Weekend Wrap-up: BlackBerry could sell, Hyperloop idea unveiled to the public
Thanks for checking out this week’s edition of the Weekend Wrap-up. Here are some of the top stories from the past week.
BlackBerry on the block?
It’s an option, according to the company, which announced that it was looking for a potential buyer or another company it can build some kind of strategic alliance or partnership with. This news joined rumors that BlackBerry was looking to take itself private in an effort to turn things around. The latest BlackBerry 10 devices might not be hitting the sales numbers the company needed, forcing BlackBerry to consider these alternatives.
Musk’s Machine: The Hyperloop unveiled
Anticipation had built for the reveal of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop plans, and this week, we finally got to take a look at the ideas Musk had put together. The Hyperloop is a futuristic mode of travel that combines a pneumatic vacuum tube — kind of like the one used by bank drive-through tellers — and a maglev train, which is a train that doesn’t use wheels or axles but, instead, magnetic levitation. Now that the plans are out there, the real question is, can it be built?
Google Search gets smarter
Google can answer a lot of questions already, but there are some answers it doesn’t have without your input. If you’re a Gmail, Google Calendar or Google+ user, though, Google does have some useful information about your recent purchases, planned activities and photos. Why not include those in Google Search? That’s exactly what the company’s done, so if you’re a user the new features have rolled out to, you can type a question like “What are my plans for this week?” and Google will display your upcoming events on the search results page.
Pay through Facebook? Perhaps
Facebook has tried to get into payments using a couple of different methods in the past, and none have wound up being that successful. But this week, it was reported that Facebook is going to give payments another go — this time, on mobile devices. The company is apparently testing out a payment service that allows you to save your payment information with Facebook and make payments inside third-party apps by logging into your Facebook account. It’ll be interesting to see how things go this time around.