Games for the weekend: Heroes of Loot

SUMMARY:

Running down a long dark corridor for the first time, clearing a room full of monsters, and collecting loot after you win. The basic formula of what makes a classic dungeon crawler fun to play.

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Heroes of Loot ($1.99 Universal) is a retro style dungeon crawling game where your character’s main goal is to free every room of the dungeon from its hoards of treasure chests, gold and, above all, assorted loot.

Set in a very basic graphical setting, you play by looking at a the map of a dungeon from a top down perspective. A virtual controller on the left side of the screen controls movement in the up, down, right and left directions, while the button on the right side of the screen controls your attack. Depending on the abilities of the character you choose to play as, you will either be better equipped to receive a blow from the creatures that inhabit the dungeon or deliver one. There is no limit to your weapon’s ability to strike; just keep tapping away at the attack button and don’t let up for a moment.

There are four different characters to choose from when starting out on each new campaign. You do not switch characters within each campaign. So you are stuck with your character choice until you die, which typically is about 15-20 minutes. The Wizard character can cast spells but is not as strong as some of the other characters when it comes to sustaining damage. The Warrior is strongest of the four, but does not do as well from far off attacks. The Elf does well attacking from longer distances, which help keeps from getting attack. The Valkyrie is initially the weakest of the four, but does gain experience faster. Regardless of which character you pick, the strategy is still the same: attack, attack, attack!

There are locked doors and secret levels that you can explore throughout the dungeon. Some even have a quest hidden behind them. Quests are timed adventures that send you running through the dungeon as fast as you can to try to collect some random number of diamonds or chests before the timer runs out. In the end you may have completed the quest, but your character’s health may have suffered in the process. As risky as storming down a corridor into an open area can be, there is nothing like the promised rewards of a good quest to keep you going.

What has always struck me as odd in such games is how there are shops scattered throughout the dungeon. Even at the deepest most difficult levels you will find a randomly placed shop keeper selling you the odd shield, heart, and cloak of invisibility. It also never ceases to amaze me that when I need to buy a heart to increase my health the most, all I can buy are discounted diamonds. Thankfully there are powerful runes scattered throughout the dungeon that turn you into a monster killing machine. These runes will help you clear a room and allow you to collect the random heart or two.

There are infinite number of levels in the game, and no two levels are the same. Each level is randomly generated based on your character’s level and skills. As you play, your dungeon will upgrade and become more difficult. At the same time your character will also level up and become more powerful. There is no real restart or go back to level zero, you pick up at the level of difficulty you have already achieved; even when you die. That is how things keep getting increasingly difficult and random at the same time. The quests, shops and locked doors are as random as they are abundant. And of course there is more loot to collect than one’s imagination can account for.The fast pace of the game and smooth controls make the game fun to play. While there is no real end to the story, it is a great game to just pick up and play. And since the dungeon generator is completely random with an endless number of configurations to play, your weekend’s quest to acquire as much loot as possible will never come to an end, never.

Google Glass app brings in-game GPS from GTA 3 to your eye

SUMMARY:

Google Glass for gaming? Yup, Google’s wearable computer may be used for fun and games based on this example app which brings real-time in-game GPS to your eye.

When you hear someone mention “Google Glass,” does the thought of video gaming come to mind? Probably not, since Google’s prototype device excels at getting and showing data from Google services such as Google+, Gmail and Google Now. That’s why a new unofficial Glass app created by Mike DiGiovanni has me rethinking the use of Glass for gaming: DiGiovanni’s app shows in-game GPS for Grand Theft Auto 3.

Here’s a picture taken while playing the game; you can see the GPS up in the top right — on Glass — mirrors the GPS in the game:

DiGiovanni is no stranger to making Glass apps: He’s also the brains behind Winky, the Glass app that lets you take a picture by winking.

Earlier this week I noted that in its current form, Glass is fairly limited; useful, yes but only for very specific types of things. Once developers can start distributing applications, the value of Glass could skyrocket. I don’t think we’ve yet figured out the capabilities that Glass — and other wearables — will bring to our digital future, but apps will help.

Ironically, my son was just playing a driving video game last night where DiGiovanni’s software would have come in handy. I was watching the on-screen GPS and shouting out directions as he was focused on driving fast and weaving through traffic.

Glass for gaming? Yup, I see the potential now.

General Assembly NYC goes all in with classes and community, plans to end coworking services

SUMMARY:

For three years, General Assembly has offered New York startups coworking services, but it plans to shut down that part of its business next year.

General Assembly has long downplayed its coworking services in New York City, choosing instead to emphasize its networking and education potential. Now the startup is moving away from coworking altogether.

In a blog post Friday, the company said that three years after opening its doors to New York startups looking for space to rent, it will stop offering its coworking services.

“It is not a decision we took lightly – but it is a necessary one as we work to expand our global network of students and alumni,” CEO and co-founder Jake Schwartz said in the post. “For a long time now, coworking has been a small part of the “business” of GA, even as it has remained important as a reminder of community as a founding an ongoing value of our company.”

As Schwartz mentions in his update, the city is now chock full of coworking spaces catering to its startups. Many of them rely on events and networking opportunities to bolster their business, but General Assembly has really established itself as a hub for classes on technology, business and design.

The startup, which has campuses around the world (although it only offered coworking in New York), plans to help its current members find spots at other coworking spaces. It will continue to offer hackathons, panels and other networking events and expect to see many more classes and educational opportunities now that it has additional space.

Making a Maker: RepRap 3D printing magic

SUMMARY:

Frustrated by my failures with the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, I turned to Noisebridge’s resident expert to learn about another 3D printer the hackerspace keeps around.

I’ve spent four weeks now preparing and attempting to print an object on a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer. I haven’t been able to convince the printer to connect with my laptop, let alone print something, so it was starting to feel like an impossible task. I badly needed some inspiration.

Noisebridge’s RepRap Prusa Mendel. Photo by Signe Brewster

While I’ve been working with the Thing-O-Matic, which is an older MakerBot printer that dates to 2010, another 3D printing relic has been staring me down. Noisebridge owns a RepRap: the do-it-yourself printer that started the hobby 3D printer movement back in 2005.

Noisebridge’s particular model is a Prusa Mendel, which was first invented in 2010. RepRap isn’t a company; it’s an open-source movement. That means you have to build one yourself (or buy a completed machine from someone else).

Over four weeks at Noisebridge, I saw the machine transform from broken to tenuously working to working. Progress was marked in the bits of discarded electronics and plastic scraps I found at the 3D printer stand each week. A friend advised me that the RepRap guru responsible for fixing the machine was making appearances at 3D Thursdays, Noisebridge’s weekly meeting for people interested in 3D printing and related technologies.

RepRaps are very technical machines. After my failures with the Thing-O-Matic, it didn’t sound like a good idea to dive into something even more complex without the right training. I found the guru this Thursday and we got to work right away on a print job. His plan is to rebuild the Prusa into a Mendel90, which is an easier-to-use RepRap. All of the controls will be browser-based, negating the need for complicated software.

RepRaps were born out of a very interesting goal: creating a machine that can replicate itself. They’re not there yet, but they draw closer all the time. The Prusa has a number of 3D printed parts, including pieces that secure its metal rods together and a gear that controls the extrusion of filament. We decided to print a few of the pieces it needs to be upgraded to a Mendel90.

A RepRap Mendel90. The parts we printed can be seen on the left and right in the front. Their purpose is to secure the rods to the frame. Photo courtesy of AdrianKelly.

We needed two open source software programs to get the printer printing. Slic3r takes your 3D design and cuts it up into the layers the 3D printer will print. It also calculates all kinds of information the printer will need, such as how much material is necessary and the path to take to lay down the layers in the most efficient way possible. It presents all of this information as code in a confusing looking document.

The second piece of software is called Pronterface. It controls the Prusa, including the location of the print head and the speed at which the filament is extruded.

Everything looked good, so we started the print job. I’m beginning to think I’m bad luck around 3D printers, because almost immediately we ran into problems. The printer wasn’t starting to print and we didn’t know why.

After messing around with the electronics and resetting the printer a few times, it was discovered in the code that the printer was hitting its maximum temperature of around 205 degrees Celsius and then shutting down to prevent itself from overheating. The print head is secured in place by a 3D printed part made of PLA plastic. If that gets too hot, it can melt. The print temperature had been set around 200 degrees. The printer had been oscillating back in forth in temperature to hit that mark, but as it oscillated up it neared the dangerous mark of 205 degrees, causing it to shut down.

We set the printer to print at a few degrees cooler. Almost immediately, it began printing.

But we weren’t done yet. We needed to make sure the print bed was at the right height. The print nozzle was too close to the bed, which meant that no filament was coming out. We moved the bed down slightly and a thin stream of plastic began issuing from the nozzle.

Meet Solar Grid Storage, a startup mixing batteries and solar

SUMMARY:

A young startup is building a business around installing solar panels and batteries. Innovation in the energy industry isn’t just about new technologies, it’s about new business models, too.

The market for storing electricity is drawing not only startups building new technology but also new comers that want to build and install new projects. Meet Solar Grid Storage, a two-year-old, angel-funded startup which just completed a project that mixes batteries with solar panels and electric car charging stations in Maryland.

The Philadelphia-based company is one of a growing crop of storage project developers that has materialized in recent years to stake a claim in a young market that’s being shaped by public policies to promote clean energy use and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Solar Grid’s CEO, Tom Leyden, compares his company to SunEdison and PowerLight, the two early players in designing and building solar power generation projects.

SunPower, the Silicon Valley-based solar panel maker, bought PowerLight in 2007. Leyden was actually an executive at PowerLight and later in SolarCity, before joining Solar Grid. SolarCity has been marketing solar panels with lithium-ion battery systems from Tesla Motors.

Solar Grid develops projects that pair an array of solar panels with energy storage equipment that could not only provide backup power but also sell energy delivery services to local utilities and grid operators. It buys all of the necessary components and hires others to create lithium-ion battery packs using cells from Panasonic or LG, the inverters and the rest of the gear. It then puts the equipment inside a steel container and ships it to a customer. The company’s intellectual property lies in the designs of its inverters and algorithms for managing the charging and discharging of batteries, Leyden said.

Solar Grid also works on lining up financing for its projects, a particularly difficult challenge given that the energy storage market is so young and many banks aren’t willing to put money into what they consider unproven technologies. In fact, two of the big obstacles for growing the energy storage market are being able to show that energy storage technologies will work as promised over time and that there is good money to be made. Wells Fargo is going as far as installing a battery system at one of its corporate buildings in Southern California to collect this type of data.

Leyden declined to divulge the sources of his project funding but called them “boutique investors.” Solar Grid’s energy storage projects for now promise to deliver returns in the range of 12 percent to 15 percent, almost twice as much as what solar projects deliver these days, he said. The premium returns are necessary to attract investors. The company focuses on projects between 250 KW to 10 MW.

Leyden is working on raising a $50 million fund to finance 50 MW of energy storage projects. The money would cover the equipment, installation, operation and maintenance of the storage equipment over 10 years, he said. The solar portion of a project would be financed separately.

Solar Grid could either develop and build energy storage projects for its customers who then own the equipment, or it could own the projects and provide the energy delivery services. Owning the projects and making sure they don’t cause too much financial burden over time requires more capital and is seen as risky in a market that is in its infancy. That’s especially true for large projects serving the utility market.

In the recently completed project in Maryland, Solar Grid provided financing along with PNC Bank and Konterra, a real estate developer. The project, which includes solar, batteries and electric car charging stations, are located at Konterra’s headquarters.

Many energy storage project developers are targeting the East Coast, including in Maryland, which is served by PJM, a grid operator that has acted quicker than its peers to set up a payment system for energy storage services. PJM and other grid operators in the country are complying with a 2011 mandate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to promote the use of energy storage to help run the electric grid smoothly, especially when an increasing amount of solar and wind electricity is flowing into the grid.

One of the ways energy storage operators make money is to send bursts of power into the grid to help the grid run at its needed frequency. Beacon Power and AES Energy are some of the energy storage companies that are selling those grid-stabilizing services within PJM, which covers parts or all of 13 states and the Washington, D.C.

California also is gearing up to be an important energy storage market. The state is working on rules that will require its utilities to use energy storage services to stabilize a grid that will get a lot more solar and wind power in order to hit its goal to have 33 percent of the electricity supplies coming from renewable sources. California already is the largest solar energy market in the country thanks to that renewable energy mandate and incentives that encourage solar panel installations at homes and businesses.

Twitter’s biggest challenge post-IPO: Optimising for advertising is a double-edged sword

SUMMARY:

Twitter faces a number of challenges once it becomes a publicly-traded company, but one of the main ones is how to increase its advertising revenue without ruining the experience for users.

As Twitter tries to get its financial house in order prior to going public at a multibillion-dollar valuation, one of the aspects of its business that will be under an intense spotlight — as it was with Facebook — is the company’s ability to generate advertising income, since that makes up the vast majority of its revenue. Among other things, Twitter will have to show that in-stream ads not only work but are growing rapidly enough to justify a market value as high as $20 billion.

As Quartz has pointed out with a helpful math lesson, Twitter’s revenue per user is much lower than Facebook’s, currently running at about $0.55 vs. $1.41. To some extent the two are apples and oranges, since Facebook has a lot more variety when it comes to ad formats and can therefore charge more — but even so, investors are still going to want to see higher numbers. Many of them are going to be looking at how Twitter compares to Google and Facebook and even LinkedIn, and they may not like what they see.

But the biggest challenge in satisfying the requirement to boost ad revenue arguably isn’t financial at all, but behavioral, and it boils down to one question: Can Twitter introduce enough revenue-generating ad formats into the stream without ruining the experience for users and torpedoing its growth and engagement numbers? It specifically outlines this risk in its S-1 filing, saying:

“If we fail to grow our user base, or if user engagement or the number of paid engagements with our pay-for-performance Promoted Products, which we refer to as ad engagements, on our platform declines, our revenue, business and operating results may be harmed.”

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Confronting the Facebook/MySpace problem

In a nutshell, this can be thought of as the Facebook problem — or even better, the MySpace problem. Social networks by definition are designed to encourage interaction between users, and in almost every case successful monetization rests on somehow convincing those users to interact with advertisers and their sponsored content at the same time. But not everyone wants to interact with ads while they are looking at photos of their loved ones: In fact, Sir Martin Sorrell of ad giant WPP Group argued last year that to some extent advertising and social networks may actually be fundamentally incompatible:

“The point is that Facebook is a social medium, not an advertising one, like search or display. It certainly is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful branding medium. It is, however, a word of mouth or PR medium. You interrupt social conversations with commercial messages at your peril.”

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For many users — at least the ones that I know — Facebook has grown less and less useful as the content stream has become more and more devoted to advertising, whether it’s sponsored pages or sponsored stories or some other intrusive content. On top of that, the size of images and video clips have been repeatedly enlarged, in part to encourage sharing of personal media, but also because images and videos theoretically drive more engagement with advertising, and because video is where the money is.

For now at least, Twitter ads are much less intrusive than Facebook’s. Sponsored tweets and trends blend in with existing tweets and trends — but they also don’t generate enough ad revenue to justify a $20-billion-plus market valuation. That means Twitter either has to add tens of millions more users at low cost, or it needs to goose its revenue-per-user, or both. And how is it going to do that? Among other things, with video, and tight relationships with TV networks.

Do you like TV clips in your stream? Good

Twitter’s new Amplify product targets advertising to users who have watched specific TV programs, and a related program lets networks like CBS push short video clips to specific users. Vine, the video-sharing app Twitter acquired, is also becoming a much larger part of its advertising efforts. And much like Facebook, the service has also redesigned a number of times to make images and video much more prominent, both on the web and in its mobile apps.

So while Twitter ads may be less intrusive now, over the medium to longer term the company almost inevitably has to become more Facebook-like, with more video, bigger video, larger ads, more calls to action (share, click, etc.) The hard part for Twitter is that Facebook has an entire page it can use and sell, so ads don’t take up as much relative real estate. Twitter is famous for its brevity — or at least it was, before it added expanded tweets and Twitter “Cards” and auto-play video clips.

And that’s the double-edged sword: in order to justify the market value it hopes to grow into, Twitter has to boost its revenue, and advertising is one of the biggest tools it has for doing that. But the more it pushes ad content, no matter how well it might be targeted by algorithms, the more irritated some users will become — and slow user growth is already a red flag even prior to the IPO. How Twitter manages that tension could be the single most important indicator of its future success.

Berg Insight: 8.3M wearable devices were sold in 2012

SUMMARY:

The number of wearables sold globally nearly tripled between 2011 and 2012, but the market is still tiny when compared to smartphones. Berg, however, predicts 64 million wearable device shipments in 2017.

In 2012, consumers worldwide bought 8.3 million fitness trackers, smart watches and other connected wearables, according to a new study from Swedish research group Berg Insight.

That may seem like a paltry amount considering IDC expects the global smartphone market to grow to 1 billion devices this year. But wearable tech is still a nascent market, driven today mainly by activity trackers and other wellness apps – wearable device sales nearly tripled between 2011 and 2012, the study found. Berg expects the market to continue its quick growth now that big consumer electronics companies like Samsung and internet brands like Google are in the market with gadgets like Galaxy Gear and Glass.

In 2017 Berg expects the connected wearable market to grow to 64 million shipments, making it eight times larger than it was last year. Berg also predicted that most wearables would also cease being “smartphone accessories” and become stand-alone devices. We’ve already seen that trend with smart watches — which in some cases host their own apps, pairing with the smartphone only for connectivity – and in particular Google Glass.

One of the central themes of GigaOM’s Moblize conference this year is the internet of things, in which wearables will have a leading role. At Mobilize, held Oct. 16 and 17 in San Francisco, we’ll have Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky talking about his groundbreaking smart watch, Heapsylon co-founder and CEO Davide Vigano discussing smart socks and the future of connected clothing, and adidas interactive VP Paul Gaudio detailing the athletic gear maker’s conceptualization of the wearable market.

Adobe source code breach; it’s bad, real bad

SUMMARY:

If the perpetrators are truly evil-doers, their theft of Adobe source code could mean bad things for the company and its customers, security experts said.

The theft of source code for Adobe Acrobat, Cold Fusion and other products poses a wide-spread threat given the installed base of these products, particularly the Acrobat reader, security specialists said. Adobe disclosed the issue in a blog post on Thursday.

In the post, Adobe Chief Security Officer Brad Arkin wrote:

“Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders. At this time, we do not believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers from our systems.”

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Not good at all. This may be the biggest compromise of a software vendor’s security since the RSA Security stolen token meltdown two years ago.  While that was extremely embarrassing because RSA is explicitly in the software security business and big customers were dinged in the process, Adobe’s products are more widely used by more sorts of customers. Acrobat and Flash are nearly ubiquitous.

Update: In a statement, Hold Security, credited along with Brian Krebs with discovering the breach, said:

“Over 40 Gigabytes in encrypted archives have been discovered on a hackers’ server that appear to contain source code of such products as Adobe Acrobat Reader,Adobe Acrobat Publisher, and the Adobe ColdFusion line of products.  It appears that the breach of Adobe’s data occurred in early August of this year but it is possible that the breach was ongoing earlier.  While it is unclear at this time how the hackers obtained the source code and whether they analyzed or used it for malicious purposes, it appears that the data was taken and viewed by unauthorized individuals.”

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Security experts said  this is serious business. “This is a source code breach not just a data breach,” said Dan Hubbard, CTO of web security vendor OpenDNS. “Having source code is a huge advantage because they can more easily hunt for and find weaknesses in the code. Before they’d have to run lots of black-box testing to do that.”

Another security specialist who could not speak on the record because he works with many of these vendors, agreed. “The issue here is that these guys will be able to find vulnerabilities and develop custom malware and use it privately before it ever goes public,” he said.

And, they could also outright sell the source code to China or other parties that could then develop counterfeit versions of the programs, he said.

Indeed, because Adobe products like Flash and Acrobat are so widely used, they’ve been prime targets in the past. One unstated motivation for Adobe moving to an all-cloud distribution model for its desktop software — or as critics called it “forced upgrades” – may have been to get a lot of old and unpatched software off the market.

As of now, Adobe is unaware of any zero-day exploits or specific increased risk to customers, but that may not make anyone feel any better. After all, Acrobat Acrobat Reader is installed on millions and millions of PC and Mac devices.

This story was updated at 6:30 p.m. PDT with additional information on Hold Security’s role in uncovering this breach.

CBS now lets you watch full episodes of fall shows through its apps 8 days after they air

SUMMARY:

CBS is expanding the full episodes that are available for viewing through its smartphone and tablet apps: The network will make all new episodes of fall primetime shows available on the app eight days after they air on TV.

When CBS launched its iOS app in March, the network said it would make full episodes of “some” primetime shows available 8 days after they aired. But viewers discovered that content was actually pretty limited —  and the app racked up one-star reviews from users who complain that few full episodes are available.

Now CBS, which says the iOS app has been downloaded nearly four million times, claims it is going to fix that. On Friday, the network announced its app is now available for Android and Windows 8, and also said that starting immediately, the app will offer “every episode of CBS’s new and returning primetime entertainment series eight days after broadcast. In addition, the app will offer episodes of many classic CBS shows like Macgyver, Star Trek and Perry Mason.”

Every episode — really? Well, kind of: A  spokeswoman told me that for current shows, “in general we offer the most recent five episodes in the app during the season.” A lot of new and returning CBS primetime shows — The Good Wifeand The Mentalist – just premiered last Sunday, so while they are available in full on CBS’s website now, those premieres won’t be on the app until Monday, October 7. Eight days may seem like a long time to wait, but CBS’s new policy does mark a fairly major expansion of full episodes available through the app. And you don’t need a cable subscription to log in.

Also, a note based on a few user reviews I saw in the App Store: No, you cannot watch full episodes of Under the Dome through CBS’s apps or on its website. It is only available for streaming through Amazon Prime Instant Video and for paid download from Amazon Instant Video.

Can local commerce site MyTime hit the big time with online booking?

SUMMARY:

More companies are stepping up their efforts in transforming local commerce, but startup MyTime aims to be an “Amazon for local services” with an online booking platform for a broad range of services.

Yet another startup sees gold in bringing local commerce into the digital age. Companies from Foursquare and Square to Yelp, Groupon and Google have all been stepping up their efforts at making it easier for people to find and transact with local businesses. But San Francisco-based MyTime believes it can become an “Amazon for local services” with a one-stop-shop for booking any kind of service online.

The company launched a pilot in Los Angeles earlier this year, but opened up its service nationwide with a new mobile app this week. Its goal: to be an OpenTable or Seamless for every kind of local business, from haircuts and manicures to oil changes and housecleaning.

As of now, just five percent of local businesses offer a shopping cart functionality for online purchasing, said founder and CEO Ethan Anderson, who was previously a product manager with Google and later sold his last startup Redbeacon to Home Depot.

Convenience for consumers, promotion for local businesses

“I created MyTime to make it more convenient to find and book the 100 or so things you need to book each year, right in the palm of your hand, anytime you want,” he said.

For consumers who currently need to call up local businesses or walk on in to make an appointment, MyTime means a new level of convenience. But it also opens up new marketing and promotion options for local businesses.

It’s free for local businesses to join, but when they receive new customers through MyTime’s promotional and retention efforts (that span Google and Twitter ads, reminder messages and more), MyTime takes 40 percent of the cut. The startup takes 3 percent of other bookings that are made through its site.

Taking a horizontal approach

Other online booking sites out there, from restaurant-focused sites like OpenTable to health and wellness sites like Zeel (for alternative medicine), ZocDoc (for doctors) and Brighter (for dental services), have focused on single verticals. But Anderson said he saw a bigger opportunity in a horizontal play. While people may order food weekly (or even more often), they only need a haircut or other services every few months. By consolidating different services on one side, the site benefits from crossover business and more frequent bookings.

I also wondered how well the site would be able to accommodate the different categories of service. When people make an appointment for an oil change they have different concerns from when they want to book an appointment with a colorist. And, for a seamless web transaction, the site needs to be able to anticipate those concerns (otherwise people may give up online and place a call).

But Anderson said they built specific architectures for each of the 70 categories MyTime accommodates. And early results from its Los Angeles pilot are positive: the startup has signed up 3,000 businesses since February and reports that 40 percent of bookings are made after hours, showing that people want an alternative way to make an appointment.

For now, its competition comes from other vertical-specific booking sites and startups like Centzy and Schedulicity. But, going forward, it may have to contend with local reviews giant Yelp, which rolled out an online booking service earlier this summer. Its first order of business is food delivery, but the company said it plans to expand into appointments at salons, spas, yoga studios and other local services.

Apple officially appeals in ebook pricing case

SUMMARY:

Apple is appealing a verdict that it conspired to fix ebook prices. The company isn’t required to file the full appeal until early 2014, but here are some of the arguments to expect. Simon & Schuster, one of the settling publishers in the case, is appealing the injunction as well.

Apple has filed its appeal against federal judge Denise Cote’s verdict in the ebook pricing case. Apple seeks to overturn Judge Cote’s July verdict that it conspired with publishers to fix ebook prices, as well as the September 6 injunction that prohibits Apple from including most-favored-nation clauses in its ebook contracts for five years and requires it to be monitored by a court-appointed external monitor.

The notice of the appeal was filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday, but I’m told Apple doesn’t have to submit its formal arguments until early 2014.

It’s fair to assume, however, that Apple will bring up many of the same issues it raised in an August letter to Judge Cote, in which it outlined the arguments it planned to raise on appeal. For instance, it argued that the court excluded or disregarded crucial evidence from various witnesses, “disregarded serious credibility issues with the Google and Amazon witnesses” and excluded information about Amazon’s “internal business deliberations” from discovery.

Separately, publisher Simon & Schuster is appealing just the injunction in the case. Simon & Schuster was one of the first publishers to settle with the Department of Justice back in 2012, but Judge Cote’s injunction against Apple puts Simon & Schuster — and the four other settling publishers — at a disadvantage by significantly extending the amount of time that the publishers are required to allow Apple to discount their ebooks. Under the injunction, Simon & Schuster will not be allowed to negotiate new contracts with Apple for at least three more years.

In August, Simon & Schuster and the other settling publishers had argued that such requirements would “unreasonably and unnecessarily [restrain] the Settling Defendants’ independent business decisions beyond the scope and time provided for” in their settlements.

This story was updated several times on Friday. An earlier version of the story referred to “the amount of time that publishers are required to allow discounting of their ebooks,” rather than specifying that the injunction extends the amount of time that publishers are required to allow Apple to discount their ebooks.

Color me shocked: Best Buy halves iPhone 5c contract price after just two weeks

SUMMARY:

A dash of color doesn’t seem to be moving Apple’s new iPhone 5c: Retailers are already discounting the device with Best Buy the latest to offer a $50 price promotion.

Good news if you didn’t buy that iPhone 5c just yet: Best Buy is selling Apple’s colorful smartphone for $50 with contract from October 3 through October 7 reports ABC News. That’s a sizable discount from the $99 with contract price tag directly from Apple. And unlike prior iPhones, it’s the fastest discount yet: The handset debuted just two weeks ago. So why the price cut from a large reseller?

The 9 million first weekend sales for the new iPhone 5c and 5s were a record for Apple, but the company didn’t break that figure down between the two models. Data from web traffic and other online analytics suggest however that the new iPhone 5s accounted for 3.4 more times the sales of the iPhone 5c. That works out to around 6.95 million units of the iPhone 5s compared to 2.05 million iPhone 5c handsets.

If the sales trend is correct, it could explain the quick discount: A lower price can obviously move more iPhone 5c handsets.

What’s interesting about this situation is that this is the first time Apple re-purposed a prior year’s iPhone model and placed such a focus on the device. The new iPhone 5c is essentially last year’s iPhone 5 on the inside, along with a color choice in plastic on the outside. The old iPhone 5 is discontinued; another first for Apple.

It seems that the “old is new” strategy isn’t working quite yet based on the anecdotal data and quick discounts. Best Buy isn’t the only retailer selling the iPhone 5c for less than what it costs at the Apple Store. Both Walmart and Target sell the handset at a $79.99 starting price; $20 less than what you’ll find in Apple’s retail locations or online.

Meanwhile, demand is still very high for Apple’s truly new phone, the iPhone 5s. The devices are hard to find in any color or capacity, leading some developers to createonline tools to check retail inventory. It looks like a dash of color on last year’s model isn’t enough to boost demand; more people want the latest and greatest from Apple.