Nook Tablet bootloader bypassed, Android 4.0 takes its first steps onto the platform originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Walmart  is ramping up its mobile strategy and releasing a new iPhone app that provides a number of features aimed at improving the shopping experience for users, who are increasingly interacting with the retailer with mobile and social tools in addition to traditional in-store visits. The new iPhone app comes fresh off the heels of Walmart’s first iPad app, which was introduced late last month, and it shows where the company is heading now that it’s rolling all of its mobile products into its new @Walmart Labs. It’s also just in time for the holidays, which are going to be huge for mobile commerce.

The new iPhone app, which should be available in the next few days, packs in a number of features, including a new smart shopping list tool that allows people to speak their shopping list into their phone to create a list. Users can also create a list by scanning a barcode or typing in products. The shopping list, which can be shared by email, can be paired with a new budgeting tool that pulls up real-time prices for products, so consumers can calculate their bill ahead of time. And they can grab manufacturer coupons for the items on their list or find other coupons for products at Walmart. Users will need to print out the coupons from an email.

Walmart will enable users to pull product information — including reviews, ratings, price and availability — from the app. They’ll also be able to scan QR codes for information. In a test in a limited number of stores, Walmart will provide a store item finder tool that tells people the exact location of products. It can work with a smart shopping list, which can organize the products by their location.

The recently released iPad app is designed specifically for a more casual browsing experience. It provides users with a view on the right side of the best recent deals and it let’s users drill down to get more detailed product information. There’s a mode that lets you browse one specific store so the items are organized first by products you can buy at a user’s favorite location.

The products are part of Walmart’s efforts to ride the big shift in commerce as the introduction of mobile and social upend the way consumers buy things. Increasingly, shoppers come into stores armed with smartphones while others hunt at home on tablets, guided by recommendations from friends on social networks. Walmart is trying to get ahead of that and address all the different ways people want to shop, whether it’s in store, online or out and about while on a mobile device. They’re also trying to use mobile to help provide people with more self-serve tools and deliver more more personalized experience.

“Mobile gives us an opportunity to bust up the ideas of channels and create a seamless experience for consumers,” said Paul Cousineau, Walmart VP of mobile products.

It’s interesting to see Walmart exposing more of its data to help consumers. This can be tricky for a retailer but it’s helpful for consumers to see in-store inventory and real-time pricing. I think it’s still early in this epic transformation of commerce. But companies are going to have to be smart about how they leverage all these new and disruptive tools in the hands of consumers. Increasingly, consumers are empowered by mobile and social, and companies need to keep up and provide great shopping experiences that incorporates all the ways people want to search, research and buy.

We’ll be discussing more about the future of commerce with Venky Harinarayan, SVP of Walmart Global eCommerce and Head of @WalmartLabs at our inaugural GigaOM Roadmap conference Thursday in San Francisco.

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We’d heard rumblings that unlimited data for Sprint’s mobile hotspot plan was going the way of the dodo, but come November folks, it’ll be official. Data sent and received over tethering — not smartphone usage — will now be measured against a 5GB cap. The same applies to mobile broadband subscribers, who will lose “unlimited” WiMax, instead having all their bits counting towards 3GB, 5GB or 10GB buckets (as seen above). Going over your allotment in either plan naturally incurs overages, which could get pricey at 5 cents per MB, and worst of all, existing unlimited plans won’t be grandfathered in. So, start counting down those last few days of limitless bliss, as you weep peeping the full details that await at the source.

[Thanks, Darren]

Sprint to nix ‘unlimited’ from mobile broadband and hotspot plans in November originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Oct 2011 07:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When a few of BlackBerry’s European users started losing service earlier this week it was irritating for those affected, but the company was confident that things would be back to normal almost straight away. In the space of just a few days, however, the blackout has done precisely the opposite — and now that it has spread to millions of users around the world, it has become impossible for Research in Motion’s top executives to ignore.

Yesterday the Canadian company trotted out CTO David Yach to talk to the media. He assured everyone that the problem had been identified, that “engineers are working around the clock” to fix it, and that while messages might be delayed, none of them were lost.

“We understand the frustrations our customers are experiencing through the delays with the messaging and browsing…
I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize unreservedly to all those people affected by this situation. We’re taking this situation extremely seriously and we’re doing everything we can to restore normal operation of our service.”

It’s something, at least. But is it enough? It’s not clear how long the problems will take to clear completely, but perhaps the damage has already been done.

This blackout is, obviously, an entirely different sort of problem to the company’s recent struggles with the Playbook tablet, or coming under fire for the way its messaging service was used in this summer’s London riots. But the company’s inability to deal with a glaring error is exposing some of its failings in the most brutal way possible.

For a start, this problem seems to be entirely of its own making. While the company is not immune to security problems, it says the original problem started not with a hack but with a failed server in Britain. That initial flaw was rapidly compounded when backup systems failed as well, pushing the impact of the glitch out to users in the Middle East, Africa and India. But things didn’t stop there, and now the problem is of a different order: the backlog of email that users have been trying to send during service disruptions have led to a cascade of blockages in America and Asia. It’s the domino effect writ large and exposes what must surely be some bad planning at the core of the business.

Secondly, its assurances mean little. Yes, as Yach says, its “engineers are working around the clock to fix the problem”. But so they should be: when your products are unable to perform their core function, you’d better treat your business as if it’s just had a heart attack. In the meantime, the impact is getting more serious day by day: whatever the engineers are doing, it isn’t working.

Third, the damage to the company’s relationship with customers is incalculable. Businesses reliant on the BlackBerry — the core users who propelled it to success — will be counting the cost of lost productivity. And its other big base, youngsters addicted to its messaging service, are having their loyalties tested. What is a phone without the ability to communicate? Why stick with a device that can’t perform the basic function you bought it for?

But over and above all of this, I think the biggest problem is in the company’s response to this crisis. The slow trickle of information from the business has been disappointing, but it’s only because there seems to have been a real leadership gap over how to handle the affair.

Sure, executives have started going on the record to make their apologies, including Yach, CIO Robin Bienfait and UK boss Stephen Bates. But the really big bosses have yet to make an appearance — despite the fact that RIM has not one but two chief executives.

Where are Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis? Why can’t at least one of them take command of this issue? It’s all very well appearing in public to launch a product, and when the wind is in your sails… but when your already-frazzled users are denied service, their fears are something that need to be dealt with at the very top. It would be bad enough if there were one CEO who had gone missing — but the bigger this problem gets, the more the inability of either man to take it on seems like willful neglect.

Sure, crisis management is tough. You don’t always want leadership to be associated with a problem that was caused further down the chain. But if RIM can’t find a way to get either of its top executives to spare subscribers a moment, what message are they sending?

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This is a review of a phone that was never actually released to the public on AT&T. Despite the unfortunateness of the prior statement, we felt obligated to run this device through the wringer as a final farewell to Palm, the Pre line and webOS on consumer devices.

Man, what a weird, labyrinthine life this device has had. European carriers didn’t even want the Pre 2, and for whatever reason, those folks were the only ones to even get the Pre 3. Excluding this guy, of course. This guy, as you’ve probably gleaned, is one of only a handful of AT&T Pre 3 handsets to make it out of the factory unscathed, and we couldn’t be happier to be putting it through the paces. Well… we could be happier, but that would require Meg Whitman undoing Leo’s departing shot through the webOS heart.

All that aside, it’s been a strange few days with the final webOS-based phone, and in a sense, the final phone that’ll ever have Palm’s DNA running through its circuitry. Not even two months ago, HP was telling developers to get their Pre 3 app submissions in for approval, and a mere four weeks ago, the same company affirmed that this very phone wouldn’t ever arrive on US shores. You know, despite that whole “being announced for AT&T” thing. Turns out, a few of those units actually did pass the requisite QA tests, and if you’ve got the right connections (or a quick enough trigger finger on eBay), you too can land yourself what’ll undoubtedly go down as one of the most highly sought after pieces of Palm / webOS history. But should you? Find out after the break.

Continue reading Pre 3 for AT&T review

Pre 3 for AT&T review originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer Aspire Ultrabook S3 officially announced, starts at 799 euros originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 05:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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