tech that...

A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD

SEND MONEY WITH MESSENGER

IT solves a simple problem very simply, and it’s a nice refreshing change to see Facebook doing something that doesn’t necessarily complicate the use of its service – you can now send payments to friends via Messenger.

You have been able to do this in the US for a while, but now Facebook is bringing its peer-to-peer payments system to the UK (and also France, although you can only send money within countries, not across borders). It’s easy to use, and the transaction takes place right within a Messenger conversation thread.

Of course, the cynical among us might well say it’s a way to get you to put your card details into Facebook, so it’s easier to spend money on other things. Whether that’s true or not, it remains a useful feature.

TWITTER AT THE DOUBLE

YOU will, unless you’ve been in some blessed faraway land where Twitter remains nothing more than a unsubstantiated rumour, have heard that the social network has completed its experiment to allow users post longer tweets and expanded the feature to all users.

Now you can post up to 280 characters, rather than just the 140 that have been available up to now.

Some people became inappropriately enraged by this news, while others embraced it with wild enthusiasm. No doubt it will change Twitter – all indications so far are that it might change it for the better, allowing deeper, more expansive ideas to be expressed, rather than pithy, and often quite nasty, put-downs – time will tell.

IPHONE NOTCH REMOVER

SO, you’ve splashed a grand on a new iPhone X – what’s the first thing you do? One software developer hopes that you hate the notorious ‘notch’ on the screen – that’s the black strip cut into the top of the screen, which otherwise covers the full face of the front of the device – and will actually spend real money on an app that gets rid of it.

Notch Remover doesn’t really remove the notch, it hides it by allowing you to create wallpapers that have a black bar at the top so you can’t see the notch.

And it costs 99p. Absolute madness.