By Sarah Kimmorley. Originally published on Business Insider Australia.
Happy Friday and welcome to the weekend. Here’s what you need to know.
1. The Apple Watch is here – almost. On March 9 Apple is hosting a media event which will likely go over the final details, including the pricing, of the watch which will be released in April. And while we still don’t know everything, we’ve collected the most important Apple Watch features the company has shared so far here.
2. How said Australian property has to be expensive? You can now buy in without actually buying a house. Real estate investment startup BrickX is trading “Bricks”, which start from $66 each, as a way for investors to partly own properties. Ultimately the business is aiming to make purchasing property more accessible, although you don’t get to move in. Read more on that here.
3. eWay has pledged 1% of its profits to philanthropic ventures. Last night the online payments startup joined Ansarada, in becoming one of the first companies in Australia to get onboard Atlassian and Salesforce’s 1% initiative. Atlassian began doing it 10 years ago, and have now donated about $40 million.
4. Buy shares in VPN companies: metadata retention is coming to Australia. The Abbott government’s $400 million plan to make telcos save two years of metadata from phone and internet users is hitting parliament today after Labor finally backed down and agreed to support the controversial measure, which the government argues will protect us from terrorists and pedophiles.
5. Westfield will offer free WiFi to shoppers. After striking a deal with Optus and recently listed Australian tech company SkyFii, more than 20 Westfields will offer customers up to 1GB of free data to use over a three-hour period daily. The WiFi service provided by SkyFii will also provide location analytics and personalised content for subscribers. See where the service will be rolled out here.
