| Amazon Breaks Holiday Records, Offers Christmas Tech Support In Under 15 Seconds Posted: 26 Dec 2013 05:42 PM PST  426 items sold per second with a 9-second average Mayday response time.
The holidays were more than kind to Amazon this year. The online retailer has announced that they sold over 36.8 million items on Cyber Monday alone—that's 426 items sold every second. The news doesn't stop there, Amazon's Mayday button had a 9-second average response time on Christmas Day. Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX comes with a Mayday button that puts users in contact with Amazon tech support pretty much immediately at anytime, on any day. The official promise is human contact within 15 seconds, but they've outdone themselves with the 9-second average despite the holiday. "We set a goal for ourselves to have a response time of 15 seconds or less when a customer tapped the Mayday button—we're proud to say that on Christmas Day we met this goal, with an average response time of just 9 seconds," said Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle. The press release also mentions some of the company's favorite Mayday calls which range from carolers singing to Amazon technicians, to a girl who accidentally hit the button and screamed at seeing a person on-screen. What do you think of the Mayday button? Is it just a marketing gimmick? Tell us in the comments. |
| Google Files Lawsuit Against Apple- and Microsoft-backed Patent Group Posted: 26 Dec 2013 12:52 PM PST  Rockstar Consortium under fire after targeting Android
Google has decided that enough is enough. The company has filed a lawsuit against Rockstar Consortium—a patent group backed by many of Google's biggest competitors—claiming that the group's patent campaign is unfairly targeting Google and its Android partners. Google's been at odds with Rockstar since 2011 when Google narrowly lost the auction to buy the Nortel Network's 6,000 patent portfolio. Rockstar picked up the patents for $4.5 billion and has since used them to sue Google and many of its hardware partners. It's a battle with clearly drawn sides. Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson, and Sony—the backers of the Rockstar Consortium—face off against Google, Samsung, Huawei, HTC, and other mobile phone companies. The thousands of patents and patent applications involve core phone technologies like wireless connectivity, networking, and even semiconductors. Google's fighting back with its own lawsuit, and it seems that Rockstar's confidence is wavering. Bloomberg recently reported that some of the Nortel patents are already being sold off. Gigaom has found a copy of Google's complaint with some of the particularly relevant bits underlined. Check out the entire document below—it's not exactly fun reading, but it has all of the specific details. Google Dec Action vs Rockstar |
| UPC and FedEx Catch Heat for Holiday Delivery Delays Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:12 AM PST  Did your PC parts arrive on time?
Don't take it personal if UPS or FedEx failed to deliver all those PC components and other goodies you intended to shove underneath the Christmas tree this year. It wasn't just you, but thousands of Americans who were affected by delivery delays, as both companies contended with exceptionally bad weather and higher-than-expected demand during the holiday shopping period. "UPS experienced heavy holiday volume and is making every effort to get packages to their destination as quickly as possible," UPS said a statement. "UPS has resumed normally scheduled service on December 26." Both companies have been apologetic, with FedEx telling NBC News that weather conditions wreaked havoc on its planes and delivery trucks this year, though it all comes as little consolation to online shoppers who were relying on quoted shipping times to be accurate. "Merry Christmas FedEx," read a sarcastic message from Teri Martin in Arizona. "Thanks for taking my money, ruining my son's Christmas and taking days off to avoid dealing with desperate customers trying to find out how to get their packages! NEVER AGAIN!!!" Complaints against UPS were equally frustrated in tone. According to NBC News, you'd have to go back to 2004 for the last time a significant amount of UPS packages were late for Christmas. "UPS understands the importance of your holiday shipments," the company said in a Christmas Day statement on its website. "However, the volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity of our network immediately preceding Christmas so some shipments were delayed." In the time period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, UPS and FedEx handled a combined 275 million shipments. And according to comScore, online spending spiked 9 percent to $37.8 billion between November 1st and December 15th. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| eXtreme Outer Vision Updates PSU Calculator to Include Radeon R7 and R9 Series GPUs Posted: 26 Dec 2013 10:17 AM PST  A handy tool for estimating power needs
Picking out a power supply is not something that should be taken lightly. In a literal sense, weight is one way to determine if a PSU is up to snuff or not, but you also need to factor in how much wattage you need and how it's distributed -- today's systems rely heavily on the +12V rail(s). The easy way to figure out how much power you need so you don't overspend is to use eXtreme Outer Vision's recently updated online PSU calculator. The handy online tool was updated on Christmas (yesterday) to include a range of new parts, including AMD's Radeon R7 and R9 Series graphics cards. If you spring for the Pro version, you can even select up to half a dozen graphics cards, which might come in handy if you're a virtual coin miner. Speaking of which, eXtreme Outer Vision added support for a bunch of Bitcoin mining modules. You can select up to five of them in the Pro version. Other updates include support for Enermax's Liqtech 120X, Liqtech 240, and Liqmax 120S liquid cooling kits, as well as a boatload of processors, including three Core i7 Ivy Bridge-E chips and a Haswell processor. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Intel to Release 8-Core Haswell-E Desktop Processors in Third Quarter of 2014 Posted: 26 Dec 2013 07:51 AM PST  Penny pinchers need not apply
Intel doesn't yet offer an 8-core processor for consumer desktop applications, but by the end of the year, that's going to change. The world's largest semiconductor company, despite being motivated to aggressively compete in the mobile market, is said to be readying the launch of 8-core Haswell-E chips in third quarter of 2014. If you're hoping to pick one as you send your Ivy Bridge-E setup into retirement, you'll want to start saving up now. According to Digitimes and the sources it spoke with from the upstream supply chain, Intel's initial batch of Haswell-E processors will hover around $1,000. At the same time, the Sunnyvale chip maker also plans to launch its high-end X99 chipset to pair with these CPUs. Haswell-E will feature a 22nm manufacturing process and come in two separate styles -- X and K. Both will support Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost 2.0 technologies, along with PCI-Express Gen. 3 and DDR4 memory up to 2133MHz. Native USB 3.0 support will be part of the X99 chipset. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Newegg Daily Deals: Seagate Backup Plus 4TB USB 3.0, APC 1500 VA 865W UPS, and More! Posted: 26 Dec 2013 06:16 AM PST |
