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Microsoft is now letting millions of students worldwide check for free Office eligibility

Feb23
by on February 23, 2015 at 7:11 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

Office 365
Back in September, Microsoft announced a program that let students at US schools see if they were eligible for a free Office 365 license. Students and teachers outside the US can now take advantage of the streamlined process as well. Microsoft says that millions of students around the world qualify for free Office subscriptions. Eligible students simply need a school email address in order to complete the sign up. Interested students can check their eligibility on Microsoft’s Office 365 page. Teachers have their own page as well. Although these students were technically already qualified for Office, they would have to go through a lengthy process…

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These are Apple’s new, diverse emoji

Feb23
by on February 23, 2015 at 7:02 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Apple has today delivered a new beta of OS X to developers that comes with a major new feature: diverse emoji. A tipster sent in these screenshots of the new emoji palette found in OS X 10.10.3. You can now click and hold on any emoji to change the skin tone. The same emoji are appearing in iOS 8.3 beta 2 as well. @ispazio nuove emoji iOS 8.3 b2 pic.twitter.com/dgNhJrwwov — Andrea Luppichini (@AndLup) February 23, 2015 There’s a ton of new family emojis for every situation. Any emoji in the “people” set that looks like a human can be changed…

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Google buys Softcard technology to improve Wallet, will pre-install it on new US Android devices

Feb23
by on February 23, 2015 at 5:35 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Google, Insider

Screen Shot 2015-02-23 at 17.26.46
Google has announced a deal with Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T to pre-install Google Wallet on all of their Android devices in the US from later this year. As part of the agreement, it’s buying technology from Softcard, the mobile payments app owned by the three carriers. There had been rumors that Google was teeing up to buy Softcard – which previously went under the now-unfortunate name of ISIS – but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Instead, it’s gobbling up some of the company’s intellectual property, which it says will improve Google Wallet. When we last heard from Softcard, it was…

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Google Inbox is coming to Google for Work users in a limited invite program

Feb23
by on February 23, 2015 at 5:18 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

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Google Inbox was one of the most unique takes on the ancient (by internet standards) email platform out there when it launched in October. However, users on Google for Work accounts were left out of the initial roll out. That begins to change today. Google now has a process that allows company administrators already using Google Apps for Work to get on Inbox. Starting next month, admins can email the company at inboxforwork@google.com to request access. Google expects administrators to sign up to use Inbox as their primary form of email, as well as be heavy mobile users. Additionally, it’s looking for teams to…

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The challenges of SMS on a global scale

Feb23
by on February 23, 2015 at 4:15 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Future of Communications, Mobile

smartphone_commuter

This post is part of a new series titled, ‘Future of Communications,’ and is brought to you by Nexmo.

Going global with anything is never an easy task. There are various legal, cultural and resourcing standpoints to consider in order to successfully scale. While SMS can be straightforward on a local level, going global can be challenging for a number of reasons: various local regulations, inefficient performing routes, untrustworthy aggregators and more. Traditional telecom infrastructure is cumbersome The traditional telecom infrastructure was never built to support the volume of business-to-person messaging we’re seeing today. Some companies have resorted to Application-to-person (A2P) SMS, but as we’ve noted before, the process for delivering A2P SMS is clunky and can be expensive to deploy.…

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