Thanks to a burgeoning procrastination economy, developers are creating content that can be consumed in short spurts. What does it mean for productivity?
Fitness apps can encourage people to throw out their own training plans and to instead, “race everyday.”
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Sarah Giles, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
Fitness apps which allow millions of users to virtually compete with each other can provide inspiration however, they may also be putting users in danger.
Sharing data about users’ HIV statuses is bad enough. But why collect it in the first place?
Buying or selling a property involves legal, financial, statutory and agency costs that mean that even moving across the road can cost about half a year’s income.
Dan Peled/AAP
Does big data threaten how humans explore the natural world? We need to protect our impulses to observe, compare, play, discover and love, no matter what technological capabilities are available.
Apps can be digital toys used by children to design, create, build, investigate and imagine.
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Open banking will see customers use their data in a whole range of ways, including seeing how they are faring financially against people in similar situations.
Calendar apps can be useful to people with and without memory problems.
Darren Grove/Shutterstock
There are plenty of apps that people with autism can use for learning, play and communication. Not all are designed with autism in mind, so what can we learn from any online user feedback?
When smartphone apps get permission to access your location or other activity, they often share that data with other companies that can compile digital profiles on users.
Both paid and unpaid apps can track your data. The apps pictured may not - but it’s hard to know which do and which don’t.
Flickr/Blake Patterson
Name almost any app. Your data is probably being tracked.
WeChat has transformed from a social media to a payment platform (among other things) and had success in China. Could Australia be next?
Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
While Apple Pay may have won the battle against some of Australia’s banks, it may lose the war against the providers of digital wallets, such as Tencent and Alibaba.