Tech

London has taken another step toward a cashless future.

Companies Busk and iZettle, a Swedish tech firm recently bought by PayPal, are making it possible for people to support buskers and street artists in London with contactless payments over the coming months.

The scheme will let buskers plug an NFC-based card reader into their phones for you to tap with your credit card and pay a fixed donation. The companies trialled the system for two weeks and trial-member Charlotte Campbell, a full-time busker, said it “had a significant impact on contributions”, according to the BBC.

The world has been embracing contactless payments, with Canada as the No. 1 cashless country. Sweden is at No. 2, with 80 percent of transactions cashless. The US has been a slower adopter however, with mobile payments making up only 1 percent of in-store transactions, according to 451 Research.

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Tech

Dophin with phonelEnlarge Image
Thank you, dolphin.
Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET

If you drop your cell phone into a large body of water, you don’t have a lot of options. You can wave goodbye and look forward to a new phone. You can go after it, getting soaked in the process. Or you can have a smart dolphin go pick it up for you.

That last option was available to Teressa Cee, a dancer for the Miami Heat professional basketball team, during a recent visit to the Bahamas.

Cee posted a video on Facebook late last month taken at Blue Lagoon Island, a place that lets people hang out with dolphins and sea lions.

Cee sets the scene: “We were filming on this floating platform in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. So, against my better judgment I asked someone to hold my phone for me and he accidentally dropped my phone into the water and it sank to the bottom.”

A dolphin named Cacique saw the phone fall and politely went down to fetch it and bring it back, adding a high-pitched squeak on delivery. Cee’s video shows the good-Samaritan dolphin in action.

It’s fortunate for Cee that the dolphins haven’t left for their home planet yet. (So long, and thanks for all the fish!)

This isn’t the first time marine-related life has tangled with technology. Back in 2012, a greedy seagull appeared to abscond with a GoPro. A penguin-egg-eating Striated Caracara bird took off with a disguised camera owned by some BBC documentarians and unwittingly became an aerial photographer in the process. At least Cacique the dolphin had the kindness to give the gadget back.

(Via Tastefully Offensive)

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