While Amazon wants to know what you want before you do, Google just wants to get you to the store when you want to buy something. Google was recently awarded a patent for ads that will offer transportation to an advertiser’s store. At the expense of the advertiser, the ad will take into consideration the proximity of the person to the store as well as their purchase history and determine what type of transportation (bus, train, taxi, limo, etc.) to offer.
Apple’s Flagship Store Shattered
Apparently, a snowblower had a run-in with Apple’s iconic ‘cube’ flagship store in New York City and the snowblower won. As a result, one of the panels was shattered. The estimated cost to replace the 32-feet high custom panel is $450,000.
The best joke I heard about this was from Stephen Colbert, saying that they could take it to the Apple Store for replacement but, wait, forget it — it’s wet.
<image: Elite Daily>
Mars Has a Donut
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity discovered a rock that wasn’t there the last time it passed that spot 13 days earlier. NASA believes that one of its wheels likely knocked the rock , ‘Pinnacle Island’, to its position. The rock, often referred to in the media as the ‘Mars donut’ is actually about the size of a real donut.
Toshiba’s Takeover of OCZ Finalized
Toshiba has issued a press release announcing the completion of its OCZ acquisition following the SSD manufacturer’s declaration of bankruptcy last December. The acquisition means that both OCZ’s consumer and enterprise products will remain on the market.
“[the acquisition] enables the established OCZ brand to continue in full force with a current product portfolio which includes SATA and PCIe consumer drives for high-performance and mainstream applications, and SATA, SAS and PCIe enterprise drives supported by virtualization, cache and acceleration software”
What was once OCZ Technology Group is now OCZ Storage Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba. “Substantially all” of OCZ’s assets are now owned by Toshiba. OCZ will retain its headquarters in San Jose and its design centers in California, Israel, and the UK.
Windows Phone Sales Besting iPhone in 24 Countries
I guess this news falls squarely into the ‘would you believe it’ department. According to a report on Forbes, Windows Phone is actually outselling the iPhone in no less than 24 countries. Furthermore, the statistics, which relate to Q3 2013, are not coming from Microsoft but from independent market analyst IDC.
IDC points out that Microsoft only led iPhone sales in seven countries in the same quarter in 2012. Sales are up 156 percent during the last 12 months, triple Android’s annual growth and 6 times that of iOS. Of course, it’s much easier for a younger platform with a smaller market share in the first place to achieve that sort of increase.
Want to know what the 24 countries are – here’s the official list:
Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Ecuador, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Vietnam.
Judy is a computer veteran with 30 years of experience. She has owned everything from a TRS-80, Apple IIe and various Windows-based PCs. She is currently living in her Apple ecosystem at home consisting of an iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook, Apple TV, iPod nano and two Time Capsules. She is a fan of all things mobile since she got her first Palm Pilot in 1999. Check out her iPad app, Number Wizard, in the App Store. Follow her on Twitter @junovotech or at Junovo.com.
