Buy now, pay later. We’re all too familiar with the way “cheap” or sometimes 0% finance is offered by bricks ‘n’ mortar stores at the point of purchase, and some of us are no doubt paying for the privilege right now. Online, however, buying on credit isn’t always quite as easy to come by or at least not at smaller e-commerce outlets. Pay4Later, in the UK at least, hopes to change that.
Today, the London-based company launched its “retail finance solution”, which enables UK online retailers to offer customers credit including interest free and traditional finance. Claiming to offer “seamless checkout integration” and instant credit decisions, other features include real time reporting and account management, support for multiple sales channels and integrated fraud screening. → Read More
Canada is testing the water for modular river turbines. The project, led by Renewable Energy Research, received $5.5 million in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada and the government of Quebec. RER will install two turbines in the St. Lawrence River. → Read More
So I just went on the Battle.net site to buy myself a copy of Blizzard’s latest game, Starcraft II. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it’s going to take 68 years before I’ll be able to buy and activate the incredibly popular new title. Apparently “It’s about time” meant it’s about how much time it’ll take before you can activate your new game. Update: Ok, the queue was grossly miscalculating. I was able to get the game after about 30 minutes. A reasonable amount of time, and I didn’t have to leave the house. → Read More
John C. Dvorak rails against the LAPD’s $7 million dollar email deal with Google. I agree that $7 million is a lot of money to spend on email, but I don’t know all the details of the deal, so I’m not going to cast too many aspersions there. I will, however, take Dvorak to task for his knee-jerk reaction to “hire three programmers and an IT guy”. End users expect email to just work, and have been blissfully shielded from the technical complexities that make running a robust email platform quite challenging. → Read More
Disney has acquired social gaming startup Playdom, confirming our story from last week. The price – $563.2 million plus an earn-out of up to $200 million.
Playdom’s last round of financing valued the company at $345 million, and the company has raised a total of around $76 million.
Press release is below: → Read More
The Dell Precision M6500 AKA “the fastest laptop in the world” apparently just got faster. These laptops now support up to 32GB of RAM along with up to three concurrent displays thanks to the ATI FirePro M7820 Mobility Professional Graphics from AMD. It has a 1GB of graphics memory and supports ATI Eyefinity. → Read More
Today saw T-Mobile finally retiring the venerable G1, forerunner to the ongoing Android revolution. I’ve been using a G1 since launch, so this is an emotional moment for me. Let’s just take a quick trip down memory lane out of respect for a solid phone. → Read More
It appears that Amazon has rolled out a new social feature integrating Facebook into your recommendations. If you go your recommendations, Using Facebook Connect, Amazon will now serve you social recommendations based on information in your Facebook profile. Facebook’s Platform account was just updated with a message that seems to confirm the rollout of this new feature.
So when you activate the feature, you’ll see a dedicated Amazon Facebook page within the recommendations section of your account. For example, you’ll see the most popular books, DVDs, and more that are listed in your Friend’s Facebook profile. So if you like Radiohead, you can see which one of your friends also likes the band. You’ll also see upcoming birthdays and find your Facebook friends’ Amazon Wish Lists more easily. And you’ll get gift suggestions for your friends based on their Facebook profiles. → Read More
Its been over three months since we first heard AT&T and Dell piping up about their Android phone, the Aero — and, unfortunately, three months in the mobile world is a really, really long time. 90 days later, this once nearly-top-shelf handset has devolved into something a little more mediocre in comparison to the freakishly powerful monster-phones that lead the way today. Fortunately, there’s plenty of room on the mid-range shelves. Today, Dell has finally revealed the Aero’s long-awaited availability details, along with all of the important info about their Android-powered tablet, the Streak. → Read More
The Chevy Volt will cost $41,000. GM finally went live with the second to last piece of the Chevy Volt puzzle and select dealers are ready to take orders with delivery expected “later this year.” After the available $7,500 tax credit, the effective price drops down to a much more reasonable $33,500. A tad pricey, yes, but GM is fully prepared to counter that higher price with an affordable leasing program that gets drivers into the Volt for only $350 per month with $2,500 due at signing.
The Volt will slowly roll out nationwide starting with California, New York, Michigan, Connecticut, Texas, New Jersey, and the Washington D.C. area. GetMyVolt.com will locate your nearest dealership who should be able to start processing orders as soon as today. Customers will then receive a phone call from a dedicated Volt advisor who will be able to answer any further questions.
But will GM have any issue moving the $41k Volt off of dealer’s lots? Probably not. → Read More
Who can forget the nonsense surrounding Real ID? Nobody, that’s who. To its credit, Blizzard quickly changed its mind after its initial decision to force people to use their real names on the official forums. Thanks to Eurogamer, we have a little bit more insight as to how Blizzard digested community feedback. → Read More
This guy, Fred Merle got arrested for selling Polka DVDs that he did not own the rights to. Apparently he was set up to make a deal with a tall guy dressed as a polka-fiend and now he can’t sell Polka DVDs anymore. Like forever. There is the wife, the lawyer and the tall guy with the mustache. Click to see the videos → Read More
Nissan‘s Leaf is almost ready to be picked. The company announced its all-electric car will be available to buy as early as December, but only for those in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee. Other parts of the country will have to hold their horsepower a little bit longer.
Nissan chose to release to those five states first because they’re home to the EV project, the world’s largest electric vehicle and infrastructure deployment designed to collect data on EV performance in different climates and terrains. ECOtality, which runs the project, received a $99.8 million grant from the Department of Energy last year and will also study charging infrastructure effectiveness and revenue models. → Read More
It’s like the lifeboat policy put in place while the Titanic was sinking, except creepier: if you’re looking to pick up an iPhone 4 on launch day at any Orange At Globus store in Switzerland, you best be a lady — or at least, you better know one you can hide behind. → Read More
The only Larsson I’ve ever heard of is Henrik Larsson, so clearly I’m out of the loop with regards to this Stieg Larsson fellow. The Swedish author has become the first author to sell one million copies of his book(s) on the Amazon Kindle store. Amazon now calls him the first member of the imaginatively named Kindle Million Club. → Read More
A few weeks ago, Google invited a handful of press for an informal get-together with Dave Girouard, Google’s President of Enterprise, who helps drive Google’s mission to get businesses to turn their back on Microsoft and make the jump to Google Apps. The conversation bounced around fascinating topics like security in the cloud and the future of mobile computing. But, by chance, it also uncovered one gripe that half the reporters in the room had secretly been harboring: they hated Google Docs smartquotes with a passion. Seriously, it was like watching a chain reaction of disdain make its way around the conference table.
Smartquotes, for those who aren’t familiar with them, are the curved quotation marks that appear in some document editors in place of the standard straight quotes. They’re generally desirable, but it seems that the smartquotes were mucking up these reporters’ content management systems, and there’s been no way to turn them off. They aren’t the only ones with this issue, either — there are multiple topics on Google Groups complaining about the same thing. Well today, Google has announced that it’s giving users the ability to undo smartquotes. Try to contain your excitement. → Read More
GM is going live with the Chevy Volt‘s pricing today at Noon Eastern but Bloomberg apparently got word early from a source within GM. Apparently the price will be “about $40,000.” That means buyers will end up spending about $32,500 after the $7,500 tax credit is figured in. We’ll have to wait a couple more hours before GM’s VP of US marketing, Joel Ewanick, takes the stage at the Plug-In 2010 conference can confirm this price, but it certainly sounds about right. → Read More
We’ve shown you “robotic” butterflies before, but this one you can actually buy soon. The ChouChou looks a lot like the real thing, and it moves realistically, too. All you need to do is to tap the jar’s lid to make it start moving. Just have a look at the videos embedded below to see how it works. → Read More
http://revision3.com/player-v6423 More details about Panasonic’s upcoming 3D camcorder, the app that helps iPhone 4 owners get a free case, hanging your iPad on the wall like a tiny TV, Bielefeld University’s entry into the “robots that learn” field, Trey Ratcliff and AJ Wood will help your photos be their best, and the Royal Family can now be found on Flickr. Join Cali Lewis for all the tech news on GeekBeat.TV #14. → Read More
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