Cool Walks aims to help pedestrians avoid dangerous heat and find public drinking fountains
A new app promises to help Barcelona residents find the shadiest route between two places to avoid extreme heat.
Cool Walks, a routing tool for pedestrians first developed at a data visualisation contest, aims to show users a variety of walking routes to take for their intended destinations.
Continue reading...Apps such as Hinge and Bumble will offer benefits to vaccinated users amid fears of low take-up
First came the idea of making Covid vaccinations mandatory to go to the pub, while Israel offered free pizza and beer with a shot. Now UK officials have hit on what they hope is an even more persuasive reason for young people to get their jab: more chance of getting a date.
In an eye-catching policy coinciding with the rollout of vaccinations for the under-30s beginning this week, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has teamed up with popular dating apps to encourage take-up of the programme.
Continue reading...Whether single, curious or just plain horny, many people are planning to make the most of life after lockdowns. Are we ready to get up close and personal?
The past year has changed 35-year-old Georgie’s outlook on dating. Several disappointing socially distanced dates and limp text exchanges meant she stopped using dating apps at the beginning of 2021. And now her parents have been vaccinated, she feels confident about returning to physical dates, “but not to the apps”, she says. “As things open up, I’m going to lean into spontaneity; I’m going to say yes to every invitation and seize every opportunity. If I feel a connection with someone at a social gathering, a festival or even a bus stop, I’ll go and talk to them. I’m going to be way more carpe fucking diem about it.”
Liam, 25, lives in Manchester and has never had a serious relationship. He can’t wait to meet people in real life: “If I never have another conversation via Zoom or WhatsApp, I’d be very happy – especially within my love life.” He gave up on dating apps this year, and is looking forward to the return of proper flirtation. “Vibing with someone on an app or a screen is not the same as seeing someone across a room and feeling that excitement in your stomach. That’s what I need right now.”
Continue reading...Our reliance on technology means ever more devices and apps and ever less interoperability – and the ubiquity of Apple hasn’t helped
In 2001, if you listened to digital music, you did it with a large folder of MP3 files. How you acquired them is probably best left between you and a priest, but you may have ripped them from a CD, downloaded them from a file sharing service, or bought them from one of a few nascent download sites.
Whichever option you picked, you’d play them on your computer with a program built for the task. And if you were lucky enough to have an early standalone MP3 player, it was probably made by another company again.
Continue reading...While enjoying an idyllic lockdown in France, the 83-year-old artist has created perhaps his most important exhibition ever – offering hope to an injured world
‘I think it looks terrific,” says David Hockney. “It’s all on one theme, isn’t it? And there’s not many exhibitions like that, really, a show all about the spring.” The 83-year-old artist is taking a look around his new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London for the first time. He seems happy with it – and rightly so, for it is hypnotic and ravishing. But while I am getting a sneak preview in person, Hockney is here only virtually, his face appearing on two screens, one a giant TV, the other a small laptop.
He is at home, at what he calls his “seven dwarves house” in Normandy, wearing a red, black and white check jacket, a checkerboard tie, a blue-green pullover and round, gold-framed glasses. His kaleidoscopic choice of clothing, challenging the very limits of the video call’s bandwidth, is as vibrant and beguiling as the canvases hanging around us. Hockney has not just painted spring; he has come dressed as it.
Continue reading...Setting means iPhone users can stop advertisers following their digital lives – to the ire of Facebook
Users of iPhones can now prevent advertisers tracking them across their apps, after the release of the latest software update from Apple introduced the controversial feature despite the protests of Facebook and the advertising industry.
The update, iOS 14.5, includes a setting called “app tracking transparency”, which for the first time requires applications to ask for users’ consent before they are able to track their activity across other apps and websites.
Continue reading...The takeaway service may have felt like a lifeline during lockdown, but its ambitious vision will dramatically change the way we eat
Shukran Best Kebab – the finest Turkish restaurant in the Seven Sisters area of north London, according to some people (although it is surrounded by fierce rivals to the throne) – joined Deliveroo two years ago, and back then it seemed like a no-brainer. “Life as a small, independent restaurant is hard and the profit margins are slim,” says Hüseyin Kurt, Shukran’s owner. “We wanted more customers and money coming in and Deliveroo seemed to offer that. I didn’t think there was a downside.” Within a few days of signing a contract with the company, a shiny new tablet computer arrived on which orders placed via Deliveroo appeared out of the ether with a satisfying ping.
The sense that something was wrong dawned gradually. Kurt, a gregarious, bearded man in his early 40s, who left his central Anatolian home town in 1995 and used his love of food to build a new life in the UK, ran the numbers: with Deliveroo’s commission amounting to 35% plus VAT on every order, he was forced to increase his prices to avoid losing money on each sale. It meant anyone buying his huge adana kofte or mixed shish kebabs through the Deliveroo app was in effect paying three surcharges for the convenience, as Deliveroo was also charging them a delivery and service fee. That went down badly with previously loyal customers who were presented with a vast number of often heavily discounted competitors when using the app.
Continue reading...Singapore-headquartered firm offers one-stop shopstyle service, including ride hailing, banking and food delivery
South-east Asian “super app” Grab, which offers services from ride hailing and food delivery to online banking, is to float in the US in a record deal with a so-called Spac investment company that values the business at almost $40bn (£29bn).
Singapore-headquartered Grab, which intends to list on Nasdaq in the US, has struck a $39.5bn merger deal with US-based Altimeter Growth Corp. It is by far the biggest deal to date involving a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) – a so-called “blank cheque” shell company that raises money first and seeks businesses to buy later – which has become the latest trend in global finance over the last year.
Continue reading...Is smartphone tracking a less intrusive reward for good behaviour or just a way to enrich the incarceration industry?
In 2018, William Frederick Keck III pleaded guilty in a court in Manassas, Virginia, to possession with intent to distribute cannabis. He served three months in prison, then began a three-year probation. He was required to wear a GPS ankle monitor before his trial and then to report for random drug tests after his release. Eventually, the state reduced his level of monitoring to scheduled meetings with his parole officer. Finally, after continued good behaviour, Keck’s parole officer moved him to Virginia’s lowest level of monitoring: an app on his smartphone.
Once a month, Keck would open up the Shadowtrack app and speak his answers to a series of questions so that a voice-recognition algorithm could confirm it was really him. He would then type out answers to several more questions – such as whether he had taken drugs – and the app would send his responses and location to his parole officer. Unless there was a problem, Keck would not have to interact with a human and the process could be completed during a TV ad break.
Continue reading...Free app allowing access to 30,000 stations proves hit for audiences stuck at home
Ever fancied listening to some pop music from Prague? Rock from Russia, or talk from Taiwan? With the pandemic limiting travel abroad, an online app has ignited the imagination of millions, allowing them to experience new sounds and travel the globe by radio.
The free app, Radio Garden, which carries tens of thousands of radio stations broadcasting live 24 hours a day, has seen a huge spike in popularity during the Covid crisis. Its founders say in the past 30 days they had 15 million users, a 750% increase on the visitors they normally get in a month.
Continue reading...Dating in a pandemic has very different challenges, as these brave adventurers discovered
For Martina Piercy, 54, an occupational therapist from Wellington in Somerset, going into lockdown at the start of a new relationship was “really upsetting”. “We had been dating for six to eight weeks before the pandemic started, so the idea of either living with Tony or not seeing him was difficult,” she said.
Continue reading...The exclusive invitation-only social networking app is a hybrid of conference calls, talkback radio and Houseparty
Part talkback radio, part conference call, part Houseparty, Clubhouse is a social networking app based on audio-chat. Users can listen in to conversations, interviews and discussions between interesting people on various topics – it is just like tuning in to a podcast but live and with an added layer of exclusivity.
Continue reading...After investors caused havoc on the markets last week in a battle over the shares of a video-game chain, we explore the promise and pitfalls of the apps they used
A year ago shares in struggling US video game store GameStop were worth just $3.25 a pop, yet at the end of last month they had reached $482. This stupendous surge was created by thousands of armchair traders, organising themselves on internet forums such as Reddit, who were attempting to outwit hedge funds who had placed massive bets on the chain’s decline in a process known as short-selling.
This has resulted in billion-dollar losses for some hedge funds, and big profits for traders who cashed out before the stock fell back to less than $100. Many of these speculators were using a new generation of share-trading apps, such as eToro, Robinhood and Trading 212. Have these services tipped the scales of financial power in favour of the little guy? Here we answer some key questions …
Continue reading...Analysis: Facebook says objections to Apple feature that affects apps are bid to defend small businesses – but do we believe it?
Never afraid of a challenge, Facebook appears to have embarked on a campaign to convince the world to hate Apple, love targeted advertising, and believe the social network when it says it is doing it all out of a desire to defend small businesses.
On Wednesday, the company launched a series of full-page newspaper adverts and a press conference where the company put forward small businesses who said they relied on app-tracking to find customers. It also announced it would be siding with the Fortnite developer Epic Games in the latter’s lawsuit over control of the iOS App Store.
Continue reading...Secure messaging app pivotal to organisation of protests and spreading of news about repressions
In a small Minsk apartment one evening last week, a group of people gathered to discuss plans for a Halloween party with a twist. There would be costumes, drinks and games, but the main event was a ceremonial funeral. The plan: to bury Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship.
“Maybe we should bury a pumpkin with a moustache,” suggested one young woman.
Continue reading...Legal Lifelines app intended to provide alternative evidence to police bodycam footage
A black criminal lawyer has designed a free app to allow anyone at risk of being stopped and searched by police to film incidents to ensure they have an “independent witness” to any interactions.
Michael Herford a criminal lawyer with Legal Lifelines, said the app could help provide a different perspective on an incident from police bodycam footage, or evidence when a police bodycam was not turned on or its footage was lost.
Continue reading...Court filings reveal Apple may delay return even if developer backtracks in App Store dispute
Fortnite could be banned from iPhones and other Apple devices for a year, the game’s developer, Epic Games, has revealed, as the court battle between the two companies continues.
The scale of the ban was revealed in a legal filing from Epic, which asks the court to force Apple to allow the game back on the iOS App Store while the wider lawsuit winds its way to a full hearing.
Continue reading...Graphic footage originally broadcast on Facebook has spread across social network
TikTok is battling to remove a graphic video of a livestreamed suicide, after the footage was uploaded to the service on Sunday night from Facebook, where it was initially broadcast.
Although the footage was rapidly taken down from TikTok, users spent much of Monday re-uploading it, initially unchanged, but later incorporated into so-called bait-and-switch videos, which are designed to shock and upset unsuspecting users.
Continue reading...Dispute over in-app purchases is seen as proxy war over future of App Store
Microsoft has joined the court battle between Apple and Epic Games, filing a legal brief supporting the Fortnite developer’s right to carry on developing software for Mac and iOS while the case continues.
The submission, signed by Kevin Gammill, the executive in charge of supporting developers on Microsoft’s Xbox console, is further evidence that the lawsuit over in-app purchases in Fortnite is set to become a proxy war over the future of the App Store.
Continue reading...The controversial app’s users are ignoring geopolitical battle over its digital security, says Richard Waterworth
TikTok’s UK chief has strenuously denied the video-sharing app, which Donald Trump has threatened to ban, shares data with China.
Richard Waterworth told the Observer that the UK and European arm of TikTok was growing quickly, despite the “turbulent” geopolitical battle in which the Chinese-born app has found itself.
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