Toronto is on the verge of a major step backwards as 2 days of court hearings on the City request to shut down Uber finishes. The judge is practically telegraphing a negative result by indicating this will surely go to Appeal, although Uber note they may not bother. Court hearing into City of Toronto’s request to shut down all of Uber’s operations wraps up after two days of arguments Continue reading City of Toronto asks court to shut down Uber

I’m watching Google I/O and some interesting developments. Watching on Apple TV and nothing blew up so far. Biggest item of note.  Mobile is not a section of the conference.  Mobile is the conference with Android front and centre.  There is much voicing between comparisons on iOS and Android and I’ll avoid that  here are some real differentiators from Google Some notes: Android pay- super simple especially when tied to fingerprint recognition. This outs pressure on hardware manufacturers to get on with this feature. type c USB support for Android sleep mode that provides long battery usage Watches – even … Continue reading Google I/O

How many times do we hear that another site has been hacked, whether icloud, twitter, Facebook, Sony and now Starbucks. The media generally does an extremely poor job on describing these situations, and the average user just gets confused. This is a different scenario than Target Krebs sums the recent Starbucks situation up well here. Starbucks Hacked? No, But You Might Be Those customers had all chosen to tie their debit accounts to their Starbucks cards and mobile phones. Sullivan allowed in his story one logical explanation for the activity: These consumers had re-used their Starbucks account password at another … Continue reading Krebs has it right – you are the one who has been hacked

This from the EBAday 2015 meeting in Amsterdam, and hosted by the Euro Banking Association and Finextra. A sensible potential use case for blockchain being considered by RBS. EBAday Live 2015 15.35 Richardson says RBS has been exploring the use of blockchain technology with a view to seeing what it can offer to the bank, in terms of both reducing costs for international payments, and different ways of handling international payments. One potential use case identified is the use of virtual currency technology to help customers in foreign countries who need emergency payments. Continue reading Blockchain as an emergency payment method – idea from RBS

Flywheel fills a function missing with Uber. We all love Uber but it hasn’t overcome the basic flaw that taxi drivers are drawn to the immediate prize that they call fishing. When the subway is down, during rush hour, or old ‘customer demand’ habits arise taxi drivers flock to the best areas to fish for fares. As a customer of cabs, this means that I cannot get an Uber cab at precisely the times I need it most. But if I can flag a cab I would like to pay with similar to Uber with a couple of clicks. Flywheel … Continue reading Flywheel addresses a gap in Uber