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Continue reading Intel reveals January 2012 Gingerbread arrival for the Atom E6xx (video)

Intel reveals January 2012 Gingerbread arrival for the Atom E6xx (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading ERPLY’s mobile credit card reader handles NFC payments on an iPad, obliterates the check-out line

ERPLY’s mobile credit card reader handles NFC payments on an iPad, obliterates the check-out line originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Aug 2011 03:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Brand Mook Series” has been a Takarajimasha Publishing House registered trade mark since 2005, and in the last year has become huge business in Japan. The Japanese publishing giant has collaborated with more than 80 brands from local fashion brands like Tsumori Chisato to international designers such as Top Shop, the Finish Marimekko and haute couture brands such as Furla and Yves Saint Laurent

A Mook is basically a magazine or book containing special edition branded items, and usually priced for less than $18. Break-through sales of about 200 branded magazine issues and a total of 20 Million copies turned the series into a huge success. For example, Kitson alone, an LA based celebrity fashion brand, have sold 1.2 Million Mooks in Japan. The tie in with numerous fashion houses has seen the Mook become an established success both in terms of sales and also as an exercise in branding collaboration.

This year, a number new brands joined the series, offering a new Spring – Summer 2011 collection of bags, pouches, purses and make up cases, which can be collected with each weeks Mook in the same way hobby magazines work offering new parts to figures each week, and driving continued sales. High end fashion brands have recently joined the Mook bandwagon, Armani Exchange, collaborated with Takarajishima for their Mooks earlier this year in Japan. In the magazine, you can find information on the new NY Spring-Summer collection and receive a limited edition set of unisex tote- bag and pouches. Cult fashion labels such as Bathing Ape have also released their own branded Mooks but at a premium rate of around $41, however with limited sales they prove particularly popular with the die hard BAPE fans.

The magazines formula is fairly simple, readers get information about a brand’s new collection, shops information, new trends and some personal information about the designers themselves along with some “exclusive” items. Basically it works as a great advertising vehicle, a PR magazine for the brand, but drawing in the reader with the offer of a uniquely designed bag.

In accessory excessive culture such as in Japan, it is a natural success where this kind of large scale marketing collaboration where limited edition bags act as the lure in the readers purchasing these magazines. As with hobby magazines, where enthusiasts want to collect the complete series of whatever it is they are colecting, similarly people are drawn to continued purchasing and collecting the special edition branded items. Taken further there is a large scale potential then for marketing in other spheres in Japan.

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It’s one thing for Fifth Ave. to get clogged up each time a new iPhone or iPad gets released, but Grand Central Terminal? Avid NYC commuters best plan their vacation days accordingly, as one of the city’s biggest transit hubs is about to get a heck of a lot more busy — and not because White Plains is the new Southampton. The New York Post is reporting that Apple and the MTA have agreed on a decade-long deal that’ll see a 23,000-square foot Apple Store take the place of Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant, with Cupertino’s rent to be set at $800,000 per year (rising to $1 million after ten years pass). For those curious, that’s around $500,000 more than the eatery before it, and Apple’s responsible for refurbishing the space. That cacophony of voices you hear? Touristy cheers drowning out local jeers.

Apple Store coming to Grand Central Terminal, travel disruptions guaranteed for next iPhone launch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jul 2011 21:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

Update: Wired.co.uk has independently confirmed store referred to in the story to be an unauthorized Apple Store.

Chinese counterfeiters have a long history of cloning hardware from major tech manufacturers, but now they’re going a step further by cloning entire stores.

A US blogger living in Kunming in Southwest China noticed what appeared to be an Apple store pop up in her town, complete with the store’s trademark spacious, airy interior, blue-shirted staff, products to play with, and upstairs seating area.

“We proceeded to place a bet on whether or not this was a genuine Apple store or just the best rip-off we had ever seen,” said the blogger, who hasn’t disclosed her identity but goes under the pseudonym BirdAbroad. It turned out to be the latter — a quick glance at Apple’s website shows that there are only stores in Beijing and Shanghai in China.

Even more curiously, the staff believed they genuinely were working for Apple. “I tried to imagine the training that they went to when they were hired,” says the blogger, “in which they were pitched some big speech about how they were working for this innovative, global company — when really they’re just filling the pockets of some shyster living in a prefab mansion outside the city by standing around a fake store disinterestedly selling what may or may not be actual Apple products that fell off the back of a truck somewhere.”

There is some debate as to whether the store in question is a “Premium Reseller” taking the job far too seriously. (Not any more there isn’t. See the above update.) The blog’s author addresses this in the comments, adding: “What these stores are doing is clearly different — they are trying to trick people into thinking this is an actual Apple store. The employees all think they actually work for the American company Apple, when they plainly do not.”

You can see plenty of images of the store on BirdAbroad’s blog, along with discussion in the comments.

It isn’t the first time cloning of this scale has been claimed. In 2006, for example, it was reported the whole of NEC, the electronics firm, was cloned.