13 March 2019

Daily Crunch: Spotify files complaint against Apple


The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Spotify files a complaint against Apple with the European Commission over ‘Apple tax’ and restrictive rules

Spotify is taking off its gloves in what has up to now been a behind-the-scenes tug-of-war with Apple — it competes against Apple Music but also relies heavily on the company for distribution of its app on iOS devices.

CEO Daniel Ek announced that his company has filed with the European Commission a complaint against the iPhone giant, over how Apple has “introduced rules to the App Store that purposely limit choice and stifle innovation at the expense of the user experience — essentially acting as both a player and referee to deliberately disadvantage other app developers.”

2. Verizon’s 5G to launch first in Chicago and Minneapolis on April 11

Current subscribers can expect to pay an additional $10 a month for access, and at launch, the only supported device is the Motorola Z3 with the 5G Moto Mod.

3. A first look at Twitter’s new prototype app, twttr

“Twttr,” as the prototype build is called, was created to give Twitter a separate space outside its public network to experiment with new ideas about how Twitter should look, feel and operate.

PARIS, FRANCE – (ARCHIVE): A file photo dated June 21, 2017 shows Boeing 737 Max flies during the 52nd International Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France. (Photo by Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

4. Boeing is moving to address potential issues in new 737s as Europe bans its plane

On Sunday, a Boeing 737 Max 8 plane operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed just minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 on board the flight. Last October, a Lion Air flight departing from Jakarta crashed in similar circumstances, killing all 189 people on board. The plane involved was also a 737 Max 8.

5. Microsoft shows off Project xCloud with Forza running on an Android phone

This is the first look at gameplay on Microsoft’s game-streaming service.

6. TPG’s Bill McGlashan is put on indefinite leave after being charged in a giant college admissions cheating scandal

McGlashan is among 49 others accused of participating in a bribery ring involving parents, admissions counselors and athletic coaches at prestigious universities in an effort to secure spots for their children at the schools.

7. ICE has a huge license plate database targeting immigrants, documents reveal

Newly released documents reveal Immigration and Customs Enforcement is tracking and targeting immigrants through a massive license plate reader database supplied with data from local police departments — in some cases violating sanctuary laws.


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YouTube Music and YouTube Premium come to India


YouTube Music is coming to the next critical battlefield for streaming music services: India. The company announced this week it’s launching its ad-supported version of YouTube Music for free in the country, as well as YouTube Music Premium, its subscription that offers background listening, offline downloads and an ad-free experience for ₹99 a month.

In addition, YouTube Premium, which extends offline play, background listening and the removal of ads across YouTube, is also launching in India. This will include access to YouTube Original programming like Cobra Kai, BTS: Burn The Stage, and others, and ships with the Music Premium subscription for ₹129 rupees per month.

This is not Google’s first entry into the streaming music market in India. The company already operates Google Play Music – and now, those subscribers will gain access to YouTube Music as part of their subscription, the company says.

India is a key market for streaming services because of its sizable population of 1.3 billion people, many of whom are still coming online for the first time. (Only some 483 million are active internet users today).

Already, Apple and Amazon operate their music services in the region, and Spotify has made an India launch a strategic focus this year.

However, Spotify’s entry into India has been complicated by a licensing dispute with Warner Music (WMG’s Warner/Chappell publishing arm, specifically). That conflict led to Spotify arriving in the market without some of today’s biggest artists, like Cardi B. and Ed Sheeran. The case has been ugly: Warner sued Spotify asking for an emergency injunction; Spotify then accused Warner of “abusive behavior;” and Warner called Spotify a “liar.”

Despite its legal troubles, Spotify hit 1 million users in India within a week of launching. That bodes well for its potential when it gets through the legal battles.

Unlike Spotify, YouTube Music is fully licensed as it enters the region – a potential competitive advantage for the time being. It also has a deal with Samsung where Galaxy S10 owners can gain 4 months of YouTube Premium/YouTube Music Premium for free. (But Spotify has a deeper Samsung partnership, involving preinstalls and Bixby integrations.)

For YouTube, a win in India is needed, as its streaming music service hasn’t picked up traction to date.

To some extent, that’s because YouTube users know they can get to music videos for free, but it also has to do with Google’s baffling strategy in operating two separate brands around music. Apple doesn’t make this mistake. It leverages the power of its platform to promote its only music service, Apple Music.

That may have gotten it into trouble, though – today, Spotify filed a complaint with the European Commission over the “Apple tax” levied on its rivals and its restrictive rules.

Google has said it plans to merge its two music services at some point, but for now the split likely leads to confusion.

“India is where the multi-lingual music scene thrives,” said Lyor Cohen, Global Head of Music, YouTube, in a statement. “It’s interesting to note how Indian artists have consistently claimed top spots over the last few months in the Global YouTube Top Artists chart. With YouTube Music, we are hoping to bring the best in global and Indian music to millions of fans across India, and give them an immersive music experience, with the magic of music on YouTube,” he added.


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Meta Collecting


Meta Collecting

Wattpad gains strategic investment from Times Bridge to further expand in India


Wattpad is further expanding into Asia with a new partnership and undisclosed strategic investment from Times Bridge, the global investment arm of the Times Group in India. The deal aims to help the storytelling community establish a larger presence in the country where it already counts over 2.6 million monthly users who have shared more than 4 million stories to date, it says.

Similar to its recent partnership with entertainment partner Huayi Brothers Korea, the deal with Times Bridge is also focused on turning more Wattpad stories into books, TV shows, movies, and other digital projects in the region.

This is an area where Wattpad has found some success. In the U.S., one of the stories on its platform became the Netflix teen hit “The Kissing Booth,” and other stories have become projects at Hulu, AwesomenessTV, eOne, Sony, SYFY, iflix, Universal Cable Productions (NBCU), and elsewhere. The company also just launched its own books division to better capitalize on bringing its online stories to print.

India has been a more recent focus for Wattpad, following its  $51 million raise from Tencent. Soon after, the company appointed its first Head of Asia for Wattpad Studios, Dexter Ong. And it also recently hired its first GM of India, Devashish Sharma, who has been working with local partners to turn its stories into movies, TV, digital and print in the region.

“Millions of Indian readers and writers have already found a home Wattpad,” said Sharma, in a statement. “Times Bridge and The Times Group have an unmatched media and entertainment portfolio, and connections with some of India’s most-respected authors and cultural figures. We’re excited to work together to create new opportunities for Indian storytellers,” he added.

Today, Wattpad’s app supports a number of local languages including Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Assamese, Marathi, and Oriya.

To find the stories that become popular, Wattpad relies on a combination of human curation and technology – the latter with its Story DNA machine learning system that helps to identify the standouts by deconstructing things like sentence structure, word use, grammar and other factors that contribute to popularity.

“We’re thrilled to work with Times Bridge expand our footprint in the region and create more opportunities for India’s rich literary community to tell their stories, reaching new audiences in India and around the world,” said Wattpad co-founder and CEO Allen Lau, in a statement.

Wattpad didn’t disclose Times Group’s investment. The firm has previously partnered with other tech companies in India, and has investments in Uber, Airbnb, Coursera, Houzz, MUBI, Smule, and others.


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Periscope cracks on inauthentic behavior including fake hearts, follows, chats and more


Twitter’s video streaming app, Periscope, is cracking down on spam and, specifically, fake engagements. The company says it’s updating its policies around how it enforces its anti-spam rules, and is making improvements in terms of how those rules are enforced. This means users will see increased enforcement actions, Periscope notes – and these may even take place on “high-profile” accounts.

The app has had struggled for some time to get a handle on spam and other bad behavior.

For example, in 2016 the livestreaming app rolled out real-time comment moderation – a much-needed change given the real-time nature of the live video and associated comments. Last year, it updated this system so broadcasters could assign their own chat moderators instead of relying on the crowd to handle the reporting and banning.

While these changes may have helped to address issues around trolling and abuse, spam is another matter – and particularly the inauthentic behavior around “fake engagements.”

This isn’t only a Periscope problem. On any platform where engagements – like hearts, favorites, follows, and comments – are the currency of success, entire ecosystems pop up designed to help people cheat their way to the top.

With the updated spam policy, the company says it will now prohibit fake engagements  – including any artificial hearts, chat, followers and views. It classifies these actions as “spam,” because they’re “deceptive” forms of activity.

Any selling or promoting of fake engagement will be prohibited, too.

In addition, company says it will focus on proactive enforcement to help improve chat quality and will soon launch account-level spam reporting options so others can report spammy users.

Fake engagement is not a new issue for the app.

For years, there have been problems with fake followers and fake hearts, as an attempt to manipulate the system. There are YouTube videos that detail how this works, tutorials on how to make these purchases, bots, and, of course, offers filed under “social media marketing” on sites like Fiverr – a marketplace where much of the fake internet is manufactured.

While Periscope may have turned a blind eye to the spam and fakery for some time, its decision to finally crack down on fake engagement arrives only a few months after Instagram did the same. In November, Instagram began fighting back against automated apps people used to leave spammy comments and to follow and unfollow users in hopes of growing their audience.

Social media platforms, as a whole, have actively ignored these sorts of attempts to manipulate their systems for most of their existence. After all, fake engagements like hearts and follows and comments make it look like their platforms are more active than they actually are. And if these fakery tools helped birth crowds of “influencers” who then, in turn, attracted more users to the platform, that could be even seen as a perk.

But fake accounts and activity aren’t always about people wanting a shortcut to online fame – inauthentic accounts are also the source for disinformation campaigns and attempts by foreign governments to hack our democracy. That’s shifted the scale in the other direction, and has forced social media platforms to finally stop ignoring the problem of inauthentic accounts and activity.

Periscope, however, told users it’s all about listening to their feedback.

“At Periscope, we value our community’s feedback to make our service better. Periscope is a place for instant engagement and we’ve heard your concerns about spammy accounts and chats,” the company said. “Whether you’re broadcasting or catching up with your favorite broadcaster, we are always looking for ways to make Periscope feel safer and more authentic for our community.”

 


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Google has quietly added DuckDuckGo as a search engine option for Chrome users in ~60 markets


In an update to the chromium engine, which underpins Google’s popular Chrome browser, the search giant has quietly updated the lists of default search engines it offers per market — expanding the choice of search product users can pick from in markets around the world.

Most notably it’s expanded search engine lists to include pro-privacy rivals in more than 60 markets globally.

The changes, which appear to have been pushed out with the Chromium 73 stable release yesterday, come at a time when Google is facing rising antitrust scrutiny and accusations of market distorting behavior at home and abroad.

Many governments are now actively questioning how competition policy needs to be updated to rein in platform power and help smaller technology innovators get out from under the tech giant shadow.

But in a note about the changes to chromium’s default search engine lists on an Github instance, Google software engineer Orin Jaworski merely writes that the list of search engine references per country is being “completely replaced based on new usage statistics” from “recently collected data”.

Their choices appear to loosely line up with top four marketshare.

The greatest beneficiary of the update appears to be pro-privacy Google rival, DuckDuckGo, which is now being offered as an option in more than 60 markets, per the Github instance.

Previously DDG was not offered as an option at all.

Another pro-privacy search rivals, French search engine Qwant, has also been added as a new option — though only in its home market, France.

Whereas DDG has been added in Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Bolivia, Brazil, Belize, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Germany, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Iceland, Italy, Jamaica, Kuwait, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Moldova, Macedonia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Paraguay, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, El Salvador, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, Uruguay, US and Venezuela.

“We’re glad that Google has recognized the importance of offering consumers a private search option,” DuckDuckGo founder Gabe Weinberg told us when approached for comment about the change.

DDG has been growing steadily for years — and has also recently taken outside investment to scale its efforts to capitalize on growing international appetite for pro-privacy products.

Interestingly, the chromium Github instance is dated December 2018 which appears to be around about the time when Google (finally) passed the Duck.com domain to DuckDuckGo, after holding onto the domain and pointing it to Google.com for years.

We asked Google for comment on the timing of the changes to search engine options in chromium. At the time of writing the search giant had not responded.

We’ve also reached out to Qwant for comment on being added as an option in its home market.

 


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How to Sell Digital Products Online with Google Drive and PayPal


The web has made it incredibly easy for anyone to sell digital products directly to customers through websites, social media, and email newsletters. You can sell PDF ebooks, MP3 music, photos, software apps, gift cards, license keys, coupon codes, website templates, fonts, graphics, video courses, and many more downloadable files.

While there are quite a few e-commerce platforms that help you sell digital products – Gumroad, E-junkie, Paddle, FastSpring, Shopify, Instamojo and WooCommerce, to name a few,  here’s a do-it-yourself solution that will help you build your own digital store in under 5 minutes using PayPal and your Google account.

How the workflow works?

Before we get into the implementation, here’s a big-picture view of how the payment and digital delivery workflow works.

  1. Embed the “Buy Now” buttons into your website or blog. Buyers can pay with all major credit cards using 1-step checkout.
  2. Buyer clicks the button, enters the card details and completes the payment. The customer stays on your site and isn’t redirected anywhere to complete the purchase.
  3. The order is delivered to the customer in a personalized email message. You can also attach a tax invoice in the confirmation emails.

You can head over to the live demo page and experience the 1-step checkout experience on your desktop or mobile phone.

Sell Digital Downloads with PayPal and Google Drive

The workflow uses Google Drive for securely hosting files, PayPal for processing payments, Google Sheets for generating professional PDF invoices and Gmail for delivering the order to the buyer as file attachments.

There are no limitations on the size of files or the number of products that you can sell. There are no bandwidth or storage restrictions. There’s no transaction fee except for the payment processing fees that are charged by PayPal and Stripe.

Get Started Selling Digital Goods

Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial that explains how you can easily sell digital products with PayPal and Google Drive.

Step 1: Create a PayPal App

Go to developer.paypal.com and sign-in with your PayPal account. If you don’t have one, sign-up here for a new Business account.

Inside your PayPal dashboard, go to My Apps & Credentials > Rest API Apps and create a new app. You can give your app any name as it is for internal use only. PayPal will now create client credentials for testing and live transactions that we’ll need in the next step.

Step 2: Create a PayPal Webhook

When a buyer completes the purchase and makes the payment, PayPal will send your app a notification by calling a specific URL and this is known as a webhook.

To create a webhook, go to digitalgoods.dev/copy and copy the Google Sheet to your Google Drive. Inside the sheet, go to Tools > Script Editor, the choose Publish > Deploy As Web App and click the Update button to create your PayPal webhook. Copy the URL to the clipboard.

You will have to authorize the script once since it has to do all the operation – send emails, attach Drive files, generate PDF invoices – on your behalf.

Step 3: Configure App inside Google Sheet

Switch to the “Configuration” sheet inside the Google Spreadsheet and paste the webhook URL inside the “webhook” field. Next, copy-paste the Client ID and Secret generated in step 1 inside the corresponding fields of the Google Sheet.

paypal-app-configuration.png

There are few other mandatory fields in the sheet. Choose your default currency, the shipping preference (whether you want to capture the address on the buyer), specify your brand name and the soft descriptor (this will show in the credit card statement of the buyer).

Go to the Digital Goods menu in the sheet (it is near the Help menu) and choose Test PayPal Configuration to verify the PayPal-Google Sheets connection.

Step 4: Add your Digital Products

Switch to the “Items” sheet and enter the default tax rate in the cell E1. Next, add one or more products in the sheet. You only need to specify the price of the item in column D, the Tax and Total Amount is automatically calculated based on the tax rate set in E1.

PayPal Digital Products

To attach files to your digital product, highlight the Files column, then go to the Digital Goods menu and choose Attach Drive Files. It opens the Google File picker and you can select one or more files from your Google Drive that will be sent to the buyer after they purchase the corresponding product.

Step 4: Create the Tax Invoice Template

Switch to the “Invoice” sheet and customize the invoice template. You can use formulas, add your logos, apply styles to match your brand and the template would be converted to a PDF file and sent as a file attachment in the order confirmation emails.paypal-pdf-invoice.png

The invoice template can include placemarkers, similar to the ones you have used inside Document Studio. For instance, the variable will be replaced with the full name of the customer as found in the PayPal order. The variable is replaced with the buyer’s email address while the adds a unique invoice number to your invoice.

Step 5: Create the Order Confirmation Email

Switch to the “Email” sheet and create the HTML template that will be sent to customers after they complete the payment. The email will automatically include the files and invoice as attachments but you can customize the email message and subject.

The first row in the sheet is the subject and everything else will go in the message body. The emails, like Mail Merge, can be personalized and you can also use HTML tags to add images, links and rich content in the emails.

Step 6: Test your PayPal buttons

Now that you have added the products to the Google Sheet, it is time to test the integration in sandbox mode before you embed the buttons on your live website.

Go back to your PayPal dashboard, and choose Credit Card Generator in the right sidebar. Here you can generate random credit card numbers with expiration date and CVV for testing your buttons in sandbox mode.

Inside the Google Sheet, choose Digital Tools > Embed PayPal Buttons to generate the HTML embed code for your digital products. The screen offers embed codes in both the live mode and the sandbox mode.

embed-paypal-buttons.png

Click the Try button next to the Sandbox mode and you’ll be able to test the buttons right inside the Google Sheet. Click the credit card icon, enter the mock credit card number and click “Pay Now” to complete the test transaction.

PayPal invokes the Webhook and it triggers the order workflow. Switch to the “Logs” sheet and you’ll soon find a new entry for the transaction that you just completed. Open your Gmail Sent items folder and you’ll find a copy othe f email that was sent the buyer’s email.

If your integration is working as expected, go to the Embed PayPal menu in the sheet and this time copy the embed code for the “Live” mode and paste it in your website. Your product is now live and anyone in the world can buy your product with a single-step checkout.

Here’s a sample email that will go out to customers after the purchase.

order-confirmation-email.png

All the incoming orders can be tracked in real-time inside the “Sales” tab of the Google Sheet. The sheet includes the customer’s name, email address, the order summary and the buyer’s postal address. The address is only available if you have set the shipping preference in the configuration sheet to “GET_FROM_FILE”.

You can directly run Mail Merge with Gmail inside this sheet to easily send product updates to existing customers. If you have been using PayPal prior to switching to Digital Goods, put all the PayPal emails under a new Gmail label, extract the email addresses inside the sheet and use that list for your merge.

How to Sell Unique License Keys & Codes

In some businesses, you may want to send unique codes to the customer. These may include license numbers to unlock software apps (like we do at Digital Inspiration),  passwords to access streaming video courses, discount coupons, gift cards, event registration numbers and more.

software-license-codes.png

This is easy with Digital Goods. Open the “Codes” sheet in the spreadsheet and the pregenerated list of codes in one of the columns. Give this column a title as shown in the screenshot above. Next, include the in your email mesage and a unique code will be added in place of the marker.

Internally, the app looks at the last row of the Sale sheet (the current order), fetches the codes from that same row in the Codes sheet and adds them to your email / invoice.

Troubleshooting Tips

The video tutorial explains the entire workflow in great detail but if you are still facing any issues, here are some tips:

  1. Go to the configuration sheet and set “yes” for the debug setting. Next, do a test transaction inside sandbox mode and check the Logs sheet for any errors.
  2. Go the Digital Goods menu and run Test Configuration again to ensure that your PayPal sandbox and live credentials are correct.
  3. PayPal, in rare cases, may delay the delivery of webhooks. Go to the PayPal dashboard and choose Webhooks (link) to get a list of recently-processed webhook events and their status. You can open a case at paypal-techsupport.com for help.
  4. Make sure that you have not renamed or deleted any of the original sheets in your copied Google Spreadsheet.
  5. Open your Chrome Dev Tools, switch to the network tab and make sure that your adblockers are not blocking the PayPal script.

If you are unable to resolve the issue, write to me at amit@labnol.org or tweet @labnol.

The post How to Sell Digital Products Online with Google Drive and PayPal appeared first on Digital Inspiration.


TwitSnap? Twitter launches new camera feature to demote text


Twitter is rolling out the redesign to its camera feature TechCrunch reported on a month ago that’s designed to let you capture photos, videos, and live footage and connect them to global conversations. Starting today when you swipe left from the Twitter timeline, you’ll get the new camera that’s no longer buried in the tweet composer. After you capture some media (no uploads for now), you can overlay a location, hashtag, or some words on a colored label. But what’s really special is that Twitter will show this media in a larger, more immersive format in the feed with the imagery appearing before the text in your tweet.

Twitter isn’t launching Stories or some dedicated feed of photos to rival Instagram. But it wants to become a more real-time lens on the world rather than just an intepretation of it through people’s words. The enhanced camera could get more people shooting media, which could make Twitter more accessible to new users daunted by walls of text. More visual content also makes it easier to slip more visual ads into the feed.

Twitter tells me it’s not giving tweets created with the camera an algorithmic boost in the main timeline. But a spokesperson told me its combined human and technology curation team may seek to spotlight Twitter Camera tweets in the Whats Happening section about live events in the Explore tab. We’ll see if media organizations and brands try to take advantage of the new camera to stand out in the feed.

When you swipe left on the timeline, you’ll see a Snapchat style camera shutter button that records photos with a tap, and looping videos up to two minutes long if you hold. A mini-swipe over and you can record video or audio-only live broadcasts without any Periscope branding (will that app just become Twitter Live?). Twitter will then recommend hashtags based on big nearby events and other signals, or you can add your own as well as a location and text. You can choose between six colors for the TV news-style chyron those tags on overlayed on that help Twitter route the content into the imagery carousels for its different What’s Happening sections.

For now, there are no stickers, filters, light enhancements, or other creative tools in the Twitter camera the way there is in the image uploader in the tweet composer (which conveniently also hosts a shortcut to the new camera). Twitter tells me it wants to focus on tags that will pipe content into the right conversations instead of beautifying the media. That’s a different tack than YouTube, which just started rolling out augmented reality face filters.

Historically, Twitter has been extremely slow to launch product changes for fear of disturbing its long-time loyalists. But Twitter tells me its turning over a new leaf and pushing the new camera out the door even with rough edges so it can start getting feedback and iterating. That’s much closer to how Facebook builds than the Twitter we’re used to. The move aligns with the recent release of Twitter’s beta prototype app twttr that launched this week. Twitter seems to finally understand that waiting to perfect each feature and being scared to experiment has left Twitter behind its rivals.

People who love Twitter can’t find the same hellscape of constant conversation anywhere else, and the new camera probably won’t change that. But shifting towards visual communication without debasing itself to chase the Stories trend could make Twitter more comfortable for a world that increasingly talks through images.


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TwitSnap? Twitter launches new camera feature to demote text


Twitter is rolling out the redesign to its camera feature TechCrunch reported on a month ago that’s designed to let you capture photos, videos, and live footage and connect them to global conversations. Starting today when you swipe left from the Twitter timeline, you’ll get the new camera that’s no longer buried in the tweet composer. After you capture some media (no uploads for now), you can overlay a location, hashtag, or some words on a colored label. But what’s really special is that Twitter will show this media in a larger, more immersive format in the feed with the imagery appearing before the text in your tweet.

Twitter isn’t launching Stories or some dedicated feed of photos to rival Instagram. But it wants to become a more real-time lens on the world rather than just an intepretation of it through people’s words. The enhanced camera could get more people shooting media, which could make Twitter more accessible to new users daunted by walls of text. More visual content also makes it easier to slip more visual ads into the feed.

Twitter tells me it’s not giving tweets created with the camera an algorithmic boost in the main timeline. But a spokesperson told me its combined human and technology curation team may seek to spotlight Twitter Camera tweets in the Whats Happening section about live events in the Explore tab. We’ll see if media organizations and brands try to take advantage of the new camera to stand out in the feed.

When you swipe left on the timeline, you’ll see a Snapchat style camera shutter button that records photos with a tap, and looping videos up to two minutes long if you hold. A mini-swipe over and you can record video or audio-only live broadcasts without any Periscope branding (will that app just become Twitter Live?). Twitter will then recommend hashtags based on big nearby events and other signals, or you can add your own as well as a location and text. You can choose between six colors for the TV news-style chyron those tags on overlayed on that help Twitter route the content into the imagery carousels for its different What’s Happening sections.

For now, there are no stickers, filters, light enhancements, or other creative tools in the Twitter camera the way there is in the image uploader in the tweet composer (which conveniently also hosts a shortcut to the new camera). Twitter tells me it wants to focus on tags that will pipe content into the right conversations instead of beautifying the media. That’s a different tack than YouTube, which just started rolling out augmented reality face filters.

Historically, Twitter has been extremely slow to launch product changes for fear of disturbing its long-time loyalists. But Twitter tells me its turning over a new leaf and pushing the new camera out the door even with rough edges so it can start getting feedback and iterating. That’s much closer to how Facebook builds than the Twitter we’re used to. The move aligns with the recent release of Twitter’s beta prototype app twttr that launched this week. Twitter seems to finally understand that waiting to perfect each feature and being scared to experiment has left Twitter behind its rivals.

People who love Twitter can’t find the same hellscape of constant conversation anywhere else, and the new camera probably won’t change that. But shifting towards visual communication without debasing itself to chase the Stories trend could make Twitter more comfortable for a world that increasingly talks through images.


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Apple’s streaming service could feature content from partners


A report from Bloomberg shares some of the details about the long-rumored video streaming service from Apple. The company should unveil this service at a press conference in Cupertino on March 25.

While Apple has been working on a ton of original content for its new streaming service, Bloomberg says that most of them won’t be ready for the launch later this month. Apple will probably share some teasers on stage, but the launch lineup will mostly feature third-party content.

Apple is probably talking with everyone, but many premium cable channels still have to make up their mind about Apple’s streaming service. HBO, Showtime and Starz have to decide whether they want to be part of the launch by Friday.

It’s unclear if Apple is going to feature some or all content from those partners. Many of them already have a streaming service on their own. And you can already access their libraries from the TV app on your Apple TV or iOS device.

Apple could streamline the experience by letting you subscribe to various content bundles in its own streaming service. Amazon already provides something similar with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Netflix and Hulu will likely remain independent services as they compete directly with Apple’s original content effort.

When it comes to Apple’s other announcement, the company should also unveil its Apple News subscription on March 25. Apple acquired Texture last year and has been working on a digital magazine subscription for a while.

Once again, details are still thin for this new service when it comes to pricing, availability outside of the U.S. and content.

Last month, the WSJ reported that Apple has been working with Goldman Sachs on a credit card that would integrate deeply with the Apple Wallet app. Given that Apple’s event is about services, let’s see if the company talks about this new product as well.


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Tetrate nets $12.1 million to bring microservices to the corporate masses


Tetrate, a company bringing commercial services and support to the open source projects –Istio and Envoy — providing network management functions for the microservices that make up modern mobile applications, has launched with $12.1 million in new financing.

The company, founded by top engineers at Google who started the Istio project, raised its initial financing from a slew of institutions and big names in enterprise software including Pankaj Patel, Former Chief Development Officer at Cisco; Guido Appenzeller, Former CTO Cloud & Networking at VMware; BV Jagadeesh, founder and CEO of Netscaler and Shiva Rajaraman, Chief Product Officer of WeWork.

On the institutional investment side, Dell Technologies Capital led the financing, which also included Intel Capital, Samsung NEXT, 8VC, and Rain Capital.

Tetrate was able to bring this motley band of investors together to back its foray into professionalizing services and support around a toolkit that’s helping to redefine application development.

The company is supporting open source projects Istio and Envoy, which developers use to create what’s called a “service mesh” that orchestrates how microservices on a distributed data center platform communicate with one another and work together as part of an application.

It’s corollary in the old software world that I initially wrote about would be the middleware layer for in a client-server architecture. (Much of this was foreign to me before I read this excellent primer from ZDNet, which spelled out a lot of what’s going on for me).

One of the key things that microservices address, and that Tetrate will provide support for, is to support the management of different microservices at scale.

Think of the service mesh as the toolkit that keeps microservices communicating with each other and enabling applications at the level of executable code. So tools like Istio are used to manage the network without impacting the services that are running on top of it.

Tetrate was actually founded by some of the architects behind the development of Istio. “I was at Google for the last ten years most recently working as a product manager in Google Cloud,” says Tetrate co-founder and chief executive Varun Talwar. Indeed, Google was where Talwar and his colleagues developed the Istio toolkit.

Talwar says that the Istio toolkit was born out of the needs of the developers in the Kubernetes community. “It decouples the operations from the development,” Talwar says of the Istio service. “You can apply policy management.”

Talwar and his colleagues took the covers off the Istio project in May of 2017 at Glucon and brought in big names to support its use including IBM and Red Hat (now IBHat? RedBM?). A little less than one year later, Talwar left Google to start Tetrate.

Now, with the new financing from its backers, Tetrate is going to bring enterprise-grade extensibility, scalability, and performance to the open source tools that its founders helped develop, according to a statement.

“Customers are going through a journey of modernization and public cloud adoption,” said Talwar, in a statement. “Tetrate’s mission is to create the tools and technologies that help customers with availability and manageability of their applications as they undergo this transformation.”

The company is releasing a set of certified builds of envoy proxy and other open source tools to speed the adoption of microservices development in businesses. The company is also partnering with Google and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for operating hybrid computing environments with Istio.

“Open source should be an integral part of any company’s software and operations strategy today,” said Envoy founder and Lyft Engineer Matt Klein, in a statement. “Interoperability will be the key factor in the next phase of cloud adoption, so having deep roots within the open source community gives Tetrate instant credibility among cloud-first companies.”

 


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Competition policy must change to help startups fight ‘winner takes all’ platforms, says UK report


A independent report commissioned by the UK government to examine how competition policy needs to adapt itself for the digital age has concluded that tech giants don’t face adequate competition and the law needs updating to address what it dubs the “novel” challenges of ‘winner takes all’ platforms.

The panel also recommends more policy interventions to actively support startups, including a code of conduct for “the most significant digital platforms”; and measures to foster data portability, open standards and interoperability to help generate competitive momentum for rival innovations.

UK chancellor Philip Hammond announced the competition market review last summer, saying the government was committed to asking “the big questions about how we ensure these new digital markets work for everyone”.

The culmination of the review — a 150-page report, published today, entitled Unlocking digital competition — is the work of the government’s digital competition expert panel which is chaired by former U.S. president Barack Obama’s chief economic advisor, professor Jason Furman.

“The digital sector has created substantial benefits but these have come at the cost of increasing dominance of a few companies which is limiting competition and consumer choice and innovation. Some say this is inevitable or even desirable. I think the UK can do better,” Furman said today in a statement.

In the report the panel writes that it believes competition policy should be “given the tools to tackle new challenges, not radically shifted away from its established basis”.

“In particular, policy should remain based on careful weighing of economic evidence and models,” they suggest, arguing also that “consumer welfare” remains the “appropriate perspective to motivate competition policy” — and rejecting the idea that a completely new approach is needed.

But, crucially, their view of consumer welfare is a broad church, not a narrow price trench — with the report asserting that a consumer welfare basis to competition law is able to also take account of other things, including (but also not limited to) “choice, quality and innovation”. 

Furman said the panel, which was established in September 2018, has outlined “a balanced proposal to give people more control over their data, give small businesses more of a chance to enter and thrive, and create more predictability for the large digital companies”.

“These recommendations will deliver an economic boost driven by UK tech start-ups and innovation that will give consumers greater choice and protection,” he argues.

Commenting on the report’s publication, Hammond said: “Competition is fundamental to ensuring the market works in the interest of consumers, but we know some tech giants are still accumulating too much power, preventing smaller businesses from entering the market,” adding that: “The work of Jason Furman and the expert panel is invaluable in ensuring we’re at the forefront of delivering a competitive digital marketplace.”

The chancellor said that the government will “carefully examine” the proposals and respond later this year — with a plan for implementing changes he said are necessary “to ensure our digital markets are competitive and consumers get the level of choice they deserve”.

Pro-startup regulation required

The panel rejects the view — mostly loudly propounded by tech giants and their lobbying vehicles — that competition is thriving online, ergo no competition policy changes are needed.

It also rejects the argument that digital platforms are “natural monopolies” and competition is impossible — dismissing the idea of imposing utility-like regulation, such as in the energy sector.

Instead, the panel writes that it sees “greater competition among digital platforms as not only necessary but also possible — provided the right policies are in place”. The biggest “missing set of policies” are ones that would “actively help foster competition”, it argues in the report’s introduction.

“Instead of just relying on traditional competition tools, the UK should take a forward-looking approach that creates and enforces a clear set of rules to limit anti-competitive actions by the most significant digital platforms while also reducing structural barriers that currently hinder effective competition,” they go on to say, calling for new rules to tackle ‘winner take all’ tech platforms that are based on “generally agreed principles and developed into more specific codes of conduct with the participation of a wide range of stakeholders”. 

Coupled with active policy efforts to support startups and scale-ups — by making it easier for consumers to move their data across digital services; pushing for systems to be built around open standards; and for data held by tech giants to be made available for competitors — the suggested reforms would support a system that’s “more flexible, predictable and timely” than the current regime, they assert.

Among the panel’s specific recommendations are a call to set up a new competition unit with expertise in technology, economics and behavioural science, plus the legal powers to back it up.

The panel envisages this unit focusing on giving users more control over their data — to foster platform switching — as well as developing a code of competitive conduct that would apply to the largest platforms. “This would be applied only to particularly powerful companies, those deemed to have ‘strategic market status’, in order to avoid creating new burdens or barriers for smaller firms,” they write.

Another recommendation is to beef up regulators’ existing powers for tackling illegal anti-competitive practices — to make it quicker and simpler to prosecute breaches, with the report highlighting bullying tactics by market leaders as a current problem.

“There is nothing inherently wrong about being a large company or a monopoly and, in fact, in many cases this may reflect efficiencies and benefits for consumers or businesses. But dominant companies have a particular responsibility not to abuse their position by unfairly protecting, extending or exploiting it,” they write. “Existing antitrust enforcement, however, can often be slow, cumbersome, and unpredictable. This can be especially problematic in the fast-moving digital sector.

“That is why we are recommending changes that would enable more use of interim measures to prevent damage to competition while a case is ongoing, and adjusting appeal standards to balance protecting parties’ interests with the need for the competition authority to have usable tools and an appropriate margin of judgement. The goal is to place less reliance on large fines and drawn-out procedures, instead enabling faster action that more directly targets and remedies the problematic behavior.”

The expert panel also says changes to merger rules are required to enable the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to intervene to stop digital mergers that are likely to damage future competition, innovation and consumer choice — saying current decisions are too focused on short-term impacts.

“Over the last 10 years the 5 largest firms have made over 400 acquisitions globally. None has been blocked and very few have had conditions attached to approval, in the UK or elsewhere, or even been scrutinised by competition authorities,” they note.

More priority should be given to reviewing the potential implications of digital mergers.

Decisions on whether to approve mergers, by the CMA and other authorities, have often focused on short-term impacts. In dynamic digital markets, long-run effects are key to whether a merger will harm competition and consumers. Could the company that is being bought grow into a competitor to the platform? Is the source of its value an innovation that, under alternative ownership, could make the market less concentrated? Is it being bought for access to consumer data that will make the platform harder to challenge? In principle, all of these questions can inform merger decisions within the current, mainstream framework for competition, centred on consumer welfare. There is no need to shift away from this, or implement a blanket presumption against digital mergers, many of which may benefit consumers. Instead, these issues need to be considered more consistently and effectively in practice.

In part the CMA can achieve this through giving a higher priority to merger decisions in digital markets. These cases can be complex, but they affect markets that are critically important to consumers, providing services that shape the digital economy.

In another recommendation which targets the Google-Facebook adtech duopoly, the report also calls for the CMA to launch a formal market study into the digital advertising market — which it notes suffers from a lack of transparency, with the panel also noting concerns raised by other recent reviews.

Digital advertising is increasingly driven by the use of consumers’ personal data for targeting. This in turn drives the competitive advantage for platforms able to learn more about more users’ identity, location and preferences. The market operates through a complex chain of advertising technology layers, where subsidiaries of the major platforms compete on opaque terms with third party businesses. This report joins the Cairncross Review and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in calling for the CMA to use its investigatory capabilities and powers to examine whether actors in these markets are operating appropriately to deliver effective competition and consumer benefit.

The report also calls for new powers to force the largest tech companies to open up to smaller firms by providing access to key data sets, albeit without infringing on individual privacy — citing Open Banking as a “notable” data mobility model that’s up and running.

“Open Banking provides an instructive example of how policy intervention can overcome technical and co-ordination challenges and misaligned incentives by creating an adequately funded body with the teeth to drive development and implementation by the nine largest financial institutions,” it suggests.

The panel also urges the UK to engage internationally on the issue of digital regulation, writing that: “Many countries are considering policy changes in this area. The United Kingdom has the opportunity to lead by example, by helping to stimulate a global discussion that is based on the shared premise that competition is beneficial, competition is possible, but that we need to update our policies to protect and expand this competition for the sake of consumers and vibrant, dynamic economies.”

And in just one current example of the considerable chatter go on around competition, a House of Lords committee this week also recommended public interest tests for proposed tech mergers, and suggested an overarching digital regulator is needed to help plug legislative gaps and work through regulatory overlap.

Discussing the pros and cons of concentration in digital markets, the expert competition panel notes the efficiency and convenience that this dynamic can offer consumers and businesses, as well as potential gains via product innovation.

However the panel also points to what it says can be “substantial downsides” from digital market concentration, including erosion of consumer privacy; barriers to entry and scale for startups; and blocks to wider innovation, which it asserts can “outweigh any static benefits”.

It can raise effective prices for consumers, reduce choice, or impact quality. Even when consumers do not have to pay anything for the service, it might have been that with more competition consumers would have given up less in terms of privacy or might even have been paid for their data. It can be harder for new companies to enter or scale up. Most concerning, it could impede innovation as larger companies have less to fear from new entrants and new entrants have a harder time bringing their products to market — creating a trade-off where the potential dynamic costs of concentration outweigh any static benefits.

The panel takes a clear view that “competition for the market cannot be counted on, by itself, to solve the problems associated with market tipping and ‘winner-takes-most’” — arguing that past regulatory interventions have helped shift market conditions, by facilitating the technology changes that created new markets and companies which led to dominant tech giants of old being unseated.

So, in other words, the panel believes government action can unlock market disruption — and it’s too simplistic a narrative to say technological change alone can reset markets.

For example, IBM’s dominance of hardware in the 1960s and early 1970s was rendered less important by the emergence of the PC and software. Microsoft’s dominance of operating systems and browsers gave way to a shift to the internet and an expansion of choice. But these changes were facilitated, in part, by government policy — in particular antitrust cases against these companies, without which the changes may never have happened.

The panel also argues there’s an acceleration of market dominance in the modern digital economy that makes it even more necessary for governments to respond, writing that “network effects and returns to scale of data appear to be even more entrenched and the market seems to have stabilised quickly compared to the much larger degree of churn in the early days of the World Wide Web”.

They also point to the risk of AI and machine learning technology leading to further market concentration, warning that “the companies most able to take advantage of [the next technological revolution] may well be the existing large companies because of the importance of data for the successful use of these tools”.

And while they suggest AI startups might offer a route to a competitive reset, via a substantial technology shift, there’s still currently no relief to be had from entrepreneurial efforts because of “the degree that entrants are acquired by the largest companies – with little or no scrutiny”.

Discussing other difficulties related to regulating big tech, the panel warns of the risk of regulators being “captured by the companies they are regulating”; as well as point out they are generally at a disadvantage vs the high tech innovators they are seeking to rule.

In a concluding chapter considering the possible impacts of their policy recommendations, the panel argues that successful execution of their approach could help foster startup innovation across a range of sectors and services.

“Across digital markets, implementing the recommendations will enable more new companies to turn innovative ideas into great new services and profitable businesses,” they suggest. “Some will continue to be acquired by large platforms, where that is the best route to bring new technology to a large group of users. Others will grow and operate alongside the large platforms. Digital services will be more diverse, more dynamic, with more specialisation and choice available for consumers wanting it. This could drive a flourishing of investment in these UK businesses.”

Citing some “potential examples” of services that could evolve in this more supportively competitive environment they suggest social content aggregators might arise that “bring together the best material from people’s friends across different platforms and sites”; “privacy services could give consumers a single simple place to manage the information they share across different platforms”; and also envisage independent ad tech businesses and changed market dynamics that can “rebalance the share of advertising revenue back towards publishers”.

The main envisaged benefits for consumers boil down to greater service and feature choice; enhanced privacy and transparency; and genuine control over the services they use and how they want to use them.

While for startups and scale-ups the panel sees open standards and access to data — and indeed effective enforcement, by the new digital markets unit — creating “a wide range of opportunities to develop and serve new markets adjacent to or interconnected with existing digital platforms”.

The combined impact should be to strengthen and deepen the competitive digital ecosystem.

Another envisaged benefit for startups is “trust in the framework and recognition that promising, innovative digital businesses will be protected from foreclosure or exclusion” which they argue “should catalyse investment in UK digital businesses, driving the sector’s growth”.

“The changes to competition law… mean that where a business can grow into a successful competitor, that route to further growth is protected and companies will not in the future see being subsumed into a dominant platform as the only realistic business model,” they add.


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Is the Google Coral Dev Board Better Than a Raspberry Pi?


google-coral-dev

Single-board computers (SBCs) are revolutionary devices. The most famous SBC is undoubtedly the Raspberry Pi. It’s cheap, about the size of a credit card, and yet it carries out most of the same tasks as a desktop computer, making it a firm favorite for hobbyists and developers alike.

The Coral Dev Board is the new kid on the block. There are many reasons to be excited about it. Today you’ll learn everything you need to know about Google’s new Linux based SBC.

What Is the Google Coral Dev Board?

Google's Coral Dev Board

The Coral Dev board is an SBC with Google’s custom Mendel operating system, designed for use with the TensorFlow Lite neural network. It also has a full complement of General Purpose In/Out (GPIO) pins. Given its looks and size, you may think this is another Raspberry Pi clone, but there are some important differences.

What Makes the Coral Dev Board Unique?

Coral SOM removable unit
Google designed the Coral Dev Board for fast prototyping of machine learning hardware. The first thing which makes it unique is the Edge TPU Module.

This module, known as a System On Module (SOM) sits on top of a connecting baseboard and contains everything that makes the board tick. The CPU, GPU, RAM, Wi-Fi chip and flash memory are all present in one removable unit which can be quickly swapped out.

The baseboard contains connectors for USB, LAN, HDMI, SD card, audio, and power. This means that you can use one baseboard for prototyping devices, before deploying to custom hardware.

It also means that technology with real-world commercial uses is accessible to those who wish to tinker with the technology at home. What really sets it aside is something you wont find on any other development board: a Google Edge TPU co-processor.

What Is the Google Edge TPU Co-Processor?

Edge TPU chip for Machine Learning

The Edge TPU is a small Application Specific Integrated Chip (ASIC) engineered to deliver high-performance machine learning interpretation. Its tiny size and low power requirements make it perfect for embedding into IoT hardware products for image and text recognition.

The addition of this chip to an SBC drastically reduces the time a neural network requires to process data. Currently, the Edge TPU is only available as part of the Coral Dev Board, or as an external USB processor.

What Are the Coral Dev Board’s Specs?

The specifications for the Edge TPU Module are as follows:

  • CPU: NXP i.MX 8M SOC (quad Cortex-A53, Cortex-M4F)
  • GPU: Integrated GC7000 Lite Graphics
  • Coprocessor: Google Edge TPU
  • RAM: 1GB LPDDR4
  • Flash memory: 8GB eMMC
  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi 2×2 MIMO (802.11b/g/n/ac 2.4/5GHz) Bluetooth 4.1
  • Dimensions: 48 x 40 x 5mm

The baseboard has its own set of specifications:

  • Flash memory: MicroSD
  • USB: Type-C OTG Type-C power Type-A 3.0 host Micro-B serial console
  • LAN: Gigabit Ethernet port
  • Audio: 3.5mm audio jack (CTIA compliant) Digital PDM microphone (x2) 2.54mm 4-pin terminal for stereo speakers
  • Video: HDMI 2.0a (full size) 39-pin FFC connector for MIPI-DSI display (4-lane) 24-pin FFC connector for MIPI-CSI2 camera (4-lane)
  • GPIO: 3.3V power rail 40 – 255 ohms programmable impedance ~82 mA max current
  • Power: 5V DC (USB Type-C)
  • Dimensions: 88 x 60 x 24mm

Python is the only currently supported programming language. C++ support is coming soon.

As it’s design supports complex data processing, it is among the most powerful of the Raspberry Pi alternatives. What it lacks, however, is a desktop operating system. The documentation for the Coral Dev Board even advises not connecting a monitor and keyboard to the board and only using network connection solutions such as SSH.

What Can the Coral Dev Board Do?

Specifications don’t mean anything if the hardware isn’t useful. The above video shows just how powerful the Coral Dev Board can be. The example uses a camera module to introduce new objects to a TensorFlow Lite neural network in real time.

This example is sure to please the DIY crowd, but there are other uses for TensorFlow Lite you may already be familiar with. Google recently rolled out Smart Reply for Gmail, which uses the same lightweight version of TensorFlow to read email and provide context-sensitive replies.

This kind of smart technology usually relies on an internet connection or the use of outside services which can constitute a security risk. By leveraging the power of on-board machine learning, neural networks can be used offline and in areas where internet connection might not be possible.

In short, the Coral Dev Board is the first real step towards powerful small form factor machine learning. The swappable SOM makes it easy to mass produce, and many future devices will no doubt feature this technology. What does this mean for you?

Will the Coral Dev Board Replace My Raspberry Pi?

The Coral USB Accelerator

TensorFlow runs on a Raspberry Pi, but it isn’t really designed for it. The Coral Dev Board offers power the Pi just cannot compete with. Luckily there is a solution in the form of a Raspberry Pi compatible USB Accelerator with an integrated Edge TPU processor.

This allows anyone with a Pi, and some machine learning know-how to develop using TensorFlow Lite.

Where to Buy the Coral Dev Board

Surely this new tech is too expensive for hobbyists?

Surprisingly, no. The Coral Dev Board costs just $149.99, a rival in cost to similar high-end development boards. The USB Accelerator is cheaper still, making it a great alternative to those unwilling to buy a whole new development board. There are plans to sell the SOM separately, along with a PCI TPU acceleration card, though they are currently unavailable for purchase.

You can pick up the components from Google’s Coral website:

The New Hotness

As exciting as it is, the Coral Dev board will not supersede the Raspberry Pi. TensorFlow will run on a Pi, but not in real time. The Coral Dev Board is powerful, but not designed for desktop use or education.

The Raspberry Pi is still the best choice for beginner electronics hobbyists who want to make awesome DIY Raspberry Pi projects.

Read the full article: Is the Google Coral Dev Board Better Than a Raspberry Pi?


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How to Use iMessage on Android With AirMessage and a Mac

What Is Fandango and How Does It Work?


fandango

After the demise of MoviePass in 2018, moviegoers are understandably cynical about movie ticketing services. However, Fandango offers a solid alternative. What is Fandango and how does it work? And what features are available beyond movie ticketing? Keep reading to find out more.

What Is Fandango?

greta fandango

Fandango is a movie ticketing company that also owns a streaming service. The company was founded in 2000 and is currently owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Entertainment.

The company’s competitors are MovieTickets.com and AtomTickets.com. All three provide similar movie ticket services.

How Much Does Fandango Cost?

You do not need to have a subscription to use Fandango. Anyone can log in and use the site to buy movie tickets.

You will be charged a “convenience” fee for each ticket you purchase. The precise amount is dependent on a number of factors, but it will be between $0.75 and $2.50.

Officially, Fandango says the fee is for “showtimes, movie listings, and theater information,” though there are lots of movie showtime apps for Android that do the same thing.

Where Is Fandango Available?

After starting life as a US company servicing the American market, Fandango expanded in 2016 with the purchase of a Peruvian movie ticketing service called Cinepapaya.

Today, Fandango is available in the US and most of Latin America.

What Are the Benefits of Using Fandango?

Using Fandango to purchase your movie tickets has a few distinct benefits.

Early-Bird Tickets

You can use Fandango to pre-book tickets for upcoming theatrical releases. Given how popular some opening weekends can be, it’s a way to make sure you don’t miss out.

This is especially useful if you live a long way from the nearest theater. You don’t need to collect your early-bird tickets (or any other pre-bought tickets) in person.

Choose Your Seat

It’s not available in all movie theaters, but in selected locations, you can choose your preferred seat on a plan.

On occasions when the feature isn’t available, it isn’t Fandango’s fault. Some theaters don’t have the capacity to offer specific seats.

Jump the Queue

Queue jumping is perhaps the most useful benefit of using Fandango to buy tickets. When you purchase a ticket, you can print it at home and take it with you.

Some theaters will even allow you to use your smartphone as proof of purchase. If you don’t print your tickets and smartphone scanning isn’t available, present your credit card at the ticket office.

What Is Fandango VIP?

fandango vip logo

Fandango VIP is a member’s club. The service is entirely free to use and has some cool perks. So it’s definitely worth spending the time to enter your details.

Most importantly, being a member allows you to accumulate points. Every time you buy a movie ticket, you will earn 125 points. If you collect 500 points, you can trade them in for a $5 voucher. You can use the voucher to buy more tickets or use them on FandangoNOW.

The VIP account also allows you to request a refund. You can get a full refund—minus the convenience fee—right up until the posted show time.

Members will also receive occasional discounts on FandangoNOW movie rentals and purchases.

FandangoNOW

In addition to the ticketing service, Fandango also operates the FandangoNOW streaming service.

What Is FandangoNOW?

FandangoNOW is a streaming service that does not require a monthly subscription fee. There are also no sign-up fees and no commitments to spend a minimum amount of money.

The service was born in 2016 when Fandango acquired movie streaming service M-GO and rebranded it.

What Content Is Available on FandangoNOW?

green book fandango

There are more than 80,000 movies and TV shows in the FandangoNOW catalog. They range from old classics to modern releases.

To give you an idea of the type of content you can expect to find, currently available shows include 2019 Oscar winners Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody, along with Deadpool, 12 Years a Slave, The Big Bang Theory, and Westworld.

Rent or Buy on FandangoNOW

All the movies on FandangoNOW are available to rent or buy. The TV shows are only available for purchase.

The amount you need to pay to rent or buy a video varies depending on how recent it is and how popular it is. The price can also differ for different resolutions; standard-definition is sometimes cheaper than high-definition or ultra-high definition (4K).

At the time of writing, it costs $5.99 to rent Bohemian Rhapsody and $9.99 to buy it.

The majority of rentals are valid for 30 days until you lose access. There is a caveat, however; once you start watching a rental, you need to complete it within 48 hours, or you lose access.

Fandango VIP Rewards

If you are a Fandango VIP subscriber, you can use the same credentials to log into FandangoNOW. Doing so lets you take your amassed points with you, allowing you to use them on movie rentals in addition to trading them for a movie theater ticket.

Which Devices Are Compatible With FandangoNOW?

fandango roku

FandangoNOW is available on Android, iOS, Roku, and Android TV. There are also native apps available for many popular smart TV brands, including Sony, Hisense, LG, and Samsung.

If you access FandangoNOW through an Android or iOS device, you can download videos that you’ve rented or bought for offline viewing.

Where Is FandangoNOW Available?

FandangoNOW is only available in the United States. However, offline shows will work anywhere in the world.

So, if you’re planning a foreign vacation and you think you might want some viewing material while you’re outside the country, make sure you download titles before departure.

Other Ways to Watch Movies and TV Shows

Ultimately, Fandango is unique for the way it pairs the physical movie experience with online streaming. The accumulation of points means the crossover between the two experiences is more closely intertwined than with other services.

However, Fandango is just one of many services that let you watch movies and TV shows from the comfort of your own home. If you would like to learn more, check out our articles on the best sites to watch TV on your computer and how to rent movies cheaper than on Amazon.

Read the full article: What Is Fandango and How Does It Work?


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A Breakdown of the Hidden CoreServices Folder in macOS


macos-coreservices

If you’re a Mac user, you’re probably familiar with the Utilities folder nested in /Applications. You may not, however, be aware of another utility-filled folder hiding deeper in your system.

It’s called CoreServices, and it contains a lot of applications that you see all the time on your Mac, even though you never “open” them in the traditional sense. Among them are Siri, Finder, Games (yep, that still exists), Bluetooth Setup Assistant, and Weather all have to live somewhere, and that place is CoreServices. Let’s give it a proper look.

Where Do You Find CoreServices?

CoreServices is in your extremely necessary, but underused, Library folder. The Library folder in turn lives inside your System folder.

Note: This is not the Library folder in Macintosh HD, nor is it the Library folder in your Home folder. You can find it by going to Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices.

The CoreServices folder in macOS

Now that you’ve found the CoreServices folder, let’s look at some of the most useful apps that live in it. Note that most of these are stored in the Applications folder within CoreServices.

About This Mac

This app shows off basic system information about your Mac. You can also access it by going to Apple menu > About This Mac.

  • Overview gives a summary of hardware and software information, like model, processor speed, total memory, macOS version, and serial number. Additionally, the System Report button will open up System Information, which gives you a deep dive into the specs of your Mac.
  • Displays provides information about the built-in and connected displays, such as their size and resolution.
  • Storage will tell you how much free space is available on your drives. Additionally, hitting the Manage button will bring up Storage Management.
  • Support and Service has helpful resources such as the user manual and links to AppleCare.

Archive Utility

Archive Utility compresses files into a ZIP archive, which can greatly reduce the overall size of the file. The easiest way to use Archive Utility is to simply Ctrl + Click on a file and hit Compress.

If you launch this app from the folder, however, you can adjust the preferences as well. You can change the folder where ZIP files and expanded files are saved, or choose to delete the original file after the archive is created.

Directory Utility

This utility is best utilized by Mac administrators who need to bind their machines to a directory service like Active Directory or Open Directory. It lets you manage settings such as mobile account creation and search policies.

DVD Player

Even though Apple hasn’t sold a laptop with a built-in DVD player since 2016, DVD Player still exists. It’s hidden deep in the depths of your System Library, presumably waiting for the day you rediscover all your Dawson’s Creek DVDs and buy an external disc drive.

Network Utility

Network Utility takes several useful Terminal commands and puts them into a handy app. It is an extremely helpful program for improving your network with your Mac.

  • Info provides information on your network interfaces. Use the dropdown menu to select Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or whatever interface you use to connect to the internet. The utility will display information such as your IP address, MAC address, network speed, and whether this link is active or not.
  • Netstat provides info that is mostly beneficial for network administrators. It shows information related to the packets sent and received by your computer.
  • Ping lets you check whether or not you can connect to a certain IP, and how quickly packets pass between that IP and your machine. It’s useful for testing a connection to a specific site, or if your computer is connected to the internet at all.

The Ping panel of Network Utility

  • Lookup takes an IP or a website and returns the website or IP that it’s associated with.
  • Traceroute will take a web address or IP and show you the route that a packet takes to get there, including the IPs of any servers that it has to pass through before it reaches its final destination. It’s useful (but mostly just fun) to see how many servers you get routed through in order to get to nearly any website.
  • Whois and Finger can show you who registered an entered domain or email address. You can use it to find out, for example, the entity that is sending you spam from a specific address.
  • Portscan lets you put in an IP and see what ports are available on that machine. It is useful when you are trying to connect to a specific machine and want to make sure that the port you’re connecting to is open.

Screen Sharing

VNC, or Virtual Network Computing, is a software that allows one computer to control another remotely. macOS has a built-in VNC client called Screen Sharing.

You must set up Remote Screen Sharing on both machines in order to use this feature. To do that, go to System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Management and check the box. They must also be accessible to each other, either over a local network or VPN.

When you open Screen Sharing, type in the hostname of the machine you want to control. Then, when prompted, type in the username and password of a registered user of the target machine.

Once you log in, the target machine’s screen will show up on your screen, and you’ll be able to control the mouse and keyboard remotely.

Storage Management

This app showed up in macOS Sierra, and gives you some insight into what’s taking up space on your Mac. It breaks down your storage space by type. It will also provide some options for managing that storage better, such as emptying the Trash automatically, or removing iTunes purchases if you’re not using them.

Storage Management in macOS

System Image Utility

This is another tool that mainly benefits Mac administrators. It allows you to create a macOS installer than you can put on a server, which you can then access over your network.

Wireless Diagnostics

If you’re having trouble connecting to your Wi-Fi network, you can utilize some third-party tools to diagnose your Wi-Fi issues, or you can use Wireless Diagnostics. Open the program either from the CoreServices folder, or hold down Option and hit the Wi-Fi icon in your menu bar to open Wireless Diagnostics from Finder.

It will analyze your network connection and provide helpful tips for setting up your network and customizing your DNS settings.

Where Wireless Diagnostics really shines, however, is with its logs. If your wireless issues are intermittent and hard to prove, you can tell Wireless Diagnostics to monitor your network for dropouts. When it detects one, it can log it in the /var/tmp folder, so that you have documented proof of a dropout that you can show to your ISP or technician.

Learn About the Default Apps on Your Mac

Now that you’ve taken a deep dive into the CoreServices folder, level up on your macOS system knowledge by reading up on all the apps that come with your Mac, particularly the ones in the Utilities folder. Learn about Keychain Access, Terminal, Script Editor and more to really get under the hood of your computer.

Read the full article: A Breakdown of the Hidden CoreServices Folder in macOS


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