Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the launch of its first region in India. Formally known as the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region, this new AWS region is the company’s sixth in Asia Pacific. With this, AWS now operates 13 regions, with a total of 35 availability zones. AWS previously announced its plans for opening this new region a year ago. The company says it has more than… Read More
LINE Corp., makers of a messaging app that’s gone mainstream in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, has set a price range for an initial public offering on the Tokyo and New York Stock exchanges in July. Its shares would be priced between 2,700 and 3,700 yen, or about $26.50-$31.50 per share. As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today, at those prices, LINE’s IPO could raise up… Read More
The folks at Bose are putting a DIY spin on the sometimes staid world for Bluetooth speakers, with a kit designed to show little ones the big wonders of electronics. The Speaker Cube is the first entry in the company’s new BOSEbuild line, featuring all the pieces and step-by-step instructions for building a Bluetooth speaker.
The Cube also features a number of customizable elements… Read More
Looks like it won’t be too much longer until U.S. users can get their grubby paws on Motorola’s forthcoming fourth-gen Moto G. Announced last month right around Google I/O, the baseline G4 will be arriving on Amazon, Best Buy (which will be offering up a $50 gift card with the purchase) and Walmart.com, and various other stateside retailers (including Motorola’s own site)… Read More
Joanne Carter worked for McDonald’s for 15 years. But she always prefered foie gras to cheeseburgers. Her new job as co-founder and CEO of For True Foodies Only — a bootstrapped company that’s about to launch an app for chefs and foodies — is probably more consistent with her culinary inclination. A native of Toronto, Canada, Carter started her career at… Read More
While I absolutely despise most STEM toys I’m going to give Happy Atoms a pass simply because it is aimed at educators and not for the home market. Created by chemistry set maker Thames & Kosmos along with Pittsburgh-based Schell Games, Happy Atoms teaches kids about building molecules using magnetic atoms that connect in “happy” ways. The entire kit comes with… Read More
Facebook is testing a new option designed to highlight the company’s ability to handle person-to-person payments through its Messenger chat application. The company confirmed it has added a new option in its flagship app’s main navigation titled “Send or Request Money.” The feature will move Facebook users into Messenger in order to manage payments, or it sends them… Read More
Dr. Dre may make some of the most popular headphones on the planet but Beats are likely tuned to the way Dre likes to listen to the music – with heavy bass. You are not Dre and your ears and my ears and everyone else’s ears hear a slightly different way. Even your left and right ear have a distinct way of listening to different types of sounds. Even is a new set of earphones… Read More
For nearly 30 years, pundits have predicted that education technology would disrupt higher education. Online courses will reduce costs and create unprecedented access to higher education, so the argument goes. Likewise, adaptive learning will improve — or replace — the art of teaching as the right digital content is delivered at the right time to each individual learner. Read More
Code.org is making some of Disney’s most beloved characters from Frozen and Star Wars a regular part of its core curriculum to its millions of K-5 students. Code.org first introduced Frozen’s Anna and Elsa as part of its Hour of Code campaign in 2014 and Star Wars characters Rey, BB-8, Princess Leia, R2-D2 in a 2015 version, crediting these tutorials with helping the campaign… Read More
PayPal is rolling out an update to its mobile application which it hopes will put charitable giving in the forefront of customers’ minds. With a new button that appears at the bottom of the home screen of its app – below options to order ahead or pay in-store – PayPal users can support a favorite cause through an in-app donation. The button connects users to the tens… Read More
From fancy chocolates to jet airplanes to teeth, gold makes things better. Devialet took this to heart when they introduced their 4500 Watt Gold Phantom, a powerful speaker with gold-plated side panels and audio quality that, in the right environment, is out of this world. Devialet, as you recall is a French speaker company that has 80 patents in the realm of music reproduction. Their… Read More
It will now be easier to add “Skills” – new functionality by way of voice-activated apps to Amazon’s smart speaker Echo, and its other Alexa-powered devices, Amazon announced this morning. The company has finally given its Skills “app store” a makeover, and is introducing a means of adding new Skills by voice, too. Amazon’s Echo and other Alexa… Read More
Finland-based Internet of Things startup Haltian, which back in 2014 crowdfunded an IoT developer device aimed at lowering the barrier of entry to building connected devices, is lining up its next IoT device: a tracker phone for parents to give younger kids. Read More
MongoDB, the company behind the eponymous open source database, is launching Atlas today, its third major revenue-generating service. Atlas is MongoDB’s database-as-a-service offering that provides users with a managed database service. The service will offer pay-as-you-go pricing and will initially allow users to deploy on Amazon Web Services (AWS), with support for Microsoft Azure… Read More
Todoist is already a useful service for your personal todo lists, but the company also lets you create shared projects so that you can share lists and assign tasks to your coworkers. Todoist now plans to completely overhaul its collaboration features so that Todoist Business becomes a full-fledged task management service for enterprise users. There will be five major updates to Todoist… Read More
Confirming reports from earlier this week, Amazon announced this morning an expansion of its Dash button program – the small, push-button devices that allow consumers to place orders of specific products, ranging from paper towels to trash bags to even bubble gum and condoms, via Amazon.com. The retailer says today it’s adding over 50 new brands to the service, which now includes… Read More
The folks at Doppler Labs have come a long way in a few short years. The company, led by Noah Kraft and Fritz Lanman, first launched with a fully mechanical ear plug for concerts. Last year, they launched the Here Active Listening System, which put a tiny micro-computer in their users’ ears, letting them control which frequencies they want to hear. Today, however, all those steps… Read More
The theme of Huawei’s press conference atop One World Trade last week was clear: The company plans to make its mark in the U.S. The hardware maker has made a name for itself outside the States with a string of high-quality handsets, but, as with a number of Chinese companies, this country has thus far proven a tough nut to crack. Announced at Mobile World Congress earlier this… Read More
Need to find that one other passage or picture in a book but find it hard to do with an e-reader? Kindle readers wanting to flip back and forth and make a quick reference to materials now have an easier way to do so with a new feature called Page Flip. Kindle refers to Page Flip as a “reimagined navigation experience.” What that means is you can now “flip” pages back… Read More
