Hasta La Gadget!

The Evernote Smart Notebook is here! Well, almost here — it arrives on October 1 — but we got our Moleskin-lovin’ hands on the app/notebook combo a bit ahead of schedule this evening. The combination works by combining the drawings, notes, and whatever other Moleskin-bound scribblings you pen with Evernote’s iOS App (said to be headed to Android as well). Snap a pic of your best Mega Man sketch and see the Blue Bomber appear magically in your Evernote account and on your phone! If you’re way into archiving, a handy set of stickers allows for quick tagging. The tags can even be customized if you’re not into Evernote’s suggested categories.

The whole concept is very neat, and it works … sort of. An Evernote rep tried repeatedly to snag images from the page with varying results. One time a shadow interfered, and another time the lighting just didn’t work out, before it finally worked. We’re lending Evernote the benefit of the doubt for now as we were shown the whole shebang in the middle of a busy, dramatically lit show floor. That said, at $29.95, if it doesn’t work out great, the worst that happens is you’re stuck with a slightly more expensive Moleskin than a normal model (around $15 on Amazon); the iOS companion app is free. Head past the break for a hands-on video.

Continue reading Evernote Smart Notebook hands-on (video)

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Software, Mobile, Alt

Evernote Smart Notebook hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Popular deal website Groupon is venturing into the world of smart phone-based credit card payments today, launching the Groupon Payments initiative nationwide after a successful pilot program is the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this year. Groupon’s boasting a guaranteed lowest cost pricing to merchants using Groupon Payments for credit card transactions — MasterCard, Visa, and Discover will cost retailers 1.8 percent of credit card sales, plus a $0.15 per transaction fee, while American Express will cost three percent of credit card sales, plus a $0.15 per transaction fee. The biggest competition in the space comes from Square, headed by former Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, which charges a flat 2.75 percent rate on all transactions against all cards, though PayPal, Intuit, and Verifone all offer similar services.

Today’s news matches up directly with leaks we saw back in May, adding on that merchants will see the day’s credit card purchases credited to their bank accounts overnight, rather than waiting two to three business days (per standard practice). Beyond credit card services, Groupon’s Merchants app also accepts Groupon daily deals, which helps elucidate why Groupon would be interested in entering the mobile credit card payments market in the first place (beyond it being a lucrative market unto itself, of course). Interested parties can sign up over on Groupon’s website, and snag the free payments app right here. Finally — finally — you’ll be able to sell all those $10 gift certificates to Chili’s you’ve been hoarding. Perhaps charge $5 a pop for their $10 value and … is this a paradox? This might be a paradox.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Wireless, Internet, Mobile

Square competitor Groupon Payments launches today, promises lowest cost for retailers originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  BusinessWire  | Email this | Comments

If you’d just put down Angry Birds Space for a moment, maybe we could tell you that mobile apps are kind of a big deal. How big of a deal? How’s about 45.6 billion downloads just this year — that’s a serious amount of birds lost in space! All of those downloads weren’t just Angry Birds venturing into the final frontier, of course. Gartner, Inc’s latest mobile report doesn’t actually break down how much of that enormous number pertains to Rovio’s hit franchise, but it does note that “free apps will account for nearly 90 percent of total mobile app store downloads in 2012.” That means of the nearly 46 billion apps downloaded this year, approximately 40.6 billion were free. Additionally, an entire quarter of the apps downloaded in 2012 were via Apple’s iOS app store — but that isn’t what’s driving app growth, necessarily. “The number of apps available is driven by an increasing number of stores in the market today,” Gartner research director Brian Blau notes. “These stores will see their combined share of total downloads increase, but demand for apps overall will still be dominated by Apple, Google, and Microsoft.”

And the growth doesn’t stop there. Blau predicts that 93 percent of all apps downloads will be of the free variety by 2016 — also, we’ll be downloading over 300 billion apps worldwide by the same year. Like we said, kind of a big deal.

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Software, Mobile

Gartner: Free apps dominate market, iOS App Store accounts for 25 percent of all content originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TechCrunch  |  Gartner, Inc.  | Email this | Comments

Those of you hankering for another look at the incoming Firefox OS will be happy with this next piece of news. Engadget is playing host to a collection of leaked images that show off the Firefox OS Marketplace, giving us an idea of how we’ll shop for apps using the OS. Of course, we use the term “shop” loosely since all of the apps that appear in the images are being offered for free, but what can you do?

The fact that all of the apps pictured are available for free suggests that Mozilla has yet to work out a pricing scheme (or payment methods) for the Marketplace, but with the OS not launching until 2013, it has time to figure that out. Naturally, a number of apps will be available for the reasonable price of absolutely nothing, but expect to see some paid apps on offer as well.

The Firefox OS Markerplace is obviously geared toward easy searching, and like most app stores, selecting an app you’re interested in will take you to a page that offers descriptions and ratings. The Marketplace looks a little rough around the edges in this early state, but for the most part it also looks like Mozilla has almost everything in place. This suggests that Mozilla is pretty far along in the production of the Marketplace, which is something to get excited about if you’re looking forward to Firefox OS.

That being said, keep in mind that the Marketplace as we see it today could change – perhaps radically – by the time Firefox OS is released. Speaking of that, we don’t have a solid release date yet, as Mozilla is sticking to an “early 2013″ release window for the first Firefox OS devices, which will be coming from Telefonica. Be sure to peruse our story timeline below for more information on Firefox OS!

Firefox OS Marketplace appears in leaked images is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple just rolled out an updated App Store for iOS 6 beta users and though it’s a lot prettier on the surface, it’s also going to be a lot more annoying to use. Why? Because it’s going to take forever to find an app by searching. More »