Rent a Charger at Your Coffee Spot; Roku Shows New Quad Core Streaming Stick; New Kindle Rolls Out Next Week
Posted: April 5, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Anker, Ankerbox, Kindle, Portable battery pack rentals, quad core, Roku, Streaming stick Leave a commentA division of Battery charger maker Anker is preparing to roll out Ankerboxes that rent out portable battery packs to charge your mobile devices in a couple hundred bars, restaurants, cafes, and gyms in Seattle, with 500 planned by May. As with bike sharing services, you download an app, go to an Ankerbox in the establishment or an a portable kiosk, charge up, then return the drained battery pack to any location. It’s 30 minutes of free charging when you rent a charger— a buck 99 a day if you keep it over a day. Even if you don’t return the charger or lose it, you never pay over 30 dollars. The little chargers can give 3 full charges, with two 3350 mAh power cells in each one. Look for them April 15th in Seattle, and in other cities later this year.
Roku has dropped a new quad core streaming stick, and at just $49.99. TechCrunch.com reports that the processor bump should make the software feel much speedier than before, and it also allows for private listening through headphones plugged into your smartphone…or via wireless Bluetooth cans. Roku says the entry level sticks are the fastest growing segment of the streaming market. They also have a ‘hotel and dorm room connect’ feature, that makes it easier to connect to WiFi with an authentication page.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Tweeted yesterday that a new top line Kindle will be shown next week. No date or details, but we’ll have those when they’re available. The verge.com notes that Amazon usually doesn’t announce products until they’re ready to go.
It’s All About the Money- Apple Pay Not Catching On; Amazon Taking on PayPal
Posted: April 4, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Amazon Payments Global Partner Program, Apple, Apple Pay, Login and Pay with Amazon Leave a commentSome people in the tech media are noticing how Apple hasn’t said much…if anything…about Apple Pay. The nextweb.com points out that Apple Pay has been out for 8 months in Europe now, and longer in the US, and not a peep from Cupertino about how many users, transactions, etc. the site got some information from Transport for London, and since Apple Pay is the only smartphone pay app available there right now, calculated it’s less than half of one percent of those transactions. Part of the problem may be availability, not the people don’t want to use it. Personally, the only places I go that have Apple Pay are Trader Joe’s and Panera Bread. I’ve always been an early adapter, but it seems that after a year and a half, more places would offer it. It may be a lot slower road to contactless payments than everybody thought.
Speaking of separating you from your money faster and easier, Amazon just announced the spread of its payments service, Amazon Payments, to more third party websites. They have dubbed it the Amazon Payments Global Partner Program, and the online giant is working to help e-commerce platform providers and other developers integrate with Amazon Payments for use at checkout. Amazon already offered ‘Login and Pay with Amazon’ to individual merchants. Payments allows merchants to tap into Amazon’s already gigantic user base, and eliminate the need for these customers to create a separate username and password on the merchant’s website. By making checkout quicker, it presumably increases sales.
Amazon Hosted Secret Robotics Meeting; GM Starts Pre-Production of All Electric Bolt
Posted: March 23, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Amazon, Bolt, Electric Car, General Motors, Model 3, Robotics, Tesla Leave a commentThis week in Palm Springs, Amazon hosted an invitation only conference for experts on AI, robotics, and space exploration. Geekwire.com reports the people from Toyota, Rethink Robotics, MIT, UC-Berkeley and others were present. Amazon not only has a big interest in robots….they have over 30,000 of them working in their warehouses, made by Kiva…a company they acquired in 2012.
General Motors has begun pre-production on the all-electric Chevy Bolt, just ahead of the showing Tesla plans for their Model 3. Both vehicles are intended for a mass market, with price tags under 30 grand. Thenextweb.com notes that pre-Production may mean GM isn’t far from full production, so the Bolt could possibly be out in the Fall as a 2017 model…at least 6 months ahead of the smaller sized Tesla Model 3.
Galaxy S7 Costs Samsung About What the S5 Did; Amazon Applies for Pay By Selfie Patent
Posted: March 14, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Galaxy S5, Galaxy S7, Pay By Selfie, Qualcomm, Samsung, Snapdragon 820 Leave a commentCosts are dropping for high end smartphone components apparently. 9to5google.com reports that an IHS teardown shows it costs Samsung about $255 to make the new Galaxy S7. That’s in the same range as the S5 cost 2 years ago. The priciest item? The Qualcomm quad core Snapdragon 820 processor at $62. In the US, the S7 sells for $670 unsubsidized, so Samsung pulls in $415 each on them. Of course, they have to cover marketing, R&D, software development, etc, so that’s not all pure gravy.
Amazon has filed a patent application for a process that lets people pay by selfie, instead of keying in their password. According to recode.net, it’s a companion patent for one Amazon has on tech to verify a user by photo or video. Amazon believes this will encourage customers to buy when they’re out and about, or chatting with friends….you do that right? ‘Wait a minute, I’ve got to buy this thing right now from Amazon?’ All joking aside, it actually should be a simpler and safer way to log in than remembering a password.
Amazon Gets Planes for Logistics; Ear Echoes for Bio-Identification
Posted: March 9, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Amazon Fulfillment Services, Biometrics, Boeing 767, Earbuds, Earhole Echo, FedEx, Keycard, Logistics, NEC, UPS Leave a commentWe have reported that Amazon was looking to go full tilt into logistics, cutting out UPS and FedEx to a great degree, and how they were working to acquire planes. Now, zdnet.com reports that they’ve inked a deal with Air Transport Services Group to lease 20 Boeing 767 freighters to expedite order deliveries for Amazon Fulfillment Services. ATSG will operate the planes, along with ABX Air and Air Transport International. It’s a 5 year deal, and Amazon has rights to acquire just under 20% of ATSG over that period.
Biometrics seem to be a pretty rock solid method of identifying a person…unless it’s a James Bond movie, no one is going to poach your eyeball for an iris scan in real life. Here’s one that goes even deeper…NEC has developed an earpiece with a tiny speaker and microphone that detects the unique echo in your earhole. Geek.com says the device looks and works like a regular earbud you listen to music through. When identification is needed, it sends a series of sounds, the mic detects them and they’re compared to an earlier recording. It takes less than a second. NEC expects to have the tech out commercially by 2018. In addition to transactions, it could even replace the venerable key card you use to get around in the building at work!
Apple’s Trade Up Plan Moves into Conquest Sales; Amazon Expands Flex Delivery
Posted: February 18, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Android Trade Ins, Apple, Flex, iPhone, Prime Now, Private Drivers, Trade Up with Installments Leave a commentApple has introduced Trade Up with Installments, which lets you put the price of a trade-in towards payments on a new iPhone, with payments down to as low as $15 a month. This is on top of your phone plan, of course, but the interesting thing noted by techcrunch.com is that Apple will take non-Apple trade-ins. Android users can get up to $300 for their used devices…like a Samsung Galaxy S6 in good condition will net you $290 towards the purchase of a new iPhone. Apple basically gets you and writes a mini-loan through Citizens Bank. If you like to trade more than every 2 years, this might be the deal. Apple is cleverly stealing the concept of conquest sales from the auto business, which has done this as well as loyalty discounts for decades.
Amazon has had Flex, and Uber-like home delivery service for Prime Now customers. The retail giant is now working to contract with private drivers to take even standard packages to customers’ doors, cutting out UPS, FedEx, and the Post Office more than ever. According to geekwire.com, the program is in effect already in part of Texas. They are reportedly paying drivers $18 an hour, and shifts can be scheduled 8a to 4p 7 days a week. Considering that Amazon has been working on leasing over 20 planes from Boeing, and flying out of a center formerly used by DHL, it sure looks like they are moving full force into doing their own logistics.
4 Inch iPhone & iPad Air 3 On Sale March 18th; Mattel To Sell 3D Printer-Kids Can Make Own Toys
Posted: February 15, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 3D printer, Amazon, Apple, iPad Air 3, iPhone 5se, Mattel, ThingMaker Leave a commentApple has an event March 15th, where it’s widely anticipated they will introduce the 4 inch iPhone 5se and iPad Air 3. 9to5mac.com says there’s an interesting wrinkle…apparently, instead of a couple weeks of preorders, Apple will just start selling both in stores and online on March 18th. Production of the fresh 4 inch iPhone started in January. The new phone will sport Apple’s latest A9 and M9 processors, an NFC chip for Apple Pay, support for always-on Siri activation, the iPhone 6’s camera system, and the ability to take Live Photos. It will feature the same color options as the 6S: gold, rose gold, silver, and space gray.
Mattel is going back to the future, re-introducing the old ThingMaker at the New York Toy Fair. It will be a quantum leap from the past ThingMaker, though…Fortune.com reports this one will be a 3D printer that will let kids print action figures, jewelry, and wearables at home. It won’t be out until fall, but preorders are open now on Amazon for $299. A large figure will take about 10 hours for the device to generate, so kids may want to fire it up before bedtime, and could have the toy or jewelry by morning.
Could the Reviled iPhone ‘Camera Bump’ be Going Away; Apple Car on Hold; Amazon Prime’s Explosive Growth
Posted: January 26, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Apple, Apple Car, Camera bump, iPhone 7, Prime, Project Titan, Spherically curved photosensor Leave a commentA clever Apple patent filed in 2013 and granted today points to the hated camera bump on the back of iPhones going away. 9to5mac.com reports that Cupertino has come up with an interesting way to defy physics, and make a smaller lens. Physics determines just how thin you can make a sensor and lens arrangement for any given aperture while retaining quality. But instead of the usual flat sensor, the patent describes a ‘spherically curved photosensor’ that would allow the distance between the lens elements and the sensor to be reduced, allowing for a thinner camera module…and no bump. It’s unclear if this will make it into the iPhone 7.
After the exit of Steve Zadesky, who was running Apple’s semi-secret car project dubbed Project Titan, macrumors.com is hearing that the Apple Car is on hold due to execs not being happy with progress being made on it’s development…especially Jony Ive. Rumors are that the Titan team feels Apple’s deadlines and goals are unattainable. Apple has apparently wanted final engineering specs for the car by 2019 or 2020…now, it looks like that deadline will slip for certain.
Amazon Prime’s US membership grew by 35% to 54 million in 2015. Think about that. The figure is according to a report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners picked up by geekwire.com. When they went to $99 a year for the package of free shipping, videos, and audio, a lot of people predicted a fall off in members, but the exact opposite has happened. Prime members spend an average of $1100 a year with Amazon, compared to $600 for non-members, so Amazon can afford free Prime shipping as a bit of a loss leader.
Musk: Coast to Coast Driverless in 2 Years; State of Union Streams on Amazon
Posted: January 11, 2016 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amazon, Elon Musk, Fire TV Stick, Self Driving, State of the Union, streaming, Summon, Tesla Leave a commentOn 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 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 140 Character limit, 200 gig, Amazon, Best Buy, blogging, SanDisk, Twitter, Wireless flash drives Leave a commentTwitter 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.
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