Apple Pay comes to Parking Panda, PayByPhone Parking, and Hotel Tonight

Apple Pay is becoming more accessible to more services. This time around, Parking Panda, Hotel Tonight, and PayByPhone Parking join the list (SpotHero is another app but that isn’t available here yet).  Parking Panda, the app that finds and reserves a parking space for you, now allows you to pay via Apple Pay. And if you pay using Apple’s payment system, you get a 10 percent discount until September 1^st and it’ll be automatically deducted after you choose Apple Pay at checkout. Apple Pay users are even eligible to win a free month or year of parking among other prizes.

PayByPhone Parking, another similar parking app, also adds Apple Pay, among the other new features of the app (such as location aware imagery, smart notices, and personal reminders). Meanwhile, Hotel Tonight, will let you find and book a hotel with Apple Pay without having a Hotel Tonight account. This last-minute hotel booking app lets you book up to a week in advanced for over 15,000 hotels in 500 destinations around the world. The app is offering first-time customers that use Apple Pay US$25 off their first $135+ reservation by putting in the promo code APPLEPAY25. The promo will be available until August 30^th.

Source: Mac Rumors

Stickers are coming to Twitter with hashtag searches

It is clear now that we're slowly moving away from purely textual communication and slowly embracing various other forms of expressions beyond emoji, animated .gifs, stickers and funky text effects. We've seen what Apple has planned for iMessage in iOS 10 and now Twitter is giving users a wider palette of expression with stickers which you can search for using hastags. It's the Snap-chatization of messaging on a wider scale and more ironically, these features were all telegraphed by BlackBerry's BBM years ago, but not enough people were listening. We'll it looks like we're all listening now as this is an inevitable evolution of messaging applications.

Source: The Verge

Apple gives rainbow-coloured Apple Watch bands to employees for Pride weekend

Apple CEO Tim Cook together with a number of its employees joined the annual Pride Parade in San Francisco in style. The Apple employees were given a limited edition, rainbow-coloured watch band to commemorate the event. A Reddit user posted a photo of the Apple Watch with the colorful band attached to it and a letter talking about the 30^th year Apple has been associated with Pride and how the band is “a symbol of our commitment to equality.” Cook, who we know has been open about his life as a gay man, shared a photo about Sunday’s parade and the large number of Apple employees who showed up to celebrate.

Source: Mashable

Google might be releasing its own smartphone (and it’s not a Nexus)

Google has been working with hardware manufacturers like LG to create Nexus-branded devices like this Nexus 5X.

It looks like Google really wants to take the fight to Apple and are planning to release their own Google-branded smartphone—if we are to believe rumours that is. Sources who’ve spoken to the Telegraph claim Google plans to launch a smartphone before the end of the year where they have tighter controls over “design, manufacturing and software.” Google’s head honcho Sundar Pichai hasn’t been shy about wanting to have more say when it comes to their smartphones and they wanted to be more “opinionated” about its design.

This will truly give the company something to truly rival against the iPhone, since they have more control over all aspects of the device and it’ll implement what the tech giant wants a Google-made phone to be like sans the interpretations of hardware manufacturers. But Google also runs the risk of alienating Android hardware manufacturers, much like what happened with Microsoft. Of course, these are all still rumours and the company won’t confirm the news. But if Google does produce its own phone, will you consider buying it?

Source: Engadget