64GB Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 sells out in under a minute

Last month, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 was unveiled. The 7.9-inch slate was originally offered with 16GB of native storage, powered by Android. This model is priced at 999 Chinese Yuan, or $156 USD. This morning, at 10 am sharp in China, Xiaomi released the 64GB variant of the tablet which is offered with Android, or Windows 10 inside. Both models are priced at 1299 Chinese Yuan, or $203 USD.

If you weren't quick enough to score a 64GB Mi Pad 2, the bad news is that the tablet is now sold out in that configuration. It took less than a minute for all of the inventory to be sold in a flash sale. There were a few complaints made to the company's Tablet page on Weibo, but there isn't much that can be done except to wait for the company to churn out more units.

In case you haven't had time to study the specs, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 keeps the 7.9-inch screen employed on the original Mi Pad, and even the 1536 x 2048 resolution is the same. Instead of the Tegra K1, which powered the OG model, the sequel has the Intel Atom X5-Z8500 chipset under the hood, with a quad-core 2.2GHz CPU. 2GB of RAM is inside along with 64GB of native storage. An 8MP camera is on back featuring an f/2.0 aperture, and the 5MP front-facing camera handles selfies and video chats. A 6190mAh battery powers the unit, and the slate features a Type-C USB port. Fast charging allows you to top off the battery quickly.

The quick sellout of the 64GB Mi Pad 2 will surely lead to the old glass half full/half empty game. Some will say that exceptional demand led to the quick sell out, while others will say that Xiaomi didn't produce enough units. Regardless of the reason behind it, the headlines say that the 64GB version of the Mi Pad 2 is sold out and that will look good for the company, which has uncharacteristically stumbled around a bit this year.

The 64GB Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 launched today, and sold out in less than a minute

LinkedIn Rival Viadeo Exits China

Viadeo, the French rival to LinkedIn, is to exit China in order to focus on becoming a profitable business. In a further cost-cutting move, it will also shutter its data center in California and migrate to the cloud.

The company moved into China eight years when it acquired local professional social network Tianji.com, but that site will cease to exist once it is closed down on December 31. Viadeo claims that Tianji has 25 million users, but it has struggled to attract the “very considerable development resources” necessary to drive it forward in “China’s fiercely competitive market”. Viadeo had planned to use one-third of the proceeds from its 2014 IPO to develop Tianji.com, but the listing didn’t raise enough capital and the firm wasn’t able to pull in money from private investors.

“In the first half of 2015 the company went looking for an investor, buyer or local partner, who could guarantee stability and commitment to support it in this market,” Viadeo said in a statement. “However, China’s changing economic conditions marked by a historical slowdown in growth, a major financial crisis in the summer of 2015 and repeated devaluations of the nation’s currency dashed hopes of identifying such a partner.”

Post-China, Viadeo said it will refocus on its home market of France and other French-speaking countries, while putting great emphasis on its B2B sales model.

Viadeo’s foray into China was a fascinating one, since it doubled down on the country in 2011, a time when Twitter and Facebook were heavily linked with opening local operations there. The company two-sided play — having a global site (Viadeo.com) and a China-only one (Tianji.com) — was a model that both of the U.S. social networks had reportedly shown interest in.

In contrast to Viadeo’s troubles in China, LinkedIn seems to be finding some success there. The U.S. social network opened a joint-venture with Sequoia China last year. LinkedIn China isn’t a totally separate site, but it does block some content from Chinabased on the country’s web censorship regulations.

Alibaba To Invest $1.25B In Restaurant Delivery Service Ele.me, Says Report

Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.

According to Crunchbase, Ele.me has raised about $1.09 billion dollars. Its list of investors is noteworthy because it includes Alibaba rivals Tencent and JD.com. Ele.me’s largest round, a $630 million Series F, was announced in August.

If the deal goes through, it strengthens Alibaba’s O2O strategy. O2O, which can stand for online-to-offline or offline-to-online, is shorthand for the business of convincing e-commerce customers to spend money at offline businesses or, on the other hand, getting customers who usually shop in brick-and-mortar stores to make online purchases.

Alibaba’s other O2O investments include its affiliate Alipay, China’s largest mobile payments platform, electronics retail chain Suning, and taxi app Didi Kuaidi.

China Is Making Domain Name History

Short domains have always been valuable, but if you’re a company today and want to own a short domain name, your price just became a lot higher. And I mean a lot.

There is a market unfolding that very few know about, and tens of millions of dollars are trading hands monthly. Over the last two years, China has become the largest buyer of domain names, resulting in what is likely the biggest story in domain-name investing since the Internet began.

Chinese investors (and other domain prospectors) have been buying up numeric and short-character dot coms faster than Adele can say “Hello.”

George Kirikos, a well-known follower of ICANN policy, tweeted on November 14th: “136 of the 676 2-letter .com domain names are now owned by Chinese registrants, breaking the 20% barrier (20.1% to be exact).”

The same week, TheDomains.com published an article noting Verisign just reported that 3.2 million new dot-com domains were registered in the previous three weeks — more than the entire second quarter.

What was once a market where domain name owners would hold and wait for a company to approach them is now quickly becoming a market with mass liquidity — the missing piece of the puzzle for the last decade.

Three-letter dot coms consisting of traditionally lower-quality letters often sold in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. Now they are catching upwards of $50,000, and more.

Western investors are still trying to catch up and understand the Chinese market. Letters of lower use in English — q, z and j for example — are considered premium in China. Vowels, on the other hand, are not premium. Any domain name with a vowel or a v is considered less valuable.

Ron Jackson, the publisher behind DNJournal, regularly reports sales like Give.com, Amber.com and Classic.com. However, the sales reports today are now almost nothing but short domains. In fact, 9 of the Top 10 year-to-date sales (all over $500,000) are less than three characters.

Even the preferred way to communicate with buyers has changed. Most transactions are agreed upon in China through QQ — the largest instant messaging system in China, but rarely known in North America. Tracy Fogarty of eNaming explains; “Most offers are sent through QQ. Maybe 1 in 10 people use email, even fewer use the phone.”

This explosion has made a lot of people extremely wealthy, but it’s not who you may think. Many industry veterans missed the boat — trying to understand how to analyze what’s attractive to Chinese buyers; others doubt the long-term value of this market, and many are doubling down for what they see ahead. All of the elements for a Hollywood story are happening right now.

One great site that tracks market activity is Chaomi.cc, showing sales history in charts (much like forex, gold or other commodities). As Hong Kong domain-name investor Franky Tong explained, “chao mi“ literally means fried rice, but also means domain speculation. This shows how Western investors may have their hands full analyzing data.

Over the last year, some incredible new milestones in domain-name registrations have been achieved.

• All five-number dot coms are now registered.
• All five-number dot nets are now registered.
• All six-number dot coms are now registered.
• All seven-number dot coms beginning with three eights, ending with three eights or having almost any repeatable pattern are now registered.
• All four-letter .orgs with premium Chinese letters are now registered.

Even with eight-number dot-com domains, of which there are one hundred million, it’s getting hard to find any of the popular patterns that don’t include a zero or four.

Is This A Fad Or History In The Making?

China is a vastly different culture than America, especially when it comes to wealth. Chinese citizens are raised learning strictly about the importance of savings and building wealth versus our consumer-based society.

Wealthy people love to invest and Chinese investors are hungry for portable wealth. The rise of Bitcoin was something quickly linked to China markets, but it couldn’t hold once Chinese regulators put a stop to the acceptance of deposits in Chinese Yuan. Bitcoin also has (and still has) liquidity issues for many owners outside of North America.

Domain names are different. First, the rarity of domain names is perfect and measurable since there are only so many two-letter dot coms, only so many three-letter dot coms, so many four-numbers with an 8, etc.

In fact, what seems like millions of domain names can easily be broken down into premium domain names that have a far lower supply than Bitcoin ever did.

This new demand for domain names is not an easy thing to understand, but some of those who do have acquired almost generational wealth over the past year. Others have made hundreds of thousands.

Short domain names are commodities now. Fads come and go, and this certainly does not seem like a fad in my opinion. Will there be ups and downs? Sure. But we are likely witnessing history in the making — a new history for an established marketplace that never saw this coming.

Maybe you should have ponied up and paid for that domain name after all.

Samsung Galaxy S7 To Get Pressure Sensitive Screen, Faster Charging Port, Says WSJ

In the cut-throat battle for smartphone buyers in increasingly saturated global marketsit’s become a game of clones for device makers.

To wit: Samsung is set to take a leaf out of Apple’s playbook for the next iteration of its flagship Galaxy smartphone. According to the WSJ — quoting “people familiar with the matter” — the Galaxy S7 will have a pressure sensitive display when it launches next spring.

This follows Apple rolling out its own pressure sensitive 3D Touch tech on the iPhone 6S, its current flagship, this fall. The tech brings an additional interaction layer to the iPhone, allowing users to press down harder to preview and view content — i.e. without having to tap multiple times.

Apple’s new, more sensitive touchscreen tech didn’t emerge out of a vacuum; rather Cupertino tested a similar tech on its Apple Watch wearable first, although the smartphone incarnation of the technology is billed as more sophisticated (hence having a fancier moniker; 3D Touch vs Force Touch).

The 3D Touch advantage represents a pretty marginal hardware gap right now vs Android devices, with relatively few iOS apps having had chance to make especially interesting use of the tech. Even so Samsung clearly can’t rest on its laurels.

Indeed, we’ve seen the exact same hardware feature catch-up race played out when Apple added a fingerprint reader to the iPhone 5S, back in September 2013 — with Samsung going on to put a fingerprint scanner on its flagship device thefollowing spring.

Albeit, on the software side, Apple is frequently accused of appropriating features from Android and adding them years later to iOS. See: Game of clones.

The WSJ’s sources also reckon Samsung will be adding a new high-speed charging USB Type-C port to the forthcoming flagship line, set to be added to both the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the S7 Edge (aka Samsung’s curved screen variant). This port will apparently support delivering a full day’s charge in under 30 minutes — or even significantly less. So even faster than the current fast-charging feature offered by Samsung devices such as the S6.

If true that’s a pretty significant addition. Apple just launched a $99 battery case — a not-so-tacit admission that people struggle with smartphone battery life as it stands. The S7 offering a very fast charge could therefore be a very popular feature — and one which steals a march on current iPhone hardware.

The S7 is also set to include an improved camera optimized for low light photography and with hardware that is flush with the back of the phone, rather than a lens that bulges out, according to the WSJ’s sources. Camera tweaks are pretty much a given with smartphone flagships since they are most people’s daily shooter nowadays, and photo sharing continues to be massively popular.

Other possible additions for the S7 line include a retina scanner, and the return of an external memory card slot (in the S7, not the S7 Edge), according to the newspaper’s sources. Samsung ditched the micro SD card slot when it redesigned the flagships last year — a decision that earned it plenty of blowback from the Android community, as did its decision to ditch removable batteries. So again adding a faster charging feature may help throw those disgruntled folk a bone.

The S7 is slated to launch in the U.S. in mid March, with its unveiling, like last year, due around the Mobile World Congress tradeshow — at the end of February.

We’ve reached out to Samsung for comment and will update this article with any response. The company recently reshuffled the leader of its mobile division — the first significant management change since Lee Jae Yong assumed the vice chairmanship of Samsung Group from his father last year.

In recent times Samsung’s mobile business has struggled to compete with Apple at the high end while also being squeezed on profits by fierce competition at the lower end from the likes of China’s Xiaomi.

Tiny baby forges adorable cross-species alliance with friendly corgi

Babies have a busy life. Many struggle with packed schedules of taking naps, watching TV, spitting up, and pushing things — including themselves— over. But babies also have important jobs as ambassadors of cuteness, so they frequently find a way to carve out some quality time for cross-species friendships.

The results are dependably adorable. Instagram user @ayako_0426 posts photos of a two-year-old Pembroke Welsh corgi and her friend, a smiley little baby. The two, it’s clear, are simply love with one another. And they do all the things best friends do: spoon each other, nap next to each other, and sometimes even smooch.

It’s a low-drama, silly, sweet friendship, the kind of relationship even adult humans aspire to. Check their beautiful little life together, below.

"Just stay there and look fluffy, please."

IMAGE: INSTAGRAM USER AYAKO_0426

"Watch and learn. I'm an expert."

IMAGE: INSTAGRAM USER AYAKO_0426

"The world is jealous of our love."

IMAGE: INSTAGRAM USER AYAKO_0426

"You are a beautiful friend, and a wonderful pillow."

IMAGE: INSTAGRAM USER AYAKO_0426

"Chilling."

IMAGE: INSTAGRAM USER AYAKO_0426

"Just two friends, enjoying a nap."

Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland Dies at 48, Says Guitarist

Scott Weiland, the ex-frontman of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver who battled substance abuse over the years, was found dead on Thursday. He was 48.

Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro first reported the news on Twitter. “Just learned our friend Scott Weiland has died. So gutted, I am thinking of his family tonight,” Navarro wrote.

Weiland was found unresponsive on his tour bus in Minnesota, where he and his current band The Wildabouts were scheduled to perform at the Medina Ballroom, but the show was cancelled, according to TMZ.

It’s unknown what caused the singer’s death.

Weiland, who battled heroin and cocaine addiction over the years, was known for his flamboyant and unpredictable persona onstage.

Wielding a megaphone alongside his bandmates for sound effect, the fiery-haired frontman led the Southern California-based Stone Temple Pilots for two decades.

Also known as “STP” by their fans, the quartet first broke out in 1992 with hit single “Creep” before going on to become one of the most popular rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s with power ballads like “Plush,” “Big Empty” and “Interstate Love Song.”

Their music still plays in heavy rotation on alternative rock stations alongside ’90s grunge acts Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.

But it was Weiland’s rock star ways that often got him in trouble offstage.

After spending five months in prison for possession of heroin in 1998, he was later charged with domestic abuse for assaulting his wife.

In 2008, he checked into rehab after being arrested for a DUI and once, after a fight with his wife, leapt from a moving car to score heroin.

“People have this misconception about me,” he said in an interview with USA Today in 2011. “OK, I struggled with heroin and cocaine and I was a big rock star. But music is not what defines me. I’m a brother, a father, a son.”

Weiland later split from Stone Temple Pilots and formed supergroup Velvet Revolver with ex-Guns N’ Roses rockers Slash and Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum. The band eventually split up, again because of Weiland’s substance abuse.

“I’m still on the verge all the time,” he said of his fight to remain sober. “My brother passed away [from a drug overdose in 2007], and that’s something that will always stay with me.”

In 2008, Weiland reunited with STP for the last time before leaving the band again and embarking on a solo career. But not, of course, without Weiland storming off in dramatic fashion.

After ex-members of Stone Temple Pilots sued the two-time Grammy-winner in 2013 for playing their material during his solo shows (STP was later fronted by Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington), Weiland countersued, calling his ex-bandmates’ claims “ridiculous.”

The group eventually reached a settlement out of court.

“I apologize to those fans out there who are, feel like they’re caught in the middle of it,” he said at the time. “‘Cause I sure feel like I’m caught in the middle of it emotionally, and all I want to do is play music.”

Known for his baritone vocal style, Weiland has also performed with the remaining members of The Doors for a VH1 “Storytellers” special.

He is survived by his two children, Noah and Lucy.

China Punishes VPN Users In Its Rural Northwest By Cutting Their Mobile Service

China’s crackdown on VPNs, software that enables Internet users circumvent the country’s web censorship, continues unabated after the New York Times reported that VPN users in one part of the country had their mobile service cut entirely.

A number of residents of Xinjiang — a province in the northwest of China that is home to a large number ethnic minority groups, including Uighurs — told the Times that their telecom operator had disabled their service, forcing them to contact the police to reconnect their account. One user was told that he’d be without service for three days.

Their offense, it seems, was to use a VPN service or an overseas messaging app.

From the Times report:

“Due to police notice, we will shut down your cellphone number within the next two hours in accordance with the law,” read a text message received by one of the people, who lives in the regional capital of Urumqi. “If you have any questions, please consult the cyberpolice affiliated with the police station in your vicinity as soon as possible.”

The person said that when she called the police, she was told that the service suspensions were aimed at people who had not linked their identification to their account; used virtual private networks, or V.P.N.s, to evade China’s system of Internet filters, known as the Great Firewall; or downloaded foreign messaging software, like WhatsApp or Telegram.

Xinjiang has been a target of Internet crackdowns in the past, rioting from Uighur in 2009 saw the region’s access to the Internet closed for nearly six months, and there are plenty of question marks this time around. For one, it isn’t clear how many of the region’s 20 million population has been affected — the Times reports queues of over 20 for reconnection at one police station — and whether this kind of clampdown might be extended to other parts of China in the future.

You’d assume the answer to the latter question is no, since cutting users off would incite unrest in many parts of the country, but Xinjiang has a reputation as a testbed and officials could justify the move in the name of upholding its new, stringent regulationsthat force phone owners to register their ID.

Why Investing In Self Education Is A Good Idea

Investing in self education- sounds like one of those looks-good-only-in-the-book quotes, right? Benjamin Franklin had once said- An investment in knowledge always pays in your best interest.

You have heard and seen people investing in real estate and mutual funds. However, investing in self education is something that many of us are unaware about. Let’s take a look at the benefits it brings you…

– Secured: Once invested, nobody can take it from you. It also opens gate for a secure retirement.

– Earnings: We all know that once learnt, knowledge brings you dividend for the rest of your life. Infact, this is one of those, which brings you high return on not-so-big investment.

– Raises your esteem: As you don’t have to depend on anybody else for financing your education, it creates confidence and security around money.

The investment is self education requires time, effort and money. I am guessing that is one of the biggest reasons as to why doesn’t everyone master these essential skills for investing and developing financial literacy.

Financing your education is one of the greatest bargains of your life, especially if you start off at an early age. It costs little, risks nothing and gives you huge returns all your life. Is it not the best investment you’ve heard of?

We live in a fast changing, rapidly adaptive world. Things that weren’t possible yesterday, are on a high today. But to be on a look out for such opportunities, requires you to keep learning, especially updating yourself on new way of doing things.

All you need to do is put out the effort and a lifetime of benefits is yours for the taking. Afterall a little extra effort put in now, for a lifetime of financial security sounds better and more reliable than avoidance now and a lifetime of financial stress, does it not?

NASA’s K2 Finds Dead Star Vaporizing a Mini “Planet”

Scientists using NASA’s repurposed Kepler space telescope, known as the K2 mission, have uncovered strong evidence of a tiny, rocky object being torn apart as it spirals around a white dwarf star. This discovery validates a long-held theory that white dwarfs are capable of cannibalizing possible remnant planets that have survived within its solar system.

“We are for the first time witnessing a miniature “planet” ripped apart by intense gravity, being vaporized by starlight and raining rocky material onto its star,” said Andrew Vanderburg, graduate student from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lead author of the paper published in Nature.

In this artist’s conception, a tiny rocky object vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star.

Credits: CfA/Mark A. Garlick

As stars like our sun age, they puff up into red giants and then gradually lose about half their mass, shrinking down to 1/100th of their original size to roughly the size of Earth. This dead, dense star remnant is called a white dwarf.

The devastated planetesimal, or cosmic object formed from dust, rock, and other materials, is estimated to be the size of a large asteroid, and is the first planetary object to be confirmed transiting a white dwarf. It orbits its white dwarf, WD 1145+017, once every 4.5 hours. This orbital period places it extremely close to the white dwarf and its searing heat and shearing gravitational force.

During its first observing campaign from May 30, 2014 to Aug. 21, 2014, K2 trained its gaze on a patch of sky in the constellation Virgo, measuring the minuscule change in brightness of the distant white dwarf. When an object transits or passes in front of a star from the vantage point of the space telescope, a dip in starlight is recorded. The periodic dimming of starlight indicates the presence of an object in orbit about the star.

The diagram depicts a model of light curve shapes. The red line indicates the symmetric shape of a hypothetical Earth-size planet transit while the blue line is the asymmetric shape of the tiny disintegrating planet and its comet-like trailing dusty tail. The black dots are measurements recorded by the K2 mission of WD 1145+017.

Credits: CfA/A. Vanderburg

A research team led by Vanderburg found an unusual, but vaguely familiar pattern in the data. While there was a prominent dip in brightness occurring every 4.5 hours, blocking up to 40 percent of the white dwarf's light, the transit signal of the tiny planet did not exhibit the typical symmetric U-shaped pattern. It showed an asymmetric elongated slope pattern that would indicate the presence of a comet-like tail. Together these features indicated a ring of dusty debris circling the white dwarf, and what could be the signature of a small planet being vaporized.

“The eureka moment of discovery came on the last night of observation with a sudden realization of what was going around the white dwarf. The shape and changing depth of the transit were undeniable signatures,” said Vanderburg.

In addition to the strangely shaped transits, Vanderburg and his team found signs of heavier elements polluting the atmosphere of WD 1145+017, as predicted by theory.

Due to intense gravity, white dwarfs are expected to have chemically pure surfaces, covered only with light elements of helium and hydrogen. For years, researchers have found evidence that some white dwarf atmospheres are polluted with traces of heavier elements such as calcium, silicon, magnesium and iron. Scientists have long suspected that the source of this pollution was an asteroid or a small planet being torn apart by the white dwarf's intense gravity.

Analysis of the star's atmospheric composition was conducted using observations made by the University of Arizona's MMT Observatory. 

“For the last decade we’ve suspected that white dwarf stars were feeding on the remains of rocky objects, and this result may be the smoking gun we’re looking for,” said Fergal Mullally, staff scientist of K2 at SETI and NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “However, there's still a lot more work to be done figuring out the history of this system.”

“This discovery highlights the power and serendipitous nature of K2. The science community has full access to K2 observations and is using these data to make a wide range of unique discoveries across the full range of astrophysics phenomena,” said Steve Howell, K2 project scientist at Ames.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Google Invests More Than $60M in Mobvoi, Its Android Wear Partner In China

Google’s services are not available in China, but that isn’t stopping it from making a significant investment in a company based on Chinese soil. The U.S. search giant is backing Mobvoi, a three-year-old company specializing in mobile voice technology, to the tune of more than $60 million.

The duo already have business ties. Mobvoi is the company that Google picked to bring Android Wear, its operating system for wearables, to China, so this deal takes things up to the next level.

The size investment, which is a Series C round for Mobvoi, has not been disclosed, but Mobvoi’s Yufan Wang confirmed that Google has become a minority shareholder. The deal, she said, takes the company to $75 million in investment to date. Since Mobvoi previously raised $10 million Series B and $1.6 million Series A rounds, Google’s investment is just shy of $65 million.

Beyond the Android Wear deal, the two companies have plenty in common. Beijing-based Mobvoi was started by ex-Googlers — CEO Zhifei Li and CTO Mike Lei are both former research scientists with Google U.S. — and Wang said the company’s DNA is heavily influenced by the tech giant.

“We used the Google model from day one,” she told  in an interview. “We wanted to have same culture and team values. The co-operation [on bringing Android Wear to China] went really well… and [Google] showed interest and decided to make an investment.”

On the business and product side, Mobvoi is very Googley, too.

The company is probably best known for Chumenwenwen, a mobile voice search service very much in the style of Siri or Google Now. The service is akin to a virtual butler, allowing users to perform a range of tasks — including search, checking weather, buying items, and more — just using their voice. Wang said the company has struck deals with over 100 content partners to give users access to various services via Chumenwenwen.

Mobvoi used its natural language technology to build out its own smartwatch software, too. Ticwear is a ROM that pairs with Android Wear to make the service — which is kneecapped in China thanks to the government’s blockage of Google services — work in mainland China.

Beyond developing smartwatch software, which works on selected watches like the Moto 360, Mobvoi went a step further and developed its own hardware: the Ticwatch. Wang said the company has sold 30,000 units of the smartwatch, which is priced between $160-$190 in China, but it remains focused on software development.

“Our goal isn’t to be a watch manufacturer, [but] we’re happy to see early adopters buying our product,” she said.

Mobvoice plans to use its new financing to hire talent from across the world and continue refine its software services — Ticwear is updated every two weeks, much like Xiaomi’s approach to its MIUI Android software — while it is also working on its own in-car software and dipping its toes into robotics. Again, that’s much like a Chinafied version of Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto from Google.

Given the many similarities with Google and reports that the U.S. firm is looking to open up its services in China — and in particular the Google Play Store — is today’s investment a sign that Google has found the company in China to rebuild its business there?

Perhaps there’s even the potential for a full Google buyout in the future?

Not so, according to Wang.

“We value this partnership a lot, and respect Google as an investor, [but it is] still a minority investor and we will focus on what we believe in and in our products,” she told TechCrunch. “We’re not changing what we’ve planned, but there are definitely more opportunities [that will open up].”

Google, for its part, said it has “nothing to announce at this time” when we asked about potential plans to expand the scope of its partnership with Mobvoi and potentially reopen the Google Play Store in China.

The company may be coy on its China plans, but today’s news is undoubted evidence that those plans do exit in some form. Google Inc and its Google Capital VC arm have made investments in China in the past — including a $5 million stake in music and video site Xuneli way back in 2007 — but this deal with Mobvoi is certainly its most strategic to date, and it sets off thoughts about what the search giant has up its sleeve.

How to Search Multiple Locations on Craigslist

According to Hitwise, a company which tracks internet search terms and trends, Craigslist is now a #1 search term. If you use Craigslist then you know that it has a wealth of information. While it's fairly easy to search through listings within a specific city or town, how do you search listings posted throughout an entire country, or even the entire world?

This is where the Craigslist Reader comes in. 


According to DownloadSquad, "Craigslist Reader makes searching Craigslist simple." It is a well written application that allows users to drill through the entire database of Craigslist, based on any search criteria whatsoever. The application is aesthetically impressive and is completely FREE. Search results are displayed in the pane to the right, and individual ad content is displayed in the panel below it. There is also a section where users can add their Craigslist items for free.

Users can go to "Advanced Search" section to set comprehensive search criteria. They pick their locations, categories, search options, and click on the "Search" button and it goes and finds stuff from Craigslist. Browsing through postings with Craigslist Reader is also very fast. In the top frame, you have a list of all your results. 

Click on a result and it appears in the bottom frame-exactly as the page would appear on Craigslist. Then you can simply click the next listing (or just press the down key) in the top frame, and that will appear below. With Craigslist Reader you don't need to constantly click the back button to view the next listing. It might be worth downloading for this reason alone.

The power of this application really comes out when you start using it. While the search itself can take a fair amount of time depending on the number of connections you allow (consider the fact that it's sifting through millions of ads across the world), the results are more useful than anything you'll find trying to sift through the website yourself.

For example, if you are looking for your dream car and are willing to look beyond your local city, you might pick your entire state or areas near you. The Craigslist Reader is useful for local searches as well, but when you can do work on a global scale, this application can really come in handy. By the time it's finished there are thousands of results to sift through; or just few - depending on your search criteria and locations.

Alerts The real game on Craigslist is getting to the opportunity faster than anyone else. If somebody is selling that iPod on a really great price because they want to sell it "today", and you call them "tomorrow" then it might be too late. On eBay, whoever calls last wins the opportunity, but on Craigslist, it's the opposite. On Craigslist, whoever calls first usually wins the opportunity. That's where the "alerts" feature of Craigslist Reader is useful.

When you click the "Add as Alert" box before performing a search, you can add that search to your alert list. What that means is that the Craigslist Reader will repeat the search as often as you tell it to, and when there are any new results, it will immediately notify you through a display, sound, SMS, email, RSS alerts. It really doesn't get any better and faster than this.

This is an excellent feature, especially if you're in a highly competitive industry and need to jump on opportunities before your competition.

Free User Ads Craigslist Reader offers something not just for buyers, but also for sellers. There is a section where you can add your ad, and everybody who is using the application will see that ad, if it matches the keyword that the user is searching for.

All you do is locate your ad on Craigslist and then drag and drop that ad on this section. Everybody who uses this application will see the ad if it meets their search criteria. This is the best way to reach those thousands of people who are using the application. This is another reason which makes this application worth downloading.

Contacting the seller

When you are looking at the ad in the bottom frame, you will notice that on the right side application provides some shortcuts. You can use these shortcuts to forward the ad to your friend, or add it in the ad section, or open it in your browser window, or add it to your favorites section. But the best shortcut is the "Reply" one.

It lets you contact the seller right from the Reader. Once you choose this option, it opens up a window which looks like this.

Here you can enter the information and click "Send" to send an email to the seller. Best thing is that it will remember all the information that you entered first time, so next time you will not have to change anything and you can just simply click on the 'Send' button. This saves a lot of time. For example, if I am buying a laptop, I usually send email to several people and I have the same body in those emails, asking them for the details of the laptop. I don't have to re-type that information again and again for different ads; the application remembers it and saves me a lot of time.

Options

The key feature in the Options section is the ability to modify how many connections you want to allow the application to use. This lets you scale back the bandwidth that the Craigslist Reader uses if you want to just let it run in the background while you surf the Internet. By carefully selecting the right connection count, you can tweak the Reader to make the most efficient use of your broadband Internet connection.

While there are a number of web based and application based Craigslist readers out there, Motion Technologies really nailed it with this particular free reader. The search capacity, bug-free features, and the ability to tweak the application and alert settings to your particular needs sets this reader well above the rest.

In particular, if you are looking for job opportunities, just set up your search notifications, let the application run in the background and before you know it countless job opportunities will be knocking down your door.