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Tuesday, 12 March 2019

Fender invites guitarists into an Alternate Reality with Powercaster release

The first of Fender's limited run Alternate Reality series: The Powercaster

Fender may be best known for its Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars, but the iconic instrument maker isn't afraid to push the design boundaries and try something new. Last year's Parallel Universe series mashed up bits from different Fender guitars, and in January the company unveiled a Tele with an acoustic heart. Now it's time to take a trip to an Alternate Reality with the release of the Powercaster.

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Nvidia Will End Support for Its 3D Glasses, an Incredible Technology You Definitely Use

Remember back when 3D TVs, movies, live sporting events, and glasses were a thing? Yeah, well, Nvidia realizes you don’t either, and as a result, it’s pulling support for 3D Vision, its platform for gaming with 3D glasses.

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The best free flight simulators

You don't have to spend the entirety of your paycheck to become a virtual ace, at least when it comes to flight simulation. Our list of the best free flight simulators will let you unleash your inner Maverick.

The post The best free flight simulators appeared first on Digital Trends.



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Gather your wands and take a first look at Harry Potter: Wizards Unite

Niantic and Warner Bros. have provided Harry Potter fans with their first look at the AR game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The game will be similar in structure to Pokémon Go, but with some tweaks.

The post Gather your wands and take a first look at Harry Potter: Wizards Unite appeared first on Digital Trends.



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The Galaxy S10’s face unlock fooled by pictures, siblings

Tim Berners-Lee says we can still save the web

The World Wide Web is 30 years old tomorrow. A day earlier, its founder, English engineer and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, first proposed the system that would become the WWW on March 11th, 1989. To acknowledge the anniversary, he’s revisited his ideas about the internet in a new letter published today.

Berners-Lee admits that the internet now has a lot of problems. Users are plagued by online harassment, state-sponsored hacks, and other criminal behavior. Ad-based revenue models reward clickbait, while there is a constant viral spread of fake news. And even though they can be rewarding, social media platforms have also become home to political outrage and polarizing conversations.

Still, Berners-Lee is hopeful about humans’ and...

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Instagram founders say selling to Facebook didn’t reduce competition among social networks

Talk of regulating Silicon Valley has dominated this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) pledge to break up Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook becoming a topic of conversation in almost every high-profile, tech-focused panel here.

A sit-down with Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger this afternoon was no exception. The entrepreneurs sold their company to Facebook, worked there for years, then abruptly left last September amid reported concerns over their autonomy and the future direction of the photo-sharing social network. Additionally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week announced a new, privacy-focused shift for the company that would see its disparate messaging products combined to...

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Apple's March 25 Event Will Be Its Biggest One This Year

Services will define the future of the company.

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The World Wide Web Turns 30. Where Does It Go From Here?

Thirty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee published a proposal that led to the World Wide Web. Today, he reflects on its history—and its future.

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Movie Review: Captain Marvel Is About Female Power—Not Empowerment

Carol Danvers doesn't need anyone's permission—or help—to kick ass.

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The Genderless Digital Voice the World Needs Right Now

The idea behind Q is to pressure the tech industry into acknowledging that gender isn’t necessarily binary, a matter of man or woman, masculine or feminine.

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'Captain Marvel' Beat Its Own Box Office Projections

Carol Danvers made bank last weekend.

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Century Wireless Remote Control Outlet Switch 5 Pack - CNET

Century Wireless Remote Control Outlet Switch 5 Pack

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Facebook reveals its 'privacy-focused vision for social networking'


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It's official: Apple announces March 25 event


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Fire TV setup no longer requires typing in a Wi-Fi password


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US may punish Germany if it uses Huawei tech


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Tidal adds high-fidelity audio to its iOS app


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Roku could add AirPlay 2 support soon


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Smart speakers are being used to help measure inflation in the UK


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Adobe will kill Shockwave on April 9th


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Bottomless has a solution for lazy coffee addicts

If you’re like me, you let out a heavy sigh every month or so when you reach out and unexpectedly find an empty bag of coffee. Bottomless, one of the 200-plus startups in Y Combinator’s latest batch, has a solution for us caffeine addicts.

For a $36 annual membership fee, a cost which co-founder Michael Mayer says isn’t set in stone, plus $11.29 per order depending on the blend, Bottomless will automatically restock your coffee supply before you run out. How? The startup sends its members an internet-connected scale free of charge, which members place under their bag of coffee grounds. Tracking the weight of the bag, Bottomless’ scales determine when customers are low on grounds and ensure a new bag of previously selected freshly roasted coffee is on their doorstep before they run out.

Voilà, no more coffee-less mornings.

Founded by Seattle-based husband and wife duo Mayer and Liana Herrera in 2016, Bottomless began as a passion project for Mayer, a former developer at Nike.com. Herrera kept working as a systems implementations specialist until Bottomless secured enough customers to justify the pair working on the project full-time. That was in 2018; months later, after their second attempt at applying, they were admitted into the Y Combinator accelerator program.

Bottomless’ smart scale

Bottomless today counts around 400 customers and has inked distribution deals with Four Barrel and Philz Coffee, among other roasters. Including the $150,000 investment YC provides each of its startups, Bottomless previously raised a pre-seed round from San Francisco and Seattle-area angel investors.

Before relocating to San Francisco for YC, the Bottomless founders were working feverishly out of their Seattle home.

“This whole time we’ve been 3D-printing prototypes out of our apartment and soldering them together out of our apartment,” Mayer told TechCrunch. “We kind of turned our place into this new manufacturing facility. There’s dust everywhere and it’s crazy. But we made 150 units ourselves by hand-soldering and lots of burned fingers.”

The long-term goal is to automate the restocking process of several household items, like pet food, soap and shampoo. Their challenge will be getting customers to keep multiple smart scales in their homes as opposed to just asking their digital assistant to order them some coffee or soap on Amazon.

Amazon recently announced it was doing away with its stick-on Dash buttons, IoT devices capable of self-ordering on Amazon. The devices launched in 2015 before Google Homes and Amazon Alexas hit the mainstream.

So why keep a smart scale in your kitchen as opposed to just asking a digital assistant to replenish your supply? Mayer says it’s coffee quality that keeps it competitive.

“Some of our most enthusiastic customers live out in like deep suburbs far away from city centers, but they really love fresh coffee,” Mayer said. And there’s no way to get fresh coffee if you live 20 or 30 minutes from a city center, right?”

“Or you might think in a city like San Francisco or Seattle, you can get freshly roasted coffee pretty easily because there are restaurants all over the place, right?” He added. “That’s certainly true, but it does take a little bit of extra thought to remember to grab it on the right day when you’re running low.”

Mayer and Herrera don’t consider themselves coffee experts, despite now running what is essentially a direct-to-consumer coffee marketplace out of Seattle, the coffee capital.

“I’m originally from Portland and Portlanders know a lot about coffee,” Mayer said. “I never really considered myself to be a coffee aficionado or a coffee snob in my head, but I guess compared to like the average American from anywhere in the country, I would be just a regular coffee drinker in Portland. All I really knew about coffee going into this was that it’s better fresh. That’s it.”

Bottomless is currently accepting customers in beta. The team will pitch to investors at YC Demo Days next week.



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Unmind scores £3M investment for its workplace mental health platform

Unmind, a U.K.-based startup that offers a mental health platform for the workplace, has raised £3 million in new funding. The round is led by London-based venture capital firm Felix Capital, with co-investment from Michael Whitfield and Chris Bruce, the founders of Thomsons Online Benefits.

Founded in 2016, Unmind is a B2B service that provides “clinically backed” tools, training and assessments for company employees in a bid to improve workplace mental health. The digital platform, delivered through the Unmind mobile app, includes bite-sized exercises for “everyday wellbeing,” personalised assessments, and customised programmes for improving areas such as stress, focus, and sleep.

“There is not enough support in society for people’s mental health, and this is especially true in the workplace,” explains co-founder and CEO Dr Nick Taylor, who is a Clinical Psychologist. “Everyone has mental health — and supporting it is integral to a successful workforce — but most provisions are highly reactive and heavily stigmatised, leading to low uptake amongst employees.”

To help remedy this, Unmind is designed to offer a “positive, preventative solution” that anyone can use to bolster their mental health. Designed to be anonymous, Taylor says employees can use the platform to proactively measure, manage and improve their mental health and well-being.

“The digital platform offers personalised assessments, bite-sized tools, online interventions and confidential signposting to other services,” he explains. “Employees can anonymously access Unmind at anytime, anywhere, on any device.”

To date, Unmind has partnered with organisations such as John Lewis & Partners, Made.com, Square Enix, William Hill, Yorkshire Building Society, Thomsons Online Benefits and Pentland Brands, to name just a few. “Unmind is now used in many countries around the world, which is an exciting place to be given the early stage of the company,” says Taylor. “We are focused on working with enterprise clients with 1,000 plus employees.”

Meanwhile, Unmind says the new investment will be used to improve the startup’s “consumer grade, mobile first product,” whilst increasing its library of proprietary content. The broader vision, says the company, is to help create a workplace environment where mental health is “universally understood, nurtured and celebrated.”



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Nigeria’s Gloo.ng drops consumer e-commerce, pivots to e-procurement

Nigerian startup Gloo.ng is dropping consumer online retail and pivoting to B2B e-procurement with Gloopro as its new name.

The Lagos-based venture has called it quits on e-commerce grocery services, shifting to a product that supplies large and medium corporates with everything from desks to toilet paper.

Gloopro’s new platform will generate revenues on a monthly fee structure and a percentage on goods delivered, according to Gloopro CEO D.O. Olusanya.

Gloopro, which raised around $1 million in seed capital as Gloo.ng, is also in the process of raising its Series A round. The startup looks to expand outside of Nigeria on that raise, “before the end of next year,” Olusanya told TechCrunch.

Gloopro’s move away from B2C comes as several notable consumer digital sales startups have failed to launch in Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation with the continent’s highest number of online shoppers, per a recent UNCTAD report.

The country is home to the continent’s first e-commerce startup unicorn, Jumia, and serves as an unofficial bellwether for e-commerce startup activity in Africa.

Gloo.ng’s shift to B2B electronic commerce was prompted by Nigeria’s 2016 economic slump and a customer request, according Olusanya.

“When the recession hit it affected all consumer e-commerce negatively. We saw it was going to take a longer time to get to sustainability and profitability,” he told TechCrunch.

Then an existing client, Unilever, requested an e-procurement solution in 2017. “We observed that the unit economics of that business was far better than consumer e-commerce,” said Olusanya.

Gloopro dubs itself as a “secure cloud based enterprise e-procurement and commerce platform…[for]…corporate purchasing,” per a company description.

“The old brand Gloo.ng, is going to be rested and shut down completely. The corporate name will be PayMente Limited with the brand name Gloopro,” Olusanya said.

From the Gloopro interface customers can order, pay for and coordinate delivery of office supplies across multiple locations. The product also produces procurement analytics and allows companies to designate users and permissions.

Olusanya touts the product’s benefits at improving transparency and efficiency in the purchasing process.

“It makes procurement transparent and secure. A lot of companies in Nigeria still use paper invoices and there are some shenanigans,” he said.

Gloopro began offering the service in beta and building a customer base prior to winding down its Gloo.ng grocery service.

In addition to Unilever, Gloopro clients include Uber Nigeria, Cars45 and industrial equipment company LaFarge. Cars45 CEO Etop Ikpe and a spokesperson for Uber Nigeria confirmed their client status to TechCrunch.

Olusanya believes the company can compete with other global e-procurement providers, such as SAP Ariba and GT-Nexus, by “leveraging our sourcing and last-mile delivery experience in Nigeria” and expertise working around local requirements in Africa.

Gloopro expects to hit $4 million in revenue by the end of the year and the company could reach $100 million over the course of its international expansion into countries like South Africa, Kenya, Morocco, Egypt and the Ivory Coast, according to Olusanya. A seed investor briefed on Gloo.ng’s estimates confirmed the company’s revenue expectations with TechCrunch.

Gloo.ng’s pivot to Gloopro and e-procurement comes during an up and down period for B2C online retail in Nigeria, home of Africa’s largest economy.

Last year, e-commerce startup Konga.com, backed by roughly $100 million in VC, was sold in a distressed acquisition, at a loss to investors, including Naspers. In late 2018, Nigerian online sales platform DealDey shut down.

On the possible upside, several outlets reported this year that Jumia — Africa’s largest e-commerce site and first unicorn headquartered in Nigeria — is pursuing an IPO. But that information is unconfirmed based on a February 8, Bloomberg story without named sources. Jumia has declined to comment.



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Amun raises $4M to give stock-like buying options for crypto investors

Crypto represent a “border-less” asset that anyone can own, but actually getting hold of it isn’t easy for everyone. Amun, a company that wants to make buying crypto as easy as stock, has pulled in $4 million in funding to offer more established channels for crypto ownership.

The startup currently offers punters an ETP (exchange-traded product) on the Swiss Stock Exchange that pulls together five of the most popular crypto assets: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, XRP and Litecoin. HODL — as it is called after “holding” crypto rather than selling it (LOL) — can be purchased just like any stock.

That five-crypto basket is just the start for Amun, which is developing ETPs for other crypto assets individually. The first one is for Bitcoin — ABTC — with others planned to come soon; you’d imagine the usual suspects such as Ethereum and co will follow. Indeed, Amun has licenses to the five crypto assets in HODL as well as EOS.

While the products are ETP and not covered by Collective Investment Schemes Act (CISA), they are protected in custody and by insurance. They are collateralized and backed by an identical amount of crypto assets.

Personally, I’ve been able to buy crypto — just base tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum rather than company-specific ICO tokens — but it certainly is true that it takes some learning. While, speaking for me and likely many others, exchange-based products aren’t easier to me, it does appeal to more institutionally minded individuals or companies for whom holding an account with an exchange or a crypto wallet isn’t feasible. That’s the target that Amun has in mind, as well as outlier cases, too.

Amun CEO and co-founder Hany Rashwan told TechCrunch that growing up in Egypt, he saw the government ban Bitcoin despite the fact that it offered an alternative to the Egyptian pound, which saw its valuation tank massively in 2016. He believes that products like Amun allow anyone to take part in crypto even when they face local restrictions, as was the case in Egypt and other countries.

“We want to make investing in crypto as easy as buying a stock. Institutional investors around the world are looking for a secure, easy and regulated way of accessing the crypto asset class. Amun’s products do that at a low price in one of the most reputable financial hubs in the world,” Rashwan told TechCrunch.

Investors share his optimism and those who took part in this round include Boost VC founder Adam Draper — son of outspoken pro-Bitcoin VC Tim Draper — Graham Tuckwell, founder of ETFS Capital who built ETF products for gold, and Greg Kidd, co-founder of investment firm Hard Yaka. Four undisclosed family offices also took part.

One reason for their optimism is the fact that Amun is developing technology that could, in theory, be licensed out to allow others to develop their own ETFs.

“We invest a ton of resources in both our product development and underlying tech infrastructure. This allows us to come up with innovative but professional and safe ways of accessing the crypto asset class, as well as do all this on a tech platform that can be used by not just us, but any issuer that wishes to do the same as well,” Rashwan said.

“The world needs a company like Amun to make crypto as easy as buying a stock. Now that they were the first to do that, they can now provide the toolset and be the de facto platform for anyone else looking to take their crypto assets/securities to the public markets,” Draper added.

Still, just giving people access doesn’t guarantee returns — that’s on the crypto market itself.

Last year was a dud across the board in terms of pricing, as Bitcoin, for example, plummeted from a record high of nearly $20,000 at the end of 2017 to $3,930-ish at the time of writing. Plenty in the industry are optimistic that will change as genuine value comes out of blockchain technology.

HODL itself debuted at $15.64 last November; today it is at $12.83

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.



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Talent Garden raises €44M to expand in cities ignored by the WeWork-style spaces

Finding myself talking at a startup conference in Kosovo three years ago (as one does), I realized how close I was to Albania, a place which held some fascination for me. I managed to grab a lift with a friendly techie to Tirana, where they arranged for me to speak to the local tech community. That meetup was held in a small co-working space called Talent Garden. It gradually transpired that, while WeWork and other such co-working/offices spaces were concentrating on New York and London, Talent Garden had been busily populating southern and eastern Europe with a network of spaces crisscrossing the continent.

That strategy has now paid off with their desire to raise money from investors. Today, it announces that it has raised €44 million ($49.5 million) in a funding round led by Italian private equity firm Tamburi Investment Partners alongside Social Capital, Inadco Ventures and a range of European family offices. Tamburi previously led a €12 million funding round for Talent Garden in 2016.

The company, founded in Brescia, Italy in 2011, now plans to expand its co-working and education to places like Spain, Italy, Denmark, Austria and many more countries around Europe, focusing on second or third-tier cities where tech communities tend to grow fastest because costs are lower than in the major capitals.

Talent Garden’s chief executive and co-founder Davide Dattoli now plans to open 20 new international co-working campuses over the next five years and expand the scope of its “Innovation School” in digital training (as an analogy, think a combination of offices and General Assembly) and generating a “second tech ecosystem” around Europe outside London, Paris and Berlin. It’s also a licensee of the SingularityU Summit brand across Italy, Spain and Switzerland, for instance.

So far, it is now present in eight countries and has 23 active campuses with the Talent Garden Innovation School present in five of those countries.

There will, however, be a particular focus on Spain, with new locations in Madrid and Barcelona; France, with one opening planned in 2019; Italy, where it already has more than 10 campuses; and Austria, where it just recently opened.

In 2018, Talent Garden opened a new campus in Dublin as part of a strategic partnership with Dublin City University and also created a joint venture with Rainmaking Loft in Denmark, and has more than three locations across Copenhagen and is now looking for more locations in the Nordic region. Germany, Israel, Benelux and the CEE region are also within its sights. It won’t be ignoring San Francisco, however, with a kind of the “campus” project planned for next year.

Will things be different as Talent Garden tries to make incursions into bigger cities? For starters, WeWork is building from a very expensive base (major capitals) while TG isn’t. There are fewer revenues in these third-tier cities, sure, but geography has been downgraded for startup teams that are well-used to remote working. So TG could try to lock-in members who only need to “pop in” to the major capitals now and again, where TG has a “landing pad” for them to visit. This potentially creates an incursion into WeWork’s space directly from emerging markets and second/third-tier cities.



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Google Approved $45 Million Exit Package for Executive Accused of Misconduct

The payment to Amit Singhal, who ran Google’s search division and was accused of groping an employee, was revealed on Monday in a shareholder lawsuit.

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Tesla Says Never Mind: It Raises Prices and Keeps Most Stores

Elon Musk’s company is reversing course after saying it would close stores to cut costs. It announced a 3 percent price increase on most models.

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How to sign up for Twttr

Twitter has announced the rollout of a new prototype application by, appropriately, a tweet. This new app is called "twttr," which is a throwback to the original name, and it was originally shown off at CES in January.

Twitter is using Twttr as an experimental testing space where they can focus on new designs for threaded conversations on the social media platform. The current iteration of this prototype app show tweets and replies as more like chat bubbles, reminiscent of messenger apps like iMessage or WhatsApp. The replies in threads also appear to be color-coded to differentiate between people you follow and everyone else.

The prototype app will also be used to test out other possible changes that Twitter wants to make to their overall product. Examples of this include status update fields and icebreakers being used as pinned tweets to encourage users to converse with each other.

If you are interested in signing up for the prototype Twttr app, here's what you need to do:

  1. Fill out this survey.

  2. Once you finish answering the questions in the survey, click on Finish.

  3. If you're accepted, you will receive an email invite within the next few days.
  4. When you receive the email invite, click on the included link to confirm your participation.
  5. Once you confirm your participation, you'll wait for another email invite from your device's app beta testing program.

Keep in mind that while anyone can apply for this beta app, not everyone will get in. They will only accept a couple of thousand English and Japanese speaking users, as long as they obey the rules.

For those who get accepted, you'll then want to download the Twttr app on your phone or computer of choice, and then use it instead of the native Twitter app. Twitter welcomes all feedback about the new look with the hashtag #LetsHaveAConvo, or you can use their online form.

Twitter still has issues with online harassment on the platform, but perhaps Twttr can help curb the problems just a bit with redesigned conversation threads.

What do you think about Twttr? Did you sign up and are eagerly waiting for your invite? Let us know in the comments below.



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The Xcentz 5-port USB-C charging station is discounted to $19 right now

Get plugged in.

Grab the Xcentz 48W 5-port USB-C desktop charging station for $18.99 with code JSF792K9 on Amazon. Without the code, the charging station is currently going for $26. It more regularly sells for around $28, though. Either way, this is great savings.

This desktop charging station includes five total ports, including one with Quick Charge 3.0, one with USB-C, and three regular USB-A ports. The station has multiple built-in protections to prevent overloads, short-circuits, and other dangers. It also comes with an 18-month warranty. Users give it 4.9 stars based on 18 reviews.

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Add some smarts to your home with this Meross 3-way switch on sale for $18

Switch your switch!

The Meross MSS550 smart Wi-Fi 3-way in-wall switch is down to $18.09 on Amazon thanks to a $4 off on-page coupon and the code BWJFQUXD. Without the stacked discounts, the switch sells for $34 and only drops to around $30 on its own. We have never seen it this low.

Connect this switch and whatever it's controlling to your smart home without the need for an additional hub. Right now it's only compatible with Amazon Alexa devices, although support for Google and Samsung systems is coming. You can use the Meross App on your iOS or Android device to control it, too. You'll also be able to use the app to create schedules. The benefit to this switch is if you use 3-way control somewhere in your home, you only need to replace one of the switches with this one to make the whole configuration smart.

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The best credit card apps

Heads up! We share savvy shopping and personal finance tips to put extra cash in your wallet. Mobile Nations may receive a commission from The Points Guy Affiliate Network.

It's 2019 which means most people want to access and manage their credit cards through mobile iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch apps. Luckily, most banks have invested heavily in creating their mobile banking apps so that menus are intuitive, and information is easily accessible. This did not come at the expensive of security – banks have been able to offer mobile services without sacrificing protection of sensitive data. A quick look at the top dozen mobile apps for managing your credit cards reveals many more similarities than differences:

American Express

Unanimous

In J.D. Power's 2018 U.S. Credit Card App Satisfaction Study, American Express ranked #1 and for good reason. In the latest redesign, users have access to features like a map that introduces nearby Amex offers, a real time transaction activity timeline that displays payment status, as well as on-the-spot fraud alerts and verification. Additionally, Touch ID and Face ID login (on supported devices), plus 3D Touch give you quick access to features so you can get the most out of your Membership. If you're a holder of the The Platinum Card® from American Express or Centurion (black) card, you will see additional features such as the ability to search for airport lounges and a new restaurant booking feature.

See at App Store

Discover

Another top pick

Discover's app gets similarly high ratings in the app store for its design and functionality. Users can enable Quick View to see a snapshot overview without having to log into individual accounts. When you do log in, you can use a 4-digit passcode or Touch ID. From there on, you can view your transactions and balances, access rewards, and activate Discover's 5% quarterly, rotating bonus categories (limited to first $1,500 per quarter).

See at App Store

Capital One

Apple Watch too!

Capital One's mobile app does everything you would expect from a credit card app. You can view your transactions, check your balance, make payments, and track and redeem your rewards. The rewards piece is huge since Capital One offers one of the best travel cards. Tapping on a transaction brings up its details as well as a menu of options to call the merchant, visit its website, or dispute the charge with Capital One. This app is also available for the Apple Watch if you want to keep an even closer eye on your accounts.

See at App Store

Barclaycard

Peekaboo

The convenience of the Barclaycard US app lies in Peek feature, which allows a quick view of key account information before you log in including your statement balance. If you have Peek on your iPhone, you will be able to use Apple Watch to Peek at your account on your wrist. That feature should be helpful for those trying to really get the most out of their Barclaycard Arrival Miles. Another unique feature is the Purchase Planner, which estimates your monthly payments based off transactions you expect to make. All in all, the Barclaycard US app is more of a no frills option to meet your mobile needs.

See at App Store

Bank of America

Erica FTW

Have you met Erica? If you use the Bank of America Mobile Banking App, you can activate Erica as your virtual financial assistant. You'll be able to ask Erica to find transactions, pay bills, and even get helpful financial guidance. For example, Erica can notify you when you qualify for Preferred Rewards and access cash back rates of over 5%. As with other apps, you can set up Touch ID / Face ID to securely sign in and get exclusive credit card offers within the app.

See at App Store

Wells Fargo

Ultimate control

In the latest version of the app, customers with eligible devices will be able to sign on with Face ID or Touch ID. However, you can also view key account information without logging in with FastLook. Another branded feature, Control Tower, allows you to manage all your digital financial connections – turn cards on and off, view recurring payments, and see your cash back earnings.

See at App Store

Chase

Ol' reliable

The Chase mobile app has all of the standard features aforementioned, but also allows you to access your Chase Ultimate Rewards® portal so you can find the best redemptions on the go.

See at App Store

Citi

No, thank YOU!

While the Citi app is packed with same features (Touch ID / Face ID, spending insights, account alerts) as the best credit card apps, there have been reports that information does not update quickly on the app. For example, after you make a payment or transaction, users have reported waiting a day or so before it is reflected in the app. However, the vast majority of users seem to be highly satisfied, and the app can help you manage your Citi ThankYou Rewards.

See at App Store

Credit One Bank

The basics

Credit One markets credit cards for people with less-than-great credit and those getting their first card. So while this app will give users a streamlined access to their accounts, it will naturally be focused on managing transactions and dealing with disputes. Users looking to manage rewards or send peer-to-peer payments will probably not be using Credit One products in the first place.

See at App Store

U.S. Bank

On-the-go

View your balances at a glance, use Zelle to send money, and set alerts or travel notifications. US Bank does a good job combining the best intuitive features and users, of say the U.S. Bank Cash+™ Visa Signature® Card, will likely find the app to sufficiently meet their needs.

See at App Store

U by BB&T

Ready when you are

U by BB&T offers its useful app on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. While it can help you manage your accounts in mostly the same ways as the other apps, you won't be able to troubleshoot issues directly in-app. You'll likely have to call in or schedule an appointment to dispute transactions.

See at App Store

SunTrust

Better every day

While SunTrust generally ranks lower than most of the big banks for its mobile app, it has improved over the years and includes most of the features you would expect.

See at App Store

As you can see, most of the apps offer similar features and will likely not be the reason you switch from one bank's credit card to another's. Whether you're looking for a credit card with tons of perks and miles or something simpler that offers cash back, you'll likely find the mobile iOS app to be helpful in managing your accounts.



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Slack now has a dark mode for its Android and iOS apps

Rolling out now with the latest update.

Here at Mobile Nations, and likely for a lot of remote companies, Slack is one of our most frequently used applications. It's absolutely essential for staying in touch with coworkers throughout the day, and while it's great for the most part, few things are as irritating as opening up a message late at night only to have the bright, white background blind you.

Now, after lots of anxiously waiting, Slack is getting an official dark mode.

Dark mode is rolling out to Slack's Android and iOS apps as of March 11, 2019, and once you update the app, you can access it by going to Settings and enabling the new dark mode toggle.

As of right now, dark mode can only be enabled manually with no option to have it automatically turn on/off at certain times of day. Also, while there's no dark mode for the Slack desktop app quite yet, Slack says that it's "working on it."

Download: Slack (free)



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Party hard with over 15% off an Anker Soundcore Motion Q waterproof speaker

You heard this yet?

Amazon has the Anker Soundcore Motion Q Portable Bluetooth Speaker available for $37.99, its best price yet. Usually it costs $46.

This speaker will do your music justice, no matter the genre, thanks to its two full-range drivers and dual passive radiators. The sound radiates from all sides of the speaker, and you can even grab a couple to link them together for stereo sound. The speaker's IPX7 waterproof casing prevents water damage, even with full submersion, making it the perfect pool party pal. Say that five times fast.

You can easily place the speaker where everyone can hear it using the included loop, and the battery lasts for up to 10 hours before it'll need to be topped up. There's also a built-in microphone to let you access smart assistants via Bluetooth, so pairing with something like an Echo Dot will widen your options even more.

See at Amazon



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