Musk: Coast to Coast Driverless in 2 Years; State of Union Streams on Amazon

Posted: January 11, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On the heels of showing the ability to summon your car from its parking spot and dispatch it to park, the other shoe dropped yesterday. Engadget.com reports that Elon Musk predicts that the Summon feature on Teslas will work anywhere by 2018. Musk says you could summon your car from New York City to pick you up in Los Angeles…provided you have a couple days to wait around. Tesla’s snake-like automatic chargers would keep the car juiced up for the trip. It remains to be seen if states coast to coast will allow self-driving cars…right now, only a handful do. Musk did concede the cars will need a lot of redundancy to be able to do this.

From the tech right now department, Tuesday’s State of the Union speech will be streamed by Amazon. With more and more cord-cutters, the White House wants to reach people where they are, according to gizmodo.com. The stream should work with any Amazon product like the Fire TV stick. It probably won’t pick up millions of views, but it’s nice to see the White House embracing the tech.

Twitter May Explode From 140 Characters to 10K, SanDisk Bows 200 Gig Wireless Flash Drive

Posted: January 6, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Twitter may soon drop its 140-character limit and allow users to write as much as 10,000 characters in a single tweet, according to recode.net. The plan is for the expanded tweets to appear the same way as they do now, showing just the first 140 characters, but users will be able to click on them to expand. This would be one of the biggest changes ever to Twitter’s design-in fact, it would change the entire character of the service. Some are already complaining it would basically turn Twitter into more of a blogging space. Last month, the company started testing a timeline that didn’t show tweets in the traditional reverse chronological order.

Wireless flash drives are pretty handy. I’ve been using a 32 gig one for over a year now, and it connects easily with my phone, and recharges just by plugging it into a usb drive. Now, SanDisk has rolled out a 200 gig model. If you are running out of memory on your smartphone…like the entry level iPhones with their puny 16 gigs, this may be a fix for you. Bgr.com reports that the new 200 gig model is $199.99 from Amazon, Best Buy, and SanDisk, and works with iOS, Android, Macs, and PCs.

Nexus 6 for $250 at Amazon; Hi-Res Music May be coming to iTunes & Apple Music

Posted: December 21, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

If you are in the market for a phablet at a great deal, or for a last minute gift for someone you REALLY like, Amazon has a 32 gig Nexus 6 for $249.99 shipped in Cloud White or Midnight Blue. With Amazon Prime, it can be under the tree by the 23rd. 9to5toys.com says the 64 gig model is $299.99, and both come with Android Marshmallow.

A rumor is afoot again that hi-resolution audio is on the way to iTunes and Apple Music. This one is from Japanese blog Macotakara, picked up by 9to5mac.com. The blog claims Apple will have better than CD quality for iTunes sometime next year. The leak is from some manufacturers that make Lightening based headphones, which would support the higher res format.

Amazon Rolling Own in Air Cargo; Messenger Fastest Growing App

Posted: December 18, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

AmazonAir

In a move that should strike terror in the hearts…or at least indigestion in the bellies…of competitors, Amazon is talking to Boeing about acquiring 20 767 freighter jets. Geekwire.com reports that as of last month, some unknown firm, now presumed to be Amazon, was flying 4 cargo flights a day out of Ohio’s Wilmington Air Park…which was a DHL facility until 2008. They were bound for Allentown, PA, Ontario CA, Tampa, and Oakland…all close to Amazon distribution centers. DHL previously had 7500 employees at the air park. Earlier this month, Amazon bought thousands of truck trailers. They are getting ready to disrupt shipping and logistics….look out FedEX, UPS, and Post Office.

A lot of people questioned Facebook calving off Messenger into a separate app, bout according to Nielsen research picked up by techcrunch.com, it was a brilliant move. Facebook remains the top app of 2015, but Messenger is now the fastest growing app installed on smartphones. It’s not up as much as last year, when Facebook split it off and growth was 242%, but still up 31% from 2014. Now, Facebook has broken off its private photo-sharing feature into the Moments app. The second fastest growing app was Apple Music, at 26% increase year over year.

Amazon-Pitch Dangerous Hoverboards-They’ll Credit; iPad Air3 Coming Sans Force Touch

Posted: December 16, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

With more stories coming out about hover boards catching fire, Amazon had pulled them from their site. Now, according to engadget.com, they are telling US and British customers to e-waste or get rid of them, and Amazon will credit their accounts and eat the cost. The Consumer Product Safety Commission is investigating the safety of the devices.

The iPad Air 3 will apparently bow without Apple’s Force Touch for its 9.7 inch screen. This will be due to production issues with Force Touch on the bigger screen. It’s expected in the first half of the year, most likely early March along with the next generation Apple Watch, and probably the 4 inch screen iPhone 6c that will replace the aging 5c. 9to5mac.com reports that KGI Securities also agrees with Morgan Stanley in predicting lower iPhone 6S sales compared with the 6 models…but KGI attributes a fair amount of that to tight inventory due to production issues for the 3D Touch screens.

Online v. Store Sales; Amazon’s ‘No Blue Light Special’ For Tablets

Posted: December 2, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cyber Monday, which now lasts about a week, showed an interesting trend this year. In a Reuters.com report, they found online sales were up 16% to $3.07 billion, with 26% of online shopping on mobile devices, according to the Adobe Digital Index. Amazon was up 21.1%. As for brick and mortar stores, they were down 10.4% from last year to $20.43 billion, as reported by ShopperTrak.

Amazon is introducing a new feature on its Fire tablets for night owl readers. According to thenextweb.com, Blue Shade filters out blue light to help you get to sleep better. You can find it in the quick settings menu. In addition, there are warm light filters. The online giant also added a tool called Activity Center, which allows parents to check on how long the kids are playing games, watching movies, or reading on their tablets…AND you can check their browser history. They have also introduced a kid friendly browser with a curated set of over 40,000 YouTube videos and websites. The updates are rolling out to Fire HD 10, HD 8, and other Fire models.

Bigger, Thinner MacBook Air Coming; Amazon Unveils Delivery Drone

Posted: November 30, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

There may be new, thinner MacBook Airs on the way by next June, including one with a 15 inch screen. 9to5mac.com reports that they will sport substantial internal changes, including battery, cooling modules, and more. Apple is still deciding whether to keep the 11 inch air, with the new iPad Pro now out.

Amazon has revealed a new delivery drone design with a 15 mile range. Geekwire.com says its intended to be able to deliver a small package directly through the air to your doorstep in 30 minutes. Amazon has a new video showing off the drone featuring Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson, who along with his colleagues, is starting a new car show for Amazon. The version 2.0 drone flies at under 400 feet, and weighs less than 55 lbs. Amazon says it won’t launch Prime Air until they are able to demonstrate safe operations.

AmazonDrone V.2.0

Shop ‘Till Your Fingers Drop; Uber Moves into Mobile Health Care

Posted: November 23, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are rapidly turning into a week to 10 day long orgy of deals from both online and brick and mortar retailers. Bgr.com notes that Amazon.com’s ‘Black Friday’ sale went live a full week before Black Friday. Target’s Black Friday ’10 days of deals’ is already live, with Target Redcard members getting an automatic 5% additional off on deals, and 25% off on toys through the day before Thanksgiving. Walmart will light off Cyber Monday deals the Sunday evening before…the 29th, starting at 8 P.M., with online only bargain prices on over 2000 products. Wanna buy a car? Chevrolet is saying it’s Black Friday ALL MONTH LONG! When it comes to retail, times and days have a very elastic meaning. Happy shopping!

Uber is experimenting with something bordering on mobile health care. For 4 hours last week, they offered customers a flu shot for 10 bucks across 36 cities. You summoned a nurse to show up and administer the shot, according to buzzfeed.com. This week, the company announced they’ve hired their first health advisor, who is director of the Computational Epidemiology Group at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is John Brownstein, and he says Uber’s drivers may someday shuttle patients to clinical trials or doctor’s offices…or, as with the flu shots, bring a medical professional by for a ‘house call!’

Twitter Replaces Stars with (Gasp) Hearts; Amazon Opens Physical Bookstore

Posted: November 3, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Twitter has killed the star indicating you’ve favorited something, and replaced it with a heart, denoting a ‘like.’ Thenextweb.com says Vine will also get the heart and lose stars. Twitter has tested hearts, and says the heart has similar meanings across varied cultures and languages, while the star did not. Twitter’s live streaming video Periscope was already using hearts. Look for this on twitter.com, TweetDeck….basically, everywhere but Twitter for Mac, where it will show up later in a refresh. For those who hate change…let the complaint Tweets begin!

After 20 years of systematically killing off physical bookstores, Amazon has now joined them and opened one of their own. It’s in Seattle’s University Village, and resembles a Barnes & Noble, in that it has some other items like Kindles, the Echo, Fire TV and tablets. Theverge.com reports that the books are racked face out, as opposed to spine out like at most stores. In-store prices will match online prices, and each book has its amazon.com rating and an actual customer review. Amazon says this is a permanent location, and others will follow…ironic coming from a company which caused the closure of so many physical bookstores for the last 2 decades.

Amazon Prime Music Now Available Off Line; Google Merging Chrome OS into Android

Posted: October 30, 2015 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Amazon has dropped a small but significant update to their Prime Music app. According to 9to5google.com, you will now be able to store offline music on a device’s SD card for playback when you’re not connected to the web. The update also adds support for Android Wear smartwatches. With SD cards becoming less ubiquitous in smartphones, no word on whether Amazon will extend the feature to the main memory of smartphones. At any rate, the updated app is available free at the Google Play Store.

Speaking of Google, it appears that they’re moving towards merging Chrome OS into Android. Theverge.com says to look for a demo of the combined system at Google I/O next year. It will take some serious changes under the hood to get Android to run everything on laptops, and when the final new system is rolled out in 2017, Chromebooks will obviously get a new name…Androidbooks, perhaps? Google has noted that they are not exactly ‘killing’ Chrome, so there may actually be 3 different systems moving forward.

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