Rumor: Verizon Receives Accessory Stock For All New HTC One M8 Ahead Of March 25th Event

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Just earlier today we saw that Verizon had begun receiving some marketing posters and materials for The All New HTC One M8 in stores, as if they were preparing to start putting stuff up for launch of the new device soon. We know that Carphone Warehouse is going to be carrying the device minutes after HTC unveils the phone at their two events on March 25th, with one event being in New York City and the other taking place in London, where some attendees may be making their way over to a local Carphone Warehouse to pick one up afterwards. For those that won’t be able to make it to either event, not to worry as HTC will be setting up to live stream the entire thing so you don’t miss a beat.

Thus far we only know that all four major carriers will be selling the device, but we haven’t gotten word if any of them will have it on the day of the announcement. It would appear that at least Verizon may do so as evident by the marketing materials that stores are getting. Even further evidence though that they might actually have the device for sale on the 25th comes by way of a source close to Droid Life, which believes Verizon will be an exclusive US carrier with the device until the phones alleged official global launch in April. There is also apparently a source that says they have heard through the grapevine that Verizon will have the phone for sale either the day of the live event or the day after,(so the 25th or the 26th of March)on a 2 year contract for the price of $199.

The reason for the belief of this rumor is because Verizon has already started receiving not only marketing materials for the new HTC flagship, but accessories as well now. As a former retail sales employee for T-mobile, this generally only happens when the carrier is getting ready to launch the device. That being said, this is just a speculation and these are still just rumors. The HTC event is only four days away, so Verizon may actually be gearing up to put up posters and stock accessories for this new phone. Time will tell, and to be honest, we’re just tired of all the leaks and are eager to see the device officially from HTC themselves.

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HTC To Live Stream The Entire All New One Announcement Event

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In case you were worried that you might miss all the awesome details of the special event that HTC is holding on March 25th for their All New One announcement, rest easy because HTC has decided to Live Stream the entire event for all the world to see. Provided you have an internet connection of course. This makes staying on top of all the great information and coverage about the new flagship phone from HTC that much easier, so you can make sure you know every detail, see the phone from every angle,(provided they show it off in such a manner) and hear every word about all its special features. The cool thing about the live stream web portal is that they have a countdown to the main event that is scheduled to go on in New York and London, which makes this announcement that much more real. The countdown is in real time, so if you have nothing better to do you can sit at your computer and watch the clock deplete. All you need is some other form of entertainment to keep you busy while you watch the clock, and maybe a favorite snack. We wouldn’t recommend that you do this, but if you feel so inclined you can.

We know that the phone will be available in at least one major retail store in the UK, Carphone Warehouse, just minutes after HTC unveils the device at their events. So we suspect those that really want to have this new device immediately will be happy about the live stream, because now they can watch all the action happening on their old devices while they wait in line in front of stores to get their hands on the All New One.

So far Carphone Warehouse is the only retailer we know of that will have the phone available for purchase almost immediately. We can go ahead and assume that other retailer would like to offer the same sort of availability but we’d only be speculating as it just seems like a good idea. If we learn more about any other locations on where you can pick this up in your local area within the same time frames as Carphone Warehouse, we’ll be sure to update you. Until then, go ahead and bring up the live stream countdown page and wait for the show to start.

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Ebates App For Android Lets You Save Money With Cash Back For Online Shopping

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It’s always nice when you can get a little cash back for spending money on things that you need and will be buying anyway. Cash back, is a concept that is applied to many different things and different services. Plenty of credit card companies offer cash back on purchases you make using that credit card which accumulates over time, and you can then use that cash back for other stuff. There are lots of online websites that offer cash back for buying things as well, and one of the most popular ones called ebates.com, has just released an android app to the Play Store so you can now more easily buy the things you need or want and get the cash back for it.

This new app is an easy way to help save money, especially since you’ll be buying things from your favorite stores that you might have otherwise bought anyway. It has tons of great features that can all be used from Android smartphone or tablet, with some stores even offering double cash back on purchases. You can earn cash back at over 1,600 stores online, access and apply coupons at store checkout, view ebates top coupons of the week, view the stores that are offering the double cash back, and get easy access to your favorite stores. If you shop online or buy things from physical retail stores that have online websites and are included in ebates, you might as well be getting something back for buying those things.

Once you’ve started accruing some of the cash back on purchases, ebates has made it simple to see your cash pending, cash back history, and your shopping trips so you can make note of what amounts you’ll be getting back. The ebates android app also gives you push notifications, so you can see when hot deals are available and when double cash back is available at stores you like to shop at. Even better, the push notifications alert you once you’ve actually earned some money back. The app has a great tablet UI as well as a smartphone UI so it’s easy to view no matter what device you use it on. The app is live as of now so if you already shop online, start saving some money by using the ebates app. You can grab the app from the Play Store link.

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Sprint Begins Company Overhaul As It Lays Off 330 Techs And Shuts Down Service Centers And Retail Locations

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Bad news for Sprint employees today as it seems that Sprint has laid off a large amount of its tech staff. Currently they are the only major carrier of the four that employs people in retail stores as techs to repair and refurbish devices, but recently the company has said goodbye to 330 tech employees and shut down a whopping 150 service and repair centers that were spread out across the US, according to a Sprint tech employee who confirmed the information with Android Headlines. On top of that, Sprint also shut down 55 retail stores that weren’t exactly up to snuff. By that we mean they were the worst performing stores in the country. Sprint as we all know is now under the leadership of the massive Japanese wireless carrier Softbank, and all of these lay offs and shutdowns are in an effort to streamline its operations and make back some profit from the previous years before Softbank’s buyout.

It’s always unfortunate to hear about people losing their jobs in situations such as these, but big companies are in business for the main reason of making money. At the end of the day that is their main goal and Sprint is no different. Most people that are in the industry or actually work for Sprint probably already knew these cuts were on the way, as Sprint had announced plans to do so back in the beginning of the year. In addition to the cuts that Sprint is undoubtedly not finished making, they are in the process of upgrading their entire network from 3G to 4G LTE, in what they will be referring to as Sprint Spark. We all know that while carriers update the network, that the consumers can sometimes be the ones that experience the worst part of the companies growing pains, and may lose signal from time to time. While Sprint changes things up to offer faster and more reliable network speeds and coverage, they ask subscribers to pardon their dust, as eventually the dust will settle and the result from all the hard work will be blazing fast internet with stronger signal coverage. Letting go of the people that have the knowledge and skills to service devices seems like a bad move, but Sprint arguably has a plan in place for the backlash. Since not all locations will have techs on hand now to repair damaged or inoperable devices, customers will get a reference to the nearest store within a 45 minute drive that has tech employees on hand to help with their needs.

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The What’s New Section For Apps Can Now Be Tailored To Specific App Versions

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One of the best parts about updates inside the Play Store for apps is that we can see what’s new. As a geek, this is something that is fairly important as we can learn what the differences are between a previous release and the currently update build. This might not be important to some but it’s great that the devs and Google want to keep us users in the know for the changes that have been made. All of this information can be found in the What’s New section of an apps description when you’re surfing the Play Store, and is usually the first thing you’ll see when you tap on that app.

More than being important from the end user side of things, changelogs are something that can be a very useful tool for developers, as it lets them explain the changes that have been made to their users. Its great that we can be informed about the changes, but it’s even greater for the devs so they can show people how things have been improved, tweaked, fixed, etc. Without these changelogs we might never know how an app has evolved after an update is released. As of today, developers can now make it so that the what’s new section can show changes for the different version of the app that they might have, I.E. alpha, beta, and final builds. Google announced these changes this morning on the Android Developers blog.

What this all means is that basically developers can now have separate bits of text for each individual version of the app, and relay those in a relevant manner to the right groups of people. For an example on the user end of things, when you opt in to a beta for a specific app through a google+ community, any time you go in to the Play Store to update it, you will see potentially different text in the what’s new section than someone who might have a final release or an alpha build version of the app. This will allow us to see more relevant information to what we’re using, as opposed to a general set of descriptions.

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Google Software Engineer Wants To Make Eric Schmidt The CEO Of America

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With all the buzz around the Schmidt/data/NSA/government fiasco, taking Eric Schmidt and appointing him the CEO of America would seem like the last thing that someone should want. However, that’s exactly what Justine Tunney who is not only a the co-founder of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but also a Google software engineer wants to do. According to Tunney, the Federal Government has had it’s chance to run things and now it’s time to step aside and let the technology industry take over and see things through. I’m not exactly sure how this would better any negative situation that the US is in, but maybe there’s a bigger picture here that I or all of us are not seeing?

As ridiculous as this whole scenario might sound, it’s very real and the petition which was created yesterday does actually exist. For those of you that may not be aware, there is a specific website for which one would send such proposals as this one to be seen and heard. Justine Tunney had apparently submitted this proposal to The White House petitions website yesterday, but before a response can be submitted back in regards to this letter, the letter demands 100,000 digital signatures from people who are in favor of this action being carried out. You can read the full letter here at this link, but the gist of it is that Justine Tunney wants the federal government to retire with full pensions(we’d assume she wants Obama to step down as well), and presume to let the tech industry take over all administrative leadership for the United States, with Eric Schmidt at the helm.

As of this point in time, there are 5, count em 5, whole signatures out of a required 100K that will be needed before the White House will have to respond to this.(I just can’t help but picture the silly nature of an auctioneer spitting out requests for bids for more signatures at machine gun speeds, that’s how silly this whole thing seems) Justine Tunney and her four supporters(we’re going to assume that she herself is one of those five signatures, is that allowed for this sort of thing?) have one whole month to get the amount of signatures they need, and with yesterday gone they have 30 days left. While we strongly believe that they will get nowhere near the amount of digital signatures they need to garner a response, it will be interesting to see how many signatures they get by the time that this petition should be considered null and void. Should we start taking bets?

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Samsung Creates Galaxy S5 Experience App To Show People What They’re Missing Out On

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Is this some sort of trick? Nope, it’s just Samsung’s latest strategy to attempt to convince customers to buy their latest flagship device. Samsung really believes in their new device, the Galaxy S5, so much so that they’re willing to tell you what you’re current phone is missing by presenting it to you with an app that you can install on your current phone. The Galaxy S 5 Experience, as it’s being called, sounds more like some sort of weird documentary or even a low budget Sci-Fi flick, but we assure you it is every bit not those things in the slightest. The app goes into detail about some of the most attractive features of the Galaxy S5 with menus and highlights of each one. You can select your category for the feature you want to know more about, and Samsung has graciously provided big beautiful images along with a description of the feature so it can shift the spotlight onto how great it would be, if you owned the phone that had them of course.

The app provides you with different categories to select from so you can learn more about the specific details that you want to pinpoint first. Perhaps you’re really interested in one certain feature of the phone and want to know more. The categories listed are camera, speed, fitness, life, gear, and more, which consists of subcategories called additional features, gallery and accessories, just in case you wanted to check any of those out. Upon glancing through each category I found that there were hands on videos in most of them, as well as an option called Experience that walks you through an interactive slideshow on key details surrounding that specific feature.

Is this a genius move on Samsung’s part to rope more people in? You be the judge. It wouldn’t be surprising though if this app helped them sell quite a few more handsets. Should any potential customer have missed any of the big announcements surrounding the phone, not to worry because they can learn about it here. And.. all the details are available right from people’s finger tips. They don’t have to do anything special to track down hands on videos or details about certain features. This won’t be getting me to buy a Galaxy S 5 which is the intended purpose for the app, but it is well designed and put together nicely. The images are beautiful especially in immersive mode, and the hands on stuff is useful, jumping you straight to YouTube to watch the videos. If you were on the fence about the Galaxy S5 and want to know more, you can download the Galxay S5 Experience app free from the Play Store.

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