Technology

I've got good news for Apple fans. If using the Match app on your iPhone and iPod Touch just isn't enough for you, you can now get your fix on your iPad, too. Match has just announced a brand new, redesigned, fully maximized app for the the larger iDevice with iPad-optimized functionality.

Check out the new app in the App Store or at Match.com and get the scoop on its robust features below:

See Endless Photos With Stream

Stream is an iOS-exclusive feature that uses an innovative algorithm to serve up photos of singles. Stream finds the members closest to you and highlights photos in their profile in addition to the primary profile pic. Because the iPad has a larger screen, Stream can display multiple pictures at once. Ostensibly it's there to help you discover more of someone's personality, but let's be real: you're not looking for personality in the pics.

Make Quick Connections with Mixer

We live in an era of NOW, so Mixer aims to match you with potential partners at warp speed. Using geographic location, another exclusive algorithm, and your favorite swiping technology, Mixer makes it easier than ever to browse profiles.

Additional Features

Stream and Mixer are the big additions to the new Match App for iPad, but it's got plenty of other interesting ingredients to look forward to:

• Facebook sign-in: Signing into your Match.com account just got even easier. Now you can sign in using your Facebook credentials.
• Grid search: The impact of Pinterest is undeniable. Now you can see more singles at a time with Match's enhanced search view, which takes a cue from Pinterest's famous grid.
• Easier photo uploading: The snap-happy can now add photos from three different locations within the app's interface.
• In-app notifications: Stay even more connected in this hyper-connected world with in-app notifications.
• In-app purchasing: For the first time, you'll be able to purchase subscriptions and additional features while you're signed into your iPad app. How did it take Match so long to make it even easier to spend money on their products? Who knows, but you'll be glad you can when you're itching for an upgrade on-the-go.
• More ways to communicate: Your communication options are practically endless in the new Match iPad app. You can chat with potential dates throughout the entire app, from Stream, to your Daily Matches, and even directly from a member's photo. And there's no waiting – you can communicate from the second you start up the app.

At the recent Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, Tinder cofounder Sean Rad made the surprise announcement that the company is launching a new premium service in early November. The upgrade will allow paying users more options beyond just swiping left and right.

This might make some Tinder fans uneasy. After all, the value of the app is in the sheer number of people using it. Will restricting certain new features to paying customers cause others to drop off and look for other cheaper alternatives for hooking up?

Not according to Rad. He says the premium service will include functions that Tinder users have long been asking for - including the ability to travel and use Tinder in multiple cities. Currently, you can only use the service locally, which means if you live in Los Angeles you can't look for hook-ups in New York.

But will people pay for this type of technology? Several hackers have taken advantage of Tinder's technology already and used it to create the very features users have been requesting and the premium Tinder will be offering - such as fooling the GPS-based technology into thinking you are in another city so you can scroll through profiles in multiple cities. Also, several hackers have come up with technology to "mass-like" profiles in mere seconds without having to manually scroll through, which is a very popular request from current Tinder users to increase their odds of a match.

And what about Tinder's current features - will new users have to start paying for basic services, or will some features be taken away to add to the new premium service? Rad says there will be no changes under the current free app, so users can rest a little easier. Forbes reported that people now swipe through 1.2 billion Tinder profiles a day, and that each day Tinder makes more than 15 million matches. The company needs to hang on to these users because its value is in the numbers. 

But Rad is trying to continue Tinder's growth, and that means it's time to add revenue - especially for investors like Barry Diller.  “We had to get our product and growth right first,” says Rad. “Revenue has always been on the road map.”

Forbes said the Tinder founder hinted at offering other types of services that go beyond dating, including features for travelers, though he didn't cite anything specific. Could we see a Tinder app that includes restaurant, car service, or hotel choices in the near future?

Clearly, Rad has big plans for his popular app. But we'll have to wait and see how the market (and their pocketbooks) respond. For more on this dating app you can read our Tinder review.

A new study by German researchers shows that men who are looking for more casual sex are more willing to spend money for the new iPhone 6 rather than purchase a cheaper Android phone.

According to website Science of Relationships, Christine Hennighausen and Frank Schwab of the University of Wuerzburg asked 350 men and women how likely they would be to buy an Apple iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy Ace. (The Samsung device sells for about 20% of the price of an iPhone.)

The experiment showed that men’s desire to purchase an iPhone depended not only on whether he was in a committed relationship, but whether he was looking for a long-term relationship or just casual one-night stands. As it turns out, men in committed relationships were no more or less likely to purchase an iPhone as compared to an Android. But single men who were looking for long-term relationships were less likely to buy that iPhone compared to single guys who were looking to score.

This phenomenon isn’t new. A few years ago, OkCupid did a study and found that daters with iPhones had almost twice as much sex as Android users. This was broken down further by gender and age, but the research was there – iPhones are definitely a sexual turn-on.

The researchers in the German study asked the participants about their sexual behavior, with questions such as “How many different sexual partners have you had in the past year?” and “With how many different partners have you had sex on one and only one occasion?” Higher numbers indicate a tendency toward flings, or a casual dating strategy.

When the researchers disregarded the men’s mating strategy, they found that uncommitted men were more willing to purchase the cheaper Samsung phone. So just because a man is single you shouldn’t assume he’s just looking to score. Apparently, his willingness to buy that iPhone depends on whether he is marriage material or prefers promiscuity. So the fact that more men seem to be buying Android phones is a good sign for ladies who are looking for long-term relationships.

The researchers found that more women in the study chose to purchase Android phones rather than iPhones, though their decisions weren’t influenced by their dating strategies as were the men’s.

Another interesting finding: single men who did purchase those iPhones tend to have them on display when there are women around them. This is not surprising in light of the findings – and the fact that those men put down a few hundred dollars to be first in line to get their shiny new devices, so they might as well show them off and see what happens.

Dating app Tinder has had to deal with a lot of security issues, despite the app’s verification system using Facebook Connect.  In theory, because of Facebook’s security measures, only “real people” can join Tinder, so users can sign up with some reassurance the profiles they'll encounter will be real. But lately, this has not been the case.

Spammers and scammers have been able to lure users away from Tinder and onto their sites, typically, with spam bots - fake accounts pretending to be real people that flirt with users in order to redirect them to adult sites - and take their money. In the past, Tinder users could block profiles, but they couldn’t report spam.

According to website Tech Crunch, things have changed. Users can now not only block accounts but also report spam. Tinder also made a technical update to address the issue, and the update was effective at cutting down on the in-app spam. Unfortunately, the spam bots just found another avenue - SMS. Phone spam for Tinder users skyrocketed.

Instead of luring Tinder users away while they are inside the app, the spam bots changed their scripts and started collecting mobile numbers from the users, sending those users text messages with links to the spammers’ websites. 

It can be really misleading for users to receive text messages from spammers who are pretending to be people. One example Tech Crunch used that came from a spam bot read like this: “sorry my phone’s almost dead and out of mins too. If you go on Tinderpages.com ill be there. Im sweetgirl4u on it. Sorry its free tho if you confirm your email.”

Tinder is still racking up complaints, so it seems the technical update hasn’t actually made a difference. According to security researchers, this is beacuse Tinder was successful in getting rid of the in-app spam bots but not the spam bots themselves. Lead researcher Raj Bandyopadhyay explained to how they conducted their research, and what it meant for Tinder:

“Our topic modeler looks for phone number related complaints, and then classifies them using Data Scientist to validate correlation. In this case, we isolated complaints related to Tinder, and then compared them to historical complaints. This gives us a high degree of confidence that the spike is specific to Tinder activity and not just an overall spike in spam. In addition, it is important to re-emphasize that this is a pattern we have frequently seen – fraudsters migrating to phone after being thwarted online.”

So it seems text messages are becoming the spam bot avenue of choice, since online technology has improved so much. Now, mobile security needs to catch up.

Today in “Yes, there’s even an app for that”: Healthvana, a new service helping to halt the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

These days we do everything online - from paying our bills to booking appointments to meeting the loves of our lives. And it’s great. There are clear benefits to living in a faster, more connected world. But where do you draw the line on going digital? Would you store your STD status online?

Healthvana is banking on the answer being “yes.” The service launched earlier this summer in partnership with the AIDS Health Foundation to offer people easy access to their own health records. Healthvana sends patients' results directly from the laboratory to their smartphones, via their website or their mobile app.

Healthvana founder Ramin Bastani told ABC News "It's a digital version of, 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours.'" Armed with your results on the digital device of your choice, you can show potential partners and new doctors a time-stamped status on prevalent STDs like chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV. (Note: Though common, HPV and herpes are not currently included in the app’s interface.)

"It's no different if you went to the doctor and got a printout and showed [your partner] that," Bastani explained. "We want to eradicate that idea that no news is good news."

Whitney Engeran, head of public health at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, is also predicting a bright future for Healthvana. "It allows us to move faster with our patients and gives them a lot of quick information," he said. "Because right now if they're negative, we don't necessarily call them –- because we see so many people, we really only call them if they’re positive."

The problem, of course, is one that plagues everything in our digital age: security. What happens if Healthvana is hacked? Or if you lose your phone?

The service supposedly follows U.S. patient privacy laws known as HIPAA, because users can only access their results after entering through a secure portal, and no sensitive info is sent via email. Patient records are stored in a secure data center that only a limited number of Healthvana employees have access to.

Of course, Healthvana can only reveal the results of someone’s most recent test - which isn’t definitive proof of a clean bill of health and is no guarantee it’s safe to skip using protection. Still, if this app makes users more aware of their health, helps people approach a sensitive topic, and encourages more responsible sexual practices, it’s a welcome step in the right direction.

So far the instant record feature is being tested in three locations in Florida, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation plans to roll out the updated app nationwide within the next two months.

Tinder is no doubt the latest craze of online and mobile dating. Most singles have heard of it, if they aren’t already using it. But despite the fact that Tinder requires you to sign up via your Facebook profile (which keeps out the fake profiles and supposedly keeps people honest about who they are) – hackers are finding ways to game the system for their own benefit.

A recent article by such a hacker appeared in Android Central, where the author Cage Michaels - who is happily in a relationship - enjoys just being on Tinder, flipping through photos and judging each woman's hotness. He has decided to share his strategy with the masses (“FTW” – “for the win” - as he says). To him, Tinder has nothing to do with his relationship and his “real life,” but considers it a game or a way to pass time entertainingly. He says, “I'm in a relationship. I'm happy. I just find it really entertaining to swipe through photos of real people. Some people spend all day looking at photos of cats. Personally, I'd rather look at photos of women. To each their own.”

Of course, in order to look at photos on Tinder you have to be on Tinder. This created a problem for him, because his friends (and her friends) noticed he was on the app and were wondering if he was cheating or had broken up with his girlfriend. According to him, neither was the case. Hence his dilemma – how could he Tinder without all the hassle?

Instead of setting up a fake Facebook profile (which can take some effort), he decided to outsmart Tinder’s GPS capabilities and fake the app into thinking he was visiting another city (where he had no friends or connections). This made his Tinder habit easy to maintain.

He goes step-by-step in the article, guiding people first through downloading a fake GPS app. Once you download, you can pick the city where you want to anonymously browse Tinder profiles. When you hit the “play” button within the fake GPS, you can then enable a fake GPS signal. Once you open Tinder, it will pick up the fake GPS location from your phone and use that for its search.

While this is one way of creating a fake profile on Tinder, it certainly isn’t the only way to outsmart the app. There are new apps being launched that take advantage of Tinder’s functionality by allowing people to match en masse without even looking at profiles, just to increase your odds of success.

Between these and the hackers, you might want to question whether your Tinder match is real, or just another person who’s gaming the system.