Tech Trend 247

This week on MashTalk, we're taking stock of all things Apple after its first "bad" quarter in 13 years. Will the iPhone 7 turn things around? Has Apple reached its ceiling?

Plus, we try to see what struggling Twitter can do to right the ship and look at another dominant earnings report from Facebook. Lastly, we wistfully pine over great gadgets we'll never buy in a new segment titled "The Gadget Price Is Too Damn High." 

Listen to the episode on iTunes or on Stitcher. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes, instantly. If you like MashTalk, please fill out our audience survey.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

This week on MashTalk, we're taking stock of all things Apple after its first "bad" quarter in 13 years. Will the iPhone 7 turn things around? Has Apple reached its ceiling?

Plus, we try to see what struggling Twitter can do to right the ship and look at another dominant earnings report from Facebook. Lastly, we wistfully pine over great gadgets we'll never buy in a new segment titled "The Gadget Price Is Too Damn High." 

Listen to the episode on iTunes or on Stitcher. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes, instantly. If you like MashTalk, please fill out our audience survey.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Ransomware, a type of malware that holds your computer hostage until you pay a certain amount of money, seems to be getting more popular since it sprouted up in large-scale form in 2013.

The website of Maisto International, a toymaker that primarily sells model vehicles and remote control vehicles, is playing host to some ransomware, Malwarebytes wrote Thursday. On the maisto.com homepage, malicious files can download themselves onto visitors' computers via something called Angler.

Angler is a type of exploit toolkit that installs malicious files on your computer. In this case, the Angler kit is infecting computers with CryptXXX, a ransomware that encrypts users' files, offering to unlock them for a fee.

According to Malwarebytes Senior Security Researcher Jérôme Segura, there is a tool that infected users can download to remove the ransomware without paying the ransom.

The Angler toolkit exploits outdated plugins like Java, Flash Player or Silverlight to install files on computers, so making sure your plugins are either up to date or disabled should keep you safe from this particular ransomware. Exploits like this one is why browsers have been disabling plugins, leading to the end of Java and other similar services.

Maisto International became a host to this malware because it's using an outdated content management system, which allowed hackers to plant their malicious software right on the website, Segura told Mashable. 

"Sites running outdated versions of CMS [content management systems] such as WordPress or Joomla are vulnerable to automated or targeted hacks," Segura said. "Just like with Windows computers, hackers can exploit a flaw to gain access to the site and upload malicious code or perform other nefarious tasks."

Malwarebytes reached out to Maisto International about the malicious software on its website, and the website is now in maintenance mode.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Delta announced Friday it will be the first airline in the U.S. to deploy Radio Frequency Identification — or RFID — baggage tracking technology, for all 120 million bags it handles each year.

Since the 1990s, airlines have tracked baggage with barcodes and hand scanning. Delta calls the switch to RFID "historic."

Bill Lentsch, Delta's senior vice president of airport customer service and cargo operations, said this will entail a $50 million investment in RFID at 344 stations globally.

"We aim to reliably deliver every bag on every flight," Lentsch said in a statement. "This innovative application of technology gives us greater data and more precise information throughout the bag's journey."

In February, the last month for which data is available, the Department of Transportation reported Delta has 1.95 mishandled baggage incidents per 1,000 passengers, placing it highest among the largest U.S. airlines and fourth overall behind Virgin America, JetBlue and Alaska. 

With RFID, scanners "use radio waves to capture highly accurate and consistent data stored on an RFID chip embedded in the luggage tag," according to Delta.

That information will be included in the Delta mobile app, and passengers would get push notifications as their bags were put on and off their aircraft.

It isn't just airlines interested in RFID tracking: Several airports have implemented processes with RFID instead of barcodes. McCarran Airport in Las Vegas has been using RFID since 2006.

And many luggage and accessory companies have been developing RFID technology for passengers so they can track their items themselves. Airlines and airports will likely all eventually adopt the technology, in order to prevent as many customer complaints as possible.

Delta has already started testing RFID, and claims a 99.9% success rate.

Delta teams have deployed 4,600 scanners, installed 3,800 RFID bag tag printers and integrated 600 pier and claim readers to enable hands-free scanning of baggage throughout the handling process. RFID will soon track bags on all Delta mainline and Delta Connection flights.

Spread throughout 84 of Delta's largest stations, 1,500 belt loaders will give baggage the green light – literally – as it enters and exits the belly of a plane. The belt loader sensor will flash green when the bag is being loaded on the correct aircraft or red when the bag requires additional handling.

Delta expects the technology to roll out beginning at the end of this year.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

This week on MashTalk, we're taking stock of all things Apple after its first "bad" quarter in 13 years. Will the iPhone 7 turn things around? Has Apple reached its ceiling?

Plus, we try to see what struggling Twitter can do to right the ship and look at another dominant earnings report from Facebook. Lastly, we wistfully pine over great gadgets we'll never buy in a new segment titled "The Gadget Price Is Too Damn High." 

Listen to the episode on iTunes or on Stitcher. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes, instantly. If you like MashTalk, please fill out our audience survey.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

This week on MashTalk, we're taking stock of all things Apple after its first "bad" quarter in 13 years. Will the iPhone 7 turn things around? Has Apple reached its ceiling?

Plus, we try to see what struggling Twitter can do to right the ship and look at another dominant earnings report from Facebook. Lastly, we wistfully pine over great gadgets we'll never buy in a new segment titled "The Gadget Price Is Too Damn High." 

Listen to the episode on iTunes or on Stitcher. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes, instantly. If you like MashTalk, please fill out our audience survey.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

A digital camera with no LCD screen? Who the heck would buy such a camera in 2016?

That's the question, Leica surely asked itself when it decided to create the M-D (Typ 262), its newest rangefinder-style digital camera, which doesn't come with any kind of display on the back.

If you believe Leica's spiel, a camera without a screen distills "photography in its purest form." A screen, apparently distracts the photographer during the photographing process.

In other words, the M-D gives you a slower, more old school way of shooting more akin to shooting with a film camera. The photographer is forced to think about composition while looking through the viewfinder, adjust settings with the shutter speed dial on top and the ISO wheel on the back.

Instead of wasting time reviewing photos after each shot (called "chimping" because you hunch over your camera like a chimp staring at the screen), you can move on and take more shots.

It's an earnest effort to preserve the art of photography, but it's just ridiculous especially considering its $5,995 price.

The whole point of a digital camera with a screen is that you can review photos after each shot. That's an advantage, not a disadvantage. 

That's like Apple making an iPhone that only makes great voice calls because all of the iPhone's other features distract from the actual phone feature.

As for specs, the camera's got 24 megapixels and uses Leica's Maestro image processor. No JPEG shooting with this camera; it only captures photos in RAW format DNG files. Its 3 fps shooting is also not impressive at all.

Nevertheless, while the M-D is too expensive and featureless in my opinion, if you can afford it, nobody's going to stop you.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

A digital camera with no LCD screen? Who the heck would buy such a camera in 2016?

That's the question, Leica surely asked itself when it decided to create the M-D (Typ 262), its newest rangefinder-style digital camera, which doesn't come with any kind of display on the back.

If you believe Leica's spiel, a camera without a screen distills "photography in its purest form." A screen, apparently distracts the photographer during the photographing process.

In other words, the M-D gives you a slower, more old school way of shooting more akin to shooting with a film camera. The photographer is forced to think about composition while looking through the viewfinder, adjust settings with the shutter speed dial on top and the ISO wheel on the back.

Instead of wasting time reviewing photos after each shot (called "chimping" because you hunch over your camera like a chimp staring at the screen), you can move on and take more shots.

It's an earnest effort to preserve the art of photography, but it's just ridiculous especially considering its $5,995 price.

The whole point of a digital camera with a screen is that you can review photos after each shot. That's an advantage, not a disadvantage. 

That's like Apple making an iPhone that only makes great voice calls because all of the iPhone's other features distract from the actual phone feature.

As for specs, the camera's got 24 megapixels and uses Leica's Maestro image processor. No JPEG shooting with this camera; it only captures photos in RAW format DNG files. Its 3 fps shooting is also not impressive at all.

Nevertheless, while the M-D is too expensive and featureless in my opinion, if you can afford it, nobody's going to stop you.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

A digital camera with no LCD screen? Who the heck would buy such a camera in 2016?

That's the question, Leica surely asked itself when it decided to create the M-D (Typ 262), its newest rangefinder-style digital camera, which doesn't come with any kind of display on the back.

If you believe Leica's spiel, a camera without a screen distills "photography in its purest form." A screen, apparently distracts the photographer during the photographing process.

In other words, the M-D gives you a slower, more old school way of shooting more akin to shooting with a film camera. The photographer is forced to think about composition while looking through the viewfinder, adjust settings with the shutter speed dial on top and the ISO wheel on the back.

Instead of wasting time reviewing photos after each shot (called "chimping" because you hunch over your camera like a chimp staring at the screen), you can move on and take more shots.

It's an earnest effort to preserve the art of photography, but it's just ridiculous especially considering its $5,995 price.

The whole point of a digital camera with a screen is that you can review photos after each shot. That's an advantage, not a disadvantage. 

That's like Apple making an iPhone that only makes great voice calls because all of the iPhone's other features distract from the actual phone feature.

As for specs, the camera's got 24 megapixels and uses Leica's Maestro image processor. No JPEG shooting with this camera; it only captures photos in RAW format DNG files. Its 3 fps shooting is also not impressive at all.

Nevertheless, while the M-D is too expensive and featureless in my opinion, if you can afford it, nobody's going to stop you.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

What do you think the nickname for a Rolls-Royce roller bag might be? A "roller roller?" No, really, I am asking. You tell me.

On Friday, Rolls-Royce unveiled a six-piece luggage set made for jet-set Rolls-Royce owners who want to bring the elite elegance of their motorcar with them while they travel.

The $45,854 set isn't just rebadged Louis Vuitton luggage; it was created specifically for Rolls-Royce.

Just like the illustrious Rolls-Royce cars, the Grand Tourer piece of the luggage set includes self-righting wheel centers emblazoned with the double-R logo. That way, even if people don't see you get out of your Rolls, they'll know you have one.

Toss your clothes inside the Long Weekender piece and you won't ever have to worry about getting a $10,000 blouse stuck in an errant zipper. That's because it features magnetic fasteners carved from solid billet of machine-polished aerospace-grade aluminum. Magnifique!

Finishing off the whole look, the Rolls' The Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament shape is embossed into the outside of every piece.

If you'd like to know more about the set, you can ring your neighborhood Rolls-Royce showroom. Your second call should be me, because I'd like to be your new travel buddy.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

It was old school versus new school. And new school won.

Vice President Joe Biden visited the Vatican recently, and, in true Biden form, he placed a bet before meeting with one of the Cardinals. You know, as good Catholics do.

Specifically, Biden bet a New York Times correspondent, Gardiner Harris, which was faster: a Cadillac or a Tesla. He relayed his loss to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, at their meeting, according to a White House press pool report. 

Parolin: You have already met with the Holy Father.

Biden: I have met with the Holy Father. And I've met with these guys, too. (Gesturing to press pool.) I had to pay this man $10. He's from the New York Times. We had a bet: Which is the faster car, the newer Cadillac or the new Musk car. Which?

Harris: Tesla.

Biden: The Tesla. I bet the Cadillac.

Harris: He went for the old technology. I went for the new.

Parolin: Oh yes?

Biden: The Tesla's two tenths of a second faster. But I lost. I paid my $10. I want the record to show, I paid my $10.

Then Michael Memoli, a Los Angeles Times reporter, chimed in: Does that count as a confession sir? Biden was quick to respond. "I'm seeking absolution!"

While it's not clear which Cadillac Biden is referring to, it's easy to deduce he meant the CTS-V powered by a 640-horsepower supercharged V8 engine borrowed from the Chevrolet Corvette Z06. We can also assume the "Musk car" in question is the Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous acceleration mode.

The CTS-V is capable of a 0 to 60 mph run in 3.7 seconds while the P90D can do that same run in just 2.8. From the seat of your pants, they're equally quick. From a numbers standpoint, though, the Musk car takes the cake.

I don't know where Biden and the Cardinal got their performance figures from. The Caddy is a bit more than two tenths of a second slower. Either way you crack it, Biden wins because both cars are American made.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

A digital camera with no LCD screen? Who the heck would buy such a camera in 2016?

That's the question, Leica surely asked itself when it decided to create the M-D (Typ 262), its newest rangefinder-style digital camera, which doesn't come with any kind of display on the back.

If you believe Leica's spiel, a camera without a screen distills "photography in its purest form." A screen, apparently distracts the photographer during the photographing process.

In other words, the M-D gives you a slower, more old school way of shooting more akin to shooting with a film camera. The photographer is forced to think about composition while looking through the viewfinder, adjust settings with the shutter speed dial on top and the ISO wheel on the back.

Instead of wasting time reviewing photos after each shot (called "chimping" because you hunch over your camera like a chimp staring at the screen), you can move on and take more shots.

It's an earnest effort to preserve the art of photography, but it's just ridiculous especially considering its $5,995 price.

The whole point of a digital camera with a screen is that you can review photos after each shot. That's an advantage, not a disadvantage. 

That's like Apple making an iPhone that only makes great voice calls because all of the iPhone's other features distract from the actual phone feature.

As for specs, the camera's got 24 megapixels and uses Leica's Maestro image processor. No JPEG shooting with this camera; it only captures photos in RAW format DNG files. Its 3 fps shooting is also not impressive at all.

Nevertheless, while the M-D is too expensive and featureless in my opinion, if you can afford it, nobody's going to stop you.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

There are so many different apps, programs and services we use on a daily basis, or even a minute-by-minute basis. Navigating through all those different things, while important, can be annoying. Email, texts, Twitter, Slack, Google Drive and Dropbox are just a few examples, and being able to condense that list down would be a huge help.

Microsoft made Flow to do just that, allowing you to connect apps and services and automate portions of your workflow, easing the need to check each thing every minute to make sure you didn't miss anything new. You can set up notifications across platforms, sync up folders in different programs or automate software approvals.

Flow works similarly to If This Then That (IFTT), creating "recipes" between apps and services so that when certain events happen in one, something will happen in another.

With Flow, you can set up text notifications for when certain people email you, get a message in Slack when a file or folder in Dropbox is changed or added, save tweets or share them on Facebook, automatically copy files between Google Drive and Dropbox, or automatically approve new members for a MailChimp list.

Microsoft has already set up a bunch of different Flow templates you can try for yourself, which are available on the Flow website. You can easily browse through categories like "social media," "productivity" or "collect data." You can also create your own Flows using a large number of apps and programs.

Flow is currently available as a preview and is free to sign up for as long as you have a work or school Office 365 account. 

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

This week on MashTalk, we're taking stock of all things Apple after its first "bad" quarter in 13 years. Will the iPhone 7 turn things around? Has Apple reached its ceiling?

Plus, we try to see what struggling Twitter can do to right the ship and look at another dominant earnings report from Facebook. Lastly, we wistfully pine over great gadgets we'll never buy in a new segment titled "The Gadget Price Is Too Damn High." 

Listen to the episode on iTunes or on Stitcher. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes, instantly. If you like MashTalk, please fill out our audience survey.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

When any kid with a smartphone has the ability to create an account on Tinder and start connecting with people, many parents will want to make sure their children aren't doing anything inappropriate.

TeenSafe, a leading phone-monitoring web program for parents who want to be aware of what their kids are doing online, updated Friday to include the ability to monitor Tinder activity. Parents who use TeenSafe can now see if their kid has installed Tinder, their profile, who they've matched with, liked, super liked and skipped. Parents can also see any conversations their child has with other users.

While Tinder is primarily known as a dating or hook-up app, it allows users aged 13-17 to sign up and use it. This demographic makes up about 7% of Tinder users, and this group can only match with other users in the same age range. But there's no saying an underage user can't lie about their age and match with older people.

If conversations struck up through Tinder move off the app and into texting, parents can see those conversations as well. By pulling data from smartphones' backups, TeenSafe allows parents to look at activity like Kik and WhatsApp messages, phone logs, web history and text messages — even if they're deleted.

TeenSafe has been around since 2011, where it began as the first phone-monitoring program that worked with iPhones. The program has gone through numerous iterations to keep up with the latest apps and updates, and has been used by over 1 million parents since it launched, co-founder Scott Walker told Mashable. 

Why do parents need to spy?

"Parents today are raising the first generation of digital natives," Walker said. "Younger and younger kids are getting these devices and don't know the power these devices have. They get themselves into situations that they often need help with."

TeenSafe was created to help parents try to bridge that gap with their digital-native kids.

Parents today are raising the first generation of digital natives

The idea for TeenSafe came from a situation with Walker's own daughter. After a move to a new school, Walker said his daughter seemed off, but continuously said she was fine. Walker used an Android-only phone spying program to find out that she was being bullied pretty badly, so they stopped the move and brought her back to her old school to avoid that bad situation.

TeenSafe can't legally be used on anyone 18 years or older without their consent.

BONUS: Mom shocked about Tinder's hookup culture

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Delta announced Friday it will be the first airline in the U.S. to deploy Radio Frequency Identification — or RFID — baggage tracking technology, for all 120 million bags it handles each year.

Since the 1990s, airlines have tracked baggage with barcodes and hand scanning. Delta calls the switch to RFID "historic."

Bill Lentsch, Delta's senior vice president of airport customer service and cargo operations, said this will entail a $50 million investment in RFID at 344 stations globally.

"We aim to reliably deliver every bag on every flight," Lentsch said in a statement. "This innovative application of technology gives us greater data and more precise information throughout the bag's journey."

In February, the last month for which data is available, the Department of Transportation reported Delta has 1.95 mishandled baggage incidents per 1,000 passengers, placing it highest among the largest U.S. airlines and fourth overall behind Virgin America, JetBlue and Alaska. 

With RFID, scanners "use radio waves to capture highly accurate and consistent data stored on an RFID chip embedded in the luggage tag," according to Delta.

That information will be included in the Delta mobile app, and passengers would get push notifications as their bags were put on and off their aircraft.

It isn't just airlines interested in RFID tracking: Several airports have implemented processes with RFID instead of barcodes. McCarran Airport in Las Vegas has been using RFID since 2006.

And many luggage and accessory companies have been developing RFID technology for passengers so they can track their items themselves. Airlines and airports will likely all eventually adopt the technology, in order to prevent as many customer complaints as possible.

Delta has already started testing RFID, and claims a 99.9% success rate.

Delta teams have deployed 4,600 scanners, installed 3,800 RFID bag tag printers and integrated 600 pier and claim readers to enable hands-free scanning of baggage throughout the handling process. RFID will soon track bags on all Delta mainline and Delta Connection flights.

Spread throughout 84 of Delta's largest stations, 1,500 belt loaders will give baggage the green light – literally – as it enters and exits the belly of a plane. The belt loader sensor will flash green when the bag is being loaded on the correct aircraft or red when the bag requires additional handling.

Delta expects the technology to roll out beginning at the end of this year.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

If you perform a very specific query in the search field of online code repository Github, where many Slack bot projects are stored, you can get info that potentially lets you access a trove of corporate data, including companies' internal chats and files. 

This is because a lot of Slack bot developers — and there are a lot of them, since building a Slack bot is quite easy — included their Slack tokens (personal Slack account credentials) directly in the code, which they share publicly on Github. 

The issue was discovered by security company Detectify, which notified Slack about it on March 26. Detectify managed to find "thousands" of such tokens with a simple GitHub search. The story was first reported by Quartz.

Tokens of all types aren't uncommon on GitHub, but the problem is made worse by the way Slack tokens are constructed. In case of private tokens and custom bot tokens, they're a string of characters using these formats:

xoxp-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

xoxb-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXX-XXXXXX

Simply searching for the four letter prefixes on GitHub will net you a lot of tokens in plain text, which we were able to replicate.

If you've never built anything on the Slack platform, you may think this doesn't affect you, and in many cases that's true. But in larger business organizations, it's quite possible that some team member had built a Slack bot and inadvertently revealed their Slack token, potentially exposing company data. 

Outsiders can easily gain access to internal chat conversations, shared files, direct messages and even passwords.

"Using the tokens it’s possible to eavesdrop on a company. Outsiders can easily gain access to internal chat conversations, shared files, direct messages and even passwords to other services if these have been shared on Slack," writes Detectify.

The researchers at Detectify have found tokens belonging to Fortune 500 companies, payment providers, Internet service providers health care providers, advertising agencies, university classes and newspapers, among other organizations. And using those tokens, they revealed database credentials, private messages and login details for other services. 

The good news is the problem has largely already been fixed. Slack responded to the problem, telling Detectify they've “revoked the tokens you reported, notified affected users and team owners directly, and that we’ll be doing that proactively going forward”.

In other words, if someone makes the same mistake again, Slack will disable the tokens and warn them — as seen in the message Slack recently started sending to some developers. 

Developers, in general, should take care not to place tokens directly in the code and use environment variables instead. Slack admins can make sure only Team Owners and selected Slack members can create tokens and integrations; the option is in Slack's Admin Settings. 

Mashable has contacted Slack about the issue. "Slack is clear and specific that tokens should be treated just like passwords. We warn developers when they generate a token never to share it with other users or applications," a Slack spokesperson said in an email.

According to the spokesperson, Slack will continue to improve its documentation and communications to make sure developers understand this.

"For privacy reasons, we are not sharing information about the teams impacted, however, all of the reported tokens were disabled, as well as others we proactively found. We notified both the users who created the tokens, as well as the owners of affected teams," she wrote.

A popular platform for corporate communication (disclosure: We use Slack at Mashable), Slack boasted more than 2.3 million daily active users in February.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

When any kid with a smartphone has the ability to create an account on Tinder and start connecting with people, many parents will want to make sure their children aren't doing anything inappropriate.

TeenSafe, a leading phone-monitoring web program for parents who want to be aware of what their kids are doing online, updated Friday to include the ability to monitor Tinder activity. Parents who use TeenSafe can now see if their kid has installed Tinder, their profile, who they've matched with, liked, super liked and skipped. Parents can also see any conversations their child has with other users.

While Tinder is primarily known as a dating or hook-up app, it allows users aged 13-17 to sign up and use it. This demographic makes up about 7% of Tinder users, and this group can only match with other users in the same age range. But there's no saying an underage user can't lie about their age and match with older people.

If conversations struck up through Tinder move off the app and into texting, parents can see those conversations as well. By pulling data from smartphones' backups, TeenSafe allows parents to look at activity like Kik and WhatsApp messages, phone logs, web history and text messages — even if they're deleted.

TeenSafe has been around since 2011, where it began as the first phone-monitoring program that worked with iPhones. The program has gone through numerous iterations to keep up with the latest apps and updates, and has been used by over 1 million parents since it launched, co-founder Scott Walker told Mashable. 

Why do parents need to spy?

"Parents today are raising the first generation of digital natives," Walker said. "Younger and younger kids are getting these devices and don't know the power these devices have. They get themselves into situations that they often need help with."

TeenSafe was created to help parents try to bridge that gap with their digital-native kids.

Parents today are raising the first generation of digital natives

The idea for TeenSafe came from a situation with Walker's own daughter. After a move to a new school, Walker said his daughter seemed off, but continuously said she was fine. Walker used an Android-only phone spying program to find out that she was being bullied pretty badly, so they stopped the move and brought her back to her old school to avoid that bad situation.

TeenSafe can't legally be used on anyone 18 years or older without their consent.

BONUS: Mom shocked about Tinder's hookup culture

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Google is working on Trips, a travel app that scours your Gmail account for travel-related info and lets you plan and book your trip, all from your mobile phone. 

The app is currently in testing, and is available as beta only to some members of Google's Local Guides program, as reported by Dutch site Android World, which grabbed a bunch of screenshots of the app. 

Even though it's still in beta testing phase (we've contacted Google about the app, but have not yet heard from them), Trips seems to be very comprehensive. It grabs travel information, such as flight reservations, from Gmail, but it also lets you build an itinerary manually. Then, it presents you with a complete overview of your trip, including reservations, info on places to see, restaurants and public transportation. 

Even better, it's all available offline, so you can browse through your trip info without an Internet connection. 

There's no word on when the app might be released to a wider audience. 

Just last month, Google launched Destinations, a service that lets you do almost all of the above without an app — directly from your search results. And the company already offers a variety of other travel-related services, including Flights. Perhaps it's time to roll all that up into one app. 

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

When any kid with a smartphone has the ability to create an account on Tinder and start connecting with people, many parents will want to make sure their children aren't doing anything inappropriate.

TeenSafe, a leading phone-monitoring web program for parents who want to be aware of what their kids are doing online, updated Friday to include the ability to monitor Tinder activity. Parents who use TeenSafe can now see if their kid has installed Tinder, their profile, who they've matched with, liked, super liked and skipped. Parents can also see any conversations their child has with other users.

While Tinder is primarily known as a dating or hook-up app, it allows users aged 13-17 to sign up and use it. This demographic makes up about 7% of Tinder users, and this group can only match with other users in the same age range. But there's no saying an underage user can't lie about their age and match with older people.

If conversations struck up through Tinder move off the app and into texting, parents can see those conversations as well. By pulling data from smartphones' backups, TeenSafe allows parents to look at activity like Kik and WhatsApp messages, phone logs, web history and text messages — even if they're deleted.

TeenSafe has been around since 2011, where it began as the first phone-monitoring program that worked with iPhones. The program has gone through numerous iterations to keep up with the latest apps and updates, and has been used by over 1 million parents since it launched, co-founder Scott Walker told Mashable. 

Why do parents need to spy?

"Parents today are raising the first generation of digital natives," Walker said. "Younger and younger kids are getting these devices and don't know the power these devices have. They get themselves into situations that they often need help with."

TeenSafe was created to help parents try to bridge that gap with their digital-native kids.

Parents today are raising the first generation of digital natives

The idea for TeenSafe came from a situation with Walker's own daughter. After a move to a new school, Walker said his daughter seemed off, but continuously said she was fine. Walker used an Android-only phone spying program to find out that she was being bullied pretty badly, so they stopped the move and brought her back to her old school to avoid that bad situation.

TeenSafe can't legally be used on anyone 18 years or older without their consent.

BONUS: Mom shocked about Tinder's hookup culture

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

In the world of engineering, you can usually trust nature to have done it first, and better.

A newly-developed fuel cell technology looks to the cactus to solve a problem involving this promising but complex form of clean energy, which generates power without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. 

The technology, which is a thin plastic membrane, could help improve the performance of fuel cells to make them more useful for everything from electric cars to desalination plants. 

The result of a collaboration between the CSIRO, Australia's peak science body, and Korea's Hanyang University, the research was published Thursday in the journal Nature.

The new membrane aims to help keep fuel cells cool, Aaron Thornton, CSIRO researcher and the report's co-author, told Mashable Australia, solving a significant problem for the development of green technology.

The problem the membrane is aimed at solving concerns a particular type of fuel cell, known as proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. Such fuel cells generate energy by mixing gases like hydrogen and oxygen. 

Most currently available membranes can heat up and dry out, meaning the fuel cell loses performance. A common solution is to include an extra component near the fuel cell — a humidifier — that helps keep the membrane moist. But this adds weight and more complexity to the fuel cell.

The new plastic membrane can solve this problem by holding water and acting in a similar way to a cactus. 

"Cactus actually have a round hole, called a stomata, [on their surface]," he explained, "that's responsible for opening them up in the cool of the night to absorb water, and closing up in the dry hot day."

The new membrane performs in much the same way, using two plastic, or polymer, skins. The internal skin, which actively draws in and holds water, is coated by a layer that repels water but also has tiny nano-cracks. 

"This skin cracks and opens up when there is moisture available — it basically self-humidifies," Thornton explained. It then closes back up in low-humidity environments to retain the water.

This feature allows the performance of the fuel cell to be increased up to fourfold, he claimed. This could help fuel cells generate more electricity with less hydrogen, or reduce electric vehicle costs by getting rid of extra components such as the humidifier.

Although it's only been tested in the lab so far, Thornton suggested the membrane could have a wide range of uses. 

It could be used to attempt to harness electricity from the sea, for example. "Because ions are actually in the sea, if you could separate [the ions] from water and run them through something like a fuel cell, you could generate electricity," he explained, acknowledging such research is just getting started.  

Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou, the leader of the Materials Energy Research Laboratory in Nanoscale at the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the new research, told Mashable Australia the study was valuable.

"One of the problems [with fuel cells] is water management," he said. "This can potentially lead to better fuel cell technology."

Nevertheless, the major hurdle to broadening the use of this type of fuel cell in clean technology is the cost, he suggested. "One of the main problems with fuel cells is the cost of platinum," Aguey-Zinsou said. "Membranes are a problem, but the highest cost of the fuel cell is the platinum catalyst that helps react the hydrogen and oxygen.

"If this problem is not met, this technology won't have a significant impact." 

Maybe cacti have more cost-saving secrets to share?

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