#UBS Is Searching For Innovative #Startups Around the World

UBS launched The UBS Future of Finance Challenge, an open competition for entrepreneurs and technology startups around the world. UBS is looking for innovative and potentially disruptive technological ideas and solutions that will support the transformation of the banking industry. It is UBS’s aspiration to support the competition winners in their bid to commercialise and scale their ideas and technologies by leveraging on its significant global presence, deep expertise in global banking and eco-system of innovation partners. Rewards for the regional and global finalists include cash prizes and acceleration opportunities worth over USD $300,000 and over 300 hours of dedicated coaching and mentoring from UBS experts and partners.


 

As the financial industry faces disruption and rapid technology change, UBS seeks to further progress by searching for solutions to four challenges for banks going forward: delivering the ultimate client experience, offering superior products, building an efficient operating model and ensuring security in banking. By inviting entrepreneurs and startups to present their ideas, UBS also supports a more open and collaborative financial services industry.

The UBS Future of Finance Challenge will be delivered in collaboration with several of the leading Fintech crowd-working and accelerator spaces including Level39 and JFDI.Asia, as well as the innovation agency 100%Open. This collaborative approach offers commercial and technical expertise to the innovators participating in the competition, and provides them with access to the innovation pipeline of a leading global financial services firm at the same time.

Check out the website now: www.ubs.com/innovate

@Twitter Removes 140-character Limit from Direct Messages

Singapore, 13 AUG 2015 – Twitter users will have no doubt noticed something missing from their Direct Messages today: the limitation of 140 characters. With the removal of character limitation, users can now chat on (and on) in a single Direct Message, and likely still have some characters left over.

 

While Twitter is largely a public experience, Direct Messages allows users to have private conversations about the memes, news, movements, and events that unfold on Twitter. Each of the hundreds of millions of Tweets sent across Twitter every day is an opportunity for users to spark a conversation about what’s happening in the world.

 

This is why Twitter has made a number of changes to Direct Messages over the last few months, such as enabling an option to receive Direct Messages from anyone, and group Direct Messages. Today’s change is another big step towards making the private side of Twitter even more powerful and fun.

 

However, this change won’t impact on the public side of Twitter. Tweets will continue to be the 140 characters they are today, rich with commentary as well as photos, videos, links, Vines, gifs, and emoji.

 

Twitter will begin rolling out this change to Direct Messages today across both Android and iOS apps, on twitter.com, TweetDeck, and Twitter for Mac, and will continue to roll out worldwide over the coming weeks.

 

Users who cannot wait to try out longer Direct Messages should ensure that they have the latest versions of the apps to get the update immediately. Sending and receiving Direct Messages via SMS will still be limited.