Parmy Olson's Blog, page 62

How Verizon Is Playing Nice To Get Inside Your Future Smoke Detector

On the ninth floor of a office building overlook the San Francisco Bay, a demo room gleams with dozens of wireless gadgets -- none of which are smartphones. There's a VGo telepresence robot, a bike clip monitor made by Wimm Labs, and a sensor made by Intwine that can detect humidity data in a room and even paint fumes, and relay it to the web in real time.

White House Upholds U.S. Ban On Certain Samsung Devices

Samsung has lost its bid to get the Obama administration to veto an import ban on some of its mobile devices, following a patent dispute with . Just to rub salt into the wounds, the administration overturned a similar ban against Apple's iPhone 4S in August.

BlackBerry Faces Legal Action As New Bid Rumors Swirl

Last month it looked as though Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa might have drawn a final line in the sand for BlackBerry when his insurance firm bid $4.7 billion to take the struggling smartphone maker private. Now BlackBerry shares are up almost 4% on a Reuters report that it is in potential takeover talks with , Cisco and .

LG To Start Mass Producing Phones With Curved Displays

The race to bring the first, curved smartphone to market is heating up. Two weeks after Samsung said it would introduce a smartphone with a curved display at some point in October, LG Display, sister company to Samsung's arch rival LG Electronics, has now said it will begin mass producing flexible smartphone displays.

Samsung Set For Another Quarter Of Record Profits As HTC Falters

Samsung has impressed analysts and investors with its latest guidance for operating profit in the third-quarter, saying it expects to have earned between 9.9 trillion won and 10.3 trillion won ($9.2 billion and $9.6 billion). That's up from 8.06 trillion won last year and marks another record performance in operating profit. It had posted an operating profit of $7 billion in the second quarter of 2013.

Apple May Bolster Siri After Reportedly Buying Cue, A Personal Assistant App

seems serious about developing the technology that powers its personal assistant Siri, having reportedly bought Cue, a personal assistant app for the iPhone that processes contacts, e-mail and files to present a daily agenda. It's bought the company for more than $35 million, according to reports in TechCrunch and Apple Insider this morning. Cue's co-founder and CEO told Forbes in August that while Cue had worked for the last three years creating its data-organizing software, it was "hard" to design an interface that consumers could understand and use easily.

Samsung's Top U.S. Mobile Executive Leaves The Company

At a time when Samsung is reigning as the world's biggest smartphone maker, one of its top mobile executives has left the company. It is unclear why Kevin Packingham, whose official title is Chief Product Officer at Samsung Mobile USA, has departed after more than two years with Samsung, in which he played a visible role in launching flagship devices like the Galaxy 3 smartphone last year.

MyTime Aims To Be The Amazon Of Local Services, By Replacing Receptionists

Not long after Amazon started selling books in 1995, people thought the world's mom-and-pop shops would all end up online, yet today only a single-digit percentage of business in the United States conduct any kid of e-commerce beyond posting their contact details on and . Want to make a hair or chiropractor's appointment? You often still have to book with a receptionist or whoever answers the phone. An upstart app called MyTime wants to disrupt that by fusing the calendars of salons, restaurants and yoga teachers with its own booking system, so that you can make appointments with all of them through its mobile app - just as you can buy a product directly on Amazon.

MyTime Wants To Replace Your Receptionist, Become The Amazon Of Local Services

Not long after Amazon started selling books in 1995, people thought the world's mom-and-pop shops would all end up online, yet today only a single-digit percentage of business in the United States conduct any kid of e-commerce beyond posting their contact details on and . Want to make a hair or chiropractor's appointment? You often still have to book with a receptionist or whoever answers the phone. An upstart app called MyTime wants to disrupt that by fusing the calendars of salons, restaurants and yoga teachers with its own booking system, so that you can make appointments with all of them through its mobile app - just as you can buy a product directly on Amazon.

Apple VP Pokes Fun At Samsung Phone 'Shenanigans'

Staffers at may be amused by an insightful report in Ars Technica this morning suggesting that Samsung's new Note 3 has been scoring a little too well in the tech website's benchmark tests -- the conclusion is that Samsung has been artificially boosting the device's benchmark scores for speed and processing power.