in and decide what they want to do. Creating a safe container that lets people opt in helps with social anxiety around making plans.”

This isn’t Shafi’s first go-round in the world of tech startups. Shafi sold his startup GetTalent to Dice in 2013. Shafi said that one of the difficulties in enterprise software was that he felt less and less connected to the problems he was solving, and knew that he felt at his best spending time with friends and family.

“I knew I didn’t want to participate in the distraction economy,” said Shafi. “More and more articles came out saying the healthiest thing you can do is spend time with people. I thought more about creating an app to help people get together, which in many ways is the white whale of consumer web.”

That’s how the idea for IRL started. But it wasn’t always called IRL. In fact, Shafi first launched an app called Gather, which we wrote about in early 2017.

Gather did an incredibly poor job of notifying users when it was sending out texts to their friends and contacts to join the app. While social apps have a limited window to get people on the app with their friends, Gather’s approach was reckless and ended up backfiring.

“That was our biggest mistake,” said Shafi. “We had a lot of really bad UX and UI that didn’t make it clear at all when you were inviting someone to Gather whether they were on or off the app, and it made people really confused.”

Shafi says that he and the team have learned a lot from Gather, and have implemented much more clear notifications around when a button in the app might send a text to someone who isn’t already on the IRL app. For example, during onboarding when the app asks you to send out nominations, it’ll show a couple of people already on the app and a couple of people from your contacts that haven’t downloaded the app. Those who aren’t on IRL will have an asterisk next to their name with a note on the page saying that those with an asterisk will be sent a text.

Some people still don’t do a great job of reading the fine print, so there are still some users in the app’s review section expressing their displeasure. But IRL has done a much better job of clarifying any step or action that might initiate a text send to a contact off the app.

Today, IRL launches its Android app, which you can find in the Google Play store.

IRL has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Floodgate and Founders Fund, and Cyan Banister (Scott Banister’s partner) led the Founders Fund round.

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Bag Week 2018: The Bitcoin Genesis Block backpack will centralize your belongings

Welcome to Bag Week 2018. Every year your faithful friends at TechCrunch spend an entire week looking at bags. Why? Because bags — often ignored but full of our important electronics — are the outward representations of our techie styles, and we put far too little thought into where we keep our most prized possessions.

It’s difficult to show people that you love blockchain. There are no cool hats, no rad t-shirts, and no outward signs – except a libertarian bent and a poster of a scantily-clad Vitalik Buterin on your bedroom wall – to tell the world you are into decentralized monetary systems. Until, of course, the Bitcoin Genesis Block Backpack.

Unlike the blockchain, this backpack will centralize your stuff in a fairly large, fairly standard backpack. There is little unique about the backpack itself – it’s a solid piece made of 100% polyester and includes ergonomically designed straps and a secret pocket – but it is printed with the Bitcoin Genesis Block including a headline about UK bank bailouts. In short, it’s Merkle tree-riffic.

The green and orange text looks a little Matrix-y but the entire thing is very fun and definitely a conversation starter. Again, I doubt this will last more than a few trips to Malta or the Luxembourg but it’s a great way to let Bitcoin whales know your ICO means business.

The bag comes to us from BitcoinShirt, a company that makes and sells bitcoin-related products and accepts multiple cryptocurrencies. While this backpack won’t stand up to 51% attacks on its structural integrity, it is a fun and cheap way to show the world you’re pro-Nakamoto.

So as we barrel headlong into a crypto future fear not, fashion-conscious smart contract lover: the Bitcoin Genesis Block backpack is here to show the world you’re well and truly HODLing. To the moon!

Read other Bag Week reviews here.

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The 12 Best Kodi Add-Ons for Watching Live News

The availability of live news has been a thorn in the side of cordcutters for a long time. Of course, there have always been illegal ways to get your fix, but those methods can land you in trouble with the law.

Thankfully, however, the situation is starting to improve. Some of the world’s foremost news networks now offer free streams of their 24/7 channels, while several independent organizations have also started publishing content.

So, if you’re a Kodi user, what legal options are available to you today? Let’s take a look at the best Kodi add-ons for watching live news.

1. BBC iPlayer

kodi iplayer

If you live in the UK, you can use the BBC iPlayer add-on. It’s available in the official Kodi repo.

In addition to the network’s regular channels, you’ll have access to two live news channels: BBC News and BBC Parliament. BBC News focuses on both domestic and foreign headlines, while the Parliament channel reports the latest goings on from Britain’s legislative chambers.

If you live outside the UK, you can use a VPN to access the feeds. We recommend ExpressVPN or CyberGhost.

2. The Wall Street Journal Live

The Wall Street Journal is one of the world’s leading sources of financial, market, and business news. The company produces several short-form videos each day which look at the biggest news stories in the sector.

While this add-on doesn’t offer “live” news in the strictest sense, it does provide a playlist of the latest videos from the company, thus recreating the live news experience.

3. Cheddar

cheddar news

Cheddar is another news channel focused on the financial world. However, unlike The Wall Street Journal, its content is geared towards a younger audience.

The official Kodi add-on offers both a live stream of the company’s news channel and a selection of on-demand video clips.

4. Pluto TV

Pluto TV is one of the best ways to watch live TV across all content genres, but its live news offering is particularly robust.

It offers live streams from several leading news networks, including Bloomberg, Sky News, CNBC, RT America, and NBC. You can also use the add-on to watch feeds of some of the newer players such as The Young Turks, Cheddar, and Newsy.

The Pluto TV add-on is free to use.

5. NewsON

kodi newson

The four add-ons we’ve looked at so far all focus on broad national and international news. NewsON flips that on its head, specializing in local news instead.

It provides 170 local stations from 113 American cities. Sadly, it doesn’t carry any non-American content, and the streams are only available within the borders of the United States.

NewsON also offers some on-demand content. Seven categories are available: Featured, Weather, Politics, Recommended, Sports, Entertainment, and an off-piste section called “Seriously?”.

6. Livestream

If you don’t live in the US but still want to watch local news, you might find what you’re looking for on Livestream.

It offers more than 250 local news channels from cities around the world. All the broadcasts are legal; the news networks themselves publish most of them.

7. USTV Now

ustv-kodi

USTV Now is aimed at American vacationers, expats, and members of the military who want to stay abreast of television while out of the country. It offers a diverse selection of channels across multiple categories.

Three price plans are available. The entry-level free package includes six channels, some of which (ABC, FOX, and PBS) show news. The $19/month regular plan adds FOX News. The most expensive $29/month plan does not add any more channels—instead, it gives you access to DVR features.

The add-on is not available in the official Kodi repo. At the time of writing, you can grab it from SuperRepo (srp.nu), but that’s liable to change.

8. Newsy

Newsy is owned by American broadcasting behemoth, The E. W. Scripps Company. It produces its own short-form videos and provides a 24/7 live news channel.

Broadly speaking, the channel is free from opinion. Instead, it tries to present the facts and nothing else. However, as we all know, the notion of a “facts-only” news station is tedious at best, especially as we are becoming increasingly inundated with fake news.

9. Haystack

Haystack—along with Plex’s own news service—is one of the pioneers of providing news content that’s been specifically tailored to your interests.

It collates videos on your favorite topics from several leading news organization. The more you use the app, the more it will learn about your preferred sources and content.

Most videos are no more than three minutes long, and the next one starts playing as soon as the previous on finishes, thus giving the illusion of being live.

The content itself comes from several leading news networks, including CNN, CBS, Euronews, CNET, Cheddar, and ABC.

10. Sky News

Sky News one of the largest British news networks. If you live in the UK, or if you have even a passing interest on the latest news on that side of the Atlantic, you can give it a try. Unlike iPlayer, the feed is not geo-blocked, so you will not need to use a VPN.

The Sky News add-on, which is available in the official repo, provides a live feed of the 24/7 news channel and a selection of short on-demand video clips.

11. Newsmax TV

Newsmax TV is a free cable news channel in the United States. It grew out of conservative news website, Newsmax.com, so be warned that it leans to the right politically.

If you’re looking for left-leaning news sources, you can use this database to check the political persuasion of any site.

12. Russia Today

Russia Today doesn’t enjoy the best reputation thanks to its pro-Russia bias, but it’s arguably no worse than FOX News or other similar networks.

While it might not be a great choice if you’re looking for a balanced analysis of the political happenings of the day, if you just want to catch up with the latest global headlines, it’s more than adequate.

Learn to Take Full Advantage of Your Kodi

If you’re a total Kodi beginner, you might be left scratching your head at this article. How do you actually get all of this great content into the Kodi app?

Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Just read our Kodi guide for beginners and you’ll be up to speed on all things Kodi in no time!

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BenQ EW3270U Review: Making 4K HDR Affordable For All

Amazon Kills Mayday Support for Fire Tablets

Amazon is sunsetting its popular Mayday feature, which let Kindle Fire tablet owners access live tech support by pressing a button on their devices. Now, we’re all going to have to phone or email customer support just like we used to in the olden days.

What Was the Amazon Mayday Button?

The Mayday button was a feature on Amazon Fire devices. This was a literal button which users could press to summon live tech support. Which would be a human being you could see on your tablet offering to help you solve any issue you were having with your device.

Amazon was rightly proud of this innovation, and it was one of the few features to differentiate Amazon Fire tablets from the competition. And users loved the Mayday button, with a reported three-quarters of Fire HDX owners using it in the first year.

Amazon Admits a Rare Fail

Amazon unveiled the Mayday button in 2013, but the company has been quietly shuffling it to one side ever since. Recent products haven’t even included the Mayday feature, meaning the end has been nigh. And now, in June 2018, it’s being killed off completely.

We know thanks to a note on the Amazon Support pages, as spotted by GeekWire. It states that the “Mayday video calling service will be discontinued in June 2018.” Instead, you’ll need to “contact Amazon customer service […] through Phone, Email, and Chat.”

While the Mayday video calling service is no more, Amazon is still offering Mayday Screen Sharing. This means that once you have contacted customer service, you’ll be able to share your screen with Amazon to help them offer technical support for your device.

Alexa Is Taking All Our Jobs

While it’s disappointing to see an innovative feature such as Mayday video calling die, it is understandable. Paying support staff to be on call isn’t cheap. Which is probably why Amazon lets Alexa take care of most of its customer support.

If you have read this far through this article then we would hazard a guess that you own an Amazon Fire tablet. In which case you should make sure to check out our unofficial Amazon Fire tablet manual and these awesome Amazon Fire tablet tips.

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How to Turn Off Smart Replies in the New Gmail

Google has added the new “Smart Reply” feature to its Gmail service on Android and iOS, and it works by scanning emails as you receive them, then suggesting pre-formulated responses that might be helpful.

For example, if you get an invitation to a birthday party, the automated response might be something along the lines of “I’ll be there,” “Sorry, I can’t make it,” or “Thanks, I’ll give you an answer soon.”

If you live under a constant barrage of email requests, the availability of one-tap responses is probably useful. However, if you aren’t comfortable with Google scanning the words of every single email you receive, you might prefer to turn off the feature. Luckily, it’s easy to do.

How to Turn Off Smart Replies in Gmail

Follow the steps below to turn off smart replies in Gmail:

Open the Gmail app.
Click on the three horizontal lines in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
Tap on Settings.
Select the email account for which you want to turn off smart replies.
Scroll down to General > Smart Reply.
Unmark the checkbox next to Show suggested replies when available.
Repeat the above steps for each email account you have.

Remember, if your only reason for disabling auto-replies is to stop Google snooping in your inbox entirely, it’s not going to work.

Google is already scanning your inbox for spam, phishing attacks, and viruses—though admittedly, these scans probably don’t read your emails word-by-word in the same way that the smart reply algorithm would.

If you’d like to learn about some of the other Gmail features you can disable, we have got you covered. We’ve explained how to turn off the nudge functionality and how to disable Gmail’s new AI intelligence.

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Apple slapped with $6.6M fine in Australia over bricked devices

Apple has been fined AUS$9M (~$6.6M) by a court in Australia following a legal challenge by a consumer rights group related to the company’s response after iOS updates bricked devices that had been repaired by third parties.

The Australian Competitor and Consumer Commission (ACCC) invested a series of complaints relating to an error (‘error 53’) which disabled some iPhones and iPads after owners downloaded an update to Apple’s iOS operating system.

The ACCC says Apple admitted that, between February 2015 and February 2016 — via the Apple US’ website, Apple Australia’s staff in-store and customer service phone calls — it had informed at least 275 Australian customers affected by error 53 that they were no longer eligible for a remedy if their device had been repaired by a third party.

Image credit: 70023venus2009 via Flickr under license CC BY-ND 2.0

The court judged Apple’s action to have breached the Australian consumer law.

“If a product is faulty, customers are legally entitled to a repair or a replacement under the Australian Consumer Law, and sometimes even a refund. Apple’s representations led customers to believe they’d be denied a remedy for their faulty device because they used a third party repairer,” said ACCC commissioner Sarah Court in a statement.

“The Court declared the mere fact that an iPhone or iPad had been repaired by someone other than Apple did not, and could not, result in the consumer guarantees ceasing to apply, or the consumer’s right to a remedy being extinguished.”

The ACCC notes that after it notified Apple about its investigation, the company implemented an outreach program to compensate individual consumers whose devices were made inoperable by error 53. It says this outreach program was extended to approximately 5,000 consumers.

It also says Apple Australia offered a court enforceable undertaking to improve staff training, audit information about warranties and Australian Consumer Law on its website, and improve its systems and procedures to ensure future compliance with the law.

The ACCC further notes that a concern addressed by the undertaking is that Apple was allegedly providing refurbished goods as replacements, after supplying a good which suffered a major failure — saying Apple has committed to provide new replacements in those circumstances if the consumer requests one.

“If people buy an iPhone or iPad from Apple and it suffers a major failure, they are entitled to a refund. If customers would prefer a replacement, they are entitled to a new device as opposed to refurbished, if one is available,” said Court.

The court also held the Apple parent company, Apple US, responsible for the conduct of its Australian subsidiary. “Global companies must ensure their returns policies are compliant with the Australian Consumer Law, or they will face ACCC action,” added Court.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the court decision and will update this post with any response.

A company spokeswoman told Reuters it had had “very productive conversations with the ACCC about this” but declined to comment further on the court finding.

More recently, Apple found itself in hot water with consumer groups around the world over its use of a power management feature that throttled performance on older iPhones to avoid unexpected battery shutdowns.

The company apologized in December for not being more transparent about the feature, and later said it would add a control allowing consumers to turn it off if they did not want their device’s performance to be impacted.

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Apple slapped with $6.6M fine in Australia over bricked devices

Image credit: 70023venus2009 via Flickr under license CC BY-ND 2.0

The court judged Apple’s action to have breached the Australian consumer law.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the court decision and will update this post with any response.

A company spokeswoman told Reuters it had had “very productive conversations with the ACCC about this” but declined to comment further on the court finding.

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