Monthly Archives: July 2018

Coming soon, eBay is adding Apple Pay as the first new payment service since their move away from PayPal back in 2015. Since then, the auction site has been preparing to slowly transition to a non-PayPal and completely new payment platform.

Only recently eBay announced they are moving to an integrated payment system built by the Amsterdam-based company, Adyen, a leading global payment processor. Since Adyen’s product is solely a back-end service, it will allow eBay to open up multiple checkout options on their website, the first of many being Apple Pay.

Having the option soon to be able to make a purchase using Apple Pay will make check out much faster and easier for Apple and iPhone users — using Face ID, Touch ID on iOS or macOS, and even Apple Watch to authenticate payments.

Over the next few years, eBay’s plan is to fully transition into a payment intermediation marketplace. This means users will be able to complete their purchases within eBay’s website or app through many different payment forms, and of course, PayPal will always remain as a payment option.

If you would like to learn more about Apple products we are a Joint Venture partner with Apple and can assist you with any questions or consultation regarding the purchase and setup of a new device. Please be in touch at, [email protected].

Google has once again been fined by the EU, this time for a record €4.3bn, over Android. Last year the company was fined €2.4bn for abusing its near-monopoly in online search to give “illegal advantage” to its shopping service. On Wednesday they were once again fined and this time for €4.3bn for abuse of Android’s dominance in mobile operating systems — the biggest EU antitrust penalty to date.

The findings for Google’s latest penalty were grounded in their business strategy over the past decade — the EU commission found they outlawed restrictions on the Android Operating System that resulted in cementing Google’s dominance in online search at a time when consumers were moving from desktop to mobile devices. Google has denied any wrongdoing.

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. Android’s operating system is used by more than 80 per cent of the world’s smartphones and it has become increasingly vital to the group’s future earnings as we all become more reliant on our mobile phones.

The EU Commission found Google has been using ‘tying’ methods, which forced mobile phone makers to pre-install Google’s search app and the Chrome browser as condition of using their Google Play, smartphone app store. In addition, they found mobile operating networks and device manufacturers were paid anti-competitive financial incentives if they pre-installed Google search and no other rival services.

A third part of the case has said that there were even contractual restrictions that blocked manufacturers from selling phones using rival operating systems developed on the Android open source code.

The EU’s Competitive Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has said these imposed conditions are illegal and ensured Google’s dominance across Android devices by using its search engine and that these practices have denied an equal and fair chance for others to innovate and compete, such as Amazon’s Fire OS.

Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai claims the commission has misunderstood consumer behaviour and wrongly defined the market. They argue that rival apps are only one-download away, making it impossible to completely shut out competitors even when theirs come pre-installed.

Google also stated that they fear this decision will upset the careful balance they have with Android and is a troubling signal in favour of proprietary systems over open platforms.

The lobby group, FairSearch, helped launch the case against Google when they made a formal complaint. They have said the latest fine and order to comply in 90 days should mean that Google will finally cease their anti-competitive practices re. smartphones, and also in other areas — smart TVs, where it is shown they are imposing the same practices.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to read more like it, please sign up for our monthly newsletter — directionforward.com/news.

We are pleased to announce we meet the requirements and have been approved to be a Silver Microsoft Partner. This level of partnership with Microsoft brings with it many opportunities for our clients to benefit from using Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions.

To qualify for the certification, we submitted three detailed case studies that were approved by the client, Ventula Consultanting, Tiro Partners, and Grosvenor. Accompanying the case studies, Malcolm also passed two Microsoft Certified Professional exams to successfully prove competency and acquire the Silver Partnership.

The Silver partnership has given us a depth of resources and materials to help provide the best Cloud Solutions to help support our clients and help you build your businesses.

Below are a few of the solutions and tools we can now provide:

This and many more benefits accompany the Silver Microsoft Partnership and being a part of the Microsoft Partner Network — by providing our team with invaluable resources to help our client’s test, build and grow their businesses using Microsoft’s Cloud Solutions and marketing materials, as well as access to the best resources for us to support you in this process.

To learn more and receive the benefits from our Silver Partnership with Microsoft, you can sign up for Microsoft Office 365 today or get in touch with us at, [email protected].

If you’re a daily Twitter user you may have recently noticed a slight decrease in your follower count or saw a tweet from a big name on Twitter reporting a significant decrease in their followers. Some top celebrity accounts are even seeing their follower count reduced by over a million.

Although this sudden drop in followers may come as a shock for some big name users, the move is ultimately a good thing. The accounts that are being removed are inactive, meaning they were originally set up by a real person but have since become locked temporarily or permanently due to suspect behaviour. It is also good to note, that these accounts are not being completely removed from Twitter, just from their followers’ accounts.

The move by Twitter is in response to their new focus on the company’s “controversial health”. Earlier this year, the Twitter CEO said the company would be searching for ways to root out trolling, bullying, hate speech, and political manipulation on the network. In order to do that, they were beginning to look for ways to better understand the nature, or “health,” of conversations on its platform. The company have now began to take active steps forward to develop an actual system metric to measure the health of the platform and ‘clean it up’ to ensure it can continue to grow in a positive direction.

The recent events of this week’s inactive follower purge, as well in May and June Twitter suspended 70 million suspected spam and bot accounts, is showing measures are actually being put in to place to begin to combat some of the serious problems the platform are facing. Overall, the update will remove tens of millions of accounts from follower numbers across the platform and impact around 6% of its users.

Whether or not you will are impacted has mostly to do with how many followers you have, and most of us will only see a very small difference, if any at all.

It’s hopeful and a big positive to see social media platforms formally putting health measures in place to improve their platform activity and encouraging to see the changes beginning to happen. If you would like to discuss social media and it’s benefits for your company and hear about our Social Media service, please be in touch with us at, [email protected]. If you liked this story and would like to hear more like it, you can also sign up to our monthly newsletter — directionforward.com/news

The Information Data Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest and promote openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals.

Direction Forward is registered with the ICO as a Data Controller, and under the Data Protection Act it requires every data controller who is processing personal information to register with the ICO, unless they are exempt.

Registering with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is a relatively straightforward step and firms which have registered are added to the searchable register on the Information Commissioner’s website which contains the name and address of data controllers and a description of the kind of processing they do. This is a good thing and keeps organisations open and transparent, which equates to more consumer and user trust in regards to the handling and storage of their personal data.

We live in a data driven world and sharing data helps make life easier, more convenient and connected, so it is important to make sure your information is safe and secure and that the organisations you are sharing it with are being responsible.

Direction Forward’s registration number with the ICO is ZA422411 — if you would like to learn more about data security and hear about our hosting services, please be in touch with at, [email protected].