bank
Latest
Kinect hack lets you manage your bank account with gestures, will occupy your living room (video)
You know all those convoluted gestures and hate-infused fist pumps you make every time you look at your bank account? Well, you can now put them to good use, thanks to a new Kinect hack from Lithuania-based Etronika. The company's software, which made its debut at last week's CTIA E&A event, effectively brings motion-controlled banking directly to your living room. All you have to do is stand in front of your display, clap your hands to choose an icon, or wave your hand back and forth to navigate across the app's carousel menu. This means you can pay your bills, check your balance and return to fetal position without even touching a sharp object. "A lot of banking software apps are filled with boring crap," Etronika CEO Kestutis Gardziulis explained with refreshing candor. "With our software, you could be on the couch at home, having a beer, all while dealing with your bank account and kicking back." Beer, banking and body language -- sounds scandalous! Head past the break to watch a demo video, starring Pam Beesly's doppelgänger.
Shareholder calls for RIM to sell itself or its patents, in critical open letter
Things just keep getting bleaker for RIM. With its revenues stagnating and smartphone market share dwindling, the BlackBerry maker is now facing new financial pressure from Jaguar Financial Group -- a Canadian merchant bank and RIM shareholder that's calling upon the company to do one of two rather unpleasant things: sell itself, or sell its patent portfolio. In an open letter to RIM's board of directors, Jaguar CEO Vic Alboni criticized the manufacturer for failing to "inspire consumer enthusiasm" for its products, and for bringing its devices to market too late. And, as share prices continue to drop, Alboni thinks it's time to make a change: The status quo is not acceptable, the company cannot sit still. It is time for transformational change. The directors need to seize the reins to maximize shareholder value before more market value is lost. Jaguar didn't specify the size of its RIM stake, but claimed to be calling for upheaval on behalf of "other supportive shareholders" who, in total, hold less than five percent of the company. The Ontario-based firm is hoping that a new line of QNX-based smartphones will curtail its slump, but Alboni doesn't sound so optimistic. "You cannot put all your eggs in one basket," he told Bloomberg. "The board should be saying, 'What if these products don't pan out?' You don't want RIM to turn into another Nortel." A RIM spokeswoman, meanwhile, declined to comment on the letter. Hit up the source link below to read it for yourself.
Enter at your own Rift: Checking out Update 1.3
The calm before the storm. That's the best way to describe the RIFT screenshot above. As I puttered around and wasted time trying to frame my screenshot from the ideal angle, working that nomad model to his full potential, I was seconds away from a zone event opening up on my head. Instantly, about 50 gigantic desert warriors emerged to attack us for their leader's amusement. And for the next half hour, Fortune's Shore was overrun with warriors, stone golems, and dog people. Fortune's Shore isn't the only place to experience chaos and danger, though. Whatever the Dwarves did in Hammerknell, it's finally caught up with them -- and with all of Telara. Abyssal and Endless Court forces are posing a real threat, and the Ascended are now tasked with repelling the invasions and charging back into Hammerknell. In this week's Enter at your Own Rift, we'll look at a few of the changes from Update 1.3. Read on for a look at tithes, character transfers, trial servers, and towering colossi!
ING Direct's iOS app adds 'bump' money transfer feature for well-heeled posses
Look, violence doesn't solve everything, but ING Direct reckons a gentle fist bump can help fix financial quarrels between you and your buddies. Recently added to the bank's iOS app is a feature that makes use of Bump Technologies' API, with which a physical bump between two active devices instantly triggers a money transfer, thus saving the sender from having to put in account details. 'Course, this is only usable for transactions within ING for the time being, so you'll have to stick to other methods for some quick and dirty mobile payments to the outside world.
Breakfast Topic: Do you save stuff for nostalgic reasons?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Nostalgia is a funny thing; it often lets us remember only the good and forget the bad. We look back with rose-colored glasses on the past, thinking how awesome it was. In real life, people hang on to odd souvenirs as memory triggers, and sometimes it is the same in game. There are old drops that took us a long time to get or signified a first kill of a boss in a previous expansion, things we just cannot seem to vendor or throw away because it feels like cheating on the memory. So we hold on to these items, allowing them to clog up bank slots so that whenever we go digging through them for an obscure item we currently need, we get that pleasant flashback. For the longest time, I was a borderline hoarder of nostalgic items. I had my full Stormrage set in the bank from vanilla, my tier 6 and my SSC trash staff from BC, and a few other random pieces, even including a Wildheart helm. I used them to not only remember the old raids and guilds, but friends who left WoW or switched factions or servers. However, it would be a quick, wistful moment -- then I would grab whatever I needed and close my bank back up. The trouble was, the amount of items and the randomness in which they were fit into my bank created chaos, and as I was collecting tabards for my 25 tabard achievement and gear sets for achievements, I simply ran out of room. So I purged my bank, selling any and everything with a cash value. It was a little tough, but I moved on. Do you have items in your bank purely for nostalgic reasons? If so, what items did you keep and why? Have you ever had to purge your bank when it began to fill up?
Enter at Your Own Rift: Sightseeing in Sanctum
One of the things I love about RIFT is its smaller, more intimate feel. Don't get me wrong -- there's still plenty of space to explore and get lost in, but the space that is present is used to great effect and isn't just there to make it seem bigger for bigger's sake. This is echoed in the two capital cities of the game, Sanctum (Guardian) and Meridian (Defiant). Both are gorgeously detailed and impressive in their own way, yet they're comfortable and accessible instead of sprawling and vast. If one thinks of the quest hubs, camps and villages dotting the world as mom and pop stores, then the capital cities are the Walmarts of RIFT: one-stop shops for all your character's needs. They're both fairly compact, although I found myself preferring Sanctum's beachfront atmosphere and circular layout over Meridian's underground labyrinth. Because all players will be traveling to and extensively using capital cities during the course of their in-game careers, I figured we might as well take a look at what capital cities -- Sanctum specifically -- have to offer. Jump on our people-mover as we wind our way through the sights and sounds of civilization!
Visa clears DeviceFidelity's In2Pay mobile payment microSD card for use in smartphones
No iPhone? No problem. If you'll recall, we heard back in May that Visa was in cahoots with DeviceFidelity, with the two trumpeting a not-exactly-svelte In2Pay case that would add contactless payment support to Apple's darling. Today, the rest of the world is finally being taken into consideration. The aforementioned firms have just cleared a new In2Pay microSD solution for use in the real world, with the BlackBerry Bold 9650 and the Samsung Vibrant in particular named as compatible. In theory, it seems that nearly any smartphone with a microSD slot could be ushered into the arena, and Visa itself expects to add additional phone models for use with this technology, "including phones based on the Symbian and Windows operating systems." This unveiling is happening after a solid 18 months of testing around the globe, but there's no definitive word on which banks will be offering this to customers. Between this and the sudden interest in NFC, America seems more poised than ever before to slip ever further into an endless pool of debt, and with way less friction than before! We kid, we kid... kind of.
Brazen bank robber arrested after emailing local paper to correct heist details
digg_url = 'http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/20/brazen-bank-robber-arrested-after-emailing-local-paper-to-correc/'; We know how great the temptation is to throw out a nasty comment when a journalist gets something wrong, but let this story out of Germany be a lesson to you that sometimes discretion is advised. A bank robber aged 19 in Wuerzburg pulled off a bank heist, managing to escape without being identified. The next morning he flipped open the paper to read of his daring exploits. Shocked to see that the press got his height, accent, and means of escape wrong he fired off a scathing missive via e-mail. Surely you can guess what's coming next -- a quick trace of the e-mail told the police where to look, and he's now under arrest, where he's surely writing daily to the warden about the improper fit of his over-alls and how the stripes make him look fat.
The Road to Mordor: Near-Death Adventures (NDA) lifted!
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Lord_of_the_Rings_Online_F2P_player_beta_impressions'; In case you were wondering, I'm part of the crowd that doesn't really believe in non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Oh, if I agree to one I'll stick to it and keep my word, don't get me wrong. What I mean is that I don't believe in the usefulness of NDAs, particularly in a day and age when all the information is available anyway -- this is, after all, the omniscient internet. Not to mention that by trying to keep a lid on testers and prevent them from sharing their experiences, companies tend to suppress the positive accolades (those are the people who want to keep playing, after all) while letting the badmouthers escape to tell their tale (they don't care if they break the NDA, because they're not going to play anyway). But my personal feelings aside, the brief NDA lockdown on the upcoming LotRO F2P edition (hey Turbine, can we get a name for this yet? LotRO Unlimited? Free-Range LotRO?) has lifted and testers have swarmed out from under its veil to share their stories and thoughts. I'd be remiss if we didn't spend some time this week looking at what people have to say about all of the changes, additions and updates to the game -- not to mention the looming specter of the LotRO store. Let us see what is to be seen as we scout the forums and blogosphere: LotRO exposed, uncovered, dissected and digested for the good of all. I've pulled salient quotes to help give you an idea how the beta is progressing thus far -- and remember, it is still in beta. Everything here is quite subject to change by the time LotRO II: Hobbit Boogaloo launches.
Chase Mobile iPhone app update: picture your paycheck deposited, and it's there
While JPMorgan Chase & Co. certainly isn't the first bank to do this -- USAA has allowed its members to deposit checks by snapspot for just under a year now -- it's definitely the first major public bank to bring this stuff to the mainstream. A recent update to the Chase Mobile iPhone app enables customers to photograph the front and back of checks made out to them and then have it deposited directly into whatever Chase account (with their name on it, obviously) they choose. Better still, the service is completely free of charge, though it's limited to Apple's platform at the moment. Too bad you can't just cut checks to yourself and live the life those goofy TV ads push so hard, but hey, at least you're one step closer to pretending. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Gold-dispensing 'Gold to Go' ATM is itself a gold-plated marvel
"Damn thing ate my dollar." "A dollar, you say?"
Breakfast Topic: A chat channel with a bank
This article has been brought to you by Seed, Aol's guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. Watch for the next call for submissions and a chance to submit your own article. The next new byline you see here may be yours! When Wrath of the Lich King was first released, my guild was red-hot for Naxx. We recruited. We started a website and started swapping ideas, posting videos, strategies and of course developed some great friendships. Although we didn't steamroll over content like a lot of our other guild peers on the server (a lot of us seasoned players had been there/done that with the hardcore raiding guild scene and were over it), we still went along at a decent pace and were satisfied with our overall progress. Things were going well. Ulduar was around the corner, and everyone was ready to do a great big cannonball into new content. New strats, pics, videos and posts were going up on the guild forums. People were reading up, doing their homework and ready to roll right into Ulduar. We were getting through the first couple of bosses with no problems, but then we ran into a boss in that my guild failed to read any strats or watch any videos on: the RL Boss. Our guild could not get past the RL Boss. People were getting married, getting divorced, buying a house, losing a house. You name it, it was happening. As luck would have it, it wasn't our second-tier raiders either; it was the performers that were taking a four-quarter breather from the game. After a while, the guild leadership just gave up. Any senior raiders who were left started pugging, and there were a few months with absolutely nothing on the guild calendar. There have been a few half-hearted attempts, but those were over before they began. Rumor has it that the GM has put the kibosh on recruitment, effectively making the remnants of our guild a chat channel with a bank. Has your guild wiped on the RL Boss enough times to discourage any guild activities, even to the point that the guild actually disbanded? What happened?
Bank alts galore: Time to vote!
After three snow storms and some milk and cookies, I've managed to whittle down all the submissions readers sent in for the bank alt screen shot contest! It wasn't easy, though; we received hundreds of very creative submissions from readers around the globe. What you see is just a fraction of the submissions that came in. Continue reading to see the submissions and vote for your favorite finalist!
Reminder: Bank alt submissions due
This is a reminder that submissions for the bank alt screenshot contest are due tomorrow, Wednesday January 27th by 11:59 p.m. EST. E-mail your submissions to dawn@wow.com. This is your chance to flaunt your WoW fashion to the rest of the community, and possibly win fabulous prizes in the process. Please make sure your submissions are in a .jpg, .png, or .gif format, and if your bank alt is a higher level character, make a note in your e-mail.
Call for submissions: Bank alts
You've seen them in the streets of capital cities, diligently dashing between the bank and mailboxes. Or maybe you'll occasionally catch a glance of them idling in front of the auctioneers. Who am I talking about? Bank alts! While we toil and triumph in Northrend, these hardworking heroes of the home front care for the well-being of our estates, keeping our investments sound and our pockets full. In return, many players choose to provide them with a share of the profits, so that they can dress themselves (or undress themselves) in the most fashionable ways. Now it's time to pay tribute to them. If you have an amazing bank alt, send a screenshot of it to dawn@wow.com by January 27th at 11:59 p.m. EST and we'll post the best results. We'll also take the top five or so and let you all vote on them, handing out a Slashdance and Papa Hummel's loot code to the top two winners. [Thank you to Lightsource for the idea!]
Square iPhone payment system gets itself a website, showcased in public
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and the quiet startup formerly known as Squirrel are finally opening up a bit. The company now called Square, as we noted back in October, has launched a website for its iPhone payment dongle, although it's still in somewhat private beta testing. TechCrunch managed to catch up with Dorsey, who gave a brief overview of the product and then showed it off by charging $4 for a cup of coffee -- so it goes in San Francisco. See Square in action after the break.
AddOn Spotlight: Altoholic
AddOn Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your AddOns folder, we'll cover it here. This week we're delving into the world of alts. If you're like me, you've probably got your 10 character slots on your main server filled out with supplemental characters to help your main. I've got my enchanter/scribe warlock who is only level 65 in order to learn Northrend recipes. I've got my death knight alchemist sitting at 70 for titanium and gem transmutes as well as the occasional flasks and elixirs. After a while, it gets difficult to keep track of what you do and don't have on each character. Sometimes you want to help outfit your alts with better gear only to log them in and find out they've already got a set. What you need is Altoholic.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's Squirrel project revealed... as the Square iPhone Payment System
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/17/twitter-founder-jack-dorseys-squirrel-project-revealed-as-th/'; tweetmeme_source = 'engadget'; Remember the Square iPhone Payment System we told you about back in August? If you'll recall, the device -- which involves an iPhone app and associated dongle -- enables an iPhone or iPod touch to become a kind of mini credit card reader, allowing payments to be taken on the spot, no matter where you are or how big (or small) the transaction may be. When we'd first reported the device, word on the street was that it was only being alpha tested around New York City, and there wasn't much else to say. Now, we may have a little more insight on just where this device is headed, and who's behind the project. Jack Dorsey, the man who all but built Twitter in a matter of two weeks, has been working on a half-secret start-up project since around May. His new venture -- dubbed, funnily enough, Squirrel -- is based around the concept of using the iPhone as... yep, a portable, personal cash register; essentially the exact device which Square has created. And that's no accident. In the images we ran of the Square system, you can see a domain name on a receipt: squareup.com. Squareup.com is the domain of the Square System (obviously), and a casual investigation into the site's WHOIS profile reveals registrant info that points to an office in San Francisco, and a contact email address which reads... billing@paybysquirrel.com. Square, squirrel, square... are you getting it? So the cat, er, squirrel appears to be out of the bag. Now the question is whether or not Dorsey and co. can turn this fairly obscure piece of tech into the kind of firestorm which Twitter has become -- and who knows, maybe there'll even be a business model this time. [Thanks, Little Birdie]
Breakfast Topic: The best city for shopping
This discussion site we linked the other day, Epic Advice, is humming with activity, and full of interesting queries and answers about the World of Warcraft. Like this one: which city is the best for running to and from the bank and the AH (the question-asker also wants to get the mage portal in that circuit, but for the purposes of our discussion, we'll assume you're on a bank alt, so no portal necessary)? In terms of speed and ease, which is the best capital city to set up shop in?
WoW Rookie: Bag it
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.With the excitement his week focused on the all-new, 22-slot Onyxia Hide Backpack, it seems anticlimactic to think that many players are struggling simply to maintain enough space in their bags for quest items and a decent amount of loot. It's easy to throw down big money for big bags when you're max level and rolling in gold from dailies – but new players must walk the line between overspending for convenience's sake and having enough bag space to get the job done.Let's make one thing perfectly clear: bigger bags are a savvy investment. There's definitely a point of diminishing returns, though, which will be obvious to even the most naive of WoW rookies searching through the Containers section in the Auction House. (Really. You'll know when it's time to stop upgrading. We promise.) Getting wise to what's available and where to find it will help you squeeze out those last few precious bag slots without going broke in the process.
