Samsung has reportedly developed a service that lets developers and apps understand more about what users do with their phones, as part of its ongoing efforts to increase its software footprint on mobile.
According to a report from The Information — via The Verge — the world’s largest smartphone maker has developed Context, a service that collects information about the behavior of phone owners — the words they type, apps they open and other data they use. This information would then be provided to apps to help provide tailored content or ads: for example, serving a sports video to a user that uses sports apps and regularly types words related to sports.
While details of the service have emerged, it remains unclear whether Context will launch with future Samsung devices. The Information reports that there has been internal debate at Samsung over whether the service will be beneficial to sales. It remains to be seen how users would feel about having their every action tracked, despite the potential benefits.
We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment.
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The Currency Cloud‘s payments service is set to undergo a significant revamp from today, with a new look and feel being outed alongside new streamlined payment integration and other features.
The platform is showing off its new UI – which also now includes a customizable dashboard – and Cash manager and TCC Direct features (both of which have been in beta before now) at Finovate Europe in London.
Where The Currency Cloud differs from other payment services is that it provides the infrastructure to facility other businesses’ online payments. So its customers are companies like other payments firms, banks or e-commerce providers.
With the new features, the company says that its customers can now maintain and manage balances in multiple currencies, ultimately reducing the time their own customers have to wait for cash to be processed.
In addition to making its UI, branding and website a bit prettier and bolstering the feature set, the company also announced that it’s opening up its API in a bid to get new integrations up and running in less than a month. The Currency Cloud will be opening a developer center in March to ensure that customers have the tools and support required for making best use of that fresh new API.
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Path has released an update for its iOS app that optimizes it for the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. In a blog post, company CEO Dave Morin said that the app now has a focus on simplicity and usability. Users will notice a refresh of the user interface, along with improved Settings workflow, and a redesigned Shop to purchase stickers and camera filters.
Here’s how Path describes the update:
In Account, you’ll be able to update your profile photo, cover photo, email and other personal information. In Notifications, you’ll be able to manage notifications for your Inner Circle and your Friends. In Sharing you can manage all of the networks you can post to from Path.
The Shop has been redesigned to showcase our premium stickers and filters in a more simplfied way. You can browse premium stickers and filters or even upgrade to Path Premium by tapping on the buttons on the bottom navigation bar.
Users can also take advantage of iOS 7′s swipe functionality that enables quick navigation between the messaging screen and the home feed.
➤ Path for iOS
Microsoft today announced optional multi-factor authentication for Office 365. The company also revealed it would bring the security feature to Office 2013 desktop applications (including Outlook, Lync, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SkyDrive Pro) later in 2014.
For those who don’t know, multi-factor verification requires you to use more than one form of verification to access an account. In this case, Office 365 users are required to acknowledge a phone call, text message, or an app notification on their smartphone after correctly entering their password before they can sign in.
Multi-factor authentication for Office 365 spans Midsize Business, Enterprise, Academic, Nonprofit, and standalone plans, including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. Organizations with these subscriptions can enable the feature for their users without requiring any additional purchase.
Here is how to do so:
- Make sure you are signed in as an administrator and open the Office 365 admin center.
- On the users and groups page, enroll users for multi-factor authentication by clicking the “Set Multi-factor authentication requirements: Set up” link.
- On this page, you can see all your users and whether they have been enrolled for multi-factor authentication.
- Once enrolled, the next time the user signs in, he or she will see a message asking them to set up their second authentication factor (phone call, text message, app notification, or one-time code).
While the feature has been available for Office 365 administrative roles since June 2013, Microsoft only extended this capability to all Office 365 users today. The company has also added App Passwords (16-character randomly generated strings) for users, allowing them to authenticate from Office desktop applications, since these applications don’t yet have the feature.
In addition to planned native multi-factor authentication for Office 2013 applications sometime in 2014, Microsoft is also planning to integrate other forms of authentication such as third-party multi-factor authentication solutions and smart cards. The company wouldn’t offer more details beyond that, but we’ll let you know when we know more.
See also – Microsoft launches Student Advantage worldwide, lets teachers who bought Office 365 give it to students for free and Microsoft announces general availability of business intelligence tool Power BI for Excel and Office 365
Top Image Credit: Robert Scoble