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OnSwipe Competitor Pressly Launches, Aims For 1 Billion Flips Per Month

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:26:49 +0000

OnSwipe competitor and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Pressly is launching today with its first major publisher, Canada’s largest newspaper The Toronto Star . Like OnSwipe or even iPad mag Flipboard , Pressly’s service is designed to give traditional Web content a makeover by making it more tablet-friendly. But in Pressly’s case, it’s not about re-packaging content as a native app – instead, it uses a combination of HTML5 and customizable templates to allow publishers more control over the tablet browsing experience. At first glance, Pressly , the first real alternative to OnSwipe , looks a lot like its competition. Both services let publishers make their content more digestible for tablet reading. However, according to Pressly CTO Peter Kieltyka , the key difference between the two is what’s under the hood. “OnSwipe started as a way to optimize a WordPress blog,” he says. “But Pressly is more of an engine…it’s like Sencha for tablets.” What he means is that Pressly was built from the get-go to be a framework for building next-generation HTML5 websites, as opposed to a tool where you pump in an RSS feed and it spits out a tablet-optimized site. (Although that’s coming, too – Pressly is launching its own self-serve platform in Q1 2012 that will do exactly that.) At launch, there are currently five templates available to get publishers started with Pressly, but really, anything goes. Publishers who want to maintain their brand can create their own templates, explains Kieltyka, “there’s no limitation over what you see on a page.” In other words, if you can imagine it, Pressly can help you build it. Meanwhile, OnSwipe sites tend to look a little more uniform. (Kieltyka says they look exactly the same. Ooh, burn – let the battles begin!) “It’s like the difference between a BlackBerry and an iPhone,” Kieltyka says. Yes, they’re both smartphones, they run apps, they let you browse the Web, etc. “But at the end of the day, it comes down to execution.” Pressly is also now offering something else that makes it different from OnSwipe – a consumption model for monetization. Before, like OnSwipe, Pressly would take a cut of the ad revenue. Now, publishers have a choice between that and something like $1 per every 1,000 swipes. This figure is not yet in stone, it should be noted. As for its launch on The Toronto Star, things are going fairly well. Since its debut at 6:30 PM EST last night, Pressly has seen 180,000 flips at an average of 22.6 flips per person. The company says its goal is to reach 1 billion flips per month over the next twelve months. It may get there, too, thanks to a couple of other publisher partners whose launches are just ahead: The Economist Media Group is debuting a Pressly-built site in a couple of weeks and soon after a news-focused NBC property will follow. Tablet readers who want to see Pressly in action from their iPad or Android tablet can do so now by visiting read.thestar.com .

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OnSwipe Competitor Pressly Launches, Aims For 1 Billion Flips Per Month

Surprise: HP Is Squeezing Every Possible Penny From The Canceled TouchPad

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:12:57 +0000

The $99 TouchPad fire sale was the best way to close the book on webOS and the TouchPad itself. It got the TouchPad into the hands of the fans. Only those that cared about the product lined up outside of Best Buy to grab one of the cheap notebooks. It’s also probably safe to say that most of these people do not have any interest in HP’s crapware notebooks. These people just wanted a solid tablet for a great price. HP, you should have taken your win and walked home. But you didn’t. You’ve screwed up. Again. The TouchPad’s story is a sad one. A product born out of Palm’s inspiring vision for the future of mobile and HP’s expertise at killing innovation. Despite featuring a solid operating system, the product landed with a thud and only webOS die-hards opted for the $499 TouchPad. HP announced just 7 weeks after it launched that it was killing all webOS hardware development and would clear out the remaining supply for just $99, which sold out nearly overnight. The story all along was that another batch of TouchPads was coming. Retailers and even the HP website had sign-up pages to notify potential buyers of available TouchPads. But here we are, a couple months later, and the $99 TouchPad hasn’t resurfaced. However, the TouchPad has randomly popped up at different retailers, but there is often a major caveat. Best Buy got a round of 32GB $150 TouchPads late last month but they were only available for purchase with an HP notebook. Then Tiger Direct (and sister site, Circuit City) started selling the TouchPads but only with an expensive accessory pack, bringing the price up to $279. Then, just today, Office Depot’s Black Friday ad leaked showing a TouchPad deal similar to that found at Best Buy; buy any HP PC and get a 32GB TouchPad for $150. You just know somewhere deep in the corporate machine that is HP, an overpaid executive and his team of cronies thought up this scheme. “People want the TouchPad, right? Alright, then let’s make a quick buck off these people. If they want one, we’re going to force people to buy one of our cheap, adware-filled notebooks. Oh, and we’ll pull support for the TouchPad or, maybe, half-heartedly support it for the stragglers.” This isn’t about capitalism or free trade. HP had a chance to make some friends and earn some good will. The TouchPad is clearly not worth anything to HP. The first fire sale demonstrated that. Now they’re using it as a bait, waving it in front of potential buyers, just hoping to trick someone into buying one of their crappy notebooks. HP has every right to make a buck but sometimes it’s worth foregoing a tiny bit of additional revenue to earn some respect. After years of self-destructive behavior, HP needs respect more than anything else.

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Surprise: HP Is Squeezing Every Possible Penny From The Canceled TouchPad

BlackBerry London: First BBX device spotted in the wild?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:36:18 +0000

Last week RIM mentioned that their upcoming BBX phones won’t look anything like the BlackBerry Bold, and judging by a photograph that recently found its way into the offices of The Verge, it looks like they weren’t joking around. The photograph shows a never seen before BlackBerry device, running a band new operating system that looks vaguely similar to QNX (PlayBook’s OS). The phone has been given the codename London and is supposed to be released in June 2012. The phone’s specs are: a 1.5GHz TI OMAP dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a 2-megapixel front facing camera. It is supposedly thinner than the iPhone 4 and roughly the same size as a Galaxy S2. According to the tipster, the phone can also be stood straight up on one of its sides. While there’s no telling if it’s a cleverly faked photograph, but the folks over at BGR are corroborating with the report , so there should be some truth behind this phone. Regardless, we won’t be seeing it anytime soon so don’t hold your breath – at least not till next year. What do you think of the London? BlackBerry London: First BBX device spotted in the wild? , By Ubergizmo . Top Stories : iPhone 4S Review ,

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BlackBerry London: First BBX device spotted in the wild?

How Google, eBay, And PayPal Are Gearing Up For A Very Mobile Holiday Shopping Season

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 15:30:41 +0000

Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season. I sat down with executives from Google, eBay, PayPal and ShopKick to discuss the trends that are expected to emerge in the e-commerce space over the next few months. They center around mobile, tablets, and deals. PayPal has more than doubled its mobile payments volume since the 2010 holiday shopping season, and we haven’t even hit the thick of this year’s rush. eBay is projecting $5 billion in mobile payments volume in 2010 and this number could increase in the next few months. And Google projects that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and one of the biggest shopping days of the year) will come from mobile devices. Tablet devices are now a part of the online shopping experience and retailers are taking note. Clearly, all signs point to the fact that this could be the breakout year for mobile shopping. Mobile, Mobile, Mobile All of the companies I spoke to unanimously agreed that this would be the year of mobile for the holiday shopping season. Steve Yankovich, head of eBay’s mobile business operations and development, says he expects this to be the biggest year for mobile sales for eBay yet. eBay has said that the company expects to see $5 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2011, and this will be partly buoyed by a strong mobile presence in November and December. PayPal’s Senior Director for Mobile, Laura Chambers, echoes Yankovich’s forecasts and says that merchants are even preparing for the onslaught of traffic to their mobile sites. A number of big retailers, such as Armani Exchange, Guess and The Limited have recently put PayPal’s mobile express checkout as an option for payments on their mobile sites as a way to help the conversion process. “We are seeing strong investments by online retailers for mobile shopping this year,” she says. Chambers says that last year, the peak day for mobile payments for PayPal was December 12, with $4.7 million in mobile payments volume. Now PayPal is seeing $10 million in mobile payments per day, and we haven’t even officially hit the holiday shopping period. Clearly, the mobile payments numbers could even triple from last year to this year. While many consumers may shop on mobile for their holiday purchases, the usage of product search, barcode scanning, and other informative apps will also play a big part in this year’s mobile shopping. eBay’s RedLaser barcode scanning apps have seen scans go up 50 percent over the past year. If you aren’t familiar with how it works, RedLaser will scan the barcode of a physical product and show you where you can buy it on eBay’s properties and where it is available in local store locations around you (via Milo) and for how much. The app has been updated with PayPal functionality so that users can actually buy the product directly from the app. Another shopping app developer who has high hopes for mobile this holiday season is ShopKick. Co-founder Cyriac Roeding says that this year will be the year of mobile for physical shopping. For background, Shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the free Android or iPhone app on their phone walks into a store. Once a Shopkick Signal is detected, the app delivers reward points called “kickbucks” to the user for walking into a retail store, trying on clothes, scanning a barcode and other actions. Kickbucks can then be redeemed across all partner stores for gift card rewards or for Facebook Credits. User can also receive special discounts on specific products at partners stores like Macy’s, Best Buy or Target. Roeding explains that the cell phone is the only interactive platform you carry with you in a physical store, and retailers are looking to use the platform to help drive transactions. Clearly, a mobile rewards app that offers in-store discounts can help do this. “The internet has caused brick and mortar retailers more trouble than benefit over the past fifteen years. Now retailers are catching on to how the internet can help retailers—that’s where mobile comes in.” Sameer Samat, VP of Product Management for Google Commerce, tells me that the search giant is seeing a growing number of users are making buying decisions using their mobile phone. “We are definitely seeing m-commerce conversions growing and becoming bigger over time,” he says. “But users are also using their mobile phone to search for products and find local availability.” Samat says that Google has seen a 200 percent growth in mobile product search usage and Google Shopper app downloads over the past year. Shopper, which is available for iOS and Android, allows you to find product prices, reviews, specs, local inventory of products at nearby stores, and more. As we mentioned above, Google is forecasting that 15 percent of total search on Black Friday. will come from mobile. “There’s no doubt that users are now making buying decisions using their mobile phone,” says Samat. “And we are seeing m-commerce conversions growing and becoming bigger over time.” Tablets As tablets have grown to be the go-to browsing device, the iPad, and other devices are also becoming a way to shop. And retailers are catching on to this trend. According to a National Retail Federation study, 20 percent of retailers have invested in tablet device apps this holiday season. With this in mind, Google debuted Catalogs in August, an app for tablet devices that includes 200 catalogs from major brands including Anthropologie, Bare Escentuals, Bergdorf Goodman, Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Sundance, Tea Collection, Urban Outfitters and Williams-Sonoma. The app is more than just a browsing experience. When consumers find an item they’d like to purchase, they can tap to find it in a store nearby or tap “Buy on Website” to visit the merchant online. Google’s Samat says that “the tablet is the ultimate leanback experience and we see that playing a big role in holiday shopping as a replacement for the mail order catalogs you used to browse through.” PayPal calls it ‘couch commerce’ and believes that tablet commerce will have a record year. PayPal recently reported that consumers who own both a tablet and a smartphone are significantly more likely (63%) to indicate increased overall spending on mobile purchases, versus owners of smartphones only (29%). Owners of both a tablet and a smartphone buy nearly twice as often as those who only have smartphones and more than 40% of dual owners made more than 20 mobile purchases over the past year, compared to only 12% of smartphone-only owners. Forrester just released a report predicting a 15 percent increase in online shopping sales this year to nearly $60 billion, partly due to the increase in consumer-use of tablet computers for shopping. Beyond Black Friday And Cyber Monday Black Friday and Cyber Monday are historically the top-high-grossing online shopping days during the holiday season. But execs expect to see high volumes of online shopping on other days thanks to an increase in mobile shopping and deals. Yankovitch tells me that eBay expects revenue numbers to be well over numbers that eBay saw last year for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but expects to see more activity at times when people aren’t traditionally shopping. The day of Thanksgiving is one of those days, says Chambers. Because people will have their phone everywhere (including at the table), consumers are expected to make purchases on the fly, especially on Thanksgiving evening. In fact, PayPal is predicting that after dinner on Thanksgiving Day will be the first mobile shopping spike this holiday season. Another popular day has been the second Sunday in December, which is one of the last days where people feel confident that items will be shipped in times for the holiday. And Chambers says across the board, Sunday is the biggest day for mobile shopping generally. Deals There’s no doubt that deals, coupons and discounts will be a large part of the online holiday shopping experience, especially with the current state of the economy. According to the recent Forrester report, 58 percent of Americans say they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago and nearly half believe they find better values online. “I really expect consumers to be deal hunting this season,” explains Chambers. She says that PayPal, which has historically offered special deals for the holiday shopping season, will be bulking up on more consumer deals this holiday season. Samat says that Google has always seen a spike for queries like deals, coupons, and sales during the holiday time and fully expects to see an increase this year. “The consumer desire for a better deal will help give certain product decision tools a big bump,” he explains. “People may take more time this year to find the best possible price.” Deals could also include lucrative holiday shipping offers. In 2010, 45 of the top 50 online retailers offered some sort of promotional deal between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, most of which were a type of shipping promotion. And in 2011, Shop.org anticipates that a record 92.5% of online retailers will offer free shipping and not just as a Cyber Monday promotion. Clearly, there’s plenty of optimism from retailers, and tech companies regarding online spending and shopping this holiday season. And this holiday season is somewhat unique considering the big bet that retailers are making on newer technologies, such as mobile, geo-location, tablets, local product search and more. The big question is how consumers will react to and engage with these technologies over the next several weeks. It could be a very mobile Christmas.

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How Google, eBay, And PayPal Are Gearing Up For A Very Mobile Holiday Shopping Season

Electronic Flowerpot Takes The Guesswork Out Of Gardening

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:37:24 +0000

Even though plants need only a few things to grow – water, air, light and minerals – maintaining the right proportions can make gardening feel like a high-maintenance hobby. Estonian company Click & Grow creates soilless, electronic flowerpots that do the work for you, providing the correct water and nutrient balance for indoor plants. For some, this may seem like a superfluous product since many varieties of houseplants don’t require an excessive amount of care. But for those with a history of killing their flowery friends, or those whose travel schedules don’t permit regular waterings, Click & Grow could be a helpful solution. Each flower pot is wired with sensors, a processor and software that checks on the plant and provides it with fertilizer and water as needed. Each pot uses a combination of hydroponics and aeroponics, and still requires an occasional refilling of the water reservoir, about once a month. A light on the flowerpot illuminates when the reservoir requires refilling, and the pot uses a pump to nourish the roots over time. While the pot takes care of water and fertilization, it’s up to the owner to find suitable lighting. The company recommends indirect sunlight. The 59 euro (just over $80) starter kit contains a pot, four AA batteries and a plant cartridge embedded with flower seeds. Batteries last about eight months, and when the first plant completes its growth cycle, you can swap in another cartridge for just under 7 euro ($9). Each cartridge sprouts about two weeks after activation and contains software that helps optimize the system for each species. Current options include several flowers, a basil mix, tomatoes and chili peppers.

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Electronic Flowerpot Takes The Guesswork Out Of Gardening

Siri, Read My Mind: Did Hackers Just Build a Brain-Powered iPhone?

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 02:55:09 +0000

If you believe this video — and that’s a big if — the era of thought-controlled phones has begun. A pair of hobbyist hackers claim to have taken Siri , the iPhone 4S feature that obeys voice commands, and turned it into an app that obeys brainwave patterns. “It works! It really works! It’s so freaking amazing,” Josh Evans and Ollie Hayward announced Tuesday on the blog they created to chronicle what they call “Project Black Mirror.” In the accompanying YouTube video, Evans wears EEG pads on his forehead and squints in concentration. A circuit board attached to an iPhone on the table beeps shortly later, and a mechanical voice says “calling Graham,” the third member of the project, whose phone then rings. The hackers explain that they used the EEG pads to record the “signature brain patterns” of 25 Siri-based commands. By pairing the signatures with the commands, they effectively create a brain pattern-to-voice dictionary. That means their system doesn’t necessarily know what a person is thinking, but it knows that certain electrical activity in the brain translates to certain commands. When the system identifies the electrical signature in the brain, it feeds the appropriate command to a sound synthesizer chip, the audio output of which is plugged into the iPhone’s microphone jack. The Case For It’s hardly an implausible system. Computer interfaces controlled by electrical energy in the brain have been in development for years. A company called Emotiv created an EEG-based videogame controller in 2009. Emotiv founder Tan Lee talks about the technology in this TED video. Scientists at the Honda Research Institute unveiled a technology in 2009 that makes its robot, Asimo , responsive to thought commands. It also used EEG technology to translate electrical signals into commands. The Case Against But Honda also said the real-life applications of the technology were limited. That was partly because of the way our thoughts get easily distracted, and partly because brain patterns can differ greatly between two people who are thinking the same word. In other words, anyone who wanted to use the technology would need to train it. Jonathan Hefter, the CEO of technology company Neverware , says that if Project Black Mirror does work, it probably has similar limitations and is unlikely to be capable of executing a large number of commands. “Black Mirror does not seem to be using a general dictionary of human thought, what we would call mind reading,” he says. “Their EEG can’t really tell the difference between you thinking about a movie you like and a song you like. ‘Mind reading’ will require a much higher resolution scanner, like an fMRI or an embedder array, and a common map and dictionary of what our natural thoughts look like.” There’s also a possibility that the Black Mirror demonstrations posted to YouTube are the result of creative camera work rather than an interesting hack. The blog incorrectly calls the technology used to measure electrical activities of the brain ECG instead of EEG. ECG is used to measure activities of the heart. It seems that this is a mistake someone familiar enough with the technology to use it in a thought command project would be unlikely to make. The setup is also somewhat suspicious, according to Dami Oomojola, who similarly used four electrodes in a brain computer interface he created to move a cursor on a computer screen. “[In their setup] they are far more likely to be picking up the electrical signals generated by moving the larger muscles of the face such as when blinking the eyes,” he says, “[and] the lack of shielding in the leads from the head also mean there is going to be lots of ambient noise in their signal.” Those who are willing to believe that the project is genuine may soon have a chance to put some skin in the game. The hackers’ demo video is intended for a Kickstarter funding page. More About: apple , kickstarter , mind control , siri

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Siri, Read My Mind: Did Hackers Just Build a Brain-Powered iPhone?

Used Cooking Oil Is a Hot Property on the Black Market. Seriously. [Crime]

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:20:00 +0000

People resort to the black market for all sorts of stolen goods: cellphones, watches, cars, babies. But used cooking oil? According to the Washington Post , that’s a thing too. More »

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Used Cooking Oil Is a Hot Property on the Black Market. Seriously. [Crime]

Forrester: U.S. Online Holiday Spending Will Grow 15 Percent To Nearly $60 Billion

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:31:30 +0000

After Q3 2011 brought a 13 percent increase in e-commerce sales, Forrester is estimating that U.S. online holiday sales will grow 15 percent this year to nearly $60 billion. The study reports that this increase will take place because of the increase in consumer-use of tablet computers for shopping combined with a growth in online holiday deals. Of course, it’s surprising that there would be a significant growth in holiday retail spending considering the economy and market volatility. But Forrester says that retailers are taking advantage of the ‘price-savvy’ shopper and presenting more lucrative deals for online shopping and free shipping offers, especially on high-volume shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The report shows that 58 percent of Americans say they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago and nearly half believe they find better values online. And 50 percent of Americans who own a tablet use the device to research products for purchase with 30 percent of smartphone owners using their mobile device to research products for purchase at least monthly (which is a 30 percent increase in just the past year). And more and more online retailers will be offering better shopping experiences on mobile and tablet devices t take advantage of these trends. Forrester also says that 12 percent of the total growth in sales will result from an increase in spending per buyer as opposed to more buyers entering the market. In January, comScore reported that 2010 online holiday spending reached a record $33 billion , which was up 12 percent from 2009. Forrester estimates last year’s spending at just over $50 billion. With Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday only weeks away, we’ll see soon if shoppers flock online and to mobile platforms for deals and savings, as is predicted. While the current technology trends and proliferation of deals could boost e-spending, even weather could be a factor in pushing holiday sales to record levels.

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Forrester: U.S. Online Holiday Spending Will Grow 15 Percent To Nearly $60 Billion

Amazon’s $111.11 Droid RAZR Deal Makes My Wallet Happy

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:02:00 +0000

Happy 11/11/11 boys and girls! Verizon is preparing to open the release their latest 4G smartphone into the world promptly at 11:11 this morning, but those of you whose wallets ache when they see that $299 price tag may want to check out Amazon Wireless’s launch day deal. Running with Verizon’s all-11s schtick, Amazon has the Droid RAZR for $111.11 with a two-year contract for today only. Hefty discount, no? Well, there always seems to be a catch when a deal this good appears, and Amazon is happy to oblige. Only brand new Verizon customers will be able to take advantage of that promo pricing, though existing customers looking to upgrade still get a teensy $50 discount. There’s also quite a wait involved — the RAZR is already backordered, so placing a new order now means it won’t mean ship for another 8 or 9 days. We felt that the Droid RAZR was a bit of a mixed bag, but such a steep discount makes it all the more palatable. Here’s a quick spec refresher for those of you teetering on the fence: the LTE device sports a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, a rather nice 8-megapixel camera, and squeezes it all into a 7.1mm thick body. Still can’t decide? Read our full review , and make it quick: who knows how much higher Amazon’s backorder window will creep.

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Amazon’s $111.11 Droid RAZR Deal Makes My Wallet Happy

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 nearly 10 million copies sold on day one

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 02:00:45 +0000

If there was any doubt to how successful Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 was going to be, all those fears can now be laid to rest. According to recent reports, the latest game in Activision’s hit FPS franchise managed to sell 9.3 million copies on the first day it went on sale – which makes it the biggest industry launch ever. In comparison with the previous games in the series, Black Ops sold 7 million copies on day one and took an entire week to reach 10 million, while Modern Warfare 2 sold 6 million on the first day. With each Call of Duty title doing even better than the last, it’s highly unlikely we’ll see Activision putting an end to the franchise anytime soon. Though we wonder if it’ll be able to continue beating its previous records. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next installment in 2012 to see. How many of you bought MW3 on launch day and what do you think of the game so far? Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 nearly 10 million copies sold on day one , By Ubergizmo . Top Stories : iPhone 4S Review , Galaxy S2 Review ,

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 nearly 10 million copies sold on day one