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Apple Pay Expands to France, Hong Kong

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Apple Pay is slowly expanding its access to more and more countries. On Tuesday, July 19, was the turn of France, the land of good wine, boutiques, and croissants.

Later the same day, Apple’s mobile payment service was also rolled out in Hong Kong. According to the French website for Apple Pay now shows the service is compatible with Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards issued by Ticket Restaurant and Carrefour Banque.

Apple Pay in France

At the same time, users can also pay with Apple’s service through Caisse d’Epargne and Banque Populaire, which includes the country’s second-largest banking group (accounting for over 20 percent of current payment cards).

The website also listed Boon and Orange, two other issuers of French credit cards, as “coming soon” to Apple Pay.

On the other side of the world, Apple Pay for Hong Kong has partnered so far with Visa, American Express, and Mastercard credit cards from banks Bank of China (Hong Kong), HSBC, DBS, Hang Seng, and Standard Chartered. HKT and the Bank of East Asia will soon be made available, as well.

Making Apple Pay available in France and Hong Kong represents the second and third new regions that the service has expanded to this month only. Switzerland was the first to get Apple’s mobile payment service in early July.

In the United States, Apple Pay is one of the most well-established services among banks and retailers, as all four major US credit cards support it. But that’s not enough for Apple, which wants to achieve a greater presence abroad in light of rival services – like Samsung Pay and Android Pay – gaining traction.

Several French retailers have already jumped on the Apple Pay bandwagon. As per the official web page of the service, Apple Pay is supported by the Apple Store itself, Sephora, Bocage, Eram, Cojean, and Total, to name some on the list.

Users in France will also soon be allowed to add loyalty cards to the Apple Wallet app and then make purchases with Apple Pay by tapping into the loyalty points they accumulate.

Prior to this latest expansion, the service was already available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, and China.
Image Source: ZDNet

Meet the New Furby Connect: Better and Smarter

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Furby Connect

Remember the cute yet creepy Furby toys that were all the rage back in the late ‘90s? Everyone wished to have one – and not just the kids. Now, the popular toy has been redesigned and it’s making the comeback of the year.

Meet the new Furby Connect, a toy that’s more interactive and smarter than ever. While looking similarly to the original version, the new Furby has bigger eyes and larger ears to see and hear you better.

Thankfully, the toy does shut its eyes and you can even cover them with a sleep mask that acts as a shut down so you don’t have to fear the Furby will turn into a live Chucky Doll in the middle of the night.

Many of the old features have been kept for authenticity – the doll still blinks its eyes, makes noises and absently chats with other Furby Connects when two are together – but the redesign also includes new smart features.

In 2012, a more recent version of the ‘90s most popular toy was released with a companion app, but Furby Connect takes it as step further by adding Bluetooth connectivity. This way, the toy connected through the app available on iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire, can always be up to date.

Bluetooth also allows the Furby to connect with its owner and play songs and show video clips. This capability was possible through the company’s partnership with Kidz Bop; the new Furby can also display sports scores and other data on global events.

Furby Connect comes with a head-attached antenna that lights up blue when it has new content for you to watch. The notification alerts the owner to open the app and react to the latest videos and songs. The Furby Connect will do the same, reacting “with its own hilarious take on what’s happening on screen.”

Kids can also use the app to take care of the new Furby – which now feels like a hybrid between a Tamagotchi and a Gremlin (other favorite toys of the last century). The owner can raise virtual Furblings in-app by feeding them and playing games with them.

You can preorder the Furby Connect at Amazon.com, and you will pay $99 for it when released this fall.
Image Source: Hasbro

You Must Install Facebook’s Moments App to Keep Backed-up Photos

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alt= Facebook moments app

Facebook is forcing yet another app down its users’ throats. Remember when Messenger became a standalone app? Soon, you won’t be able to check your Facebook messages outside the dedicated platform.

Such is the case of the company’s photo-sharing app, Moments; according to a recent report, all images synced from the main Facebook app will be automatically deleted by July 7, unless people save them or install the Moments app.

The photo-sharing app was launched in June 2015, but before that, the syncing feature was integrated into the world’s largest social network. Many smartphone owners use the back-up option, as Facebook promised mobile users they would get unlimited automatic image uploads to a private Facebook photo album.

It was a simple way for people to be assured their photos were backed up – much like other services, including Apple’s iCloud Photos, Google’s Photos, or Yahoo’s Flickr.

But a new official announcement revealed that in early July, Facebook will remove all photos that are not from the synced album. The period between now and the deadline was offered for users to be able to download the photos they want to keep.

The social network had already stopped supporting automatic photo syncing from its main app back in January, which then required users to download the Moments app if they wanted to continue uploading their snapped photos. Now, the Moments app is required to sync photos.

Facebook explained that the privately-synced images were moved to Moments in January and if people do not want to install Moments, they should download the images from their Facebook profile before the deadline.

As we explained previously, this move is not completely foreign to Facebook’s practices. The private messaging option that used to be included in the main app was recently split and turned into a standalone platform.

Users were required to install it if they wanted to keep on chatting, which led to the Messenger app boasting more than 900 million users. The broader purpose of these new apps is to create a gargantuan platform and attract new Facebook users.

Since the announcement, Moments has started skyrocketing on app charts, becoming the third most popular free iOS app in the United States.
Image Source: Phandroid

Ephemeral Tweet-like Posts are Coming to Facebook News Feed

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alt= Facebook vs Twitter

Facebook and Twitter are constantly locked in a fascinating dance, a competition of sorts that makes them push closer and then farther away from the each other with each move they make.

Today, Facebook’s new test is bringing the social network a tiny bit closer to Twitter as it announced a new posting option; it will allow users to create News Feed posts that are strikingly similar to tweets.

The test, first reported by CNET, introduces a new option: making Facebook posts that are visible only in the News Feed, instead of being permanently engraved into your Timeline.

It’s a dip into Snapchat’s ephemeral business because the update will be somewhat ephemeral, pushed down as other updates appear. They won’t be completely gone, as users can find them through search or with a link.

But the feeling of a mostly disappearing update is definitely new according to Facebook standards. It borrows something of a tweet’s nature and less of a typical Facebook post, which is usually recorded permanently on your Timeline to be viewed for years.

Given that their friends won’t view them for long, users are bound to be more comfortable to post more – even if just quick or lighthearted – things that aren’t necessarily important, but they’d nonetheless prefer to share in the online.

The News Feed-only posts aren’t enabled by default; a post-by-post basis will be necessary, which will appear in the form of the “Hide from your Timeline” option beside the posting button.

According to Engadget, Facebook has found out that people are interested in being able to post more ephemeral messages, so the new feature is designed to “make it even easier to control where your posts live.”

For now, the tweet-like Facebook posts are still in testing, so only a select number of users are seeing it. Even if does roll out universally, it’s hard to imagine this new feature making a massive change in how people use Facebook.

What the company hopes to happen is users feeling encouraged to post more, even though it’s in ways they aren’t typically comfortable with. This test is part of Facebook’s effort to combat a decline in sharing across its site, hoping to address the problem.
Image Source: Sprout Social

Student Loan Debt Piles Up at Record Pace

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Student loan debt is growing by $3,000 per second, being the largest form of debt in the USA outside of mortgages.

According to a Federal Reserve report, updated in May 2016, American students owe over $1.3 Trillion in Student Loan Debt. The average debt for 2016 graduates now averages $37,172, which is up to 6% over 2015 data.

closeup of graduation cap and cash roll

Recent research conducted by the Federal Reserve also shows that over half of outstanding student loans are presently in deferral, delinquency, or default. Americans are more burdened by student loan debt than ever before.

While most studies focus on the exacerbating growth in outstanding debt, delinquency rates, and wealth inequality, few initiatives highlight the importance of financial literacy and its impact on the graduates’ development as future employees.

On the other hand, the rapidly growing problem of student debt has attracted many and diverse reactions, ranging from rallies and protests to constructive initiatives from well-regarded business people.

Most importantly, in April 2016, Rep Matt Salmon from Arizona introduced a bill into the US House of Representatives. The H.R.5016 – Financial Literacy for Financial Aid Act would require student borrowers applying for a loan to be provided with financial education. Joining forces with Rep. Salmon to develop and advocate for this bill is Sharon Lechter CPA CGMA, financial literacy expert and recognized as the #1 Financial Literacy Educator for 2015 by the National Literacy Educators Council.

Closeup Of Hand Holding Pen Over Student Loan Application

Needless to say, before borrowing tens of thousands of dollars, potential students need to be educated in the long-term impact of such financial decisions. Through this online counseling tool, graduates would receive instruction in various areas of financial literacy such as the purpose and uses of taxes, the cost of borrowing, the importance of financial planning, and the understanding of their rights and responsibilities as credit consumers.

“Education is the most important tool our children have to ensure their financial wellbeing. We must educate our children on the financial responsibilities of student loans”, says Sharon Letcher, CEO at Pay Your Gamily First, noted entrepreneur, author, and business advisor. In her public service announcement, she lays stress on the fact that the vast majority of our students have little to no financial education in high school or college.

If the government allows potential students to borrow substantial sums to find and maintain employment, it is essential to help them craft financial goals. American young adults are asked to take on financial literacy as they are facing a debt crisis exceeding that of any previous generation.

Your immediate help has never been more important. You are kindly asked to call your representative today or email his or her office in support of the H.R. 5016 – Financial Literacy for Financial Aid Act. Let him or her know that the next generation needs financial education before getting into debt. For further assistance, please visit https://www.house.gov/representatives/find/.

Ultimately, share this with your friends and associates and ask them to do the same. Your voice can make a difference!

For more information, contact info@sharonlechter.com.

Image Source: no attribution required.

Data About Objects Falling into Black Holes Could Be Preserved

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alt= black hole evaporates

We live in an orderly universe, governed by laws such as causal determinism; the cause always precedes the effect and not the other way around.

If all the forces acting on an agglomeration of atoms are known, we should be able – in theory – to not only predict how the entity would behave in the future but also all its past states.

According to the laws of quantum physics, everything in the universe is encoded with data about the state of its constituent particles’ quantum. And if this information never disappears, then causal determinism can remain inviolable.

But trust black holes to muck things up a bit. Dubbed the “vacuum cleaners” of the universe, these space objects are bodies that have such strong space-time warping capabilities that nothing – not even light – can escape once it goes over the “event horizon,” or the edge of the black hole.

When they “evaporate,” black holes cause the complete loss of the data it chewed. This unnatural puzzle – also known as the information paradox – has become one of the many mysteries of the universe.

Five months ago, Stephen Hawking, the famous British cosmologist, offered a solution to the paradox, and his paper on the matter has now been published in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters.

Titled “Soft Hair on Black Holes,” Hawking’s paper challenges previous theories that black holes have no “hair.” His colleagues, Malcolm Perry of Cambridge University in the U.K. and Andrew Strominger of Harvard University, co-authored the study.

In this case, the ‘hairs’ refers to “low-energy quantum excitations” that stores information about everything that has been gobbled up. Hawking believes that charged particles passing the event horizon could, in fact, leave traces in space-time in the form of “soft gravitons” and “soft photons,” which have no energy.

As they change the vacuum of space-time, these peculiar particles allow it to preserve data about the state of the original particles. This data is then released in the form of “Hawking radiation,” which was initially believed to be a random jumble with no useful information about the objects that fell into the black hole.

Event though the new research piece does not entirely explain the black hole information paradox, it is definitely a significant step in the right direction.
Image Source: Phys.org

Cold Water Upwelling in Antarctic Seas Could Explain Climate Change Paradox

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alt= Antarctic ice melting

It seems that in spite of the global warming that melts the Arctic ice, the ocean around Antarctica maintains a persistent chill caused by ancient cold waters surfacing from the depths after hundreds of years.

According to a U.S. study, the Southern Ocean off Antarctica could be the last place on Earth to react to the man-made climate change, thanks to a lag of centuries that affects waters emerging from up to 5,000 meters deep.

A lot of people still doubt current scientific findings saying that human use of fossil fuels is the cause of an increasing warming of the planet.

This seeming paradox of expanding winter sea ice around Antarctica in recent decades and a rapid decrease of ice in the Arctic is something they often point to in their reasoning.

“Our findings are a step toward resolving the mystery,” explained senior author Kyle Armour of the University of Washington, Seattle, in the journal Nature Geoscience.

He noted the fact that cold water keeps surfacing helps to explain the fact that sea ice persists in large masses. However, it does not explain the trend of expanding, which other studies have associated with shifts in winds off the massive frozen continent.

The recent report found that warm waters in the Gulf Stream get colder as they flow north into the North Atlantic, then go under and loop south towards Antarctica as part of a great aquatic conveyor belt that completes once every few centuries.

In the end, winds in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica send surface waters northwards and encourage the upwelling of the chill, ancient waters from the abyssal depths.

This could be an explanation for why the surface of the Southern Ocean has warmed by just 0.02 degree Celsius per decade since 1950, which is considerably less than the global average of 0.08 degrees.

Scientists are still unsure if the cold waters could also help in delaying the melting of ice locked up on the continent in Antarctica; one of the biggest worries is that the melt could sharply raise global sea levels.

Colin Summerhayes of the Scott Polar Research Institute, who was not involved in the study, said that “even water that cool is still warm enough to melt the ice at the base of the ice shelves.”
Image Source: Phys.org

Google’s Project Ara Could Be So Much Better

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project ara

The excitement of fans of Google’s Project Ara has been long gone, but news of the modular smartphone could bring some of the fire back. According to Phonebloks’ Dave Hakkens, however, that should not be the case.

In fact, Hakkens believes that Project Ara has much more potential than what Google has done with it so far. Recent updates from the search company talk of the modular smartphone with its working prototype.

For one, Hakkens’s disappointment was caused by Google’s decision to fit the essential specs – such as the processor, sensors, antenna, screen and battery – in the core skeleton of the phone. Among the external modules are the camera, speakers, and projector.

Phonebloks has a similar concept for the modular smartphone, but there is no actual product yet in sight. According to Engadget, Hakkens partnered with Google and Motorola on Project Ara.

Phonebloks was meant to help decrease electronic waste caused by the continued purchasing of new phones; instead, users could simply upgrade each part that has become obsolete.

Phonebloks shares its vision with Project Ara, except that Google has already announced a working prototype. The company is now trying to figure out how to make the modular smartphone look more appealing to consumers because a plain blocky device is not necessarily enticing.

But there’s a problem, says Hakkens. The system implemented by Google for their modular smartphone does not encourage collaboration but competition. He believes that the modular smartphone should have been created as an “open system,” one that would allow developers to help improve the end product.

“However, it isn’t truly open. Everything happens under the umbrella of Google. They are in charge, they make the rules. They can decide to suddenly change the connectors, or design,” Hakkens explained in a blog post.

He added that Google did one thing well: pushing through with the Project Ara modular smartphone. However, the company has the resources and the brain to make something much better than this.

Google’s focus right now – as far as Project Ara is concerned – shouldn’t be to make a smartphone that would sell, but rather “a smartphone for the future.” Thankfully, a lot could change in the time that the project remains under development.
Image Source: Ars Technica

The iBot Could Make a Comeback with Toyota’s Help

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the ibot

When the iBot made its first appearance 16 years ago, a lot of people got really excited. We hadn’t seen anything like this motorized wheelchair with its special features; not the least of which was the fact that the user could be elevated to the eye level of a standing person.

More than allowing people with disabilities to entertain more natural communication with those walking alongside the chair, the iBot also came with the impressive ability to tackle uneven terrain.

The multi-wheel machine did not stumble at steps either, offering its users a new level of independence they had never experienced before. But a pretty big obstacle stood in the way of making the iBot a success: the cost.

At $25,000, the motorized wheelchair came with a prohibitive price tag that eventually forced the company to halt production in 2009.

But count on inventor Dean Kamen to not give up on his dream of taking the iBot to the larger public. Even though he moved on to create the Segway – using similar balancing technology – Kamen was convinced there was a way for the wheelchair to give freedom to people with disabilities.

As a matter of fact, Kamen just announced a new partnership with Japanese automaker Toyota, which he hopes will be a second shot at making the iBot a viable alternative to the traditional wheelchair.

“I’m happy to tell you that our goal is to bring back the iBot,” Kamen said in a video (below) that was posted online on Sunday. “We’d like to take everything that was great about the original iBot and then enhance it with 15 years of improvements in technology.”

In the video, the iBot is shown riding on uneven terrain, climbing stairs, and crossing thresholds with no trouble at all, which proves Kamen’s point that the machine could give people more of the freedom, flexibility, and independence they need.

The partnership is meant to combine DEKA’s vision with Toyota’s expertise and experience in mobility technology. The Japanese company also hopes to use the development of Kamen’s company in balancing technologies for “medical rehabilitative therapy and potentially other purposes.”

Even though Kamen has yet to reveal details about the availability of the second-generation iBot – or about its new price – Toyota’s support represents a significant step toward making the machine a reality for more people who need it.


Image Source: YouTube

Scientists Explain Increase of Shark Attacks in Hawaii

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shark sighted

According to a recent study on the Hawaiian shark populations showed that it is indeed true that sharks prefer the waters near some of Maui’s most popular and crowded beaches, which leads to an increasing number of shark attacks each year.

One of the things that scientists at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology say is the most important is that swimmers should not fear sharks. As absurd as that sounds – have these guys ever seen Jaws? – it’s a natural conclusion of their study.

Instead, the researchers point to the role the study can have in teaching people how to coexist with their aquatic friends. “Swimming in the ocean is swimming in what amounts to a wilderness environment. Sharks are part of this environment,” explained Bruce Anderson of Hawaii’s Division of Aquatic Resources.

Contrary to what movie franchises like Jaws seem to instill in our minds, the ocean is the sharks’ homes, which means that when we go swimming it the ocean, we’re figuratively stepping on their turf.

Once we accept that it’s normal to have sharks in the wild, we also must learn to take precautions so we avoid meeting one face to face. Unless we’re being careful, these unpleasant encounters are going to occur from time to time.

With warming ocean temperatures comes a certain expansion of the typical shark habitats, which, in turn, increased the numbers of encounters between human and sharks. But are sharks to blame, or should humans share some of the responsibility for the bloody results?

According to the study, the number of humans partaking in ocean recreation increases with each year, meaning that more people are taking up surfing or paddleboarding – both of which will put humans right in the middle of the sharks’ living, eating and socializing environment.

So why are sharks attracted to Hawaiian waters? Partly, it’s because of the food supply and the coral reefs, but also because that area is also a popular mating season hangout for sharks.

The study reached the same conclusion as the 2015 International Shark Attack File report: more people in the ocean doing recreational activities will generally an increase in the number of shark bites in Hawaii – and other places around the world, for that matter.

Peacefully coexisting with sharks can only happen when people are informed. You shouldn’t swim in murky water or go near dead animals, such as seals. “When it comes to shark interactions, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” the authors added.
Image Source: ABC News

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