U.S.Ads!

It appears that Motorola will celebrate this year’s independence day by promoting a new American-made smartphone, the Motorola X.

With full page ads running in the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, it will be hard to ignore Motorola’s message. The ad will clearly state that the upcoming X smartphone is an American phone from an American company, and according to Motorola, it will be the first smartphone ever to be designed, engineered, and assembled in the USA. Founded in Illinois in 1928, Motorola was once a great example of American ingenuity, leading the world in mobile technology for decades.

Now that they’re owned by Google, hopes are that consumer patriotism and American pride will result in more handset sales, and with it, we could possibly see Motorola return to its former days of consumer product prominence.

Just a Qwiki…

It would appear that Yahoo’s appetite for mobile apps is unquenchable. The latest addition to their acquisition list is Qwiki, an iOS app which helps users create movies out of photos and videos in their camera roll.

When Qwiki first launched, they focused on generating short, auto-narrated, informational videos on popular search terms. Earlier this year, the company shifted their focus, and re-launched their app to with a focus on the user’s own content. The buyout was rumored to cost somewhere between forty and fifty million dollars.

Unlike most of Yahoo’s recent purchases, Qwiki says their app will remain in the App Store and will continue to be supported as a standalone application.

Crypto-tastic ATMs

Want to get your hands on some Bitcoins, but having trouble converting the cash in your wallet into digital crypto-currency? A new kind of ATM aims to solve that problem by letting users quickly turn their banknotes directly into Bitcoins.

Previously, users often met with Bitcoin owners in person to complete a transaction, but now, thanks to Lamassu Bitcoin Ventures, the process just became much easier.

A prototype of the device was unveiled at the Bitcoin London conference. The small, table-top ATM was designed to be as simple as possible, first asking the customer to scan the QR code for their Bitcoin account to start the process. From there, it asks the user to deposit cash, and it sends the bitcoins to the users’ account. Once the process is completed, the system takes about fifteen minutes to confirm the transaction.

The ATM will support multiple currencies, but in order to avoid having to deal with banks, payments using cards will not be accepted. Lamassu says they will not charge any fees for the currency exchange itself, instead, they plan to make a profit on the hardware units themselves, which will sell for roughly forty-five hundred dollars apiece.

Ready? Set. SELL!

Big Data company Semetric, the masterminds behind music and video streaming analytics service Musicmetric, have added a few new features in their latest product update.

Musicmetric pro now has the ability to give music marketers a better picture of when and where to start promotions or buy advertising.

The London and LA based Semetric comes up with this information by comparing Spotify and iTunes sales data with piracy rates and social media patterns to determine which music is trending. Further details are also extracted from sources including the news and online audio streaming, to increase the accuracy of Semetric’s projections.

Speaking of the importance of big data on marketing, Semetrics executive chairman was quoted as saying, “The entire industry is on a learning curve, finding new ways to use its valuable data in different parts of the business. We’re focused on making Musicmetric Pro the most robust and dependable means by which executives form their decisions.”

Dear Congress, Leave Us Alone

Google has responded to the letter sent by the Congressional Privacy Caucus in May.

Congress had numerous questions and requests about privacy in relation to Google Glass. Google’s answers may not sit well with the group. It says it has no plans to change its company-wide privacy policy for the eventual public launch of Google Glass. Specifically, it says, “Use of Google Glass will be governed by the terms of the Google Privacy Policy and no changes to the Google Privacy Policy are planned for Glass.”

The company also revealed that, unlike the Explorer beta versions of Glass, once the product officially launches, consumers are free to sell or transfer it, and they’ll have options for removing their content from the device. In addition, should the device ever become misplaced or somehow compromised, users can use their Google account to login to MyGlass and initiate a remote wipe of all data stored on Glass.

Congressman Joe Barton, co-chair of the bipartisan group, quickly issued a statement that read: “I am disappointed in the responses we received from Google. There were questions that were not adequately answered and some not answered at all. When new technology like this is introduced that could change societal norms, I believe it is important that people’s rights be protected and vital that privacy is built into the device. I look forward to continuing a working relationship with Google as Google Glass develops.”

Happy Birthday Internets!

Here at Silicon Angle, we provide you with analysis for breaking stories, but today the News Desk team wanted to share with you something that’s out of date.

Over fifty years out of date. I’m talking about the first steps to what would become the internet. This week, in nineteen sixty-nine UCLA issued a press release stating that they “…will become the first station in a nationwide computer network which, for the first time, will link together computers of different makes and using different machine languages into one time-sharing system.”

The article went on to describe how three computers could be linked together to complete a basic task of sharpening a photograph.

Engineering professor Leonard Kleinrock went on to say “As of now, computer networks are still in their infancy, but as they grow up and become more sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of ‘computer utilities’, which, like present electronic and telephone utilities, will service individual homes and offices across the country.”

And that’s all we have for today. For these and more news in tech, join us every morning on NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

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