November, 2011 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for November 2011

MasterCard and mFoundry are poised to help banks launch potentially hundreds of NFC-based mobile wallets with a new partnership that will allow banks that use mFoundry for mobile banking apps to add support for contactless PayPass payments, turning those mobile banking apps into digital wallets. Read More »

WalmartLabs, the new commerce research lab created out of Walmart’s acquisition of Kosmix, is formally launching its first product, a gift-finding Facebook app called Shopycat. The app enables users to take the likes, shares and interests of friends and turn them into intelligent gift recommendations. Read More »

 
 

AT&T had slower speeds in the city than you might expect, but overall the performance of the new LTE network and new smartphones was impressive, streaming uninterrupted Netflix video for 45 minutes and clocking average speeds of more than 10 Mbps on the freeway. Read More »

Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are attracting more eyeballs every month, stealing attention away from traditional TV. But cable providers could soon fight back, by basing their pricing on how much a given user streams every month. That would effectively raise prices for streaming services. Read More »

Nowadays, many people’s email inboxes are overflowing with deal advertisements. As much as everyone loves a bargain, it can all be a bit overwhelming. A new app called Frugalo aims to separate the wheat from the chaff in our daily deal overloaded email inboxes. Read More »

Silk, the browser for Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, utilizes Amazon’s cloud. But don’t think AWS is the Kindle Fire’s only cloud connection. In a post on Tuesday, Pulse’s Greg Bayer explained how his company’s news-reading app actually runs atop Google’s App Engine Platform-as-a-Service offering. Read More »

The Kindle Fire isn’t just for watching Amazon and Netflix streams anymore: The newly-released Plex app makes it possible to access videos, music and photos stored on your home PC where ever you are. Users can even share content libraries through a personal cloud service. Read More »

MIT Tech Review’s annual list looking at 35 innovators under 35 always has gems for the energy sectors. This year’s list is no different and the publication highlights three under-the-radar entrepreneurs at startups including ultracapacitor company FastCAP, geothermal drilling startup Foro Energy and battery company Wuhe. Read More »

The board that administers the Pulitzer prizes for journalism has changed the criteria for the breaking news category to stress the real-time nature of the reporting involved — which suggests that some day a Pulitzer might be awarded for live-tweeting of a news event. Read More »

Welcome to another installment of Tips and Tricks, the series that aims to teach you something new about your Apple stuff. This time, we’ll be taking a look at Siri and how changing one or two words in your query can produce completely different results. Read More »

Now that I have a new Galaxy Nexus on the way from the U.K., you’d think my faithful Nexus One would be sent out to pasture after 23-months of service. Nope. There’s a custom ROM that brings Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) to the old Nexus. Read More »

According to the New York Post, Apple has one of the lowest rents of all other retailers for its Grand Central Terminal store and will not pay its landlord (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) any percentage of its sales, a situation being called “unique.” Read More »

More Must Reads

I don’t use FaceTime all that often, which is why this neat little Arduino-based hack is so cool: It basically guarantees someone will call me using Apple’s video chat service. Plus, that someone will also be a dog called Chewie. Read More »

Many people had the hopes up for something truly revolutionary coming out of Spotify’s mystery event this Wednesday. Instead, we got an app platform that’s restricted to a desktop client, doesn’t offer partners any revenue and suspiciously smells like another platform bully power play. Read More »

Spotify is opening up its service to developers to create free applications inside its desktop app. The company is now enabling much more robust integration of apps inside its desktop client, allowing developers to tap into Spotify’s 15 million songs and fast growing user base. Read More »

Rural mobile operator Viaero Wireless is preloading YouMail’s visual voicemail application into all Android phones, giving customers a compelling alternative to its standard network mailbox services. This could be the beginning of a trend that sees the mobile carriers abandoning voicemail to independent cloud providers. Read More »

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