Author: Julie Campbell

The Houston based mobile ad platform will target the ride share program’s customers.

Gnomad took the opportunity to use the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival in order to launch its mobile advertising platform which will make it possible to display ads to passengers sitting in the back seats of dozens of Uber vehicles around the Austin, Texas area.

The Gnomad mobile app was developed by a company called Poetic Systems, Inc., out of Houston.

The way it works is that it displays mobile advertising and content, among other features, that are geared toward travelers who are visiting from elsewhere and who are seeking to find out more about what there is to do within the area, particularly throughout the duration of the festival. So far, the mobile marketing content in the app is featuring the Greater Houston Partnership, which is a SnapStream based in Houston. It has also placed the spotlight on the Capital Factory co-working space and an assortment of startups in Austin.

Mobile advertising content was also assembled for Gnomad along with the Tasting Table culinary website.

That site is based in New York under Rich Winley, the co-founder and CEO. Ahead of the SXSW, he explained that “We’re expecting to be in about 75 Uber cars,” and that “We’re expecting 20,000 people to see the GHP ad over the weekend.”

That said, despite this mobile marketing agreement, Gnomad is not considered to be an official partner with Uber as each driver with the rideshare program is considered to be an independent contractor. This has given them the opportunity to create individual partnerships with Gnomad if they wish to do so. Those drivers, who are currently facing fare cuts, are frequently seeking additional opportunities to generate an income. By working with Gnomad, Winley explained that they can take part in a revenue sharing model.

Over the long term, Gnomad will continue these types of mobile advertising opportunities and intends to take its ad tech to New York throughout Fashion Week. For that event, it has partnered with a handful of ad agencies in New York, which had not been identified by the time of the writing of this article.

This new feature has now been added to give iPhone and iPad users greater protection for their emails.

Mobile security has become a hot topic over the last while, particularly since Apple has started fighting the FBI’s demands to unlock an iPhone in a criminal investigation case, but for the rest of us, we’d still like to be able to keep our devices safe from prying eyes.

In this light, the iOS version of the Outlook mobile app now supports fingerprint scanning for added protection.

This new update from the Outlook app from Microsoft – which is one of the best loved email application for iOS devices – is now letting users take advantage of the mobile security boost available through the fingerprint scanning feature in certain iPhone and iPad models. Those compatible with this new protection feature are the ones that have an integrated Touch ID sensor. That option is available in the newest smartphone and tablet models from Apple.

Using the fingerprint scanning mobile security option is quite straightforward and easy to set up.

To enable Touch ID protection, head to the Settings option in the mobile app and scroll down until you reach Preferences. From there, switch the toggle so that “Require Touch ID” is active. That’s it. It’s ready to be used.

From there, the next time Outlook is launched, it will require you to authenticate your identity with your fingerprint before you’ll be able to read your emails. At the moment, this Outlook protection feature is limited to devices based on Apple’s iOS. Moreover, interestingly enough, neither Gmails email app nor Apple’s own Mail app support the added fingerprint scanning protection afforded by Touch ID.

In fact, at the moment, it appears as though there may be only one other app that uses Touch ID to help to further protect emails, which is “Safe Mail for Gmail”. If there are others, they are not listed in a quick mobile app search for that feature.

As mobile security has moved into the spotlight, many are impressed with the initiative Microsoft has taken to align itself with the additional protection level for its email application.