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It’s been rumored for quite a while that Amazon would be manufacturing their own smartphone, especially considering that they have their own tablets. While still have yet to see anything official come out from that front, we’ve been treated with a report saying that the e-tailer giant has acquired Evi, which is a Siri-like voice control app.

According to TechCrunch, anonymous sources are claiming that Amazon purchased Evi for $26 million. Furthermore, it’s said that all of Evi’s directors have been replaced by Amazon’s UK legal representatives, and the company’s records show that all directors have been replaced and all loans have been paid off.

Evi has been a bit of a controversial product in the past. It was pulled from the iTunes App Store for being too similar to Siri, but was later let back in. Evi works similar to Siri, where it uses a natural language search engine to find answers for questions that are asked by users. However, Evi can learn from your questioning habits and produce better answers in the future.

Back in January, Amazon acquired text-to-speech company IVONA, but that seemed to be mostly meant for Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet lineup. However, it’s a feature that we could also see in an Amazon smartphone as well. With the acquisition of Evi, Amazon may be looking to take on Apple directly, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see what happens.

[via TechCrunch]

Amazon reportedly acquires Evi voice-control app to take on Siri is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Today Amazon has announced that it is expanding its Android Appstore to some 200 new countries. The company suggests that developers should start submitting their apps soon so that their can reach millions of new active Amazon customers in these markets as well. The apps will be available in the coming months, right after Amazon launches its Android Appstore for international markets. Some of these new countries include Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Australia and Brazil. The Appstore was initially launched only in the U.S. before being expanded in to European countries such as UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The company does not sell its Kindle Fire tablet in these new markets, but that doesn’t mean that Android users won’t be able to download and use Amazon’s Android Appstore on their devices. Mike George, the VP of Apps and Game at Amazon, says that their apps platform is the complete end-to-end solution for developers who want to build, market and monetize their apps for Android and Kindle Fire. He says that most of their developers have already localized their apps for international markets.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Google Fiber Confirmed For Provo, Roll Out In Late 2013, Alicia Keys Gives PowerPoint Presentations At BlackBerry Meetings,

Amazon is working on an anonymous mobile payments system, a new patent filing has revealed, using a Western Union style process of temporary identifiers which allows transactions without handing over your name, email address, or other personal details. The PayPal alternative uses an intermediary payments provider with which each individual in the deal is registered, but rather than sending money to a user’s email address, a special code is generated which can later be redeemed.

The patent, filed back in 2009, argues that many users prefer not to give out personally-identifiable details as a way of avoiding potential data theft or spamming. In contrast, Amazon’s system uses a series of temporary tokens that can be exchanged, either with the sender triggering the payment or the recipient requesting it, but with no exchange of personal information.

“It is commonplace for entities to conduct an electronic payment to complete a transaction. In a typical transaction, information about each party is typically exchanged to facilitate the electronic transaction. Some of this information may be personal or private information that a person may not desire to share with a stranger. For example, a customer may have to provide their address and telephone number during execution of an electronic payment” Amazon patent

In practice, if you had to give a friend a payment of $20, you could send a text message to Amazon’s server with the text “PAY 20″. A return message would have a specially created code, tied to your account, which – when your friend texted it to Amazon from their phone – would credit their account with the appropriate amount. Amazon suggests that the code could contain part of the recipient’s phone number: not enough to identify them, but enough to ensure that it would be unlikely that someone else could use the code from their own phone.

More complex versions of the system, meanwhile, would allow limitations to be placed on the temporary codes. For instance, Amazon describes how they could be set with expiration dates, so that recipients would have to use them before a certain periods; alternatively, a single code could be valid for multiple redemptions (potentially a limited number) such as to operate as an anonymous payment plan. Something other than money could be exchanged, too; Amazon suggests tokens, download credit, or other virtual currency.

Of course, any such system would require the intermediary infrastructure be set up, and enabled for accepting payments in multiple currencies across multiple locations. Amazon already has such a system, given its retail presence across the world, while its mobile ambitions have already been revealed in the form of the Kindle Fire range and the upcoming near-200 country expansion of the Amazon Appstore.

Amazon anonymous mobile payments system revealed in new patent is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Amazon has big plans for its incredibly successful (we guess?) Appstore on Android, which include expansion to “nearly 200 countries,” — after rolling out in Europe and Japan — but it’s asking for developers to get on board first. So that its store shelves aren’t empty when they open up in places like Brazil, Canada and Papua New Guinea, it’s securing app submissions and making sure devs opt-in to international distribution. Peter Sleeman, Director of P2 Games, is quoted in the press release claiming his company saw 4-5x sales of a recent app on Kindle Fire compared to Google Play. That feat is echoed by several others quoted, citing Amazon’s in-app purchasing system and features like GameCircle. There’s no word whether this global rollout will be followed by wider distribution of its other media services and branded hardware, but given the predictable path it’s followed so far that seems like a safe bet.

Filed under: Mobile, Amazon

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Source: Amazon

All right, so now that summer will soon be upon us before we even know it, it is time to make sure that the entire household is well prepared to usher in plenty of sunlight, fun and laughter. What better way than to spend your time outdoors instead of remaining cooped up throughout the entire day? Teenagers and kids won’t mind that though with video games at their disposal, but us adults, it is time to get back to nature. Say you love golf and your wife loves swimming, instead of spending time apart from one another with individual pursuits, how about doing your own thing together? This is made possible thanks to the $60.63 Swim Time Aqua Golf Backyard Game.

The Swim Time Aqua Golf Backyard Game is special since it is a floating green that measures 32″ x 45″, where each purchase will be accompanied by a dozen practice golf balls in 2 colors for competitive play. Not only that, you also have a 12″ x 24″ chipping mat with rubber tee, a couple of flags and an equal number of cups. The only thing that is not included would be the relevant golfing skills required, and of course, you will need to provide your very own set of golf clubs.

[ Swim Time Aqua Golf Backyard Game copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]