Amazon China Takes On Alibaba, Apple Watch Disappoints, Apple Pay video

Apple Pay Is a Game Changer: Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster

True Ventures' Om Malik and Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster discuss the launch of Apple Pay. They speak with Emily Chang on "Bloomberg West." (Sept. 9, 2014 Bloomberg)

Alibaba Grabs The IPO Money But The Future Belongs To Jeff Bezos And Amazon China - Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Pending:BABA) | Seeking Alpha: "While Alibaba touts itself and raises $20 billion from US investors, Jeff Bezos is busy in China with his Alibaba-killer business. Bezos has precision-targeted Alibaba's key weaknesses and is positioning Amazon China for long-term dominance. Amazon in typical style reveals nothing about its strategy or operations in China. Everything is secret. They're clearly spending heavily, but with outstanding results so far."

Wolverton: Apple Watch underwhelms - San Jose Mercury News: "....That need for an iPhone link is likely to greatly limit its appeal. Even if you already own an iPhone, you may wonder why you need to buy an extra device... The other big problem with Apple Watch is its price, which starts at $350... it's a high price to pay for what is basically a phone accessory. It's also likely to be a high hurdle for many young people, especially since many of them have yet to be convinced that they need to wear a watch at all... its screen is generally turned off. To turn it on, you press a button or raise the watch to your face. That's annoying... at first glance, I wasn't convinced it's a device that most people need -- or may even want."

Alibaba's IPO covered in two days - Alibaba Group Holding Limited (Pending:BABA) | Seeking Alpha: "Within just two days of its launch, Alibaba (Pending:BABA) has collected enough orders for its IPO to cover the entire deal, although there still is no indication to where most of the demand is within its $60-$66 per share price range.At the top end of expectations, Alibaba would raise $21.1B as the largest ever tech IPO, smashing Facebook's $16B listing in 2012."

T-Mobile will give you a customized router for better Wi-Fi calling — Tech News and Analysis: "T-Mobile will start providing a customized Wi-Fi router to subscribers that prioritizes voice calls over other packets. The device, called the T-Mobile Personal CellSpot, will require a $25 deposit and can work alongside an existing household router."


Google Hangouts Gets Google Voice Integration And Free VoIP Calls | TechCrunch: "Google has long said that Hangouts is the future of Google Voice. The regular Google Voice service and site will still continue to work for the time being and most importantly, Google says that if you have a Google Voice number today, it has no interest in taking that away from you. “The important thing that users should take away is that the number they have will be carried forward and the feature and functionality set will be growing,” said Google VP of Engineering Chee Chew in an interview last week." (To make use of these calling features, you have to have the latest version of Hangouts (2.3) and also install a special dialer app.)

Google Should Buy MasterCard - Google Inc. | Seeking Alpha: "It's unfortunate for Google that Apple is receiving all the attention right now for launching a service that Google has already been providing for three years. An acquisition of MasterCard would provide a definitive statement that Google is here to stay in digital and mobile payments. It would also provide an ever-growing boost in revenue and earnings for years to come, as the world gradually switches from paper to plastic, and from plastic to digital."

America's new class system: Column: "California now has the wealth distribution — and, in some disturbing ways, the political underpinnings — of a Third World country. In Silicon Valley, a group of super-wealthy tech oligarchs live lives of almost unimaginable wealth, while only a few miles away, illegal immigrants live in squalor."

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Visa, Mastercard, Tracking Your Smartphone (video)

Banks and card networks like Visa and MasterCard are working with wireless carriers to cut down on fraudulent transactions by tying purchases to the location of a shopper's smartphone. Bloomberg's Crayton Harrison reports on "In The Loop." (Source: Bloomberg June 26)

Google execs visit Cuba for first time to promote open Internet | Reuters: "... The Google delegation in Havana met with students and was given a tour of Havana's University of Information Sciences on Saturday, according to 14ymedio. Sanchez started 14ymedio, Cuba's first independent online newspaper in May, although the site has been repeatedly blocked in Cuba. The Cuban government sought to discredit Sanchez as a paid propagandist doing the bidding of the U.S. government."

Why Google, Amazon and Apple are making set-top TV boxes: "The answer, says Creative Strategies’ Ben Bajarin, can be found in the attached chart, taken from Mary Meeker’s Internet trends slide show. It shows consumers around the world spending less time in front of their PCs and more time looking at their smartphones and televisions. Americans, for example, spend an average of 2 hours and 31 minutes a day staring at their smartphones and 2 hours and 27 minutes staring at their TVs."

Google Apps update alerts: Removal of Quickoffice from Google Play and App Store: "With the integration of Quickoffice into the Google Docs, Sheets and Slides apps, the Quickoffice app will be unpublished from Google Play and the App Store in the coming weeks. Existing users with the app can continue to use it, but no features will be added and new users will not be able to install the app."

Facebook News Feed: 5 Changes
InformationWeek
Gone are the days when Facebook showed you every post from every friend. Here's a look at Facebook's latest News Feed algorithm changes and ...

Google I/O 2014: 10 Big Developments
InformationWeek
Google unveiled everything from Android to wearable news at its annual developers show. Here are the developments that matter most. Previous.

Google I/O: Project Tango LG Tablet Coming To Consumers In 2015
Forbes
Google's Google's Project Tango — an effort to develop mobile devices that can map the space around you — is set to be in consumers' hands next ...

Google focused on big data, real-time analysis in the cloud
Computerworld
Google plans to focus on helping those companies over the next year. ... continuing what some have called a price war with Amazon Web Services.

Status update: Facebook not so diverse
USA TODAY
SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook, the world's most popular social network, ... He appeared at the shareholder meetings of Google and Facebook to ...

Facebook battles Manhattan DA over warrants for user data
Boston Globe
NEW YORK — Facebook and the New York district attorney's office are in a bitter fight over a privacy question that was bound to come up sooner or ...

Google targets business users with cloud, Docs advances
Computerworld
"Microsoft Outlook is well-entrenched in almost all large businesses. ... or Apple devices, there's now mobile support for Google Slides, an Android app ...

Microsoft to double OneDrive free space, slash extra storage prices up to 73%
Computerworld
Computerworld - Microsoft today announced it would double OneDrive's free storage space for ... (Data: Amazon, Apple, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft.).

Microsoft $650 Macbook Air Trade-In: Fine Print
InformationWeek
But it appears especially interested in Apple customers who might be getting ... even in light of the price war among Google, Amazon, and Rackspace.

Microsoft Exchange Online Suffers Service Outage
InformationWeek
Microsoft's Exchange Online hosted email service suffered a disruption Tuesday morning, leaving many users without email for much of the morning.

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