Hasta La Gadget!

PayPal is one of the most well known and widely used solutions for online payments. The service is used by millions of people around the world who wish to shop online. Users might find it irritating to be redirected to PayPal’s website from the online store they’re checking out from. Users are redirected so that they can punch in their credentials and authorize the transaction. The payments company is now working on a new solution called In-Context Checkout which will make the entire process seamless. Users won’t have to leave the online store, rather they’ll authorize the transaction through a pop-up window.

Billing and shipping information is entered in the pop-up, thus eliminating the need to visit PayPal’s website to do just that. Only a few online stores are currently testing out this new method, but the company confirms that larger retailers will start using it in the first half of this year. Those who don’t want to checkout altogether can opt for PayPal’s Beacon payment system. It is also being testing at a small scale right now. PayPal has expanded Beacon to retailers in Canada, Germany, France and the UK. If tests work out fine, this service is expected to launch within the next few months.

PayPal Working To Make Online Payments Seamless original content from Ubergizmo.

There has been a lot of debate about the electronics spying programs of the National Security Agency, programs which not only affect U.S. citizens, but also those of other nations around the world. The programs have been criticized a lot as the stream of highly classified documents kept informing the public just how much the NSA is keeping an eye on internet users around the world. According to a new report by The Wall Street Journal, President Barack Obama is considering making major changes to the agency and its surveillance programs, he is expected to make an announcement on Friday.

It is expected that President Obama will extend privacy protections to non-Americans, in an effort to downplay the blowback generated after word broke that NSA also spied on citizens of friendly countries. Rumor has it that the president may appoint a privacy advocate who will argue in FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. FISA is tasked with approving requests for electronics surveillance. President Obama is also expected to meet with members from the tech community who have also been affected by NSA’s programs and its constant requests for access to user data. It remains to be seen what the president actually announces, but it seems that Edward Snowden might have achieved one of his objectives, reforming the NSA.

President Obama To Announce Major NSA Changes This Week [Report] original content from Ubergizmo.

Schemer was launched over a year ago with the aim of motivating people to do “more awesome stuff.” The service required users to have a Google+ account, however it wasn’t promoted that much by the company and for the past couple of months no major updates was rolled out. The Android app hasn’t been updated since October 2012, which is testament to the fact that the time has come for Schemer to power down. Google has confirmed that Schemer will be shut down on February 7th, the iOS app has already been pulled from the App Store. Users have until the last day to retrieve the data, after which all data will be permanently deleted.

It was actually rumored late last year that Schemer would be shutting down soon. At the time it was not known exactly when this service would meet its inevitable end. So what do Schemer users do now? The team recommends using the “Explore” section on Google Maps for iOS and Android to find interesting things to do around you and Field Trip to discover unique things to do in your city. To retrieve data, Schemer users have to sign into the service using their Google account, select the “Email me my schemes” option at the top and wait for the data to be delivered via email in CSV and HTML formats.

Google Confirms Schemer Shuts Down On February 7th original content from Ubergizmo.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been releasing a variety of documents that shows how the NSA is not only spying on US citizens, but apparently on its allies and foreign countries as well. We guess the idea of the US spying on other countries isn’t as ludicrous as it sounds, but having it actually confirmed in black and white is pretty damning. To that extent it seems that Snowden’s documents have cost US-based companies a fair amount of job opportunities in overseas markets, such as India, for example. According to reports, the Commission Election of India has announced that they will not be using Google as a partner to help create a voter registration tool that will provide Indian citizens with voting information.

According to the official statement, the Commission has chosen not to go with Google after “due consideration”, but inside sources have revealed to Reuters that one of the main reasons the Commission turned down Google’s services was amidst the spying and surveillance allegations that have strained the relationship between the US and India, along with the recent incident regarding an Indian diplomat which we guess did not help the entire situation. Google has released a statement saying, “It is unfortunate that our discussion with the Election Commission of India to change the way users access their electoral information, that is publicly available, through an online voter look up tool, were not fruitful.”

Like we said Google is not the first US company to have their business affected by the Snowden reports, as companies such as Cisco have been similarly affected as well, giving foreign companies the opportunity to offer their services as NSA-free alternatives.

Commission Election Of India Rejects Google’s Services Amidst Spying Concerns original content from Ubergizmo.

A while back, Facebook introduced the idea of Sponsored Stories which was basically taking what you had done on Facebook and selling them to advertisers who might in turn use it as part of their ads, but packaging it in such a way that it looks like you are recommending it to your friends or family. For those who know better, these ads are pointless and just a waste of space in your newsfeed, but thankfully it looks like Facebook will be retiring the somewhat controversial Sponsored Stories come 9th of April, according to an updated roadmap on Facebook’s developer page.

Prior to this, Facebook had mentioned it would be bringing an end to such practices back in June 2013, but we guess we now have a concrete date to look forward to. In fact Sponsored Stories proved to be so controversial to the point where a class action lawsuit was filed against Facebook over the program where the social networking giant eventually agreed to a $20 million settlement. We doubt $20 million is a lot of money in the eyes of Facebook and over the past few years, we have seen Facebook come up with various eyebrow-raising ways of monetizing its social network, most of it leaving much to be desired.

We doubt Facebook will cease its creative ways to monetize itself, but the good news is that at least one of its more controversial methods will be put to rest once and for all.

Facebook To Retire Sponsored Stories original content from Ubergizmo.