Technology

Cameo has a new way for fans to interact with celebrities: Zoom calls. The company launched a video call option over the weekend, called Cameo Live, where people can, instead of a prerecorded shout-out, book a 10-minute Zoom call with their favorite talent. The prices are wildly more expensive than the usual Cameo videos, with stars like Jeremy Piven charging $15,000 for 10 minutes. (He charges $400 for a video shoutout.) Skateboarder Tony Hawk charges $1,000 for a Zoom call, and football player Brett Favre charges $5,000. Cameo says up to four additional friends or family can join the call, and people have up to 24 hours before the call to cancel. If the celebrity doesn’t show up, they’ll get a refund. Fifty stars have signed on to the feature for launch. Prices range from hundreds to tho...

Apple will begin selling an SSD kit for the Mac Pro that allows buyers to add more storage to the high-end desktop computer. The kit, which Apple tells The Verge should be available later today, includes options for up to 8TB of storage. That storage will replace the machine’s existing SSD, so this kit is really designed for buyers who originally configured the Mac Pro with a smaller SSD option (it can go as low as 256GB), rather than people who already picked a larger SSD and still want to add more capacity. Mac Pro owners could already expand their storage by purchasing third-party components, but that expansion had to use a PCIe slot, rather than replacing the SSD directly. This is the first time Apple has offered an official kit for upgrading the machine’s SSD. It’s also a little surpr...

After testing a beta version in India, WhatsApp has launched in-app payments in Brazil, the company announced in a blog post on Monday (via TechCrunch). The payments are enabled through Facebook Pay, which parent company Facebook said last year it would be rolling out to Instagram, Messenger, Facebook, and eventually WhatsApp. “Payments on WhatsApp are beginning to roll out to people across Brazil beginning today and we look forward to bringing it to everyone as we go forward,” the company said in the post. WhatsApp says its digital payments are an open model that will allow it to add more partners in the future. There will be no fees for consumers to use the payments service, but merchants will pay a processing fee to receive payments. Users need to link a credit or debit card to their Wh...

With the world now in a seemingly permanent state of crisis, you may not be in the market for a new email address. And why would you be? Even in the best of times, getting a new email address comes with all the hassle of changing your phone number, without the minor upgrades that a new phone brings. Changing your email address feels like a pointless struggle in a world where the existing options, however unremarkable, work basically fine. Like changing banks, really. Or moving into a new apartment in the same building. In any case, I’m sorry to report that it’s time to consider getting a new email address. The reason is Hey, a new email service from Basecamp. It’s a genuinely original take on messaging that feels like the first interesting thing to happen to email since clever apps like Ma...

Sony showed off its PlayStation 5 console design last week and briefly teased the OS, now Sony’s VP of UX design at PlayStation, Matt MacLaurin, is promising an overhauled user interface for the PS5. Describing the new software interface as a “very interesting evolution of the OS,” MacLaurin says it’s a “100 percent overhaul of the PS4 UI and some very different new concepts” in a LinkedIn thread. “As it’s UI it’s practical first, but it’s a whole new visual language and a complete rearchitecting of the user interface,” explains MacLaurin. The new PS5 OS is “more subtle than flashy, but no pixel is untouched,” he adds. MacLaurin says the team will show off the new OS soon, after Sony briefly teased part of it during its PS5 games stream. The PS5 OS was shown as part of several Easter eggs ...

Samsung is no stranger to themed special-edition smartphones, having offered Galaxy phones emblazoned with Batman logos and Star Wars themes in the past. The latest collaboration is a Galaxy S20 Plus BTS Edition, with a matching set of Galaxy Buds Plus to go with it. The Galaxy S20 Plus BTS Edition looks like Samsung’s regular flagship, but with a unique iridescent purple exterior (the color is heavily associated with the K-pop group) that has a BTS logo on the back and the band’s heart iconography on the camera array. The BTS Edition of the phone also includes BTS-inspired Android themes, along with a preinstalled copy of the Weverse app (a social media platform used by BTS band members to communicate with fans and share content). Lastly, photo cards of the band are included in the simila...

Germany’s health minister said Sunday that its contact tracing smartphone app will be launched this week, Reuters reported. The app uses short-range Bluetooth to contact people who may have been exposed to someone who contracts the coronavirus, and doesn’t rely on a centralized database, according to Reuters. Contact tracing involves interviewing infected people to find out where they’ve been and who they may have been in contact with, with the goal of slowing the spread of the virus. While several other countries have already launched contact tracing apps, progress has been slower in the US, with concerns about privacy and accuracy. Germany is set to relax its travel restrictions for European Union countries and the UK on Monday, and Health Minister Jens Spahn said the country will offer ...

After four commercial publishers filed a lawsuit earlier this month, the Internet Archive ended its National Emergency Library program earlier than planned, the organization said in a blog post (via ArsTechnica). It opened the “emergency” program in March, providing free access to 1.4 million books for people unable to get to classrooms or libraries during the coronavirus pandemic. The Emergency Library is part of the Open Libraries initiative, in which the Internet Archive scans libraries’ books, allowing digital “check-outs” via a waiting list. But the Emergency Library did away with the waiting lists and made the scanned books immediately available. The intent was to keep the Emergency Library up and running through June 30th. But on June 1st, publishers Hachette, Penguin Random House, ...

After initially postponing it from June to September, organizers have now canceled Computex 2020 due to the ongoing impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The show will miss a year, like many other tech conferences that were planned for 2020. The next Computex event is slated for June 1st through 5th, 2021. The pandemic and the resulting travel restrictions to help curb its spread meant many participants would not have been able to attend a show in Taipei in September, the organizers explained in a blog post. Taiwan has been hailed for isolating coronavirus patients and imposing travel restrictions relatively early compared to the rest of the world, resulting in fewer than 500 total cases and seven deaths from COVID-19. Computex 2019 drew nearly 43,000 visitors from 171 countries, organizers ...

Microsoft has restored custom Xbox Live gamerpics, Windows Central reported. The software giant turned off the ability to upload gamerpics, club pics, and club backgrounds near the end of March amid a surge in demand. Microsoft’s other cloud services, including Windows Virtual Desktop, Teams, Mixer, and Xbox Game Pass, also saw huge increased demand in March, as many people were on lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The company also said at the time that it was working with game publishers to deliver higher-bandwidth activities, like game updates, during off-peak gaming hours. Reinstating features like custom gamerpics may mean the strain of demand for Xbox Live has eased, with many areas loosening lockdowns and social distancing measures. Microsoft didn’t immediately reply to a req...

Persona 4 Golden, the enhanced version of Persona 4 for PlayStation Vita, is launching for PC via Steam. The game is available as a standard version for $19.99 or a deluxe edition — which includes the digital soundtrack and art book — for $24.99. The game’s launch on PC is a first for the mainline Persona series, which has previously been restricted to PlayStation platforms. Persona 4 Golden, released in 2012, follows a group of small town teens investigating a series of murders. Golden adds new characters, dungeons, and more from the original game. It’s one of the series’ most highly praised games; it’s also inspired several spinoffs, including Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4: Dancing All Night. The last game in the series, Persona 5, recently had its own enhanced edition with Persona 5 Roy...

It might not necessarily make that early Monday morning video call more fun, but Microsoft Teams will now let users upload their own photos for custom backgrounds, the company announced in a blog post. Custom images and other background effects are only available for scheduled Teams meetings, Microsoft says. Teams has a background blurring effect and a library of pre-installed images to allow meeting participants to conceal their messy home offices. But it’s still playing catch-up with rival Zoom, which has seen huge growth during the coronavirus pandemic (despite multiple security issues), as people have been working and schooling remotely. Zoom already allows the use of custom images for meeting backgrounds. Microsoft said Teams saw a brisk uptick in users during the pandemic as well, an...