TechsTicsInfo

After raising $160 million for the Global fund as part of its partnership with (RED), Apple is marking tomorrow’s World AIDS Day by offering up a bunch of opportunities to donate. The easiest of the bunch is the company’s promise to donate $1 to the fund for every transaction made with Apple Pay at the company’s retail stores, on its site or in-app. In honor of the occasion, 400 of the company’s stores will turn their logos red for the week, and the App Store will offer content devoted to the event. All of the proceeds from in-app purchases made on Candy Crush Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga and Candy Crush Soda Saga, meanwhile, will also go to benefit the fund. Apple’s fundraising makes up more than a fifth of the $500 million (RED) has raised for the Global Fund since starting. The partnership has raised $30 million this year thus far, and provided the equivalent of 475 million days of medication since starting, according to the company. “Connecting th...

Facebook has been under fire for its practices and policies that enable advertisers to exclude “multicultural affinity” groups from the audiences they reach via the social network. Now, in light of a ProPublica investigation and pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus, Facebook says it’s committed to taking a closer look at its advertising policies, its COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a letter to CBC Chairperson Cedric Richmond. Until Facebook figures out how to ensure advertisers don’t use its tools in a discriminatory way, Facebook will temporarily disable the option that lets advertisers exclude multicultural affinity groups from their audience. As Sandberg wrote in her letter to the CBC, multicultural affinity groups “are made up of people whose activities on Facebook suggest they may be interested in ads related to the African American, Hispanic American, or Asian American communities.” Multicultural marketing, Sandberg said in her letter, is c...

Will the government fulfil its manifesto promise that every home and business in the country will have high-speed broadband by 2020? The company that it will have to rely on to make that happen - Openreach - is warning it could risk missing the target unless the government decides soon how it will allow it to do the work. Openreach has come up with a unique way to try and deliver that broadband. You can listen to the Today programme daily from 6-9am and on Saturdays 7-9am.

7Seas Connect is glad to announce the release of its enhanced callback service iCallMe. The new enhanced Callback service offers a new set of features including Speed dialing, balance and minutes announcements and tag on call. 7seas Callback service is a great way to save on international calls for customers traveling overseas or customers living outside of the United States and wish to make international calls for much less. Why use our Callback service? Accessible from any phone: No need to switch or contact your phone service provider. You have the freedom to use our service from any phone you desire at anytime. Minimize your international calling cost: With our low rates and premium quality, you will be paying less for all your international calls, yet enjoying our premium voice quality. Available from anywhere in the world: Whether you are traveling overseas or living outside of the United States, you now have the freedom to call from anywhere to anywhere in the world even if your...

Shortly after the announcement of the iPhone X in September, my colleague Natasha Lomas noted the similarities between the phone and how WebOS operated on the Palm Pre. She ended her article, noting “in the iPhone X it’s clear you’re looking at a little ghost of the Pre.” It seems that Qualcomm’s legal team was taking note; they cited that line in a complaint alleging that Apple ripped off Palm’s patented interface. In the latest escalation of the nearly year-long legal battle, Qualcomm filed three complaints Wednesday in U.S. District Court alleging violations on 16 different Qualcomm patents by Apple, some related to RF transceivers and power-saving measures, some related to multi-touch displays and some related to the innovations of Palm. Why does Qualcomm care about Palm? Well, in 2014 Qualcomm bought a bunch of Palm patents from HP, some apparently related to the company’s design choices for WebOS and the Pre. In the complaint, Qualcom...

Google might fold Nest back into the Google, well, fold. The company is considering integrating Nest, which is a separate company under mutual parent Alphabet at the moment, back into Google’s hardware business. The re-integration, first reported by Wall Street Journal, is a move that Google is considering as a way to help it build out its smart home capabilities vs. Amazon, which is expanding its hardware offerings in that regard. Nest’s lineup works with Google Assistant, but also with Amazon’s Alexa; bringing it back into Google’s core hardware team could help develop better integration with Assistant and the company’s other mobile and networking devices, building a more extensive competitive hedge. Now that Google is developing out its Google hardware business in earnest, it also makes a bunch of sense to bring this together in terms of branding and making sure that consumers are clear about the relationships and advantages inherent in Google’s gr...

Image copyright Ford Image caption Wearable technology helps workers doing repetitive physical tasks If you've watched the Iron Man film franchise, you'll know that a powered suit gives inventor Tony Stark superhuman strength to fight the bad guys. But away from the the fictional world of blockbusting movies, robotic exoskeletons offer more prosaic and useful help for humans. The military has been in on the act for years, using them to help soldiers carry more weight for longer periods of time. Meanwhile manufacturers have been busy creating robotic suits to give mobility to people with disabilities. But now exoskeletons are becoming an important part of the scene in more conventional workplaces, mainly because of their unique offering. "Exoskeletons act as a bridge between fully-manual labour and robotic systems. You get the brains of people in the body of a robot," says Dan Kara, research director at ABI Research. "But there's more to it than th...