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Tired of swiping? This app hosts parties and events to take dating offline

Tired of swiping? This app hosts parties and events to take dating offline
Bring your single friends and get meeting people in real life (Picture: Inner Circle)

Dating has changed so much in the last few decades that it’s almost unrecognisable from the ‘courting’ our parents knew.

But while swiping to find the perfect match widens your pool of prospects, it can also be draining; from endless digital small-talk to the ghosting and bad behaviour that the anonymity of apps enables.

Covid lockdowns have affected things too, with research from dating app Inner Circle finding that 80% of singles want to meet people in real life more than pre-pandemic.

The survey also revealed that a third of singles think approaching people in real life is less common now, and a whopping 87% feel that meeting someone at a singles party is more socially acceptable than before.

To help break dry spells and get you back in the mingling game, Inner Circle offers dating with a difference, hosting events in London that bring single people together in ‘spectacular, non-cringey ways’.

From cocktail masterclasses to pop-up beach parties and entire food festivals full of single people, Inner Circle’s parties take the guess-work out of approaching people IRL.

The dating app hosts all sorts of events across the city’s best venues (Picture: Inner Circle)

There are a number of reasons to try the offline-focused app. A team of real people screen new members (for safety, effort, and mindset), so you know you’ll be surrounded by likeminded, unattached people looking for something serious.

Even if you don’t meet your next flame, Inner Circle’s parties are worth it just for the experience.

Among the meet-ups currently in the works is a festival-style event featuring DJs, cocktails, and games, as well as wine tasting and soirees across the city’s best venues.

All you need to do to be a part of the fun is join Inner Circle for free here, grab a ticket to your favourite event, then turn up and prepare to be swept off your feet.

Although it’s still technically dating via an app, you’ll be able to gauge connections in person, meaning sparks can fly right off the bat.

Download the Inner Circle app here.

This article contains affiliate links. We will earn a small commission on purchases made through one of these links but this never influences our experts’ opinions. Products are tested and reviewed independently of commercial initiatives.


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Rush Hour Crush – love (well, lust) is all around us

Visit Metro’s Rush Hour Crush online every weekday at 4:30pm.

Tell us about your Rush Hour Crush by submitting them here, and you could see your message published on the site.

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City Hosting BlindSquare Event App Information Session

City Hosting BlindSquare Event App Information Session

City Hosting BlindSquare Event App Information Session

The City of St. John’s and CNIB are hosting a free orientation session for people learning how to use the BlindSquare Event App.

The app is being piloted at the Downtown Pedestrian Mall to help those with vision loss navigate the area.

The information session will cover how to download the app, how to adjust settings for better results, and how the app helps people navigate.

The event takes place Tuesday, July 26 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Foran Greene Room at City Hall.

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Staytuned acquires Evey, a Shopify App that Allows Merchants to Sell Events Directly from their Store

Staytuned acquires Evey, a Shopify App that Allows Merchants to Sell Events Directly from their Store
Staytuned buys Evey Events

Evey is the top app that lets you manage event tickets directly from your Shopify store. It’s extremely easy to use and we’re delighted to welcome this phenomenal app to our Staytuned family. — Navi Hehar, VP Corp Dev, Staytuned

Staytuned, the software company that provides a suite of revenue-growth tools for Shopify merchants, has completed the acquisition of Evey, a Shopify app that provides DTC brands an event toolkit to ensure their events are always a success.

“Upon meeting Jason and Levin, we realized these entrepreneurs had built an incredible application suite that allows merchants like Moonshot Games, Kpop Nite, and 1Picasso100euros to use Shopify to sell live event tickets while owning a direct relationship with their customers. The set-up on Evey is a breeze, nearly any merchant can get this installed, customized, and live in just a few minutes. We are especially proud of applying our streamlined acquisition process—this was one of our fastest acquisitions, taking just four weeks from discussing terms to signing the deal.” said Navi Hehar, VP of Corp Dev at Staytuned.

Staytuned currently serves 19,000+ ecommerce merchants across its portfolio of apps. The mission of the company is to enable merchants to unlock efficient and scalable growth using user-friendly tools—Evey was a clear fit.

“We started Evey after personally hosting an event and hitting many roadblocks with the experience — from complicated set-up to inability to cross-sell our merchandise to taking over 1 month to get paid our ticket sales from our events platform. So, we took this frustration back to our computers and built Evey. Given our depth of knowledge of Shopify, we purpose-built our app to work for Shopify merchants who wanted to set up and sell event tickets within seconds right within the Shopify platform. We’ve been fortunate to work with some incredible brands over the past few years and are very excited to partner with Staytuned to further our mission to enable Shopify merchants across the world to profitably and effortlessly scale their businesses,” said Jason Normore, Founder of Evey (and former director of engineering at Shopify).

Evey started in November of 2013 with the mission to help Shopify merchants sell tickets and manage events right within the Shopify platform. With Evey, you can manage sales, in-person event check-ins, and PDF tickets, for one-time and recurring events (in-person or online).

About Staytuned

Staytuned builds, acquires, and grows Shopify apps that enable ecommerce merchants to grow their business faster and more efficiently. We support our apps with scalable and reliable technology and processes and serve our merchants with empathy, humanity, and respect. Today, over 19,000+ stores are using one or more of our apps to accelerate their business. Got an app to sell? Drop a line!

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Province outlines notification plans for summer heat events; Kamloops readies Voyent! Alert app

Province outlines notification plans for summer heat events; Kamloops readies Voyent! Alert app

During the heat event last year, B.C.’s ambulance system was run off its feet responding to 9-1-1 calls. To limit wait times, Health Minister Adrian Dix says more paramedics and dispatchers have been hired and additional ambulances have been brought in.

“For instance, staff may be reassigned to support areas experiencing higher call volumes and we may take measures to reduce turnaround time at hospitals.”

For heat waves, fires, floods, train derailments or any other urgent emergency, Kamloops brought in the Voyent! Alert app, which Mayor Ken Christian says will allow the city to send immediate notifications out to users.

“I would encourage residents to download the Voyent! app if they haven’t already and we’re going to have a test of that system at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday (June 8),” adds Christian.

The app will be used in addition to other measures the City enacts each year during prolonged heat, such as opening cooling centres. Christian notes that there’s also a certain level of community thoughtfulness that needs to be part of the response.

“I think we learned a lesson last year. We lost six lives in Kamloops because of heat exposure and I think many of them were in un-air-conditioned apartment buildings and they just were left alone. And what we really need to focus on is wellness checks,” reiterates Christian. “Know your neighbour, know your family members, check on them during periods of extreme heat.”

Extreme heat emergencies such as the heat dome of 2021 are expected once or twice a decade, according to the province. But it’s anticipated heat warnings could be issued as often as two or three times each summer.

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Google Play adopts App Store-like features including in-app events and custom product pages – TechCrunch

Google Play adopts App Store-like features including in-app events and custom product pages – TechCrunch

At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company rolled out a series of updates for Android app developers who publish to Google Play. Among these were two high-profile changes to its Google Play app marketplace, custom store listings and in-app events, which follow updates Apple made to its own App Store just last year.

Google had been offering A/B testing for product page enhancements since 2015 — a feature that allows developers to see which text and graphics would best convert users.

Apple later adopted a similar feature when, at last year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, it introduced Product Page Optimization designed to help developers to try out different app screenshots, videos, and even app icons to try to appeal to different types of users. Developers could segment a certain percentage of App Store traffic to these cohorts to see which product pages performed better before deciding which page should be their default.

Apple last year also announced a related feature called Custom Product Pages that lets developers create different product pages to highlight different app features, each with its own unique URL to be used in external marketing channels.

Today, Google is following suit and essentially launching the same thing with Custom Store Listings.

Instead of simply testing different product pages, Android app developers will be able to make up to 50 custom store listings for their apps. Each page will have its own analytics and deep links available. Notably, this is more listings than Apple’s solution offers, which is currently set at 35 per app. Google explains developers can use this feature to display different listings to users based on where they’re coming from. For example, a developer with a recipe-finding app could target ad campaigns to U.S. users based on U.S. holidays, by showcasing recipes for Thanksgiving or July 4th. But it could target users from other markets at different times with recipes related to their own cultural traditions.

Apple last year also introduced an App Store feature, in-app events, to allow developers to promote real-time happenings going on inside their apps — like special events or even just seasonal deals.

Google Play is now rolling out its own take on this feature, as well.

With the launch of what it’s calling “LiveOps,” developers will be able to submit content for featuring on the Play Store, including major updates for their app or game, in-app events, and limited-time offers.

Google says LiveOps can drive 5% more 28-day active users to apps and deliver 4% higher revenue for those using the feature compared with those who don’t. The feature is in an invite-only beta testing phase for the time being.

While these changes were the highlights among those designed to help developers target, acquire and re-engage their users, Google also announced a few other notable Google Play updates.

The company said the Play Store would be updated to help people find the best tablet-optimized apps with new large-screen focused editorial content and a separate review and rating system for large-screen applications. Google Play will also later this year be updated to look better on tablets and foldable devices.

Image Credits: Google

For developers, Google also launched the Google Play SDK Index which lists over 100 popular SDKs and which app permissions they use, so developers can determine if they adhere to Google Play policies and help fill out their app’s privacy labels.

The company said it will soon launch a new Play Console page dedicated to deep links to put all the information and tools for deep links in one place. It also improved its Store Listing Experiments feature (aka A/B testing) to allow developers to see their results more quickly, with more transparency and control so they can better understand how long each experiment may need to run.

And beyond this, it rolled out features focus on improving app quality, including a new Developer Reporting API for accessing Android vitals metrics and issues data outside the Play Console; support for viewing vitals data at the country level; and Google said it’s making it possible to view vitals alongside Firebase Crashlytics. It updated the Play Console by adding revenue and revenue growth metrics to Reach and devices and overhauling its device catalog to include install data and filters by new device attributes like shared libraries. It said it’s now easier to test apps on different form factors including Android Auto and soon, Wear OS.

Play App Signing was updated to use Google Cloud Key Management and the ability for any app to perform an app signing key rotation in the event of an incident or as a security best practice from the Play Console.

And finally, Google’s In-app Updates API will now let users know if there’s an update available within 15 minutes instead of up to 24 hours.

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Google Home app redesigning events feed to be simpler & better prioritized

Google Home app redesigning events feed to be simpler & better prioritized

After updating the primary tab with interactive device toggles inspired by Android 11, the Google Home app wants to redesign the “Feed” to be more useful.

The Google Home app consists of two main tabs. There’s the “Home View” with a list of all your devices laid out in a grid that Google just updated to allow for quicker actions. Next to it is the “Home Feed” tab that’s meant to show alerts from your smart devices.

These “Priority events” include Home & Away changes and other updates, like the recent one to Speak Group functionality. Underneath that is a “Recent events” section, while a few promotional “Discover” cards round everything out.

Google this month will redesign the Home Feed to “help you better understand what’s happening in and around your home.” 

The update automatically sorts your home’s recent and most important events in an updated clutter free layout. Grouped events will help you understand what happened around the same time instead of scrolling through a list of repetitive events.

There looks to be much less scrolling with a new card design that immediately identifies the type of alert at the left. Each notification includes the name, time, and what room the device originates in. Camera cards are accompanied by images, while each has an overflow menu. Lastly, there’s a “History” shortcut at the top-left of the feed to see everything. 

This should be available in the coming weeks, while version 2.49 with the Home View redesign is not yet widely rolled out for Android via Google Play. 

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Ask SAM: Are there any shredding events coming up?

Ask SAM: Are there any shredding events coming up?

Mount Tabor United Methodist Church, 3543 Robinhood Road, Winston Salem, will have a shredding event from 9 a.m. to noon April 23. They will accept monetary donations to benefit food programs serving children in Forsyth County and other missions of the United Methodist Women. Make checks payable to Mt. Tabor UMC-Circle 5. For more information, call the church 336-765-5561 or go to www.mttaborumc.org.

New Philadelphia Moravian Church, 4440 Country Club Road, Winston-Salem, will have a document shred from 9 a.m. to noon April 23. The cost is $5 per box. Enter from Kilpatrick Street. They will unload. You do not have to get out of your vehicle. The shredding is sponsored by the Advent Class. Proceeds will benefit outreach ministries of the Moravian Church. For more information, call 336-972-0494 or visit www.newphilly.org.

Fries Memorial Moravian Church, 251 N. Hawthorne Road, Winston Salem, will have a community shred day from 9 a.m. to noon April 30. Shamrock Shredding will be shredding documents on-site in the church parking lot. Donations of $5 per file box or bag are requested. Paper only, no plastic or non-paper trash will be accepted. Proceeds will benefit local youth and family ministries.

Hopewell Moravian Church will have two shredding events at the Griffith Volunteer Fire Department, 5190 Peters Creek Parkway, Winston-Salem. The first will be 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 30. The second will be 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 25. A $5 per bag or box donation is suggested.