Apple might buy Jay Z’s Tidal music app

 If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em. Apple is in discussions with Tidal about acquiring its music streaming app, which offers exclusives and early releases from big artists like Beyonce and Kanye West. The Wall Street Journal reports that the talks are still early and might not end in a deal, but Apple wants those exclusives to bolster its Apple Music streaming app that’s… Read More

Facebook throws out the news Paper

 Facebook Paper could have given publishers the reach they lost yesterday in the News Feed, but no one wanted the standalone news reading app. Facebook has pulled the Paper app from the app store and will discontinue support for existing downloads of it on July 29th, according to a message show to all user. Despite it’s eye-catching, progressive design, the experience proved unnecessary… Read More

How Mexico went from telecom laggard to mobile trailblazer

 Twenty years ago only one out of 10 people in Mexico had a telephone of any kind. Today, more than 100 million people have cell phones and, more amazingly, more than 70 percent of those are smartphones. To keep up the torrid growth, scrappy competitors are offering smartphones for every budget and plans that let users choose right from their handsets which services they want and how much they… Read More

Google Maps gets multi-stop directions and vacation memories on mobile

 Google is bringing long awaited multi-stop directions to mobile with its new summer update. Travelers can now hit as many tourist traps as they want on their cross country treks. Just like in the web version, users can swiftly rearrange the order of stops. Android users will get the feature first, followed by iOS in the near future. The summer update caps off an active week for Maps.… Read More

Aircall launches mobile apps for its cloud phone system for teams

 Aircall just launched its mobile apps on iOS and Android out of beta. The company announced the first beta of its mobile app at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. The startup is bringing all the core features of the service to its mobile app. Read More

SmartRecruiters raises $30 million for hiring software

 Because managing a large pool of job applicants can be cumbersome, SmartRecruiters thinks its software has the right tools to keep you organized in your candidate search. The team counts clients like Square, Atlassian and Equinox gyms, who use SmartRecruiters to manage job postings and communicate about prospective employees. Now SmartRecruiters is arming itself with a $30 million funding… Read More

Video app Chosen doubles down on music video creation with access to 20M songs

 Started over a year ago by the ex-CEO of Beats Music, Chosen is a video creation app with a competitive element. Users create short clips on their phones, and can view others while swiping left or right to up vote or down vote the clip. Originally, the videos were designed to be short clips of users showcasing their musical abilities – playing the guitar, singing, or… Read More

Hyper, the Mic-owned app for curated videos, comes to iPhones

 Hyper founder and CEO Markus Gilles said he has a simple goal — to create “the single best video app.” We covered the company last August when it launched its first app on the iPad. Since then, it’s been acquired by millennial-focused publisher Mic, but it’s still going after that big goal — and today, it’s launching on the iPhone. Particularly… Read More

Yandex’s Android browser now supports third party ad-blocking extensions

 Another brick in the wall for the mobile ad-blocking wars: Yandex has opened up its Android browser to third-party ad blocking extensions. Read More

DoorDash, going beyond food delivery, will soon bring you alcohol

 DoorDash started off as a restaurant delivery company — but, like many on-demand delivery companies, its ambitions are certainly much higher than that. And it’s making one step beyond food delivery today by adding the ability to purchase alcohol through DoorDash. While DoorDash may have already delivered food from breweries or restaurants that offer paired food, it still… Read More

Facebook puts friends above publishers in “News Feed Values” and ranking change

 Those core values are that friends and family come first, that the feed should inform and entertain, that Facebook is a platform for all ideas, that authentic communication beats spam, that you have the controls to hide or highlight what you want, and that Facebook will keep iterating to improve the experience. Facebook is also making a feed ranking change today that literally puts its… Read More

Final is a plaster on the gaping wound that is U.S. credit card security

 Credit card fraud is a big problem, with an increasing number of companies launching products to patch the problems. The most recent example is Final, which today announced it is shipping its first consumer product: disposable credit card numbers. That’s lovely, but in doing so, it serves predominantly as an example of a company fixing a serious problem from the wrong side of the fence. Read More

Akamai: global average connection speed up 12 percent, bye bye IPv4

 CDN network Akamai published today its quarterly “State of the Internet” report for the first quarter of 2016. The report examines global internet speeds, which are going to be more relevant than ever for live-sports aficionados in the summer of the Rio Olympics games. Global average connection speed increased 12 percent from the fourth quarter of 2015, to 6.3 Mbps, a 23… Read More