BBVA continues its fintech acquisition run, buys Holvi, an online-only business bank

 Spanish banking giant BBVA has made another M&A play as it looks for a bigger role in the next generation of financial services: today the company has announced the acquisition of Holvi, an online-only bank for entrepreneurs and SMBs based out of Finland. (“Holvi” means “vault” in Finnish.) Terms of the deal have not been disclosed but we are trying to find out.… Read More

The broken world of mobile payments and how to fix it

 It’s being predicted that by the end of this year, mobile payment transactions in the U.S. will grow 210 percent. Despite this impressive gain, it turns out that not everyone is taking advantage of mobile payments. Why aren’t more people enjoying the convenience and ease of mobile payments? Some have said that the system for money exchange in the mobile world was broken before… Read More

How to politely ask people to get the f*ck off their phones

 You’re with a small group of friends at a nice restaurant. Everyone is enjoying the food and conversation when someone decides to take out his phone — not for an urgent call, but to check email, Instagram and Facebook. Maybe you’ve witnessed this behavior and found it unsettling. What do you do? Do you sit idly by, thinking disparaging thoughts? Or do you call out the offender? Read More

Rando is a random social sharing app that lets you pay Russian Roulette with photos, GIFs and more

 A new app from David Barnard, the developer behind the popular Launch Center Pro, promises to be the cure for boredom. Rando, as the app is called, offers a crazy twist on our carefully curated online personas – instead of allowing you to choose a photo or GIF to share with friends, Rando will just randomly pick one for you. You can also share random text quotes, then post them to… Read More

Two new apps, Daycap and VideoSlam, help you create GIFs and videos to remember your day

Two new, recently launched applications, Daycap and VideoSlam, make it easy to summarize your day in the format of videos or GIFs, which can then be shared out to social media. Do you need these apps on your iPhone? No. Are you totally going to download them on your lunch break because it’s Friday, they sound fun, and those TPS reports can wait? Yep! Daycap The first application… Read More

It’s the end of “euphoric times” for custom app developers

 For the first time in about eight years, we saw a decline in the small business customer base of app developers (in terms of revenue and per-project value). The primary reason cited is the rise of white labels and SDKs. “Uber for X” toolkits have indeed become a force to reckon with. Small businesses increasingly rely on “ready to use” frameworks rather than opting… Read More

Facebook Messenger Adds Music Starting With Spotify Song Sharing

 First came the Transportation hub with Uber, and now Facebook Messenger is launching “its very first music integration” with Spotify. Inside the Messenger “More” section in chat threads, all iOS and Android users will now find a Spotify option. Tap it, and they’ll be shuttled into Spotify’s app where they can “Search for something to share”. Once… Read More

imDown’s mobile entertainment network focuses on one-minute vertical videos

 Thanks to smartphones and the rise of apps like Snapchat and Periscope, vertical videos have gone from being an annoyance requiring a workaround to a popular and often preferred video file format. That shift has inspired a number of startups to focus on the medium, in an effort to carve out a niche in YouTube’s shadow. The latest to join the fray is imDown, a mobile-first… Read More

Evertoon wants you to build funny 3D cartoon videos on your phone

 Niniane Wang was watching the infamous “iPhone vs. Evo” video — a short animated film of two creatures poking fun at the iPhone — on YouTube and was thinking of all the ways a video like that could be more customizable and personalized. It also helped spark the idea for her to start Evertoon, an application launching today that makes it easy to make short,… Read More

Reports of the death of apps have been greatly exaggerated

 One of the problems with technology maturation frameworks like the Gartner hype cycle is that you never know where you stand. That is certainly the case with mobile apps today. Depending on whom you ask, the app economy is either poised for significant growth or about to take a serious nosedive. Read More

Vimeo’s iOS app gets a big makeover aimed at improving discovery

 Vimeo, the video network and underdog to the global behemoth that is YouTube, has given its iOS application a massive redesign today aimed at making it easier to upload, discover and play videos. A key part of the revamp involves new, cleaner navigation combined with an element of human curation to the network’s content, which now sees videos organized into various categories like… Read More

Mapillary raises $8M to take on Google’s Street View with crowdsourced photos

 A startup out of Sweden called Mapillary is using crowdsourced photos to create an open sourced and more intelligent version of Google’s Street View, and today it announced a Series A round of funding from an impressive list of backers to help make that ambition a reality. The $8 million from Atomico, Sequoia, LDV Capital, and PlayFair will be used to expand operations outside of… Read More