Uber, Airbnb, eBay and Etsy: 2.5m people a month are now part of the online sharing economy, finds JP Morgan February 18, 2016 From selling items on eBay to renting out a spare room on Airbnb, 2.5m people each month are now earning money from the sharing economy, according to one of the most comprehensive studies of the new and fast-growing part of the economy to date. Those participating, who are more likely to be young and on lower incomes, earn around 20 to 30 per [...]
Apple iPhone sales fell for the first time in history, Gartner figures reveal February 18, 2016 Sales of Apple's iconic iPhones have fallen for the first time in history, analysts say. Global sales of the device declined 4.4 per cent at the end of last year, with 71.5m handsets sold in the last quarter of 2015. Apple sparked fears that the world has reached "peak Apple" in January when it revealed sales had fallen to [...]
Consumer’s guide to blockchain: How the cryptocurrency will revolutionise life for the consumer February 18, 2016 When I spoke to Peter Kirby, chief executive of blockchain startup Factom, he laughed when I described myself as a “blockchain traditionalist”. I meant that I still think of blockchain as the technology that made bitcoin credible – a peer-to-peer distributed ledger which immutably logs all transactions. This all sounds like jargon, so what does [...]
London startup Curve launches new card that will allow consumers to combine all their payment cards February 17, 2016 London-based startup Curve launched today, the latest in a string of new companies in the payments technology sector, with the aim of allowing consumers to combine all their bank cards into one payment card. The card, which is supported by a mobile app, will be accepted everywhere that MasterCard is. According to the company, the service "offers [...]
It’s official: Twitter’s getting Gifs with search support for web, iOS and Android from Giphy and Riffsy February 17, 2016 Twitter is adding a new feature which will likely please most of the internet this time: gif support. Users will be able to search for and add gifs to their tweets directly in Twitter. "Whenever you're composing a tweet or direct message, you can search and browse the gif library. So if you're looking for the [...]
Why Tim Cook is totally right on encryption and “backdoors” in his letter opposing FBI court request for access to iPhone of San Bernadino shooter February 17, 2016 FBI investigators investigating the San Berdanino terrorist attack have hit a stumbling block: Syed Farook, who killed 14 people, used an iPhone to communicate. The FBI believes that valuable information is stored on the Farook’s phone. Yet they can’t get at it. Putting the wrong password into an iPhone a few times wipes the phone, [...]
Street Fighter V review: a promising but unfinished update that’s plagued by gargantuan bosoms February 17, 2016 The Street Fighter franchise is so iconic to a generation of players, so steeped in warm, fuzzy nostalgia, that updating it requires a surgeon's touch. You can't keep making the same game, but its success lies in its simple mechanics, stored deep in the muscle memory of our fingers. If a Street Fighter II aficionado can’t pick [...]
Google Ideas think tank becomes Jigsaw in latest Alphabet renaming February 17, 2016 First Google surprised us with a name change to Alphabet, now, it's taken further inspiration from the kids' playroom with its latest renaming. Google Ideas, the search giant's think tank, will be called Jigsaw from now on and will expand its focus to become a technology incubator. "The team’s mission is to use technology to tackle [...]
Is your city most or least at risk from robots taking jobs? February 17, 2016 The robot overlords are taking your jobs, so we've been told time and time again. But there are some places in Britain where that's more likely to happen than others. Exeter, Crawley and Norwich have the highest number of job vacancies which are at the greatest risk of automation in the future, according to new research. It [...]
Tim Cook: Apple won’t unlock San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone with “backdoor”, responding to FBI court ruling, and warns of weakened encryption risks February 17, 2016 Apple boss Tim Cook has said the company will contest a US court ruling forcing it to break the encryption on the iPhone of one of the San Bernadino shooters. "The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far [...]