Bitcoin, Better

San Francisco’s Coinbase has always made it convenient to buy bitcoins by connecting any U.S. bank account, but now it’s making the buying, selling and storage of Bitcoins even easier.

By supplying your private information, and answering some public data questions, the exchange can identify individual visitors as verified users, allowing them to instantly trade Bitcoins on the market.

According to Coinbase, the user data required is standard financial information, no different to the same data used by banks and credit card companies. Using the information, the company can instantly process up to fifty Bitcoins at a time while, unverified users still have to wait four-business days to complete their transaction.

About Time, Vine!

Following an update to the iOS app, Vine for Android has received an upgrade.  The new version comes with a number of improvements that are sure to make Vine users very happy.

The update brings all the features that were rolled out to iOS users, such as re-vining and content channels, as well as a new camera interface. Users will see an improved grid and focusing tools when shooting video.

The Vine stream has been modified, as well. A mute button has been added, so you can watch videos from the app without having to hear them. To make things even more interesting, Twitter is also adding another feature that iPhone users will miss out on. Exclusive to Android is the new capture widget that lets users shoot and record videos quickly with a widget on their home screen. Users can download the improved Vine immediately from the Google Play Store.

Pebble Seeks Devs

Pebble, the crowd-funded smartwatch that launched onto the scene earlier this year, just announced passing the quarter-million pre-order mark.

In light of the news, Pebble is making a renewed commitment to its development platform by promising to help third-party developers gain deeper access to their technology. The company also released an update to its financial backers, by announcing their priorities for the next year.

First and foremost, they will continue fulfilling nearly 200,000 reservations from their non-kickstarter backers. Next, they’ll begin the process of releasing their own software developer kit.

Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky summed up the company’s new direction toward software, saying, “The entire team is focused on crafting a developer experience that allows 3rd party developers to access deeper down into pebble and to basically write watch apps that communicate from the watch to the Web and the phone.”

You Can Play Potto While On the Pot-oh?

A new kind of advertising app has been taking over South Korea, and in the past few weeks, its popularity has been sweeping across the world.

TrafficGem’s app Potto has a potentially lucrative claim to fame: If you use the app, you could win cold, hard cash. Basically, the service is an international lottery, but instead of paying for the tickets, users have to watch advertisements to be entered into the drawing.

Currently, all the ads are for mobile games, which makes Potto a great platform for game developers. In order to keep viewers honest, users have to click a little penguin that randomly appears as they watch videos. Once five of the little penguins have been clicked, the user has collected enough points to be entered into the lottery.

Lotto numbers can be “quick-picked” at random, or users can select their own lucky numbers. Every Tuesday at Noon – Korean time, the numbers are drawn and broadcast live over the internet, with live international news playing so that everyone knows the feed is live and everything is fair.

Winnings are paid out via Paypal, however other methods are available to users upon request.

Sprint Trying to Compete With T-Mobile…Finally

Today, Sprint announced some new unlimited plans with lower pricing that come with a guarantee, promising limitless talk, text and data for life.

On the$50 My Way Plan, customers get unlimited data, and can add the service to as many lines as they want for an additional $30 per line. By comparison, a similar plan from Sprint starts at over $100/month.

In other mobile carrier news, T-Mobile has unveiled their new Jump program, which lets customers trade in their existing phones for the latest and greatest new models, after a one-time, six-month enrollment period.

That means T-Mobile customers can get brand new phones at the new customer price, twice a year. The $10 monthly subscription fee for JUMP, which also covers insurance for the phone, means that users can simply trade in their old phone without having to worry about paying off the remaining balance.

Customers who want to get enrolled in Jump can join when the program goes live on Sunday.

Nokia Lumia 1020 Deets!

Nokia held their press event yesterday in NYC for the Nokia Lumia 1020 release.

The star of the show was clearly the 41-megapixel PureView camera.

The industry leading camera includes Carl Zeiss optics, optical image stabilization, a xenon flash for photos and an LED flash for video.  One surprising bit from the event is that the Lumia 1020 will be available exclusively through AT&T in the U.S.

Those who are interested in taking their camera phone pics to the next level can get their hands on the device when it launches July 26th for $299 on contract.

Raspberry Microwaves

Nathan Broadbent, the owner of the popular do-it-yourself site Made by Nathan, has hacked away at his microwave and added a few new features to create a unique microwaving experience.

Among other improvements, his robo-microwave now has the ability to respond to voice commands, read barcodes with pre-set cooking times, and even full integration with the internet.

He created the microwave by mashing up a $25 Raspberry Pi micro-computer, some leftover electronics, and an old microwave. The onboard computer enables the microwave to do some neat things, such as look up cooking instructions, use your phone as a remote controller, and the microwave can even send tweets, alerting you when it has finished cooking.

Interested do-it-yourselfers can recreate Nathan’s microwave by following the instructions on his website, madebynathan.com.

And that’s all the news we have for this week. If you want to keep up with these stories and more, be sure to join us every weekday morning at 9:30 Eastern time for NewsDesk with Kristin Feledy.

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