Rest of the Day: You Can Now Ask Uber to Drive You to a Person, Not a Location
Uber’s new feature allows you to book a ride that takes you to one of your contacts, even if you don’t know exactly where they are. The function asks for their location, and if they approve, you’re on your way. About this and much more in today’s news.
- “People are new places,” says Uber. You sync your contacts first, and then you can request that the app redirect you to a specific person. The request is then sent to your contact, and if they approve, it sends their current location to Uber. A bit creepy, but your location is only available when you approve the request (that is, it doesn’t dynamically track you). Although Uber has faced some privacy issues from scammers in the past. [Uber]
- In other news, you’ve probably noticed that Facebook makes more daily illustrations similar to Google Doodles. They want you to share those moments with your friends so that you just post more on Facebook. There are also new holiday cards. (Personally, I find that everyday moments are often too innocuous for their own good; Facebook encouraged me to celebrate the anniversary of photography, for example. Photography – congratulations on existing ones!) [Facebook Newsroom]
- Twitter is experimenting with breaking news alerts. Like many news apps, it sends a notification whenever a major news event occurs, which is then linked to the Twitter Moments tab. It focuses exclusively on news, not viral tweets ( remember @MagicRecs? ), And they use an algorithm to determine who gets notified of what. [BuzzFeed News]
- The sling has a new thing. A new set-top box called AirTV allows Sling subscribers to broadcast their regular cable channels, and it also lets you hook up an HD antenna so you can watch your local stations in the same interface. [The Verge]