Spread the holiday cheer with 20% off your favorite Android accessories
What better way is there to spread a little holiday cheer than to give you an easy way to save 20% on your favorite accessories? You probably have a bunch of gifts that you want to buy for others, as well as a few things you want for yourself, so saving money anywhere you can is always good. Whether you are in need of a new charging cable, a new case to protect your phone, or even a Bluetooth speaker, we’ve got you covered.
There are tons of great accessories in stock for a variety of different phones right now. From the HTC 10 to the Google Pixel, Galaxy S7, and even the OnePlus 3T, you can find what you need at ShopAndroid. You can save now through December 16, so don’t wait too long to pick up what you need.
See at ShopAndroid
I have seen the future of wearable payments, and it is magical
Disney World does mobile payments right.
I went to Walt Disney World at the beginning of December. It was absolutely glorious. And each day, while in the parks, I did not take a wallet with me. I stuck my driver’s license in the back of my phone’s clear case, and that was all I brought. And while I bought tons of keepsakes and food, my credit cards stayed safely in my hotel room.
Did I use Android Pay? Samsung Pay? Apple Pay? No; I used something even better.
This is a MagicBand. There are many like it, but this Limited Edition Very Merry Christmas Party one is mine. MagicBands are how Disney revolutionized their ticket system, turnstile and FastPass system, hotel key system, and hotel room charging system. MagicBands are waterproof, wearable tickets/keys/credit cards for resort guests that function over RFID, have a two-year battery, and work almost everywhere on park property.
Coming into the Magic Kingdom? Tap your MagicBand to the turnstile and press your fingerprint to verify your identity. Going back into your room? Tap your MagicBand to unlock your door. Paying for your oh-so-delicious Mickey Bar? Tap your MagicBand to the contactless payments pad, type in your PIN, and be on your way. No fussing with PINs and fingerprints on my phone, no messing with figuring out where the NFC tag on this damn thing is (I swear the sensor on my HTC 10 moves between transactions). It. Just. Works. 100% of the time.
In the course of a week no one using mobile payments systems besides MagicBands — and trust me, I saw a LOT of Apple Watches.
These same Mickey-shaped terminals that take MagicBands also take Android Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay. In the course of a week, during one of the busier times of the year, I saw a grand total of no one using mobile payments systems besides MagicBands, and trust me, I saw a LOT of Apple Watches at Walt Disney World. No one wanted to hassle with a system that had failed them so often back home; no one wanted to suffer than embarrassment and hold up the long lines at the registers.
This isn’t the fault of Android Pay and the others. Not entirely anyway. This is on the businesses we patronize, and it’s on us for not politely asking them to turn on NFC every time we use the terminal. Yes, I ask H-E-B almost every time I buy groceries when I can start paying with my phone. I got a new Target card out of their hack, I’ve gotten a new credit card out of a gas station skimmer, and I want businesses to know that turning on mobile payment systems can limit their liability and protect them just as much as it protects our customers.
It’s also on the banks, which is a damn shame because wearable and mobile payment systems have such huge potential for them. Mobile payments systems mean that, yes, there is a potential for you to rack up mobile fees if people use your system, but that’s not nearly the end of it. Most mobile payments systems use one-time tokens, meaning no actual card/account numbers can be stolen by infected POS terminals or card skimmers, potentially eliminating millions of fraud cases and the costly process for replacing a compromised account.
I want businesses to know that turning on mobile payment systems can limit their liability and protect them just as much as it protects the customers.
Supporting mobile payments systems mean that you have a greater potential to be the primary card your customer uses. When we have to pull out a wallet, all cards are equally in reach to be used. When you use Android or Samsung Pay, the primary card is the first, meaning switching to another card takes more steps that most users won’t bother with.
The other problem here is an Android problem: if we truly want to make these systems more convenient, they need to be on wearables, not just on phones. If I have to dig into a pocket, the wallet is easier. If my card is already on my wrist, I’m far more inclined to tap that than to pull out my wallet. Sure, we have tap-to-pay on the wrist for Samsung Pay, but Android Wear is still sorely lacking in that department. Maybe not for much longer, but for too long already.
MagicBands were glorious, and when I had to stick my wallet back in my pocket and go to the airport, I felt a small pang of sadness. I’m still wearing my MagicBand today, wishing I could tap it to that little Mickey-shaped reader when I’m in line for groceries or out grabbing dinner. I glimpsed a mobile payments utopia… and now I’m back in the real world, wondering how long it’ll take us to bring that magic here to Texas.
More: Samsung Gear S3 review
Protect your phone for 30% less at Seidio right now!
Seidio is currently offering a pretty huge sale on all of its great cases, saving you 30% off your entire purchase with coupon code nations30. Whether you are looking for a new case for yourself, a family member, or a friend for a Secret Santa exchange, you’ll save on your whole purchase. Seidio has been making great accessories for years, and offers everything from basic to protective cases, charging cables and much more.
The sale runs through December 25, but if you want the gifts in time for the holidays you’ll want to order it sooner than later. What will you be picking up with this discount? Let us know!
See at Seidio
Save big on Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo and Dot
Amazon is once again offering some pretty sweet savings on its Alexa-powered Echo, Dot, and Tap. You can save as much as $40 on the purchase, dropping the starting price here down to just $40. Over the course of the last year Amazon has made Alexa even smarter, allowing the speakers to now understand a wide variety of voice commands from ordering items on Amazon to telling you the weather, sports scores, and much more.
Not sure whether you should check out the Amazon Echo or Tap? Check out our great comparison to see which may work best for your needs. These deals won’t last long, so be sure to grab one sooner than later.
See at Amazon
Project Fi referral system offers you (and them) $20 for signing up
Pick up a nice little bill credit for referring friends to join Project Fi.
Google likes to give you little tips about your account when you open up the Project Fi app, and now you’re going to start seeing a reminder to “refer a friend.” It’s really simple: just tap “refer a friend” in the app, and you’ll see a unique code. When someone signs up using that code, both you and the person you referred get $20 toward your account once the new account has been active for a month.
The referral system will be active until January 11, and if you send out a code before then the person will have to activate by that date in order for you both to receive the account credit. The one caveat here, it seems, is that additional members on a group plan are not eligible to be referred (which kind of makes sense).
I’m not sure how many people are going to be swayed to trying Project Fi by the promise of a whopping $20 when the likes of the big carriers in the U.S. are offering hundreds in switching bonuses. But this is of course yet another clear point that Google is working to grow the Project Fi subscriber base. Add to it the big announcement recently that there are new group plans, and you can be sure that Project Fi is growing.
So if you’re going to be giving Project Fi a try this holiday season, be sure to ask around if anyone you know has a code — you might as well save a few bucks on your first bill by getting a referral.
Google Project Fi
- What is Project Fi?
- Get the latest Project Fi news
- Discuss Project Fi in our forums
- Phones: Google Pixel | Nexus 6P | Nexus 5X | Nexus 6
- Sign up for Project Fi
Instagram Live brings streaming to your Stories today
Just a few weeks after Instagram announced that it’s adding live video broadcasting to the app, the feature is now, well, live. To start broadcasting, just head over to your Stories camera and swipe over to “Live” mode. Viewers will know you’re live with the “live” badge over your Story icon. From what we can tell, the interface is very similar to that of Periscope and Facebook Live. You can leave comments and tap the Heart button to send floating hearts into view.
The big difference seems to be that unlike Facebook Live and Periscope, the live videos captured by Instagram are truly ephemeral — you can’t access archived videos for later viewing. So if you don’t want to miss those Instagram Live videos, you generally have to be following those accounts and be tuning in at the right time. That said though, Instagram is also populating its Explore page with “Top Live” videos that it hopes will highlight the most popular live stories at any given time.
In a way, Instagram Live seems to be something of a hybrid between Facebook Live and Snapchat. It’s mobile-only unlike Facebook Live, and appears to be geared mostly toward personal video sharing, whereas Facebook Live has so far been mostly used by media companies and publishers. It’s not entirely clear yet if there’s a market for this kind of live video sharing, but Instagram’s sheer popularity could prove to be a great testing ground for it.
Live video on Instagram will roll out starting today, and should be available to all US users in the coming days.
Apple Has Discussed Investing Up to $1 Billion in SoftBank’s Global Technology Fund
Apple has held talks with SoftBank about investing up to $1 billion in the Japanese telecommunication giant’s global technology fund, according to The Wall Street Journal. A deal has not been finalized, while the current status of the talks could not be determined, according to the report.
President-elect Donald Trump and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son (Image: LA Times)
The so-called “SoftBank Vision Fund,” expected to launch next year, will be valued at up to $100 billion, which will be invested into emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and connected internet devices. SoftBank itself will invest at least $25 billion in the fund, while the Saudi Arabian government will pledge up to $45 billion.
Apple’s own investment would allow it to gain insight on emerging technologies, according to the report.
Such a move also would reflect a shift in Apple’s investment strategy, which until recently focused on small stakes in young technology companies. Earlier this year, Apple invested $1 billion in Didi Chuxing Technology Co., China’s homegrown ride-sharing competitor to Uber Technologies Inc. SoftBank is also an investor in Didi.
Last week, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said he would invest $50 billion of the fund in the United States and create 50,000 new jobs in the country following a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. SoftBank is the parent company of U.S. carrier Sprint, which employs about 30,000 people.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Tags: wsj.com, Softbank
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Netflix and Amazon secure 17 Golden Globe nominations
While Amazon and Netflix are now regular names during awards season, the Golden Globes helps provide a good benchmark for how the wider industry rates their output. For the 2017 Globes, TV honors are even, with both companies securing five nominations each. As for movies, Amazon drama Manchester by the Sea has a whopping five nominations.
Amazon paid $10 million for Manchester by the Sea, a Kenneth Lonergan drama that stars Casey Affleck as a handyman dealing with family woes, at Sundance and that investment seems to be paying off. It’s up for Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor, Best Performance by an Actor (Michelle Williams), Best Director and Best Screenplay. The Salesman also earned a nod in the foreign language film category.
Two of Amazon’s most successful shows — Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle — received another couple of nominations in the Best TV series and Best actor in a TV series categories for comedy, courtesy of Gael Garcia Bernal and Jeffrey Tambor. Billy Bob Thornton is also in the running for Best actor in a TV series for his role as Billy McBride in legal drama Goliath.
Netflix, which has relied on mainstays like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black in the past, could see some its newer shows getting the recognition they deserve. Sci-fi hit Stranger Things and royal drama The Crown are in the running for best drama TV series, with Winona Ryder and Claire Foy receiving nominations for best actress. John Lithgow was also picked as one of the five “best supporting actors in a series, limited series or TV movie.” As for movies, Netflix picked up a lone nomination for Divines.
Last year, Netflix trumped Amazon in the nomination stakes, but it was Amazon that prevailed on award night, taking home two Golden Globes for Mozart in the Jungle. Transparent and Mozart are up against Atlanta, Veep and Black-ish this year, but the retailer-cum-streaming-giant will fancy its chances in those categories due to sheer strength of numbers. We’ll have to wait a month to find out who wins and who doesn’t, however, as the ceremony airs January 8th on NBC.
Source: Golden Globes
Celebrate the SNES with Hyperkin’s mechanical keyboard
If you grew up in North America during the early 1990s, there’s probably one color you associate with Nintendo: Purple. The SNES had a distinctly violet tinge in the region, while European and Japanese customers were treated to a grey, slightly more curvaceous model (the controller had multi-colored face buttons too.) If the purple model has a special place in your heart, you might be interested in the Hyper Clack Tactile Mechanical Keyboard by Kyperkin. It costs $99.99 and comes with Gaote Blue switches, which should suit serious but not too serious gamers and writers.
While Nintendo’s classic consoles have always been iconic, they’ve recently found new prominence in the cultural zeitgeist. The NES Classic Mini has been a smash hit (even if people can’t buy it), re-introducing fans to the company’s 8-bit games and design ethos. There’s also the SNES-inspired 3DS — one of the better limited edition variants — and countless other merchandise inspired by the system. Hyperkin isn’t known for its keyboards, having built its brand on retro consoles and replacement controllers instead. The Retron 5 is a decent bit of kit, however, so maybe some of that hardware expertise will translate to PC peripherals.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Hyperkin
Dropbox is now available on the Xbox One
Dropbox has long said that it wants to be available on whatever platforms people use to get things done. That’s why it has done so much to integrate with Microsoft Office over the years, for example. But the latest place you’ll find Dropbox is nonetheless unexpected: The company just launched an app for the Xbox One.
Sure, the Xbox One is, at its core, a Windows 10 computer you hook up to your TV, but it’s still surprising to see a productivity app all about sharing your files show up there. However, Dropbox doesn’t think users will be collaborating on Office docs through their TVs. Dropbox has come up with a few features that make sense for the platform. “We wanted to solve an issue that we all have: making it easy to access and share your content from the biggest screen in your house,” Dropbox staff engineer Rudy Huyn said in an email. “That meant giving users the ability to access files without the need to plug in an HDMI cord or connect to their laptop.”
Once logged in, you can upload screenshots and pictures taken with Kinect straight to your Dropbox. You can also stream any video files in your Dropbox to the Xbox One — something that’ll definitely be handy for those of us who have a large video library but no seamless way to play it on the big screen. You can also upload files from USB drives connected to the Xbox One or upload files from other universal Windows 10 apps you may be running on your console. And other applications (Dropbox specifically mentioned VLC) can see flies in your account and access them.
The rather unusual project was born at Dropbox’s annual hack week, when the entire company takes 5 days to build and show off a wide variety of projects. Some have nothing to do with actual shipping projects, but many others end up making their way into Dropbox in one way or another. “At this year’s event, one of our engineers decided to prototype the app, and demo’d it to other Dropboxers, showing how we can bring a new Dropbox user interface within Xbox that is optimized for TV screens and for gamepad navigation,” Huyn said.
And it turns out this wasn’t just a random pet project but something that users were asking for but in Dropbox’s support channels and on social media. “Given what we heard from our users, we knew that there was demand for this app, and so we decided to make it available to everyone as a full blown offering.”
As for the development process, the universal nature of Windows 10 made it fairly simple. “The simplicity of building this app is part of why we decided to transform the prototype into a real product,” Huyn said. “A big reason that it was so easy to build is that Microsoft makes it easy to develop applications for Windows 10.” But the Dropbox team still had to change a number of things to make this work, as the user interface naturally needs to be different when dealing with an Xbox controller and a TV 10 feet away. Specifically, Huyn noted that the difference in how TVs display colors compared to monitors necessitated a new, darker theme with more contrast “to make the app easier on our users’ eyes.”
There are benefits to having Dropbox on the Xbox One that should extend to app developers as well as your average console owner. “We heard from Xbox developers that they needed a file explorer on Xbox that allowed them to access their files for the cloud, because many of the apps that they were building were useless without having access to files,” Huyn said. “Now developers can easily access files stored directly in Dropbox.”
Of course, Microsoft’s own OneDrive has been available on the Xbox One for some time now, but millions of people are using the service, so giving them an option to easily get their files on the Xbox is a smart move, even if it’ll likely be something of a niche app. If you want to give it a shot yourself, the app is live today in the Xbox Store.
Source: Dropbox
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