• Security flaw in Grindr exposed locations to third-party service

    Security flaw in Grindr exposed locations to third-party service

    Users of Grindr, the popular dating app for gay men, may have been broadcasting their location despite having disabled that particular feature. Two security flaws allowed for discovery of location data against a user’s will, though they take a bit of doing. The first of the flaws, which were discovered by Trever Faden and reported…

  • Hide 3D paintings anywhere with AR app Artopia

    Hide 3D paintings anywhere with AR app Artopia

    Public places may soon be filled with secret pieces of art unlocked by looking through the lens of AR, if Artopia’s cheerily creative app catches on. It essentially lets you geocache your 3D scribbles so anyone else can find, appreciate and share them. Artopia, currently in beta for Android and iOS, is a straightforward combination…

  • ARKit-only apps top 13 million installs, nearly half from games

    ARKit-only apps top 13 million installs, nearly half from games

    Over 13 million augmented reality apps built using Apple’s ARKit have been downloaded since the release of iOS 11 on September 19, 2017, according to new data from app intelligence firm, Sensor Tower, which took a look at the state of the AR app ecosystem, now that it’s had time to become more established. It…

  • Facebook makes its privacy, data downloading and deletion settings easier to find

    Facebook makes its privacy, data downloading and deletion settings easier to find

    With Facebook facing a wave of public backlash over how it has handled user data over the years — a backlash that was kicked off two weeks ago with the revelation that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had worked on targeted election campaigns using personal and private Facebook data — the company today announced a…

  • Google Maps gets support for 39 new languages

    Google Maps gets support for 39 new languages

    Google today announced that Google Maps is getting support for 39 additional languages. The newly supported languages are Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bosnian, Burmese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Georgian, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Kazakh, Khmer, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek,…

  • Google Play Movies & TV becomes a one-stop shop for nearly everything that streams

    Google Play Movies & TV becomes a one-stop shop for nearly everything that streams

    With the explosion of streaming services now available, it’s becoming more difficult to figure out not just what movie or TV show to watch next, but where you can actually watch it. Google today is rolling out its solution to this problem with a significant revamp of its Google Play Movies & TV app and…

  • Apple’s learn-to-code app Swift Playgrounds adds AR lessons

    Apple’s learn-to-code app Swift Playgrounds adds AR lessons

    Amid a flurry of educational-related announcements at Apple’s press event this morning, the company also unveiled a new feature in its learn-to-code app Swift Playgrounds, that will help teach a younger generation of iOS developers how to build AR-enabled apps. Apple has been heavily pushing augmented reality and its ARKit for developers, as the technology…

  • Huawei’s P20 is a shiny, extravagant phone

    Huawei’s P20 is a shiny, extravagant phone

    Huawei just unveiled its brand new flagship phone — the P20. It’s a solid, well-designed Android phone with a shiny design, an iPhone X-like notch and some extravagant features, such as not one, not two but three cameras on the back of the P20 Pro. I played with the phone for a few minutes yesterday,…

  • Facebook fights creeps and apathy with expiring friend requests

    Facebook fights creeps and apathy with expiring friend requests

    Snapchat has ephemeral messages, and now Facebook has ephemeral friend requests. The big blue social network feeds off your social graph, and every time you expand it, it has more content to show you. But if you leave a questionable friend request in limbo for too long, you’ll probably never confirm or delete it. So Facebook…

  • London proposes stricter vetting for ride-hailing drivers

    London proposes stricter vetting for ride-hailing drivers

    London’s transport regulator is asking for public views on a series of new proposals aimed at boosting the safety of private hire vehicles (PHVs), such as cars served via ride-hailing platforms like Uber. Among the measures Transport for London (TfL) is considering are: Enhanced background checks for private hire drivers — with a proposal to…