New Tech : Finding Love on LinkedIn

If your LinkedIn profile can help you find a job, then why not a date?

That’s the idea behind LinkedUp!, a new networking app for those who want to ensure their next match is gainfully employed before they meet for drinks.

The app, which for now is compatible only with iPhones and other iOS devices, is a cross between the professional networking website and Tinder, the popular dating app. Users filter potential mates by job industry, age, proximity and gender. Just like Tinder, two users who signal they like each other are encouraged to chat.

If LinkedUp! has a familiar user experience, its data source is novel. Many dating apps, like Tinder or Hinge, sync with FacebookFB +1.08% to pull in a user’s photo and personal information, but this is the first to use source code from LinkedIn. (Users can add additional photos on the app to balance out corporate head shots.)

Max Fischer, the 28-year-old founder of the app and a former investment banker, said he believes the LinkedIn data “is going to result in much higher-quality matches.” Because a LinkedIn profile is essentially a digital résumé, “people get a really true sense of where someone’s from, what they do, and where they went to school, which are the main questions people ask in terms of dating,” he said in an interview.

The app has no affiliation with LinkedIn; developers often apply to use elements of the site’s database. A LinkedIn spokesman declined to comment.

Fischer declined to disclose how many downloads the app has logged since soft-launching in early March, but said that its user base has doubled in the past month. He is planning a hard launch in the near future, with “download parties” in the cities where LinkedUp! has gained  traction, such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Fischer, who previously worked for a private equity firm, said he is also in the market for venture-capital funding.

He said he had the idea for LinkedUp! about a year ago, when he noticed young professionals using LinkedIn for more than just networking. He enlisted a family friend with the technical know-how to get it off the ground.

Nodding tot he concerns of Hr departments everywhere, Fischer cautions that the app does not encourage office romance. Instead, he said, it is a chance to tap into a network of professionals with common backgrounds.

Of course, intentions may vary. In a recent survey, 84% of workers aged 18-29 said they’d be open to dating a coworker.

New Tech : In Battle with Amazon, Google Expands Same-Day Delivery Service

Google is expanding its same-day delivery service to Manhattan and West Los Angeles as the Internet-search giant competes with Amazon.com for consumer purchases.

The company launched Google Shopping Express last year in the San Francisco Bay area. The service lets people order online and pay for packaged foods and other items, such as toys and diapers, from physical stores operated by retailers including CostcoCOST -0.62%, Target and WalgreenWAG +1.41%. The products are delivered to consumers’ residences by small vans within hours.

Google is offering the service free for the first six months in each metro area; after that, it will charge a fee of about $4.99 per store.

Google and Amazon.com, the world’s largest Internet retailer, are competing to be shoppers’ primary online destination and merchants’ preferred place to reach those consumers.

Amazon has become a popular first stop on the Web and smartphones for people searching for products, taking away some lucrative search advertising business from Google. That competition has intensified as Amazon has introduced faster delivery and more food and consumer packaged goods that people buy more often.

Last week, Amazon broadened its same-day delivery service, adding Dallas and San Francisco to the dozen cities where it was already available.

Amazon and Google approach this differently. Amazon uses its existing network of fulfillment centers to deliver products quickly. Google picks up products from retail stores.

That gives Amazon more control over the delivery process and the products stored in its warehouses. But Google saves the cost of building warehouses, by working with existing stores.

Google is bringing its delivery service to all of Manhattan with Babies “R” Us, Costco, Fairway MarketFWM -2.51%, L’Occitane, Staples, Target, and Walgreen. The company said in a blog that it also wants to bring Shopping Express to Queens and Brooklyn in the coming months.

In the Los Angeles area, Google Shopping Express will cover Culver City, Inglewood, Marina Del Rey, Santa Monica, Venice, West Los Angeles, and Westwood and include retailers like Costco, Guitar Center, L’Occitane, Smart & Final, Staples, Target, Toys “R” Us, Babies “R” Us, and Walgreen.

Google said it will expand the service soon to other parts of Los Angeles, Bel-Air, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista and West Hollywood.

New Tech : Microsoft’s backwards policies are hurting the Xbox One

Since the Xbox One was revealed last May, Microsoft has made some major course corrections. The draconian always-online requirements were scrapped, and the execution of used game dealers was stayed, but a number of serious issues still plague the Xbox One. Worst of them all, Microsoft is demanding launch parity for indie ID@Xbox titles. Because of this short-sighted policy, many notable indie devs are steering clear of the Xbox One completely.

In an interview with our sister site IGN, Curve Studios’ Rob Clarke explains exactly why his company is developing titles for the Wii U and PS4, but has nothing currently slated for the Xbox One. In the ID@Xbox agreement, there sits an insidious requirement dubbed “the parity clause.” This clause requires that these indie games must not have been released previously for other consoles. For small indie developers already working with Sony and Nintendo, this clause effectively means that the Xbox One is persona non grata.

Meanwhile, Sony is knocking it out of the park in terms of developer relations. Fan favorites like Nidhogg, Spelunky, and Escape Goat 2 were among a list of a dozen indie games scheduled for release on the PS4. If Microsoft wants to cater to the indie scene like Sony is, the parity clause has got to go. In the end, it does little more than shorten the list of titles available for the Xbox One.

Unfortunately, the demand for launch parity isn’t the only problem facing the Xbox One. The $500 price tag is an albatross around the Xbox One’s neck, and the cost of the Kinect is largely to blame. To close the PS4 sales gap, Microsoft needs to drop the MSRP, and make the Kinect an optional purchase. $400 is the right price for the Xbox One right now, and anything more than that means giving up even more ground to Sony.

If Microsoft is serious about fixing the Xbox One and its flagging sales, there are also a few smaller tweaks that would help its case. Sony has been quite aggressive with its plans for virtual reality and game streaming, but Redmond has remained relatively quiet on the subject. Getting out in front of these major trends would help mend Microsoft’s damaged image, and portray the Xbox One as a platform with a bright future.

While we’re on the subject, Microsoft also needs to remove the paywall from video apps on its consoles, and release official PC drivers for the Xbox One controller. It’s surprising to see how Microsoft is still dragging its feet on even the most minor of issues, and it’s slowly squeezing the life out of its new console. The time for action is now, but all we’re hearing is deafening silence.

New Tech: ET deals: Core i7 IdeaPad, 27-inch monitor, Alienware 14, more

We’ve searched all over for the hottest deals in tech, and today we’ve got some great ones for you. Some of our favorites are the Lenovo Z510 Core i7 laptop for $599, a 41% savings on a JayBird bluetooth headphones/earbuds combo, and the lowest price we’ve seen around on the Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4-inch bundled with extras.

If you’d rather have a pro quality tablet with a larger display, you can now pick up a new entry level configuration of their Venue 11 Pro for just $430, the lowest price ever. We’ve also spotted a time limited price drop on the Alienware 14 gaming laptop, bringing the price down to $850, and a 43% discount on Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013.

Read on and check out all our great deals today, while these offers last.

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Twitter’s Vine Makes It Easier to Find Its Videos

Twitter's VineTWTR +0.31% revamped its website to make it easier to browse its trove of six-second video clips, including placing a prominent search bar on the homepage.

Until now, the browsing experience on Vine’s website, which was launched in January, was limited. People could only do two things: watch videos of the accounts they followed and click through to people’s profile pages. It was otherwise difficult to search for Vine’s short, looping videos.

The homepage now includes new ways of categorizing videos, several of which are already available on Vine’s mobile app. These include channels for things like news, food and style, as well as featured and popular videos.

Vine also is making its videos more accessible, including letting visitors view videos without logging in or creating an account. Previously, people could only view videos through a specific link or via the video creator’s profile page. Now, they can surf and watch the whole spectrum of videos without signing in, similar to the YouTube experience. Videos that people set to private aren’t included.

The changes come less than a month after Vine started letting people send text and short video messages privately to each other. Vine recently reached 40 million registered accounts in August, the only time it has disclosed user numbers. It doesn’t release monthly active user figures. Rival photo and video-sharing service Instagram, which is owned by FacebookFB +2.24%, hit 200 million users last month.

Oculus’s Carmack Working on a Comic Book App

Videogame pioneer John Carmack may be at the center of a potential legal dispute involving the virtual-reality headset maker Oculus, but it hasn’t slowed his creative impulses.

Carmack sent a tweet Thursday saying he is building what he described as a VR comic book shop. “Not kidding,” he added.

The Twitter post came after Carmack had referenced a new set of coding tools by Disney’s Marvel division that integrate information from its library of comics into other apps.

Carmac did not elaborate on his plans. An Oculus spokesman had no immediate comment.

Of course, the idea of a visually compelling virtually reality app makes sense. Before Carmack was even hired at Oculus, he worked with the its founder, Palmer Luckey, to create virtual reality demonstration apps in 2012. One of the first demonstrations created for the VR headset was a scene from one of Carmack’s recent games.

Carmack’s involvement with the first Oculus designs are at the heart of a dispute between his old employer, ZeniMax, and Facebook, which in March said it agreed to buy Oculus for $2 billion. ZeniMax is claiming rights to intellectual property that powers the Oculus device. ZeniMax has sent “formal notice of legal rights,” and is seeking compensation.

Carmack is best known as a driving force behind ground-breaking titles such as “Wolfenstein 3D” and “Doom,” which revolutionized the videogame industry when they were released a couple of decades ago.

New York Commuters to Use Mobile Phones as Train Tickets

Commuters to New York City who hate the wait to buy paper train tickets–whether from a man or a machine–will soon have the option to use their mobile phones instead.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority Board (MTA) has approved a contract with a provider of mobile ticketing technology, London-based tech venture Masabi (a subsidiary of Blue Technologies Ltd).

Masabi will help the MTA roll out mobile ticketing for riders of trains on the Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) but not the NYC subway– not yet anyway.

Executives with the MTA could not be reached for comment immediately. Masabi CEO Ben Whitaker explained that the MTA has not yet made an official determination on timing for the launch of its mobile ticketing apps.

Because Metro North and LIRR operations, staff and ridership are so large, he said, “planning, training and testing” must take time–meaning the app won’t be available for months, most likely.

Masabi’s mobile ticketing platform (called JustRide) lets users buy individual tickets, from a one-way ride to a monthly pass, in a matter of seconds via their phones, and also provides them with information about train arrivals, route maps, timetables and other transit-related issues.

On the transit side of the business, train inspectors will be able to verify riders’ mobile tickets by scanning them with another mobile device, like an iPhone. And the MTA, as a corporation, can use JustRide to receive real-time data about ticket sales and system use by riders, among other things.

Metro-North Railroad and the LIRR received just 11 proposals from mobile ticketing suppliers including Masabi, according to a public statement by the MTA.

Masabi has raised $8.8 million from angel and venture investors including Fontinalis Partners, m8 Capital and MMC Ventures.

The company already provides mobile ticketing for the Thames Clippers “river bus” service in London, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authorityin Boston, and the San Diego Metropolitan Train System, among others.

Another venture-backed company, called SilverRail Technologies, also offers mobile reservations and ticketing to railways around the world. Backed by Mithril Capital Management, Canaan Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures, SilverRail aims to make train travel at least as easy to book as air travel.

Large tech integrators, including International Business Machines and Xerox, also provide some mobile payment and ticketing technology to transit companies as well.

Masabi began creating mobile banking, games and other apps in 2002, still early days for mobile.  It began making apps for transit in 2006. The company has worked with 18 large transit agencies, some larger than the MTA, Whitaker said.

According to the American Public Transportation Association, riders make 2.9 billion trips and pay $13 billion in fares each year in the U.S. alone. Metro North and the LIRR account for about $1 billion in fares collected annually.