Shift: Living in the Digital Age

London photographer Rich McCor had an idea for how to photograph the sights in his city in a novel way: he gives them new and whimsical spins by adding paper cut-outs. Rich McCor posted his images on Instagram and received an offer from travel guide publisher Lonely Planet. The publisher liked them so much that they sent McCor to Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Paris. Now his Instagram channel has about 30,000 subscribers.

The mobile messaging app Snapchat is especially popular with young users. Now businesses have started using the app to introduce products to a younger target audience. Snapchat was launched in 2011 and has become especially popular with the under-25 user base. The photo and video messages are for quick consumption, after which they’re deleted. It's currently the fastest growing social network. There are more than 200 million users, who send almost 9000 images per second.

Messenger apps have now moved well beyond exchanging texts and images. Soon, users will be able to shop, pay bills and transfer money through WhatsApp, WeChat and Line. The future of mobile messaging services has already arrived - in Asia. China's WeChat, for example, can be used to pay for and order clothes, meals or a taxi. Other companies can even set up their own shops on the app.

Students from Uganda have developed an app to help breast cancer screening. It features a glove that can be connected to a smartphone app to relay data from sensors.The sensors search for suspicious lumps in breast tissue. The resulting images are stored in the app and sent on to specialists for a closer analysis if necessary. The screening tool is especially promising for women living in rural areas.

Sweden’s DreamHack festival makes its debut in Germany. The event in Leipzig will see thousands of participants playing with and against each other. It’s the biggest LAN party in Germany. In addition to the LAN section for registered participants, there’s also a variety of e-sports tournaments featuring the stars of the scene. Manufacturers will also be attending to present their latest releases...

Deep Forger is a Twitter bot which transforms photos into famous works of art. Send a picture to the account and you’ll get an image back of it morphed in the style of one of 2500 classic paintings. Deep Forger was programmed by Alex Champandard. Originally from France, he now lives in Vienna, where he works as a computer game developer specializing in artificial intelligence. The bot is based on the principle of neural networking, which allows it to learn as it works...

Wikipedia was started 15 years ago. Today, the online encyclopedia features over five million English articles and nearly 1.9 million German articles. It's one of the internet‘s most frequently requested sites.The collective reference work has become globally established with over 37 million articles in some 280 languages. In terms of reliability, too, the collaborative project is improving its record compared with conventional print encyclopedias...

A Lagos taxi company is luring customers with free Wi-Fi access during their trip. For the customers, it’s a great way to make use of the time on the road, especially because traffic jams are common in the Nigerian megacity. The service is proving very popular in the congested megacity. Many of regular customers are people traveling to work or business appointments. For them, free Wi-Fi means they can use their taxi ride to get work done...

Co-parenting sites offer a useful service by connecting people who want to raise children together. But not everyone is in favor of such websites. Many religious conservatives, for example, believe such sites are damaging to the traditional family. Many people hope to become parents. But for some people this dream is harder to achieve - including for those who haven’t found the right partner, or who are infertile or homosexual. Internet platforms such as modamily.com and familyship...

Fighters from the Islamic State terrorist organization use digital media and also Playstation 4 consoles for communication and propaganda purposes. What does this mean for security services?Fighters from Islamic State communicate with each other using digital apps such as Telegram. The app uses strong encryption technology, making their communications inaccessible to prying eyes. The terror group is also believed to be using Playstation 4 consoles to plan operations...