Apple's latest holiday ad brings all the feels

Apple has invoked the magic of animation for its latest holiday ad. With some subtle product placements, the clever and whimsical 'Share your Gift' holiday ad. The focus here, beyond buying expensive consumer electronics, is to share your gifts and talents. It's a great message for the season to remind us about what is really important.

Swiss hotel chain offers ‘Instagram sitters’ that can post on your behalf

Want to document your amazing vacation but want to go off the grid at the same time? Sounds impossible, right? Well, for Ibis hotel chain, they are offering a trial “Instagram sitter” service for all of its 17 properties in Zurich and Geneva. Hotel guests can have one of the 16 social influencers take care of their Instagram accounts while they enjoy their vacations. Called “Relax We Post,” the service employs the help of influencers like local radio DJ Sylwina, lifestyle blogger Cristina Gheiceanu, and Germany’s Next Topmodel’s Sara Leutenegger.

To avail of the service, you’ll need to give your login details so that the Instagram sitter can curate your feed while you’re staying at the hotel. The Instagram sitter can post photos, videos, and Instagram Stories for you. If you want, they can even respond to comments made on your account. The sitter can even help you find the most “Instagrammable” spots in the hotel and the city. You can also let them know about specific feed requirements or requests, like not posting photos of meat if you’re a vegetarian.

Source: Lonely Planet

Microsoft Launcher on Android will help track your phone use

While Android Pie has its own built-in digital health tracking feature, Microsoft’s update to its Launcher app on Android brings this feature to more users. The app, which supports Android 4.2 and above, can help you track how long you’ve used apps, screen time, and the amount of times you’ve unlocked your phone. Version 5.1 of the app also includes To-Do and Sticky Notes integration, letting you sync your tasks and notes from these apps to the launcher. It also gets Hey Cortana support. This version is already available as a beta version from the Play Store and should be rolling out to all users in the coming weeks.

Source: The Verge

Google pulls 13 malware apps from the Play Store that have been installed over 500,000 times

Google was quick to pull 13 malware-ridden apps from the Play Store. But not before these apps have been downloaded by at least 500,000 users, at least according to a researcher who reported how these malicious apps got into the store. The 13 Android apps included car and truck driving simulations with a couple getting into the store’s trending section even. The apps don’t have really work and crash every time they were launched but these hid in the phones to make it easier to install malware. According to ESET security researcher Lukas Stefanko, these apps have been downloaded over 560,000 times with a single developer named Luiz Pinto being credited for making them. Stefanko details in a series of tweets how these apps operate and that these would ask to install an additional APK, which you can see in action in this link.

However, as NDTV Gadgets points out, this isn’t the first time malicious apps have showed up in the Play Store. There was an auto-clicking adware last year called Judy found in 41 apps and affected between 8.5 and 36.5 million Android devices. There was also a botnet malware called FalseGuide that infected millions of Android devices via Google Play.