mobile apps

McDonald's tests PayPal payments in mobile app trial

McDonald's is testing a new payment system that could allow customers to purchase their meals using mobile devices.

According to Reuters, 30 restaurants in France are involved in the trial, which sees customers' payments processed by eBay's payment arm, PayPal.

The concept was demonstrated at a McDonald's conference in Orlando, Florida, earlier this year as part of a booth featuring technology expected to go live in the next couple of years, Reuters reports.

The participating French restaurants allow customers to order food through their smartphones or tablets, using a McDonald's mobile application, and then pay through … Read more

Flurry launches AppCloud with help from mobile startup Trestle

Venturing out of its typical terrain Flurry announced today that it is launching a collection of cloud services to "empower developers to build better apps faster."

To accomplish this feat, the mobile app analytics company acquired the mobile startup company Trestle (it bought Trestle back in May but didn't announce the acquisition until today). Together they worked to create the data driven app built on cloud infrastructure. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The way AppCloud aims to work is by letting developers put cloud-driven capabilities into their apps, such as user account management, scalable … Read more

AT&T inducts Watson speech recognition for app development

AT&T is looking for help in making its speech recognition software ultra-consumer oriented. The mobile carrier announced today that its Watson Speech application programming interfaces, or API, is now open to developers.

AT&T's Watson, not to be confused with IBM's Watson, is software that the company aims to program to learn different accents, speaker variations, background environments, platform variations, dialects, and speech patterns, according to a company blog post today.

"It's a technology that's been a long time in development and more than 600 patents in the making, and we're … Read more

ACLU app lets Android users secretly tape the police

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has released an Android app designed to be used by people who want to secretly record police activity without running the risk that the mobile device will be seized.

Called Police Tape, the free app allows the user to record video and audio discreetly. For one thing, the app disappears from a phone's screen when the recording begins. For another, it can send a copy of the recording to the ACLU-New Jersey for backup storage and analysis of potential civil liberties violations.

It is similar to the Stop and Frisk Watch app … Read more

Instagram: How to go from zero to $1B in under two years

Co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger started out with a straightforward but ambitious mission when they launched Instagram: "To change and improve the way the world communicates and shares."

And now they have done the unimaginable: Gone from zero to $1 billion in just 18 months, as the startup -- valued just last month at an already fat $500 million -- is selling itself to the powerhouse that Mark Zuckerberg built.

The $1 billion figure and the speed to get there sounds ripped right from the headlines of 1999. And the news is sure to have app makers … Read more

BlackBerry maker touts developer support

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is turning to developers to help it keep its business alive as sales of the once popular smartphone drop sharply.

On Tuesday the company reported that it's been making significant progress in attracting developers to create applications for its BlackBerry Playbook tablet and its upcoming handsets using the BlackBerry 10 software.

In the fiscal fourth quarter of 2011, which it reported last week, the company said that it saw a 21 percent increase in new BlackBerry smartphone apps. And it saw a 240 percent increase in the number of apps created for its Playbook … Read more

EA announces three games ready for the new iPad

After new iPad owners get acquainted with Apple's latest tablet, one of the first things they'll do is head to the iTunes App Store. As more news of Retina-ready apps continues to come in, EA has added its own contribution for those ready to start downloading apps on launch day.… Read more

AllClear ID offers free ID theft mobile app

A Texas company is releasing a free mobile app today that will alert people if their personal data has been stolen and makes it into the hands of criminals.

AllClear ID offers identity fraud protection services to consumers when their data has been exposed by an attack on a corporate database or other compromise. For instance, Sony hired the company to help its 75 million PlayStation Network customers after the system was hacked and their names, addresses, e-mail addresses and other information were exposed last April.

While very few of the data breach incidents actually result in harm to consumers, … Read more

Google reportedly pushing devs to use Google Wallet

Google has been pressuring app developers to use Google Wallet as opposed to alternatives from other companies, according to a Reuters report.

The news service reported today that Google is pushing applications and mobile game developers to use its payment service instead of rivals, such as PayPal, Zong, and Boku, threatening removal the apps from the Android Marketplace as a consequence. On Tuesday, Google rebranded the marketplace, Google Play.

Google, though, says nothing is new. It's always required developers to use its payment processing service, even if some tried to skirt the policy.

Reuters based its report largely on … Read more

Tech firms agree to privacy protections for mobile apps

SAN FRANCISCO--California's Office of the Attorney General has gotten agreements from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, and Research In Motion to improve privacy protections on mobile apps.

The companies will require developers to include privacy policies in their apps so that users will be informed about the data that apps will access, use, and share before they download the apps, California Attorney General Kamal Harris said today in a news conference. The news follows disclosure that some mobile apps were using address book data without user notification or permission.

Basically, California's Online Privacy Protection Act, one of the … Read more