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Amazon adds personalized music stations on iOS

Mar23
by on March 23, 2015 at 7:46 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Amazon
Amazon is looking to become your source for all things streaming media. Its next step is taking its music streaming more seriously – well, at least for iOS users. The company is introducing Prime Stations for iOS with version 4.0 of its Amazon Music app. The feature is what you’d expect: music stations tuned to certain genres and preferences, a la Pandora. The more you use the feature and skip or highlight songs, the more it learns about your tastes. Prime Stations include unlimited skips, and the updated app brings along an improved design for easier browsing, as well as…

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Microsoft releases developer tools for building Windows 10 universal apps

Mar23
by on March 23, 2015 at 7:39 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider

Windows 10
Microsoft has today made available a set of tools that allow developers to get started building apps for the Windows 10 Universal App platform. The company has made available the tools, alongside sample code for universal apps. This means developers can start building apps that work across desktop, tablet, Xbox, embedded and mobile devices using a single codebase. To get started, developers need to be part of the Windows Insider Program and using the latest build, then download Visual Studio 2015 CTP6 and the SDK tools for Windows 10. Windows 10 is due to be released this coming summer, so Microsoft is…

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Stripe launches major API update to help on-demand startups go global

Mar23
by on March 23, 2015 at 7:09 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Insider

Screen Shot 2015-03-24 at 8.04.47 am

Stripe, the payment company that’s quietly building the best way to pay people online, has today launched a major API update to its Connect API. The new API builds on what the company learnt from modern “platform” companies such as Instacart, Shyp and Lyft, that employ many ‘sellers’ to get their work done. Stripe Connect now makes it easier to onboard sellers (think Lyft drivers or Instacart shoppers) for their marketplace and now manages verification of their identity and ensuring they’re compliant with local tax laws. It also makes it much easier to pay those sellers, no matter what country they’re in. Previously,…

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Facebook has open sourced its developer tool for simulating slow networks

Mar23
by on March 23, 2015 at 5:48 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Product Launches, Product Updates

Facebook Expected To File For IPO
Facebook has open sourced Augmented Traffic Control (ATC), the tool it developed to test the performance of apps under different network conditions. It allows engineers to simulate Edge, 2G, 3G and LTE connections to test the performance of apps on networks with varying strengths. ATC was originally developed during an internal Facebook hackathon in 2013. The tool has been used to test products like Messenger for crashes, time outs and download speeds. The code for Augmented Traffic Control is available now on GitHub. ➤ Augmented Traffic Control: A tool to simulate network conditions [via VentureBeat]

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How I hacked India’s biggest startup

Mar23
by on March 23, 2015 at 5:09 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Asia, Hacking, India, Insider, Investigations, Ola

Hacking security
This post originally appeared on Medium. A few weeks ago I was monitoring my phone traffic from a proxy server. While doing that I saw Ola API calls going from my phone (since I was booking a cab). For those who don’t know about Ola, Ola Cabs is the biggest cab provider in India and also biggest competitor of Uber (again in India). It has raised $500 million in funding, and processes 150,000 bookings a day. After seeing those flashing binary data going from my system I forgot my weekend project and started tweaking and reverse engineering Ola’s APIs which eventually…

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