Molly Wood is on to talk about Amazon’s new wallet app, the future of payments, and possibly a tiny little patent rant.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Molly Wood, of the paper of record!
Headlines
Techcrunch reports Xiaomi announced a new phone called the Mi4 and a wearable called the Mi Band. The wristband device is a fitness tracker and can unlock your mi phone, coming in 5 colors and will sell for 79 renminbi or about US$13. The Mi4 has a metal band reminiscent of the iPhone with a 5-inch 1080p display 2.5GHz processor snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM, 16GB internal storage and a 3,080 mAh battery. It’s also the first model with LTE. TNW reports the Mi 4 will be available for CNY 1,999 (approximately $322) for the 16GB and CNY 2,499 (around $403) for the 64 GB. 3G versions come July 29 (China Unicom) and August (China Telecom), while the 4G version will land some time in September.
Apple Insider posted that the USPTO granted Apple a patent for a “ “Wrist-worn electronic device and methods therefore” The device can connect with portable devices and the strap carries sensors. It also supports wrist gestures and proximity-sensing circuitry. Prior art? Never heard of it. Apple Insider points out the patent seems to be as much about putting an iPod Nano in an enhanced wristband as anything.
TechCrunch started the wave of tech news sites noticing that Amazon had quietly launched a wallet app on July 17th for Kindles and Android. The app lets you store gift cards and loyalty cards and in some cases check balances. You can manage the app at amazon.com/wallet which also will list your Amazon-linked credit cards, implying that someday those too may become available in the wallet app. Amazon says the current app is in beta and will ship pre-installed on the Amazon Fire Phone.
Ars Technica passes along the Nvidia announcement of a new version of the Shield Android gaming tablet. The previous all-in-one unit becomes the Shield Portable while the new unit is an 8-inch 1920 x 1200 tablet that can be controlled with a WiFi connected controller sold separately. The tablet includes 2GB of RAM, 300Mbps 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and 5MP front and rear cameras. It also supports 4K video through its micro-HDMI port. The tablet will sell for $299 at 16GB and $399 at 32GB with LTE. Controllers will cost an extra $59 and a cover-case is $39. All of that arrives on July 29 in the US and Canada.
Ars Technica reports researchers from Carnegie Mellon University Alexander Volynkin and Michael McCord had to cancel a talk at Black Hat that would have shown how to discover the identity of Tor users for less than $3,000. Attorneys from Carnegie Mellon and the Software Engineering Institute requested the cancelation. Tor project leader Roger Dingledine wrote in an e-mail to Tor users that a fix is coming that should close the particular bug in question.
CNET reports Verizon posted Q2 profits of $4.32 billion, down from last year’s $5.2 billion. But Verizon’s share of the profit, after excluding the cut that Vodafone used to get as part owner, was actually $4.2 billion, or $1.01 a share, up significantly from a year-ago gain of $2.2 billion, or 78 cents a share. Revenue rose 5.7 percent. Verizon’s customer growth was attributed to tablet demand as well as net addition of 304,000 phone subscribers.
The Wall Street Journal reports sources say Apple is asking suppliers to manufacture between 70 million and 80 million units two iPhone models with 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays by December 30. Either phone could go on sale well before that date. Foxconn and Pegatron plan to start mass producing the 4.7-inch iPhone model next month and Hon Hai will reportedly begin making the 5.5-inch version exclusively in September.
Microsoft reported Q4 revenue of $23.38 billion with earnings per share of 55 cents. TechCrunch reports analysts expected the company to earn $0.60 on revenue of $23.00 billion. It sold 5.8 million Windows Phone-based Lumia handsets in the period. Phones cost the company $0.08 in earnings per share and lost it $692 million in the quarter. Devices and Consumer segment revenue were up 42% and Commercial revenue up 11%. So in the end, more revenue, less profit.
Apple reported revenues of $37.4 billion for its third fiscal quarter and profits of $7.7 billion, or $1.28 per share. Wall Street was expecting the company to announce earnings of $1.23 a share, on $37.99 billion in revenue. The results are right in the middle of Apple’s own revenue forecast, which was between $36 and $38 billion. 35.2 million iPhones shipped, versus 31.2 million a year ago 13.2 million iPads shipped, versus 14.6 million last year and 17 million the year before that 4.4 million Macs shipped, compared to 3.8 million last year
News From You
Kylde, the self-described janitor of the subreddit, whose tireless efforts keep it spam free pointed out the daily dot post about a decision U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to allow law enforcement officials access to a suspect’s entire email account without limit. The judge placed no limits on the time frame or manner of search, which is unusual when approving a search warrant. The decision contrasts with one made by Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola, in March, blocking an attempt by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) to obtain what he saw as an overly broad search warrant for an email account.
melchizedek74 submitted the Verge report that FXX cable channel will marathoin the entire run of the Simpson’s, all 25 seasons, from August 21st to September 1st. After THAT, Variety reports that FXX will launch “Simpsons World” in October, which will let cable subscribers watch every episode on demand at SimpsonsWorld.com, or on the FXNow app.
Discussion Section: Amazon Mobile Wallet
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/22/amazon-quietly-launches-its-consumer-facing-mobile-wallet-app-amazon-wallet/?ncid=rss
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LIBDH8M/ref=mas_dl?ie=UTF8&mas_redir=T5&ref=mas_dl
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.wallet
https://www.amazon.com/wallet/merchantCards?ref_=wallet_ln_mc
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/29/amazon-wants-to-include-peer-to-peer-payments-in-its-real-world-paypal-competitor/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/16/amazon-reportedly-buys-mobile-payments-startup-gopago-working-on-an-ambitious-new-project/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/22/us-nigeria-paypal-launch-idUSKBN0FR22L20140722?
feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews
Picks of the Day: iSmoothRun & Smashrun via Neil
Mr. Merritt, Here are two picks in the category of fitness (primarily running, but iSmoothRun does work well with bicycling too).
iSmoothRun — how I collect my GPX run data and view on my phone
The best running application for iOS devices, in my opinion, is iSmoothRun.It doesn’t hold your GPX data hostage like some competitor applications, and makes it easy for you to share your data (I can export all, not just one at a time). I can also link it to many sites (including those that would be considered competitors). It has feature that no other running application has (or at least I have found) … It is only $5.99 and is the best money I have spent on my staying fit and healthy.
Smashrun.com – how I analyze my GPX run data on my computer
I use multiple sites to track and share my runs. This site has become my favorite. It has a good social aspect as well as provided a lot of details into your various runs. It is actually the first running or application with badges that are actually encouraging and worthwhile (IMHO). The ability to summarize my running data is great. The pro features allow me to do a deep dive into a run and see my pace, heart rate, and elevation along the entire course. Considering how new of offering this is, it is very impressive. Also, the blog posts show the upcoming feature set based on votes from those that are using smashrun.
Tomorrow’s guest:
