I’m just back from the whirlwind that was Dublin Tech Summit – which you can catch up on in the latest episode of Tech Yurt with myself and Jon. You’ll also hear me jabbering on about how great Web Summit was back in the day and I remember listening in to the founder of Tinder discussing how his dating app was used for “short-term relationships”. Facebook Dating is about to become a reality and Mark Zuckerberg believes this new service from Facebook is going to be more meaningful.
What is Facebook Dating?
Well, Facebook dating is exactly what the name suggests. At their recent F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced the next effort from the social media giant to connect people. Facebook dating kind of makes sense. The platform has a huge number of groups we all know people that creep around Facebook like a CIA agent in what has lovingly become known as ‘Facebook Stalking’. Whether you’re looking for your friend’s friend or that person you matched with on Tinder, Facebook’s wealth of profiles puts them in a unique position for matchmaking.
Zuckerberg highlighted how one in three marriages in the US now start online and that people in the street often thank him for Facebook helping them to start families. He laid it on pretty thick!
There are 200 million people on Facebook that list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here – Zuckerberg
Why Facebook Dating Will Work
I guarantee you, this isn’t a stupid experiment from Facebook that’ll be gone in twelve months. Just think back to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook handles a crazy amount of data on everyone so you can be sure they’ll be as effective as the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival at pairing potential lovers.
The financial world definitely doesn’t think this is a stunt. The arse fell out of Match.com’s share priceafter the announcement indicating there’s real competition a brewin’.
Also, when he announced the idea, Zuckerberg said he was aiming this feature at meaningful connections between potential couples, clearly setting Facebook dating aside from Tinder’s more casual elements.
Obviously predicting the lines being drawn between creepy amounts of data and privacy issues Facebook has experienced lately, Zuckerberg was quick to point out this new ‘Facebook dating’ feature would be designed with privacy in mind. The platform also announced Clear History which will help people delete data various websites collect on their browsing history, suggesting everything that’s happened might just be leaning in the favour of our privacy.
Facebook Dating doesn’t have a launch date yet but expects the new and improved ‘poke’ feature to be coming really soon.
It’s less than a month to go until Ireland takes to the polls to decide whether or not we keep or repeal. The debates are heating up and you might notice that social media is becoming a hotbed of trolls and bots accounts. Thankfully, there’s a service that can clean up your Twitter feed. It’s called, Repeal Shield.
Making Your Time On Social Time Better Spent
Social media can have an incredible impact on your own mental well being. Earlier this year, Facebook implemented some dramatic changes to your newsfeed which aimed to bring you more content from friends and family. The ultimate goal here was to make your time spent on Facebook time better spent. Personally, I do spend quite a bit of time on social, but over the last year, I’ve seen Twitter as being my platform of choice.
I make no secret of my stance on the May Referendum. I’m supporting a Yes vote after weighing up everything and imagining any women I know having to endure travelling to the UK or ordering illegal pills. I also make no secret of my stance on Twitter, publically sharing my own opinion and retweeting other pro-choice content. This might draw the attention of the anti-choice side from time to time, which is fine – healthy debate is a good idea and actually, I welcome the opportunity to share my views. What’s much less enjoyable are the trolls, bots and fake accounts spewing lies and messages of hate to muddy the waters. Fortunately, there’s a team of volunteers who are creating a list to tidy up your Twitter feed and make the platform more enjoyable.
What Is Repeal Shield?
Repeal Shield is a service run by volunteers to improve the experience of Twitter for pro-choice users. Repeal Shield’s own bio on the platform describes them as “blocking blatant, harmful anti-choice misinformation so you don’t have to”. Simply put, Repeal Shield is a list of over 8000 Twitter users who troll pro-choice Twitter users along with bots and fake accounts. The list is built on a service called Block Together where the public can pool their efforts to build similar lists for any range of choices. When you activate Repeal Shield on Block Together, they will link up your Twitter accounts and block these users from appearing in your feeds and from being able to engage with you.
Is Repeal Shield A Good Idea?
A case could be made that Repeal Shield is simply removing people that disagree with you and that this dampens healthy debate. Some anti-choice Twitter users believe pro-choice supporters enabling this service highlights the “insecurity they have in their own viewpoint“. Personally, I decided to enable Repeal Shield after seeing that most of the referendum related replies that negatively affected my own mood on Twitter were coming from accounts that had just been opened or that didn’t even have profile pictures. To me, these are bots and fake accounts negatively impacting my real world mood for no good reason so removing them is a great choice.
If you find yourself in a similar boat, you can get Repeal Shield by heading over to their Twitter account or joining the movement on Block Together.
Repeal the 8th
Finally, I’ve become a little anxious about the men of Ireland not voting – as have Cillian Murphy and Blindboy from the Rubber Bandits. I know the slight majority of our readers are male so I want to take this chance to encourage everyone to make sure you are registered to vote and that you’ve made plans to vote on 25 May. You can visit Check the Register to see if you’re registered to vote. If that shows you’re not, like it did for me, give your local office a call to double check. Also if you want to move your vote, here are the forms you need.
It’s no secret that there is a serious mental health problem in Ireland, particularly in Limerick where my fellow Goose, Jon, and I hail from. The main issue with mental health is that a lot of people aren’t willing to speak about it. Some people don’t want to burden their friends and family with their problems. They don’t want to be a downer. They are afraid to show weakness. All of which are false. However, as this is still the case with a lot of people who suffer from mental health, a team of innovative students from Trinity College Dublin have created an app called ‘Keep Appy’ where people can not only log their fitness and diet, but also their mental health. We recently caught up with Aimee from Keep Appy at the recent Dublin Tech Summit who gave us the low-down.
What is Keep Appy?
Keep Appy is an incredible app that acts as a diary for those suffering from mental health. Each day you are asked things like how much sleep did you get, did you exercise today, how is your mood ect. By answering these questions the app with provide you with a range of content to help turn that frown upside down. Whether it’s inspirational quotes, YouTube videos, informative articles or just a simple challenge, the app is designed to help the user understand their mental health better and provide them with the tools to grow.
The app will also give the users challenges to accomplish, each of which are proven to improve mental health. It could be anything from starting a conversation with a stranger, drinking a litre of water a day to simply getting 7 hours of sleep. These challenges are aimed to be stress relievers and to make you feel better physically and mentally.
Create Your Own Goals
Along with their challenges, Keep Appy also allows you to set your own personal goals. If you want to hit a new target in the gym or walk for an extra 10 minutes, even cook a good meal, it’s completely up to you. Keep Appy also has a diary where you can log how your day has been and what positive or negative things happened that resulted in a good or bad day.
If you do have a bad day, you can look back on your progress and diary and see what you did on positive days that made you feel so good about yourself in the hopes of building positive habits to gradually improve your health, physically and mentally.
The important thing to take away from this app is that it is not a replacement for human interaction. If you are feeling low, talk to someone. If you still don’t want to talk to people you know but you need to talk, there is a link within the app to contact the Samaritans and Niteline. This is the amazing thing about Keep Appy. They are not trying to replace these helplines with their app, it’s just a alternative when you don’t feel like talking, and when you do you can get in contact with the right people within the app itself.
The Next Steps
The app is so innovative and groundbreaking that they have been nominated for an Global Social Innovator Challenge (GSIC) award in San Diego, California. If the Irish team manage to win, they will receive further funding to develop the app and help people suffering from mental illness in the future.
It’s important to note that you don’t need to be suffering from mental health problems to use the app. Myself and Jon have both began using it to set ourselves daily and weekly goals, mainly exercise and sleep more. Hopefully this will lead to some success! Success leads to endorphins. And endorphins is what make us happy! And who doesn’t like being happy?!
This is definitely one company to keep an eye out for, we know we will be!
Keep Appy is available on iOS and Android now.
*We here at Goosed take mental health very seriously, we recently took all gambling related articles off out site.If anyone is suffering from depression or having issues with mental health in general always remember you can talk to someone. Contact the Samaritans on 01 671 0071 and you can visit Niteline here where they do great work for students in particular.*
You might know that the Goosed team recently attended the Dublin Tech Summit. It was actually great craic, some great Dublin weather meant the beer garden was mandatory and while that was fun we had more craic wandering the halls of the convention center and chatting with some of the next generation of game changing technology. One of these amazing products that grabbed our attention was Chris, a digital assistant in your car which will make using the phone while driving will become a thing of the past.
Who is this Chris chap?
Chris is a new product which has recently launched on Kickstarter.
Chris looks something like a sat-nav device which mounts on your windscreen and works as an alternative smartphone interface designed to keep your phone out of your hands in the car. We recently caught up with Daniel Meives the head of marketing for this company who gave us the low down on this interesting new product.
With nothing but a phone mount and a Bluetooth connection, Chris gives your smartphone hands-free navigation, music playback and phone calls in your car. He will listen and talk to you just like a friend, controlling your apps and road music so you don’t try too.
The team behind Chris call it a digital driving assistant that works as a secondary interface for your phone designed specifically for driving safety. The graphics on screen are intentionally simple and the interface is controlled through voice and hand gestures instead of touch functionality so you’re hands never need to leave the wheel.
While the tech in Chris is impressive, the set up is incredibly simple. Stick the device to your windshield with the suction cup, plug it into the lighter port to charge and connect via Bluetooth. It’s that simple!
With this offline connection, the driving assistant will run it’s app for navigation, messaging and music playback. The app, through Chris, can warn you of traffic on the road ahead, give turn-by-turn directions and read out short emails or text messages. Chris even has some inbuilt AI which makes it aware of your surroundings. For instance, the device will not alert you of a message until you have finished merging onto a motorway or if you are reversing out of a parking spot. They have create Chris to behave like a passenger, who knows when to shut up while you need to fully concentrate on driving.
How does it work?
It’s actually very simple, Chris works pretty much like Alexa or Siri doing natural language voice processing through your phone’s data connection. The main difference between the driving assistant and a general voice assistant is simple, Chris focuses on driving tasks.
Through a series of infrared sensors you can control Chris through a series of hand gestures. Just wave your hand left in front of the display to reject a call and right to receive. Imagine a country road, every auld fella will think you’re waving to him when really you just want to answer a phone call. The driving assistant also includes four microphones to more accurately understand voice inputs.
The lads involved told us we should be seeing this in Ireland by September this year, hopefully we can get hold of one for a road test review before then to give you the true user experience. The price that is currently being quoted is €299 which isn’t considering the penalty for using a phone in the car is currently up to €1,000 and 3 penalty points. However, if that’s to rich for your blood go over and have a look at their Kickstarter program which includes pricing ranging from €170 to €215. To be honest this is one of the products that really grabbed our attention, if it stops one person using their phone while driving and makes the roads safer, then it’s worth the investment.
When I start writing articles, I do a little digging around online to see what people are searching for on Google. You see, I want to make sure you’re actually able to find this article but it can be hard sometimes. This article is about a red wine scanner, but people are looking for “the best red wine in Ireland” and “Tesco wine 6 for €50”. This would suggest there are some differences out there when it comes to what’s a priority when choosing a wine. But if it’s quality rather than quantity you’re after, MyOeno is the gadget for you.
Understanding Red Wine Characteristics
You’ll no doubt have heard wine specialists and your friend that’s a bit of a gobshite talking about the nose and body of red wines. For the regular red wine drinker, this can be harder to identify and remember after finding a bottle you really like. That’s why MyOeno was created.
MyOeno is a neat little gadget that you pop into your glass of red wine. This little silver wonder is like having your own pocket-sized wine sommelier. Once you pop the device into your wine, it runs an analysis and then gives you three key red wine traits:
strength
acidity
tannins
You don’t really need to fully understand what these characteristics mean and the MyOeno service is designed to help you navigate the wine aisles and cellars.
Finding Red Wine You Like
After you’ve run your red wine analysis using MyOeno and have identified your three key characteristics, you can provide some additonal information. A quick scan of the label will update the MyOeno network, adding the wine if it’s not already there. Thanks to this system, the network is already rich in knowledge with tests run on thousands of red wines from around the world.
Users can also identify flavours and aromas that they think they’ve noticed and share these with the network too, with the MyOeno app building a taste profile to match your tastes.
MyOeno: The Verdict
I personally love a good gadget that makes me look smarter than I am and I’m more than happy to trust the opinions of thousands over my own. That’s why I love Vivino – an app that lets you scan labels to check for value and popularity. Right now, Vivino is probably still my weapon of choice because you don’t need an extra gadget to access a massive wealth of knowledge on all those wines available in your local Tesco or Lidl.
MyOeno has thousands of wines, but it doesn’t have many of the ones I went looking for – granted, I’m a completely uncultured mess of a man.
With all that said, MyOeno is an incredible gadget for wine lovers and at €99 could be one of the coolest gift ideas on the market for that wine wanker in your life. In a few years, I could see the app being much tidier and offering an even wider range of accessible wines. The company also has plans to dabble in other beverages, the most exciting of which for me would be whiskey or brandy, confirmed to be coming down the line when I met Bastien at Dublin Tech Summit. When that happens, it’s likely any home with a bottle opener will also have a MyOeno.
You can pick up the MyOeno on their website for €99 or save a few bob and buy it from Amazon. You’ll get free delivery to Ireland and all.
So, would you lob a MyOeno into your glass of wine? Let us know in the comments below.
As you may have noticed the Goosed.ie team recently attended the Dublin Tech Summit. It was a great couple of days with some fantastic companies showing off their products. One such company we stumbled upon was Mingo, an Irish start up with a mental set-up. Put it like this, imagine an app that only keeps all of your messaging services together in the one place but which also allows us to invest in and pay with their very own dedicated cryptocurrency. Well that’s basically what Mingo is, in this article we will show you how Mingo can help you start your own crypto journey while also merging all your messaging apps into one easy to use platform. Oh and there is one very mysterious shareholder, give it a guess we bet you will be wrong. The answer is below….somewhere.
Mingo at a glance
The fact that this is an Irish company that is going to have a cryptocurrency was more than enough to have us popping our heads up like a pack of wild meerkats. However, while crypto is one of the biggest buzz words in the tech industry at the moment it’s when you find out what Mingo do that really sets this company apart.
So Mingo as we may have mentioned is a new merged platform instant messaging app with added crypto features and their company motto is “making communication simple”, which is exactly what they do. Essentially Mingo will act similar to a messaging app like any other but doubles up as a crypto wallet that you can use to store MingoCoin which you can use to pay for goods and services. Now if you don’t know much about how cryptocurrency works you can check out our “How to get started with cryptocurrency guide”.
How Does Mingo Work?
The messenger part of the app is the real bread and butter for this company and will probably be the strongest part of their service offering as the progress. Not only does Mingo have ts own messenger platform, but it can be used as a way to centralize all your other messenger platforms in a single app. Currently the list of available apps is as follows:
WeChat
Telegram
Twitter
Steam
Facebook
Discord
Slack
The chat has a simple user interface and it is fully compatible with the most popular messenger services, except Skype and WhatsApp which will be getting added in the near future.
What is a MingoCoin?
The roller coaster ride that is cryptocurrency is the other half of Mingo. MingoCoin is a Ethereum-based token which will be used as currency authenticated merchants, this ensures that you are buying products that have quality and will not be scammed in any way. Clever, considering how hyper vigilant the world has become in the last month around online payments.
As a result of this purchasing platform the Mingo app actually doubles up as a cryptocurrency wallet on your smartphone. The tokens will not be mineable, so you have to buy them to use them or watch some ads in return for tokens.
The Goosed Verdict
Mingo is a software which can be extremely useful for people who love to chat. It can be a pain to organize your apps, so Mingo seems like the best shot for these users. It does not look like it has a very strong cryptocurrency, though, but the app is certainly interesting enough on its own.
If you are anything like us you and you’re using a plethora of different messaging services, Mingo could be the solution. It’s a software that has been designed to be as simple as possible. We were told at the event that WhatsApp will be the next platform added to the ever growing list so watch this space. To be honest the crypto side of things might or might not work out but it’s a cool idea and if people get behind an Irish company doing something different then who knows.
Seriously it is none other than Mullingars darling and ex One Direction member, Niall Horan! Who would have guessed that. He’s actually been has been involved in MingoMessenger from the beginning and is a shareholder in the company. His role in the company will be as Brand Ambassador, providing exclusive content and offers which can be monetized appropriately. Any other information about his involvement is being limited to just the investor community to avoid prematurely on-boarding MingoMessenger users from his followers and ensure that their first experience is a strong and stable experience. We actually think this is rather interesting and to be applauded as rather than ride the wave of his fame, Mingo want the app to work for itself. Let’s hope it works out for them.
After an impressive launch year in 2017, Dublin Tech Summit returns for 2018; and it’s bigger than ever. You can check out the wide range of talks and the great speakers on show through the Dublin Tech Summit website. As you can see, the Summit is great for businesses looking to peek into the future, but if you’re looking for some talks that’ll appeal to your consumer side, here are five to look out for.
The Future of Global Travel
Have you used Airbnb yet? I used it last year for the first time. It’s an incredible service that lets you rent the home of a complete stranger when you’re travelling. You might have heard people using the term ‘disruptive tech’ and Airbnb is the perfect example of this. Disruptive tech is a new way of doing things that completely change a long-standing norm. Remember there used to be taxi offices for phoning cabs? Well, now we have MyTaxi. Over the UK, Uber lets the general public replace taxis altogether. And hotels? Well, they’re making way for Airbnb.
These are all examples of disruptive tech. Travel is going to change massively in the coming years from digital passports to Elon Musk’s Hyperloop. Aisling Hassell, Airbnb’s Global Head of Customer Experience will take to the INNOVATIONxTECH stage at 10am Wednesday.
VISA and Payments Innovation
I’ve been blown away by how payments have changed in just a few short years. Laser cards used to be a real thing and at the time were somewhat groundbreaking. Now, they’re a distant memory as we tap cards, shop online and even use our smartphones and smartwatches to pay for stuff. The EU is chugging along with the creation of a Digital Single Market and paving the way for new technology to help how we buy stuff and pay bills with PSD2 being one of the first examples.
Paul Walsh from VISA will be on the INNOVATIONxTECH stage at 12.10pm on Wednesday to show what VISA has in the pipeline.
Banking in 2028: The State of the Industry
You’d be forgiven for thinking Goosed is turning into a finance news site lately, but it’s really because consumer technology and banking are enjoying a great run right now. Traditional banks are under fire from modern alternatives. Just like travel, disruptive tech is rampant in banking. I ran through Irish banks recently and showed just how diverse the landscape is with banks ranging from offering very little innovation to completely modern online banks.
This talk takes place on the FUTURExTECH stage at 3.30pm on Wednesday and brings leaders from companies who are really challenging norms in the banking sector. Check this talk out to see how the banking frustrations of 2018 will be the Laser cards of 2028.
Policing the Web: Who’s Responsibility Should It Be?
The latest season of Silicon Valley is all about the Pied Piper guys building a ‘new internet’. It’s a cool thought. Will everything that’s gone on in recent years, we’ve learned so much. Should we start over with the internet we’d definitely have done it differently and better. Unfortunately, that’ll never happen, so what do we do with the internet we have? Chances are we police it.
Who should be in control of the internet? Governments have proven to be an unpopular choice for this task given the example of China where Google and Facebook are forbidden. Should the government have that kind of control? If not, then who should? On the surface, you might not think this to be the most consumer-friendly talk in the world, but everyone really needs to start paying attention to the online world and how we’re positioned within it.
This talk, kicking off at 10.55am on Thursday over at the FUTURExTECH stage should provide a great insight into what lies ahead for online regulation.
Voice Control and Audio Recognition
Desktop computers used to be all the rage. We’d book flights on them, browse the web either shopping or just wasting time and managed things like the music on our iPods using iTunes. That life is not so long ago, yet the smartphone has replaced nearly all of this craic leaving our dependency on desktop computing as a distant memory. Would you believe the days of the smartphone might already be numbered too?
Voice has been touted as the next major change in how with interact with technology. Desktop was keyboard. Mobile is touchscreen. The future will be voice control. This talk should give you an idea how what this revolution looks like and kicks off over on the MUSICxTECH stage on Thursday at 4.35pm. I’m not entirely sure what the following talk is on the same stage, but they definitely win the award for best title with “Audio Recognition: Voice Control to Major Tom”.
We’ll be covering the two days of Dublin Tech Summit which also features the one and only Casey Neistat. We didn’t include him in this list because he’s talking about brands connecting with people and stuff but it should be really interesting nonetheless. The real win is if you go check out Casey’s YouTube page where he’s making simply incredible videos.
Dublin Tech Summit takes place on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest craic, live from the conference centre.
You can be sure that governments, banks, tech companies and anyone else who stores anything of value are spending big in order to protect their assets. But let’s be honest, which of these is really likely to affect you personally?Which of these is going to take cash out of your pocket or funds from your accounts? Really, what we are looking at here is your financial data. How do the bad guys get their hands on it, what can they do with it and what can you do to protect yourself? Let’s start by looking at “card not present” fraud.
What is Card Not Present Fraud?
By a long way, the biggest type of fraud being carried out against the individual is what is called “card not present” fraud. Even with the wealth of payment methods we have at our disposal these days, the good old card fraud is unfortunately popular. This basically means that somebody has gotten their hands on your credit or debit card details and is using them to buy stuff over the phone or online. Scammers are selling card details to each other for dollars right now, depending on how recently they have been sourced. There is a sliding scale of cost depending on age and quality, a new number with the PIN, name and address, CVV etc. will command more than just a number that’s been out there for a few days.
So how are the fraudsters getting your details in the first place? There are lots and lots of ways, many of which we could be doing more to prevent. They range from the incredibly sophisticated to the incredibly simple. In some cases, we don’t know that our details are being taken at all, in others we are unwittingly handing them over. It may be through our reliance on our online devices or it may be our simple naivety. I don’t intend to call them all out here (we would both be here far too long for that) but I will mention one or two.
How Fraudsters Get Your Details: Viruses and Malware
One source that will spring to most minds is through a virus or malware on a PC which is used for online shopping. Someone buys something on Amazon or eBay or wherever and some malicious piece of code picks up the details and sends them off to a scammer, who immediately uses them to buy loads of stuff for themselves. Well yes, but it is often a little more complex than that. Some of the malware that is out there is built to be so much smarter.
For example, there are variants of the ZeuS Trojan virus that are particularly nasty. They will obviously steal your card details but they will also hang around until you log into your online banking. They will steal your login details, but they will also mask any fraudulent transactions that have been carried out on your account, so when you log in you just don’t see them and your balance is altered to be what you would expect. This means that detection can take much longer and so the cards remain active for the fraudster. And it’s not just PC’s that are vulnerable, Android phones and tablets are also widely targeted. The restrictions placed by Apple make their devices significantly more secure but never say never!
How Fraudsters Get Your Details: Phishing, Smishing, Vishing
Of course, if you are reading this, you are probably up to speed enough to never be caught out by Phishing, Smishing, Vishing and the likes. These are all variants of the same thing, fraudsters acting like someone you can trust and asking for your bank or card details.
Phishing: fraudulent attempts to get your details through email, instant messaging etc.
Smishing: fraudulent attempts to get your details through SMS messages
Vishing: fraudulent attempts to get your details through a phone call
These are still very prevalent for two simple reasons. Firstly, they are very cheap to operate and secondly, they still work! It may be hard to believe but so many people still fall for this kind of scam. In fairness, the fraudsters are smart. They can be hugely convincing and there is usually some form of implied threat included like ‘you won’t be able to access your funds unless you answer’ or ‘your laptop will be disabled’.
Ransomware is not a million miles from this, but with ransomware, the threat has usually already been acted upon and you are paying to get it removed.
Fraudsters will also play on your over-confidence. There are cases of fraudsters sending out numerous phishing emails that are obviously bad so the victim thinks that they know what a phishing mail looks like. They then send out one which looks perfect. It’ll have the right logo, be carefully crafted sentences with no spelling mistakes, use the correct tone and voice etc. All of this leads to the victim thinking that it must be real. They may also phone claiming to be from your bank saying that they are aware of fraudulent calls and wanting make sure that you have not been compromised. Sneaky, but very easy to fall for.
How Fraudsters Get Your Details: Card Skimming
Then there is the physical card itself. Card skimming is certainly an issue, both at ATMs and in store. Recently many banks have updated their ATM’s to make it much more difficult to attach skimming devices; you may have seen the machines with the round flashing green card slot. It wasn’t long before the fraudsters adapted. Many of you will have seen the below video from Vienna, but maybe you haven’t seen the photograph. It’s happening here as well.
Image credit: bedharak / Flickr, ASSOCIATED PRESS, Shutterstock / Oliver Hoffmann, Brian Krebs / krebsecurity.com
Using our cards in-store can also bring a share of risk. You may remember how one of the country’s largest retailers unknowingly allowed fraudsters to alter the point of sale machines in one of its largest branches to capture and send customer data. The fraudsters disguised themselves as service agents looking to check the machines, but instead, they fitted card readers along with SMS capabilities so the card details were sent to the scammers in real time. This was an extremely rare example, what is more, usual is a rogue person who is working at a till holding your card over a hidden camera, or attaching a second card reader to the genuine one.
So basically whatever you do, there are bad guys out there trying to get your hard-earned cash. So what can you do about it? Well, it’s mostly common sense but there are some very simple things that you could and should be doing to protect yourself. I don’t want to come across all preachy, but these really are simple and no one will look after your own data, money and cybersecurity better than yourself.
Protect Yourself From Payment Fraudsters
Cover Your Hand
When using an ATM or a card machine in a shop, cover your hand when you are entering your PIN. The value of your card number is massively reduced if the bad guys don’t have your PIN as well. That’s why you often see the handguards broken off ATMs. Hidden cameras or shoulder surfers may be trying to see what you are entering, so don’t let them!
Physically Protect Your Card
The technology that lets you tap your card is called RFID. Some scammers have RFID readers and can run this alongside your bag or pocket, nabbing details. Some banks are wise to this and offer RFID protection sleeves. If you don’t have that option, pick yourself up a Secrid Wallet. These protect your card and looks lovely to boot.
Never Let Your Card Leave Your Hand
When you are buying stuff in a shop and especially in pubs, don’t hand over your card. The point of sale machine should be accessible for you to either tap or put your card into. There is no reason to give it to the person working in the shop to do it for you. Go on, imagine the last time you handed over your card for a few pints and the barman vanished for a few minutes.
Use Google Pay or Apple Pay
Ok, so you’d expect members of team Goosed to be biased towards tech, but both Google Pay and Apple Pay have added protection for shoppers. When you tap your phone, the payment app cloaks your actual card number with a virtual number. If someone is on the lookout for your card number, the one they get will be useless.
Also, store assistants and bartenders are a lot less likely to grab phones than they are cards. Which brings me to my next point…
Seriously, It’s Your Card: Stop Being So Polite
It’s not easy for us but stop being so polite. We often don’t want to seem rude by asking to shop assistant to give the point of sale machine to us. Or even worse, we don’t want them to think that we don’t trust them, so we openly enter the PIN in front of them. They would do it themselves so deep down they’ll understand.
Could You Be Talking To A Fraudster?
Unless you have instigated the conversation and know who you are talking to, don’t give anyone your passwords or login details. Simple as. If someone contacts you and asks for your details, just say no. If you think that it might be genuine, you are wrong. If they insist, ask them to put it in writing (a proper written letter) to the address that they should have on file for you. Then hang up, go and find the number for their complaints department and tell them about the poor business standards.
Use Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware Software
What we have all been told since we started using computers. Use anti-virus and anti-malware software and keep it up to date. It’s not a guarantee but it will certainly help. It is also in your terms and conditions of use for online and mobile banking, so if you do suffer fraud because your software was not effective, you may not have any come back.
If you’re on the lookout for some free options, both AVG and Avast offer free anti-virus protection that will suit most users. Malwarebytes is another critical piece of software with a really effective free tier that’ll both protect you from malicious software and help your remove existing gunk on your laptop.
The bottom line is that fraud is here to stay. Scammers will continue to try and find ways to get at our money. They will always be one step ahead and they only need to be successful once. We will always be playing catch up and we need to stop them every time. At the same time, there is no reason for us to make it easy for them. Noone cares about protecting your money and data more than you do, so take a few simply steps and make yourself a moving target for fraudsters.
I really enjoy cooking. I used to be a super fussy eater and compared to many, I still am. But cooking opens up a world of foods to me. When you put in the effort to cook things, tasting it as you go and investing time in the creation of a meal, you’re much more likely to actually eat it or taste new things. There’s one other problem though. I said I really enjoy cooking but I never said anything about being good at cooking. I tend to fall apart following some of the simplest recipes, so naturally, I assumed there’s some sort of gadget out there to help with this problem. This is my review of the Drop Kitchen Scale.
What is Drop?
I almost never wait this long to nationality drop but, this incredible gadget is Irish born and bred. In a strange turn of events, perfectly demonstrating just how local they are, I was delighted to hear that one of the judging teams at a recent Story Slam in Dublin was, in fact, the Drop team. While interesting, I digress.
So Drop is an Irish startup, but what the hell do they do? Well, it’s actually quite simple. Nearly every home has a kitchen scale. You put a bowl on top, measure in ingredients using a black and white display to tell you how much you’re adding before cooking away to your heart’s content. Generally speaking, you’re either following a recipe in your head or something you’ve found online or in a book.
The Drop Kitchen Scale works in a similar manner. You put a bowl or plate on top to hold your ingredients, but then things get a little cooler. There’s no display built into the Drop Scale, instead, the red device connects to your iPhone, iPad or Android device. With the Drop Recipes app, you connect to the scales and can see the weight or volume of the ingredient you’re dealing with.
Then it gets even cooler!
The Drop Recipes app, as you might expect, has recipes programmed into it. When you select the meal you want to make, simply pick it and Drop will hold your hand as you go. So if the recipe asks for 100 grams of butter, the scales will show you how much you’re adding and once you hit 100 grams it’ll move on, prompting you to get the next ingredient ready.
Drop Review: Cooking With Drop for the First Time
Ok, so on paper, the Drop Kitchen Scale is awesome but is it actually any good? Like I said earlier, I enjoy cooking and trying new ingredients. I’m often compelled to rummage around some of Dublin’s more hipster food stores like Dunnes Rathmines (seriously) or Fallon and Byrne. After a quick rummage, I decided to head home and make some mussels. Now, I’ve made mussels once before and couldn’t for the life of me remember what recipe I used. Then it occurred to me; that Drop scales I bought before Christmas still hasn’t had any use.
What’s For Dinner?
I opened up the Drop Recipes app and searched for mussels. I was a little disappointed to see only one option there, but still – the ingredients sounded tasty enough. I wandered around Dunners picking up everything I needed to get cooking and headed home.
Getting Started With The Drop Scale
Drop works with both Android and Apple devices but to be completely honest, Android isn’t quite as good as Apple just yet. For example, Android recipes don’t progress automatically though the company did tell me that this is a feature they hope to roll out in 2018. Regardless, I hooked up my Drop to an old iPhone 5c and got cooking.
The First Snag
It didn’t take long to find a snag. I had bought a massive bag of mussels; twice the weight of the recipe. This is honestly one of the coolest features of Drop. As you start the recipe it asks how many people you are trying to feed with your meal. I bumped the number of mouths from two to three and suddenly I had the perfect amount of mussels. Better still, the app automatically adjusted all the ingredients to match the bigger portions. That’s incredibly smart.
Nobody’s Perfect
As I worked my way through the recipe, I couldn’t believe how simple it was making the process. Sure, because there’s a Drop Creator process which means anyone can submit recipes, some of the instructions might not be perfect or be open to interpretation. For example, it would be nice to get the heads up for head the pan with butter a couple of steps before you need it. That’s me really nitpicking and to be fair, it’s not Drop’s fault a Drop Creator submitted a recipe that was only slightly short of perfect.
With that absolute first world problem aside, the whole process of cooking with Drop is incredibly straightforward. Another fantastic feature is how Drop doesn’t care if is solids or liquids your mixing. I was lobbing butter and chopped shallots into a bowl one minute and pouring double cream all over wine in the next. The smart kitchen scale tracked it all, letting me know when the perfect amount was poured before telling me what was next on the menu.
The Perfect Ingredients Make the Perfect Recipe
This has to be one of my favourite reviews of all time. I’m usually reviewing something that’s pure tech related, you know? Like a smartphone or something. Kitchen scales and cooking are far from being my forte so this was a very genuine review of someone with little clue trying out something for the first time, and boy was I impressed with Drop.
As a startup, I can’t help but feel they might be stretched a bit, but Drop are far from lacking in support. They’ve been in the official Apple store online for quite some time and recently announced a partnership with Kenwood, a huge kitchen appliance manufacturer. They will now integrate Drop’s technology into their kCook Multi Smart food processor.
Drop is clearly a plucky Irish company leading the way in connected kitchen technology. You might not have heard of them before now, but I assure you; Drop will be in every kitchen before long whether you know they’re there or not.
Oh and here. Would you look at the dish I ended up making – it was only bleedin’ delish man.
It’s finally here, Sony’s long awaited PlayStation Now has finally launched in Ireland. Dubbed the “Netflix of gaming”, the service has over 500 games that are available to play on a range of devices, all for a simple monthly subscription. Previously we mentioned some of our favourite retro PlayStation games and now we can get them all in one place….on our PS4 or PC whenever we want..praise the lord hallelujah.
So what is PlayStation Now?
Sony’s PlayStation Now is essentially the gaming equivalent to Netflix. PSNow hints at a future beyond purchasing video game consoles to get the latest releases. It’s a subscription based service that makes playing all your favourite hits from years gone just as easy as watching television shows on Netflix.
Initially PlayStation Now was created as a way for PS4 gamers to play old PS3 games without the need for the old console. The system basically works by connecting to a ghost PS3 within Sony’s network, that way when playing a game you’re not doing it on the piece of hardware in your living room. Technically. Your PS4 is simply providing video and controller input, if you’ve ever streamed music or watched video online; the premise is pretty much the same. The content – in this case, the game – isn’t on your smartphone, tablet or video game console. It’s on a server somewhere. You’re just renting access to it.
With PlayStation Now you will even be able to play both single and multiplayer games. Your saved data is even stored on the server, so regardless of whether its a PC or PS4 you connect to you can just pick up exactly where you left off. Oh and you still get trophies, just like any game you buy online or through a shop.
What games can you play?
The list of games is actually pretty impressive. Thanks to the Netflix styled model, PlayStation Now allows gamers to pay a monthly subscription in order to access a library of over 500 PlayStation 3 or PS4 games on their PlayStation consoles or a compatible PC.
The catalogue of games includes some proper heavy hitters like Red Dead Redemption, Batman: Arkham City (great game by the way) as well as PlayStation exclusives like God of War and The Uncharted series. You can even get some classics like Street Fighter!
Similar to Netflix, the games are not downloaded to the PS4 or PC, but are instead streamed over the internet. This way there is now installing updates, patches or better yet, no waiting for your game to download. Just plug and play, the way gaming was always meant to be done. Better yet, game progress is saved online, so you can start playing on your PC and then switch to your PS4 or back again and just pick up where you left off. A full list of titles is available on the PlayStation Now website. New games are added at regular intervals to keep the service fresh.
How much does it cost?
For a service that has over 500 games at your fingertips, PlayStation Now is available for the relatively decent price of €14.99 a month. Just think about it, a standard PlayStation game costs about €69.99 for a game you will complete in a couple of weeks. So for a small monthly price you get an awful lot more bang for your buck, plus the list of games is pretty cool.
You can also sign up for a free 7 day trial, which should give you enough time to get well and truly hooked. The 7 day trial will give you access to the full catalogue, just be aware this trial automatically renews into a monthly subscription at the end of the trial period. Similar to your PlayStation Plus subscription you need to link a credit card or your PayPal account when you sign up for a trial so that it can automatically renew. However you can cancel your subscription at anytime you wish, so if you think PlayStation Now isn’t for you make sure you cancel at least 24 hours before your wallet gets charged.
What you need to get started
Thankfully Sony have made it easy to get started. Simply turn on the PlayStation, find the PlayStation Now icon and off you pop.
Well that is pretty much it. You will also need a steady broadband connection with a minimum speed requirement of 5Mbps. You will also need an adult PSN account (so the kids don’t get access to unwanted information), an acceptable payment method and a DualShock controller.
Getting started with PlayStation Now is incredibly simple, and you can use it on your PC of PS4.
If you’re into gaming at all we highly recommend giving the 7 day free trial a blast, if nothing else there is something nice about playing Saints Row or Street Fighter all over again!
