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Friday, January 10, 2014
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Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications outfit best known for its mobile phones and its propensity to spook U.S. lawmakers, announced that it has created China's first videogame console. The timing of Huawei's announcement, coming at this week's CES extravaganza in Las Vegas, is interesting: Just this week, Beijing announced that it would for the first time allow foreign-made videogame consoles. Huawei's console, called "Tron," is small and cylindrical -- roughly the size of a coffee mug.


9:39 AM

Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications outfit best known for its mobile phones and its propensity to spook U.S. lawmakers, announced that ...

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fobo

By now you probably know that Craigslist sucks as a way to sell stuff. You have to contend with spam emails, buyers who promise to purchase your goods but flake, and people who show up then try to haggle down the price after the fact. But somehow, no one has figured out a way to make it better or provide a real alternative.


Well, there’s a new app out called FOBO that aims to solve all those problems, providing users with a local marketplace for selling consumer electronics.


FOBO launches in San Francisco today, offering its users a new way to sell goods via mobile app. It gets rid of all the hassle that is usually associated with local marketplaces and makes it ultra-simple and ultra-fast to do so. The app guarantees sellers will get a certain price for their devices and will be paid upfront, and ensures that their product is sold fast — within 97 minutes.


When you list an item on FOBO, the app instantly prices your item, usually based on the average sales price on eBay. It then starts up an auction that lasts a little more than an hour and a half, during which time other FOBO users can bid on your goods.


But, if by some bit of bad luck your item doesn’t sell to another user, FOBO will buy it for the guaranteed starting price and do the hard work of reselling it. So there’s really only upside to listing your item.


FOBO doesn’t want to be a Gazelle-like reseller — it’s mainly just guaranteeing sales prices to seed the marketplace with good stuff. Getting the supply side of a marketplace rolling is the hard part, after all. And it seems to be working: FOBO sold less than half of listed products during its trial run over the past few months.


There are other advantages to listing with FOBO, other than just getting a guaranteed amount for a consumer electronics device in 97 minutes. Buyers pay for the good in-app, which means there’s no haggling once they show up to pick up the device. And they agree to meet at a time that works on the seller’s schedule.


On the buyer side, FOBO also makes things easy. When you first sign up, you’re prompted to subscribe to certain types of electronics. And then you get notifications when they go on sale.


The team had raised $1.6 million in funding from Index Ventures, Greylock, Kevin Rose, Chris Sacca, Y Combinator, and a few others.







9:09 AM

By now you probably know that Craigslist sucks as a way to sell stuff. You have to contend with spam emails, buyers who promise to purchase ...

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Bluetooth and sport headset company JayBird is venturing a little outside of its comfort zone with the new JayBird Reign fitness tracking wristband, a device unveiled earlier this week at CES 2014. The JayBird Reign goes beyond most existing devices like those from Fitbit, Withings, and Jawbone, tracking different types of fitness differently instead of just lumping them all in together.


There’s also a little bit of intuitive prognostication built into the Reign; JayBird says that it can actually recognize when your body is ready to get active, even if you can’t. It can then prompt you to get up and get moving even when you might not feel like it, to help you make the most of those times your body is ready to go for the most possible return on your workout investment.


Conversely, it also tells you when you need more rest thanks to built-in sleep tracking. The sleep tracking not only tells you when you’re sleeping heavily and when you’re sleeping light, like many other trackers, but also provides advice about how much sleep you should get the next night in order to feel as rested as is possible.


reign-jaybirdThe Reign uses Bluetooth to communicate data with a companion app for iOS and Android, and should be available sometime this spring for $199. That’s pricier than many entry-level fitness trackers on the market, but Jaybird is hoping people are willing to pay more for a device that automatically recognizes what kind of sport or activity you’re doing and switches its tracking rhythm accordingly. It’s also light and comfortable with a highly flexible band, an a simple LED notification light for communicating basic info.


Few device categories are growing faster than the health and fitness tracking gizmo market, and an increasingly crowded space means more companies competing for the same pool of potential buyers. At least JayBird hasn’t just thrown its brand on something that simply matches what’s already out there, but we’ll still have to wait and see what kind of tolerance consumer demand has for a growing number of suppliers.







9:09 AM

Bluetooth and sport headset company JayBird is venturing a little outside of its comfort zone with the new JayBird Reign fitness tracking w...

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Rumors of a super-duper, amped-up, big-screen "iPad Pro" have been floating around at least as early as this summer, and that's before Apple surprised the tech community with its 64-bit A7 processors in September. Overall, most of the rumors seem to surround speculative predictions, where a financial analyst predicts a class of new product in an attempt to lend insight into how the market might shift. Of the dozens upon dozens of iPad Pro rumor articles I've been following, however, none of them seem to have a real, direct connection to a source that would truly know.


7:39 AM

Rumors of a super-duper, amped-up, big-screen "iPad Pro" have been floating around at least as early as this summer, and that...

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Target’s massive credit card breach reported last month may be worse than previously thought. Today, the company disclosed the attack affected as many as 70 million individuals, whose names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and emails have been stolen. This customer information was taken during the attack in addition to the payment card data. As many as 40 million credit and debit cards were reported stolen last month.


The retailer clarifies this is not a new breach, but a theft discovered as a part of the ongoing investigation into the hack which used compromised point-of-sale terminals to get at customer data during the busiest shopping season of the year.


The breach, which occurred from November 27 to December 15, is one of the largest, and most high-profile attacks in recent years. Thieves made off with customer names and account data, including credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, the three-digit CVV security code, and even PIN data for 40 million account holders. Target may be liable for up to $3.6 billion as a result of this attack, it’s been said. The company’s name has also been sullied in the eyes of consumers, who have lost trust in Target’s security measures.


In a statement released this morning, Target said that much of this additional stolen data is “partial in nature,” but in the case where the retailer has customer email addresses, it will attempt to contact those affected customers and alert them to the issue. The email will provide consumer protection information, like how to guard against scams, and will remind customers that Target will never ask for a customer’s personal information via an email message.


“I know that it is frustrating for our guests to learn that this information was taken and we are truly sorry they are having to endure this,” said Gregg Steinhafel, Target chairman, president and chief executive officer, in a statement today. The company added that Target shoppers will have zero liability for any of the fraudulent charges arising from this breach, and is also offering a year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all who shopped Target’s U.S. stores when the attack occurred.


Target also said that the breach will impact company earnings. Before the attack, the company had been on track for stronger-than-expected fourth quarter sales. Now it’s saying it expects to see a Q4 comparable sales decline of 2.5%.







7:09 AM

Target’s massive credit card breach reported last month may be worse than previously thought. Today, the company disclosed the attack affect...

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When we began our planning we initially invited 15 finalists from 11 countries onto our TC Hardware Battlefield stage. One company couldn’t make it. They were PlayFresco, a team of engineers and hobbyists working on some amazing wireless motion interaction technology. Sadly, they couldn’t get a visa to the U.S., forcing them to drop out of our compeition.


Created by Feras Abed-Alhaq, Monier Aghbar, and Sudqey Dwikat, the system allows you to add motion control to any laptop without visible tracking hardware. Kids can use any round object as a steering wheel, for example, and you can wave things in front of the computer to use them as pointers. Like Leap Motion it can sense your hands in space next to and around a computer but unlike Leap it uses magnetic fields to sense objects and body parts.


Playfresco


The company has secured $130,000 in funding from Michal Zalesak of the Czech ICT Alliance. Not surprisingly, it’s been a hard road for their startup, but things seem to be looking up.


“Unfortunately in Palstine electronics are really hard to get and the electronics and equipments that are available are really limited,” said Abed-Alhaq. “Our first prototype was made from paper and was huge and we made it literally from scratch.”


The group were inspired by watching children play with toys. Abed-Alhaq saw his little brother playing with a duct tape roll, pretending to drive a car.


“We did hundreds of experiments, hundreds of prototypes to do such a thing that could detect our bodies and how they move, and after we mastered this technology we thought that PlayFresco device can introduce a natural way to enjoy and play with what ever everyday object you hold in your hand,” he said.


The system sits underneath your table and senses your hands above with some accuracy. The team showed us their product in Europe a few months ago and they were ready to launch on stage at Hardware Battlefield. That’s been put on hold, but they’re still hard at work on the device.


“PlayFresco is a perfect example of true innovation with passionate and hard-working CEO, representing the emerging culture of new start-up Palestinian entrepreneurs, who focus on new technologies and business and don’t mix with politics in the region,” said lead funder Zalesak.


The team is working on a desktop system now but is planning a version for cellphones and tablets. They’re also looking into using Bluetooth to add motion control to almost any device. They didn’t make it to our stage this year but there’s always next year.







7:09 AM

When we began our planning we initially invited 15 finalists from 11 countries onto our TC Hardware Battlefield stage. One company couldn’t ...

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Here's a simple way to refresh the look and functionality of your newer Android device without going to the trouble of rooting, bootloader-unlocking or installing a customized ROM. It's by using a home screen replacement app called a launcher, which is essentially a super-customizable home screen with themes. The one I'm looking at this week -- Nova Launcher Prime -- is one of the most popular, with a 4.8 out of 5 star rating in the Google Play store.


5:40 AM

Here's a simple way to refresh the look and functionality of your newer Android device without going to the trouble of rooting, bootlo...

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