Hasta La Gadget!

Tim Cook is auctioning off approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour of his time for anyone who can purchase that slot, they’ll get to have coffee with him at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. The auction is being conducted by CharityBuzz, often celebrities use this platform to auction experiences so that they can raise money for charity. This coffee date with Tim Cook is valued at $50,000, and the proceeds from it will go to The RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.

As of now 9 bids have been placed, currently it stands at $10,500. This experience will be valid for two people, both of which will be subjected to security screening before they can have face time with the Apple CEO. The winner is not allowed to resell or re-auction this experience, it will be scheduled at a mutually agreed upon date. The cause is good, and if you’ve got that kind of money lying around, it would be interesting to have a face to face with Tim Cook. However don’t expect him to tell you what colors the next generation iPhone will be coming in.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Afghanistan Gets An Apple-ish Store, 150 WWDC 2013 Student Scholarships Being Offered By Apple,

According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products, the gaming nature of Microsoft’s XBox, the half-baked Google TV or the little engine that could, Roku.

Yes, this is a crowded market, but Amazon has something that these other companies don’t have, which is warehouses full of things to sell to people while they watch TV. I imagine that you’ll be able to shop as you would online or on your mobile device, right on your TV set. That means that the temptation to pick up that new TV, while you’re watching your old crappy one, could overcome you during a show. One button click and a new TV could be on the way.

Think of it as Home Shopping 2.0. With some interesting programming to watch, of course.

Instead of acquiring a smaller company that already has its own product in the wild, Amazon has decided to build this in-house, under its Lab126 umbrella in Cupertino.

Amazon has been building up its content viewers by bundling it with Amazon Prime shipping for free, trying to entice anyone who is already spending regular money with them to try other things out. What shipping has to do with free movies and TV, I don’t know, but customers seem to be happy with it thus far.

Reasons for doing a set-top box are obvious, with its original content being the most popular on the platform since it launched. As Amazon finds its way to more niche shows that it can present exclusively, the reasons to grab an Amazon-branded device for your TV makes more sense. In the same way that Apple leverages each of its devices to sell new ones, Amazon is learning how it’s done. It also doesn’t help that it has millions of shoppers visiting its site daily looking for new things.

Some could say that Amazon is late to the game, but I see Jeff Bezos and company taking smart, calculated steps to capitalize on mistakes made by others, much like it did with the Kindle, staying close to a purer paperback-esque reading experience.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

If you’ve ever wanted to have a one-on-one with Apple CEO Tim Cook, now is your chance. He’s auctioning off a coffee meeting with him at Apple headquarters, and the highest bidder will be able to chat up the big wig of one of the world’s wealthiest companies. Of course, though, a coffee date with Tim Cook doesn’t come cheaply.

Cook is using Charitybuzz to host the auction, which is a website that gives celebrities the chance to auction off experiences with all the money going to charity. Cook’s charity of choice will see the funds from his auction go to the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights. The highest bid at the time of this writing? $10,500.

The auction page lists an estimated value of the coffee meeting with Tim Cook at $50,000, which is quite an expensive cup of coffee, but perhaps Starbucks is catering? According to the auction details, it seems that the highest bidder will be able to bring one guest, both of which will go through background checks before meeting up, and each meeting will last between 30 minutes to one hour.

However, the highest bidder will also have to pay for travel costs, but we’re guessing that shouldn’t be too much of an issue, considering that you’re already paying a few thousand dollars to meet up with the Apple head. The auction listing also says that “polite manners and respect for the generous donor and adherence to any rules or parameters are a must,” so it looks like you won’t be able to give him a hard time over when the iWatch and iTV will come out.

[via The Next Web]

Tim Cook auctioning off coffee meeting for charity is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Amazon has already single-handedly shaken up the tablet market with its Kindle, and it looks like the company may be looking for expand its consumer electronics presence by planning to introduce a set-top box some time later this year.

According to people with knowledge of the matter speaking with Bloomberg, Amazon’s set-top box will connect to a person’s television to provide access to Amazon’s video services, one of which will certainly include the Amazon Video on Demand store and Instant Video service. The product’s development is being handled by Amazon’s Cupertino-based Lab126 division with Cisco’s former vice president of emerging products Malachy Moynihan leading the project. (more…)

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We live in a day and age where there is just way too much video content available freely, that the onus is on you to spend your time wisely, otherwise you might get sucked into an apparent black hole for time simply by watching one video to another on YouTube, Vimeo, you name it. The existence of Smart TVs and set-top boxes too, have made streaming online video a whole lot easier, and here we are with the idea of PLAiR, which happens to be an elegant micro-computer which enables users to transmit HD online videos directly to any HDMI-equipped display or projector sans wires – and of course, without any frustration, too.

It is platform agnostic, which would certainly see it score plenty of brownie points among the masses, and the entire setup process does seem to be made for dummies. The moment the PLAiR is plugged into a TV or projector and powered up, it is a simple matter of connecting it to a Wi-Fi network, before installing a Chrome extension or the free Android (2.3 Gingerbread or higher) or iOS app (iOS 5 or higher). Henceforth, beaming online videos from a computer is a simple matter.

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