Monthly Archive: January 2016

Somewhere in the foreseeable future, Apple Pay users might never again require their ATM cards in order to withdraw cash amounts from ATMs, their only requirements to successfully transact a withdraw at any of the participating bank’s ATMs would be to have Apple Pay activated on their iOS device.

According to a report by TechCrunch there are already a number of banks within the US that are involved in a cooperative effort to integrate Apple’s proprietary NFC-enabled mobile based wallet services into their ATMs to provide card-less instant transactions for withdrawals made at their automatic tellers.

Wells Fargo issued a confirmation that they have been working towards finding a technology solution that would allow them to hook into Apple digital wallets, by utilising NFC on mobile devices to do away with the customary plastic card during the ATM transaction. Wells Fargo currently offers Android Pay as its only mobile digital wallet; however, possible integration onto Apple Pay is a very distinct possibility as the bank is investigating into a variety of mobile wallets with the purpose of evaluating those that may be appropriate for their customers.

Bank of America is another one of the collaborators into incorporating Apple Pay support on its ATMs, they did however not confirmed Apple Pay integration, but rather their current development of a similar card-less ATM service. Associated Press confirmed via an earlier report that Chase will make similar upgrades to the bank’s ATMs which would allow for card-free withdrawal transactions. This however would only be offered via the company’s official mobile app, which may later be extended to include digital wallet services like Android Pay as well as Apple Pay.

Speculation predicts that Apple Pay integration with bank ATMs could fully do away with any requirement for the customary plastic ATM cards, since it would be replaced by the client’s iPhone situated close to an NFC enabled ATM terminal. The transaction would then be authorised via a pass code or even a Touch ID fingerprint authentication on their iPhones.
The integration will prevent card skimming as well as fraudulent transactions, in addition to the newfound convenience to the user.

Since Apple relaxed its tight controls over the contents and development of new apps entering their App Store, it has seen a very welcome newfound spurt of growth since it nearly fell to the threat of being left behind the likes of android insofar as content volumes were concerned. Their newfound freedom allowed developers to come up with a whole new slew of never before seen iOS content, which greatly benefited the variety of options available to iPhone and iPad users. The apps forming part of the discussion below clearly benefited from these newfound freedoms as well, it is now up to iOS users to vote with their downloads.

Save Mars is her brand-new fast paced arcade mobile game that challenges layers to disintegrate rockets and asteroids threatening the destruction of Mars. This new gaming skills test require players to speedily identify the wheat from the chaff before blowing up any new threats to the planet, with the ultimate goal being to finally save the possibly doomed red planet from utter destruction. A variety of objects will come flying planet wards where they will need to be blown up while still in trajectory, with blue asteroids destroyed by just a single tap, while the tougher rockets require a double tap before being taken out. The trick comes in avoiding the automatic reaction of unwittingly destroying any red asteroids since they are part of the good guys and destroying them comes at a stiff penalty. Top your previous best scores before Mars gets destroyed again.

Kung Fu Panda: Battle of Destiny saw its release on iOS yesterday just before the premiere of DreamWorks Animation’s much anticipated Kung Fu Panda 3 on 29 January 2016. Battle of Destiny offers players a shot at a card-based battle game that includes all the characters of the highly popular computer animated series of comedy filled martial arts forms that sees the bumbling Kung Fu Panda that defeat his enemies in a variety of methods that induce newfound sidesplitting comedy sequences by the minute.

Each week sees the shelves of app stores receive new batches of mobile games just released into the wilderness of the already flooded market. The great upshot of this flooding of new games apps is the continual competition for recognition by kids of all ages from 3 to 63, which causes the developers to try new and innovative approaches that often seems to be substantial improvements over the originating titles that first appeared on consoles and PCs. The discussion below highlights another number of highly worthwhile new arrivals.

In the not too distant past, prior to Disney’s acquisition and subsequent closure of the much-adored LucasArts, there existed a browser and mobile game close to full completion would potentially have vanished forever. Enter the brand-new Star Wars: the Force Awakens which shot the brand back into its much-deserved limelight and in the process excited new and old fans from all over the globe. The game would arrive to an audience that welcomed it with open arms sporting complex main game mechanics unlike other games seem to date in this series. Players would have newfound ability to capture and there after control enemy outposts making it their own trade resource harvest that could also be utilised to build weapons, fulfilling most of the functions of an MMO.

Rayark quickly built a reputation for the company throughout Western markets after the release of its Triple-A grade mobile game called Implosion: Never Lose Hope that was followed up by ambitiously beautiful excellence in mobile gaming titles like Deemo during the past holidays, Rayark secretively hinted at a number of new titles the company looks to release somewhere during 2016. The new scheduled releases will include the promising blockbuster Soul of Eden, which they’ve recently released a cinematic preview video clip that excluded any game play footage, along with artwork visuals, and a brief description. The latest cinematic trailer teaser hinted at a summer 2016 window to release. Soul of Eden will deliver another brilliant RTS game with overtures of MOBA featuring CCG in its real-time battles.

Unlike new games, productivity, social media, photo, camera, and audiophile apps the newest and latest is in this specific set of circumstances 99% of the time not the greatest solution in guarding your deepest darkest financial and selfie secrets on your latest darling new smart device’s data files and operating system. As has become abundantly apparent with a slew of unwilling and unknown celebrity revelations in the recent past, smart device security needs to be made rock-solid by tried and proven methods from development companies beyond reproach in the quality of their product. The below security apps are shining examples of rock-solid security defences in the online mobile world and would be one of the most worthwhile contributions to download and install on any smart online device.

CM Security from developers Cheetah Mobile delivers an award-winning option in online security that delivers the best in available malware protection to any Android device. Cheetah Mobile is a security research company well-known for its compilation of credible security reports on the latest state of any Android security issues and all scam related breaches, it has delivered one of the most comprehensive and fastest dedicated apps on the market to date.

360 Security provides users with a long-standing and highly popular antivirus app for Android devices that will deliver all the bells and whistles any user may wish for to protect their phones. As has become the norm first and foremost it has an extremely powerful antivirus engine that features the ability to scan the complete device automatically along with updating security and antivirus definitions automatically. Any new installation immaterial of where a user may downloaded from will pass through its comprehensive real-time protection scan before the app becomes active on any phone. As an added boon it even has a brilliant system cleaner that clears it all those old junk files that pile up to make a phone slower.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware delivers one of the best privacy managers imaginable from a company that built its well-deserved reputation for providing one of the most unintrusive and lightweight PC protection toolsets available anywhere. It’s totally free of charge Android app similarly trades off tons of features for a much more pertinent focus on user-friendliness. Aside from its top-class anti-malware protection delivers one of the best privacy managers that not only scans for malware and antivirus but will also monitor and scan apps that behave suspiciously.

This Thursday past Microsoft launched its latest app, the Mimicker Alarm that tries to assist you in getting out of bed every morning by pissing you off. This is a last-ditch effort to those that have tried everything else to wake themselves up using conventional alarm clocks and getting themselves out of bed and still turned the morning (non)wake-up routine into a miserable failure.

This cool little alarm app will have the groggy morning you yammering tongue twisters without any expletives in order for it to turn off the alarm each morning. This app is the software giant’s way to provide users with a peek into its growing machine learning APIs called Project Oxford, which focuses on teaching computers about speech, emotion, and vision.

This unique alarm clock can assist the company in accomplishing all the above goals by turning your impossible wake-up routine of snoozing, snoozing, snoozing, and finally turning off your alarm clock into a fun game that just won’t stop unless you comply or kill your mobile phone totally dead. It accomplishes both the near impossible tasks (teaching machines about emotion, speech, and vision as well as waking the dead up in the morning) by turning it into a fun game that offers difficult risers three game options to select from when setting their alarms.

The three alarm game options include Colour Capture, Tongue Twister, and Express Yourself. Colour Capture will in all probability be quite annoying, since it requires the sleepyhead to capture a picture of a colour matching that prescribed by the app.

Express Yourself requires the sleepyhead to take a selfie of your facial expression that has to match whichever emotion it instructs you to mimic, and once you succeed in making a selfie of your surprise, smile, et cetera face you are free to share it on the social media site of your choice.

The app first saw the light of morning in Garage, the software giant’s experimental lab. It follows Google’s Material Design guidelines for the greater part and presents a polished and sleek GUI to round off its intention to potentially irritate assistively.

Global crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, recently finally got around to fielding an Android app for its website, this belated offering arrives three years since its iOS-based cousin. The company provided no clarity as to the reason for the massive delay, but Android platformed crowdfunding investors must certainly be quite pleased to finally be able to interact and explore the site from their mobile devices.

This first release of their app is currently still quite basic when compared to its iPhone peer, offering potential funders not much functionality other than a search function and the ability to track projects they have already backed. Android-based creators at this stage would still choose to abstain from utilising this app since there is not much on offer for them, at the moment it offers no function to add new content or the ability to update their project pages.

According to a post by Kickstarter’s team in Brooklyn wearing they introduced their app, the team revealed that this is only version 1.0. The further requested that their Android based fans must stay tuned to expect additional features, such as tools allowing its innovative creators to more fully manage their personal projects.

The company further explained that the just released version is only an initial take on a platform that they wish to utilise to create fantastic experience of discovery to all backers and potential backers. The final goal is to make it for easier to go diving into its thousands of creative live projects loaded from all four corners of Kickstarter’s universe.

Currently Project searches offers option of search refinement via categories, which makes it for easier to find the type of campaigns that interest backers the most. The application’s activity feed allows backers a tracking option that deliver the latest updates from project creators that they have supported, and in addition highlights campaigns to recently backed partners.

The Kickstarter team described their feed as a moment-by-moment play of all the latest news but should potentially be on any backer’s radar on any day at any given moment.

The record-setting card game Exploding Kittens quickly became the most backed new game in the history of the crowd funded Kickstarter, and now just one day since its launch in the iStore it made a name for itself once again as the top paid application in Apple’s App Store. This latest achievement racked up another important milestone in the game’s already impressive trophy room that already contains markers for collecting the single greatest number of backers in any campaign.

At the moment mobile gamers are virtually falling over themselves to download the game to their mobile devices, a simple matter of all in app purchases being available for free during the next couple of days may be partly responsible for the early rush, the app is available at a cost of $1.99. As an added incentive, mobile versions feature an NSFW decks that are not available in the standard game and in app purchases already makes a party-pack expansion deck available together with a ton of sexy avatars.
It delivers a purely local multiplayer experience that allows 2 to 5 gamers to connect across their mobile devices via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It excludes any on-device single player mode, and no multiplayer online offering. Exploding Kittens is the brainchild and creation of Matthew Inman founder of The Oatmeal, along with Shane Small and Elan Lee and is a gamified version of Russian roulette.

Exploding Kittens dares players to, initially quite eager that quickly changes to apprehensively, draw cards from its delightfully comical deck of cards, while attempting to avoid the game-busting, life ending Exploding Kitten card. Since if you drew that card will have guts splattered all over the insides of your phone since it causes your character to explode which forces you out of the game. Unless, you are at the time in possession of one of the Defuse cards that allows you to return your life ending Exploding Kitten card to the Master card deck.

Developers made a plea urging players to remain patient if at first they find the app a little buggy; they would appreciate any feedback on system bugs, and attend to whatever reports they receive. In addition, Android users can rejoice, since the makers have reported that their route is an app in the pipeline for this platform!

Wise online shoppers know that every day, week, and month is a sale period when you shop online; however, due to the massive number of online there are worth your attention and shopping time, we active online shoppers need a little assistance to create an adrenaline filled online space to make some sense out of the sale madness. The space must also provide you with the best possible bang for your buck, since budgets are stretched every day due to fluctuating economies currencies. The apps in the discussion below hopes to make some sense of your online sale madness and provide you with the best value for money your personal budget can stretch to.

SalesGossip accrues beauty and fashion promotions both online as well as on high streets, which allows shoppers from across the complete spectrum defined their personal items at the best possible deal prices on the fly, offering them the ability to identify exactly which stores carry the category and product they may be looking for. It even provides directions to land-based tours and periodically checks in for specific exclusive in-store promotional events. When browsing it offers a slight function that allows the shopper to let app know their personal likes and dislikes, which works a little like Tinder’s app, but focused on fashion. Let the app know what your preferences are, for items you like swipe the left and to the right for a dislike or even upwards for items you do not care either way about. This assists the app in preselecting only the type of items and stores of your preference in all your future shopping expeditions.

getHunt allows its users to plan their shopping expeditions even before they dare leaving their abode to prevent them from being distracted by other not so lucrative offers that may see them wandering around aimlessly instead of getting their daily budget spent while acquiring the maximum number of items for your money. It allows shoppers to first search and select the items they want via an online browser, where after finding the required items they can drag-and-drop these items into a toolbar by using getHunt’s web extension. Afterwards they will sync their item list via getHunt’s mobile app that will there after plan the shortest/quickest route between their shopping destinations based on where their current location may be.

Regular travellers tend to have their trusty standard travelling companions well sorted on their mobile devices, ready to assist them with whatever they might require on their journey in a moment’s notice. This same set of regular travellers have over the years tried and tested numerous apps that looked promising, but in the end failed them until they sorted the wheat from the chaff and arrived at their favourite set of apps that met their personal preferences. The irregular or ad hoc travellers have not had the benefit of being exposed to travelling environment over a sufficient period of time to have tried and tested and arrived at the best group of apps as the travelling companions. This group will find great benefit in the apps discussed below; however, even the first group of travellers may just find their new favourite in the discussion below.

Triposo delivers to you their World Travel Guide app that logically leaves you with a completely explained and guided world in your own pocket. The app quickly proves itself to be indispensable, it offers a framework into which users will download various city and country guides to replace a variety of individual apps that serve in one or two cities but not in others. The base app is just 22 MB in size, users will then really familiar splash screen where after they will be prompted to download their city or even a complete country guide of choice to get them started. Users on a multiple country journey will be able to browse through all of the available individual guides. There are able to plan their trip via pins that can be used to pin to specific locations, each location or destination features a brief description, some images, a handy navigator, and a travelogue with all their account information.

Phrasebook Pro will become utterly indispensable when entering into countries where users have a grasp of the local language dialects. The app requires zero registration and presents an extremely clean, crisp use interface that offer users the capacity to the require for download and then save in order to use off line. It currently offers 17 languages including Swedish, Chinese, Arabic, Greek, as well as Indonesian to name a few. As mentioned above, one of its greatest features that proves incredibly helpful when travelling in countries that have pro or little cell phone signal coverage is its off-line feature. To further bolster its capacity, the phrases are spoken in high quality in each country’s native mother tongue in the correct dialect and pronunciation along with an excellent variety of topics.

As the others of its kind, Facebook has been through deep waters, the mill, and a number of other farm implements signifying its various stages of either being maligned or viciously celebrated by both the media as well as its supporters over the years. Despite the trials and tribulations it has not slowed one iota in its march to retain and consolidate its place of dominance at the top of the social media tree, and now it has once again received a major update that needs to be discussed.

As any long time smart device user will testify each and every app have over the years added tons of weight that arrive in small increments with each and every update as they slog forward toward their respective goals and Facebook has not escaped this long time weight gain. Part of the weight gain in this latest version is the addition of experimental support over Tor’s encrypted network. Tor, over the years became the world’s anonymity network of choice by providing its secure onion routing method of transferring encrypted data over open internetworks. In 2014 Facebook created an officially supported personal Tor onion address which the update now offers expanded Android support, by allowing Facebook access through Tor with an Orbot proxy app that is freely downloadable from Google’s Play Store.

Additionally Facebook saw fit to give its app notification tab on Android devices an extensive overhaul, it now features capacity to display a number of customisable information topics that include milestones reached by friends, the latest sports results, as well as an upcoming event calendar. Additionally users that enable their Location History function within the Facebook app will have access to information on events and news that occur in their local community, as well as weather updates, and upcoming movie show-times to name but a few.

On the morning of 19 January IM giant and texting stalwart to multiple millions of users, WhatsApp, announced via a mass push notification from the company to all their Android app supporters that each user’s personal account were migrated to a lifetime free service subscription. The company made the move while looking to replace some of its lost income necessitated by the move by allowing various businesses to utilise its service in order to communicate directly with their users.