Apps

How Klook made it out of the woods during Taylor Swift’s Singapore ticket sales

This travel platform survived the great war!

Published

July 21, 2023

MJ Jucutan

July has been an eventful month for Swifties — fans of Taylor Swifts, in case you still don’t know about them.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was dropped, while tickets for The Eras Tour opened up in Singapore and Japan, prompting fans all over Asia to fight and enter The Great War.

While ticketing platforms face an enormous battle of high volume and demand for ticket sales, Klook — Asia’s leading travel and experiences platform — stood still.

Surviving the great war

On July 7, Klook’s Experiences Packages for Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour in Singapore sold out in just hours. My confidante and GadgetMatch‘s lifestyle writer, Betty, was also able to purchase a package through the app along with Filipino Swifties.

More than 600,000 fans across the region waited online to secure their tickets without hiccups. With Klook’s robust infrastructure, the app was able to handle a seamless ticket sale for the Singapore tour.

Bernie Xiong, CTO and Co-Founder of Klook, shared that the company capitalized on the opportunity to ramp up the systems during the pandemic-induced event hiatus, allowing the app to deliver an unparalleled booking experience.

Klook can now handle over 10 million users queuing concurrently and has the capacity to scale even further, thanks to its near real-time capacity management and resource provisioning.

How did they get out of the woods?

By leveraging a Content Delivery Network (CDN) system combined with Edge Computing technologies, Klook’s in-house queuing system adjusts its pass-through rate to accommodate millions of users worldwide.

It ended up having no crashes even with a massive surge in demand during peak times. Undergoing rigorous load and stress testing helped the app in providing a harmonious experience without compromising system performance.

While Klook was handling ticket sales, the app is still functioning normally for other users who were browsing the app for other activities, experiences, hotels, and mobility options.

Onto some vigilante sh*t

To fight off ticket scalpers and bots, Klook implemented an app-only approach to ensure that genuine fans with a unique ID had a fair chance of securing tickets.

Klook used AI in its in-house fraud prevention and security system, employing techniques such as device fingerprinting and behavior analysis to detect and mitigate suspicious activities.

Closely examining user accounts and identifying anomalous behaviors allowed Klook to reject fraudulent orders and subject them to manual verifications.

These security measures helped level the playing field to ensure that fans have a fair and square chance of securing their tickets during the great war.

Long live the walls they crashed through~

Of course, Klook’s successes didn’t happen overnight. Three years in the making, the app already had skin in the game, supporting high-traffic events such as JJ Lin and Jay Chou’s concerts.

Aside from ticket sales, Klook curated value-added bundles from multi-day experiences and services such as play (attractions, experiences), stay (hotel nights, staycations), and move (rail, car rental, or transfers).

After all, Klook’s data revealed that when tourists attend a concert or event, their incremental in-destination spending can range from 4-5 times the face value of the ticket.

Now, Swifties who were able to book an Experience package can look forward to more moments of joy when they visit Singapore in March 2024.

Apps

Google Photos can now censor your kid’s face better

The new Redact feature can censor sensitive information.

Published

September 25, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

Censoring photos is heavy work. Either you stick on random emojis or draw an indiscriminate splotch of doodles to cover sensitive information. It’s an imperfect art but an essential one to protect privacy. Today, Google Photos is getting a Redact feature which can censor sensitive bits with pixelated blocks.

An addition to the Markup tool, Redact acts like a nifty pen that can hide information that you don’t want seen. Unlike a ghastly emoji or a splotch, the censored bar mixes better with the surrounding elements. In the example that Google used, a censored license plate blends well with the car it’s attached to, making the photo look more cohesive. Besides license plates, it’s the perfect tool for covering other information like phone numbers, addresses, and the faces of your loved ones.

Google Photos is also rolling out Moods, a set of filters that give photos a nostalgic look, including a 2000s night digicam vibe that’s popular today. There are also 15 new Remix templates to add more creation options.

Both the Redact and the Moods features will roll out to Android users starting today. The new Remix templates, however, will be limited to some countries on both Android and iOS.

Apps

Smart launches LiveSmart App for exclusive deals

Exclusive deals, cashback, and bill payments in one app.

Published

September 18, 2026

GadgetMatch

Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) and TNT have launched the LiveSmart App, a new platform that combines loading, bill payments, exclusive offers, and other everyday transactions in one app.

The app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It is open to Smart, TNT, and subscribers of other mobile networks.

The LiveSmart App gives users access to exclusive deals and savings. These include cashback offers, discounted Smart and TNT data packages, and limited-time access to AI.Smart.

“Filipinos are becoming more deliberate about where they spend and how they can get more value from every peso,” said Lloyd R. Manaloto, FVP and OIC for Smart. “The LiveSmart App is designed to help make those everyday decisions a little smarter, by giving users convenient ways to load, pay bills, and access exclusive savings and offers in one place.”

Exclusive deals and perks

Smart and TNT are rolling out several offers on the LiveSmart App starting September 18.

Smart and TNT subscribers can get 5% cashback when they purchase load or pay their Smart Postpaid bill through the app.

The app also offers data packages at exclusive prices. Smart Prepaid subscribers can get Power All 109 for PHP 105, while TNT subscribers can get Saya All 109 for PHP 105.

Users who download the LiveSmart App may also receive limited-time free access to AI.Smart.

AI.Smart combines multiple AI models, including AWS Nova, ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, and Thinking Machines, in one workspace. Users can use it to generate images, create presentations, draft documents and spreadsheets, and get help with schoolwork, content creation, and other projects.

To claim the free AI.Smart credits, users need to tap the AI.Smart banner in the LiveSmart App. They then need to create an AI.Smart account using their Smart or TNT number.

Smart says users can also expect more exclusive deals and perks from lifestyle partners as it expands the LiveSmart App.

Powered by Smart 5G

The LiveSmart App runs on Smart’s network. Smart 5G supports activities such as video streaming, gaming, and real-time social media sharing.

The company said Ookla recently recognized its network for the Best Mobile Video Experience in the Philippines for the first half of 2026. Smart recorded a Video Score of 72.82, which it said was the highest among mobile operators in the country.

The LiveSmart App is now available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Users can learn more about the app through Smart’s website.

Apps

Apple’s best feature to cure motion sickness is finally on Android

Google copies a good page from Apple’s playbook.

Published

September 15, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

As an Android user, I’ve been jealous of iPhone users for a while now, but it’s not for the reason you might think. See, I’m ridiculously prone to motion sickness when I’m not driving. So, when I discovered that Apple has a software-based cure called Vehicle Motion Cues, I wanted it immediately. Now, Android does have third-party apps that do the same thing, but they’re not as good as a fully native version. Well, those dark, nauseating days are about to come to an end. Android 17 is finally getting a similar tool called Motion assist.

Before that, let’s rewind for a bit. What do these features do? How can they cure motion sickness?

Whenever you open Vehicle Motion Cues or Motion assist, the interface spawns a series of dots on the screen. These dots respond to movement. For example, if the vehicle turns to the left, the dots also go to the left, mimicking the movement. Without cues like this, the stationary nature of the screen clashes with our brain’s perception of movement. The disparity creates that feeling of nausea. Basically, our eyes are desperately trying to focus on the static screen, but our brains are telling us that we should be seeing motion. Having moving dots reorients our brain and places the phone inside our perception of movement.

Now, you can enable the same feature on your Android 17 device through Settings > All services > Motion assist under Personal & device safety. You can also set it so that the feature turns on automatically when the phone detects that you’re in a moving vehicle. Finally, you can also tweak the shape, color, and opacity of these dots.

Android 17’s Motion assist is rolling out now to compatible devices.