Google pays those who find Android security glitches

Those who pinpoint vulnerabilities in Google's mobile operating system can earn cash rewards, similar to those paid out for identifying bugs in Chrome.

 

 

Google has expanded its bug-bounty program to cover vulnerabilities uncovered in Android.
The program began with Chrome and expanded to Google Web sites and other open-source software projects. Under the program, people who find security holes get paid bounties. That often equates to a few hundred dollars, but particularly skilled attacks can mean big money -- $50,000 last week for one expert who goes by the name Pinkie Pie, for example.
The broader expansion, called the Patch Reward Program, now includes Android, Google security team member Michal Zalewski said in a blog post Monday.
The program also includes three widely used Web server packages: Apache's http, Nginx, and Lighttpd, Zalewski said.

Chrome, Opera pass Epic Citadel demo's Web graphics test

Two new browsers have followed Firefox with support for the Web-based 3D gaming engine. But Chrome and Opera don't use Firefox's asm.js technology approach.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

Chrome and Opera have become the first browsers to match Mozilla Firefox's support for Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and the Web-based Epic Citadel demo that's built on the 3D graphics technology. The demo's computing challenges include 3D graphics covered with 2D textures, rustling leaves, flowing water, reflective stone floors, lens flare, and shadows and other lighting effects.
Mozilla and Epic Games demonstrated the advanced Web programming in March using a combination of Mozilla technologies: Emscripten that converts C or C++ software into JavaScript, and asm.js that can run a specialized subset of JavaScript much faster.
Mozilla has been trying to drum up support for asm.js, but Chrome and Opera used their own JavaScript technology. (Opera Software, earlier this year, shifted away from its browser engine, adopting Chrome's and benefiting from Google's investment in the software.) The Epic Games demo also uses the WebGL standard for 3D graphics, which Chrome, Mozilla, and Opera all support.

Epic Games added Chrome 31 and Opera 18 to its Unreal Engine 3 supported browsers list. Martin Best, the product manager of games at Mozilla, noted the rival browsers' achievement in a blog post Tuesday.
The new browser support is notable, given the push toward Web programs that run on any machine with a browser -- cross-platform flexibility that has big advantages over writing native code that only works on iOS, Windows, or some other specific operating system. But the maturity and consistency of Web programming still leave a lot to be desired, especially for complicated, performance-intensive Web apps.
Mozilla and Google got their Unreal performance with significantly different approaches. Asm.js uses a technology called ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation for its performance boost, with the Web app sending a "use asm" hint to the browser to trigger the technology. Compilation is the process of converting human-written source code into machine language that a computer can execute. AOT compilation means the browser can build an optimized version of the software in advance.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

But Chrome uses a different approach with its V8 JavaScript engine called just-in-time (JIT) compilation that's standard nowadays for most Web sites and Web apps. The JIT approach means the browser compiles the JavaScript, monitors how it runs, and optimizes with new compilation as it goes.
Google likes its approach because improvements to the JIT can mean all JavaScript across the Web gets faster, not just what's specifically created to take advantage of asm.js.
Google's "V8 people seem to want to JIT-optimize harder, not process 'use asm,'" said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich, but he's not convinced the performance will catch up to AOT compilation. In his experience, Unreal Engine 3 on Chrome shows more "jank" from pauses triggered by recompilation and Firefox is faster to start running the software.
"Yet they do well," Eich said, praising Chrome's virtual machine that runs the JavaScript programs. "V8 is a formidable JIT'ing virtual machine."
In my tests of the two, Chrome showed a higher frame rate on a 2012 Retina-equipped MacBook Pro. Firefox Nightly version 28.0a1 (2013-11-26) showed 52.4fps, but Chrome 33.0.1712.4-dev ran at 59.8fps.
Both versions sent the CPU fan whirring, though, so there's still work to be done.

Update, 11:24 a.m. PT: Adds comment from Google.

The Epic Citadel demo of Unreal Engine 3 running in a browser using high-speed JavaScript and WebGL.

Reports of Comet ISON's death may be greatly exaggerated

The sun-grazing comet spent Thanksgiving visiting our neighborhood star, and seems to have emerged from its shadow to tell the tale.\

ISON (or fragments thereof) emerges from behind the sun on its path back out of the solar system and past Earth.

(Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO/GSFC)

It made for perhaps the nerdiest Thanksgiving moment ever when I plugged a Google Chromecast into my mother's TV on Thursday and proceeded to put a live NASA Google+ Hangout on Comet ISON's sun-grazing journey on the screen in the living room.
By the time all the pumpkin pie had been knocked back and the turkey set to work lulling me into a coma, ISON had failed to emerge from the sun's shadow after reaching perihelion, leading many observers to conclude that the comet had been destroyed by its close encounter with the massive nuclear furnace at the center of our galactic cul-de-sac.

ISON is a breed of comet fresh in from the Oort Cloud, the likes of which have not been observed from Earth in many years. If it were to survive perihelion, it would be flung back out to deep space, perhaps giving off a spectacular light show for us on planet No. 3 in the process.
That's the best-case scenario. Worst-case scenario is that ISON is basically swallowed by the sun, and for most of Thursday that seemed to be the actual-case scenario as well.
Then NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite sent back an image that seemed to show...something. Here's how NASA's Karen Fox described it in a blog post:

The question remains whether it is merely debris from the comet, or if some portion of the comet's nucleus survived, but late-night analysis from scientists with NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that there is at least a small nucleus intact.

In other words, Comet ISON seems to have survived in some form, but it's not yet clear if what remains of it will put on the spectacular light show in the coming weeks that we've been hearing about for months now.
Fox says ISON has been behaving in unexpected ways, so the way its long-anticipated Thanksgiving perihelion went down seems true to form. Now it's time to sit back and await the big show...or the big disappointment.

Google Nexus phones reportedly susceptible to SMS attacks

 

 

Google's latest Nexus smartphones are vulnerable to an attack in which someone could force the phones to reboot or lose their network connection by sending them a large number of a certain kind of SMS message, according to PC World. Bogdan Alecu, a system administrator at Dutch IT services company Levi9, reportedly found that the vulnerability can occur when an attacker sends about 30 so-called Flash SMS messages -- messages that appear immediately on the phone's screen on arrival -- to the Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 4, or the Nexus 5. If the messages aren't promptly dismissed, it opens the phones up for attack. Alecu plans to present his findings Friday at the DefCamp security conference in Bucharest, Romania.

One of the problems Nexus users face is that they won't be automatically alerted with an audio tone when a Flash SMS message is received, which could allow an attacker to send a lot of them quickly before they're noticed or dismissed, PC World reports.
According to Alecu, the SMS overload can result in several issues, including the phone rebooting, which is the most likely outcome. In that case, if a PIN is required to unlock the SIM card, the phone won't connect to the network after rebooting. Another problem that can occur is that the messaging app crashes, but the system then automatically restarts it.
Alecu told PC World that while the issue appears to affect the latest Nexus smartphones running Android versions Ice Cream Sandwich through KitKat, it hasn't worked on other phones he's tested.
We've reached out to Google for comment on how the company plans to address the issue and will update this post when we learn more. Alecu told PC World that he reported the issue to Google, but that it hasn't yet been addressed.

Wave fingers, make faces: The future of computing at Intel

The chip giant is working on "perceptual computing" technology that will sense your emotions and your body language. Here's an inside look.

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Anil Nanduri, an Intel executive working on perceptual computing, demos technology that senses users' individual fingers. 

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- If the next big wave in devices turns out to be gestures and eye tracking, Intel wants to be ready. Intel is the king of PCs, but it hasn't always been ahead of evolving innovations. Its processors power more than 80 percent of the world's computers and the vast majority of its servers, but Intel has made little headway in smartphones and tablets. To spur interest in PCs again, as well as persuade more mobile device makers to use its chips, Intel has devoted significant resources and efforts to something it calls "perceptual computing."
Perceptual computing may sound like a jargony, marketing term, but it does just what it says -- it uses the senses to help technology interpret what's going on around it. Those features, such as gestures, facial recognition, and voice recognition, should all make devices more "natural, intuitive, and immersive," says Anil Nanduri, one of the Intel executives in charge of the company's efforts in perceptual computing.

 

 

The goal is getting "sensory inputs that make [computers] more human like," Nanduri said. "Once you give computers the ability to assess depth, a lot of wonderful things can happen."
Devices will be able to sense emotion and detect a person's biometric data simply using a camera. They'll be able to carry on conversations with users and understand context -- or what "play me some jazz" means -- instead of simply following commands. Computers will be able to pick out individual fingers instead of simply recognizing an entire hand or the fact that a person is present. And they'll create more immersive augmented reality, such as digital versions of children's pop-up books.
In the case of Intel, the company is placing particular emphasis on vision and teaching devices to recognize depth. That's made possible through 3D cameras. The company has partnered with Creative on 3D cameras, which should show up integrated into devices such as PCs and tablets in the second half of 2014.
A big pitfall for companies like Intel is the hyper focus on speeds and feeds, making technology that's the most powerful without necessarily considering all the ways it might be used. For perceptual computing, Intel says it's starting with software and users first and then moving to the hardware.
To do that, Intel released a software development kit last year to get developers interested in the technology. Since that time, the SDK has been downloaded more than 26,000 times. Intel is so serious about perceptual computing that it has even sponsored contests -- with $100 million in prizes -- to get app developers interested in the technology. Intel will announce the latest crop of winners soon.
"For the users, what am I getting for it?" Nanduri said. "That's why we started a year early, focusing on the ecosystem more so than talking about bringing this into hardware or a device."

Yuriy Kozachuk, an application engineer in Intel's perceptual computing lab, demos technology that tracks facial expressions and translates them to characters in a game. 

But now Intel believes the ecosystem has advanced enough that it's time to talk hardware. Devices will show up next year that contain elements of Intel's perceptual computing efforts. And it hopes all of those will use its chips. Technically, some features could be possible using chips such as those from Qualcomm. However, Intel says the amount of horsepower needed to run the features smoothly will require its higher-end chips. Initially, the perceptual computing features will only work with Intel's Core line traditionally used in PCs and some tablets, not its lower-power Atom line used in mobile devices. However, the company plans to eventually make the features run on its more energy efficient processors, and it's also adding accelerators, tools, and graphics to its chips to take advantage of the perceptual computing capabilities.

"We're already thinking ahead and looking at the use cases people need two to three years out from now and putting them into our silicon," Nanduri said.
Some elements of perceptual computing have already shown up in products. The Kinect for Microsoft's Xbox is one example, as are Siri and Google Now for voice recognition. However, Intel says it's taking those a step further by focusing on short-range interaction of less than a meter. That means the technology needs a very fine level of recognition, with the ability to pick out specific fingers instead of just noticing an arm or if entire person is present.
But it still will be a challenge for Intel to make features that are truly useful and not just gimmicky. Intel acknowledges that gesturse and other features won't be ideal for all instances. Computer users, for instance, won't be making slideshows by waving their hands in the air. But they might use gestures when showing the slideshow to friends.
Gaming, in particular, is one area where perceptual computing could really take off, Nanduri said, as well as education and related fields. And it's not just about PCs. This technology will show up in a wide range of devices in the coming years, he said.
The company is sure to provide more details and demos in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
"Perceptual computing is about everything and is device agnostic in many ways," Nanduri said. "It's going to be everywhere."

'Fast & Furious' actor Paul Walker dies in car crash: Publicist

SANTA CLARITA, California: Paul Walker, the star of the "Fast & Furious" movie series, died on Saturday in a car crash that killed two people north of Los Angeles, his publicist said. He was 40.

Walker died on Saturday afternoon, Ame Van Iden told the Associated Press.

A statement on the actor's Facebook page said he was a passenger in a friend's car, and that Walker was in the area to attend a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide.     

 A statement on the actor's Facebook page said he was a passenger in a friend's car, and that Walker was in the area to attend a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide.
   "We... are stunned and saddened beyond belief by this news," the statement said.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's department said that deputies found a car engulfed in flames when they responded to a report of a collision in the community of Valencia. Two people who were found in the car were pronounced dead at the scene.

The Santa Clarita Signal reports a red Porsche crashed into a light pole and tree and burst into flames.

Walker was working on "Fast & Furious 7" at the time of his death. He also starred in the suspense drama, "Hours," which is set for release this month.

Pop music finally put to good use tracking space junk

The dipole antennas of the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope can pick up reflections from up to 620 miles away. 

Australian broadcaster Triple J plays a mix of pop and alternative tunes that are being recruited to serve science -- by helping track space junk orbiting above us.
The station is among FM broadcasters whose signals are bouncing off decaying satellites and other debris and into the giant "ear" that is the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia.
The high sensitivity of the radio telescope launched earlier this year allows it to detect objects smaller than 1 meter (3.2 feet), according to its director Steven Tingay of Curtin University. Tingay wants to use the array to improve knowledge of the thousands of bits of scrap that may threaten working satellites.
FM radio transmitters send waves over the Earth but also into space, where they bounce off satellites and space junk. Some of those waves get reflected back to Earth.

The array, which consists of 2,048 dual-polarization dipole antennas arranged in 128 formations of four-by-four tiles, is a precursor to the international Square Kilometer Array radio telescope. It can pick up reflected waves from objects up to 620 miles away.
In 2009, an Iridium communications satellite collided with a defunct Russian satellite, creating an unprecedented cloud of more than 2,000 bits of debris, which worried operators of other satellites as well as the International Space Station.
Earlier this month, the European Space Agency's 1-ton Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer fell back to Earth, mostly burning up in the atmosphere with bits hitting the southern Atlantic.
In a study in The Astronomical Journal, Tingay and collaborators showed how they used the Murchison Widefield Array to track the ISS based on how it reflected FM radio broadcast signals originating in southwestern Australia.
"Because the telescope has such a large field of view, monitoring vast patches of the sky at any given time, we can simultaneously image hundreds of these objects every day and track them for long enough to determine their orbits," Tingay says in a recent video.
"We can do all this at the same time as our primary mission. That is, to look way back into cosmic time."

Microsoft, bored of bashing Apple, bashes Samsung

It's been established that Microsoft believes the i Pad has many, many flaws. Now Redmond would like you to know that the Samsung Galaxy Tab isn't all that either.

Look how substandard the Galaxy Tab is.

If you're in business, you have to get used to criticism.
If you're in the gadget business, however, you're nobody unless Microsoft criticizes you.
What other conclusion can one reach after Redmond's assault on its various rivals?
There's the constant poking at the iPad's foibles. Then there's the sublimely gauche Scroogled campaign, which accuses Google of being little more than a malevolent dictatorship.
Samsung, though, has been relatively free of Microsoft's barbed fire. Until now, that is.
For Microsoft has chosen the Thanksgiving weekend to give thanks that its own Surface RT is so much more intelligent and useful than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
I'll admit I haven't seen an enormous proliferation of Tab 10.1s adorning coffee shops, holding cells, and public transport. So it makes for a slightly odd target for Microsoft.
However, Redmond wants you to be clear, should you be vacillating between a Tab and a Surface RT, that its machine is superior.

It has a full-size USB port, which allows you to do, well, full-size USB porting. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has one micro USB port, which means you can't power and connect to an external device at the same time.
And then there's the need for connectors that you have to buy as extras.
Microsoft is looking to find any and every possible rational reason to persuade you that the Surface is all things to all people with computing needs.
Indeed, more ads targeting the Galaxy Tab appeared last week -- including a family sharing comparison similar to one of the most recent anti-iPad ads.
Sadly, the initial launch of Surface, with its embarrassing dancing teens and business people, continues to hamper progress.
When people don't have their emotions positively disposed to your brand, it's so much harder to persuade them that you're as great as you think you are.

First iPad Mini vs. Retina: No contest

iPad Mini Retina.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

The iPad Mini Retina's speed seals the deal.
A lot has been written about the Mini Retina's display. For good reason, of course. Take a display with 786,432 pixels (iPad Mini original) and put it up against one with over 3 million (iPad Retina) and you notice the difference.
But I have been more impressed with the performance of the Mini Retina. After using it for two weeks, the speed is what has sold me.
The best analogy I can think of is going from a circa 2009 MacBook Air to today's fastest Haswell-based MacBook.

It's that dramatic. Those numbers (below) don't lie.
The reason is pretty easy to understand. The iPad Mini has a very old (in computer years) A5 chip -- that's the same chip that debuted in the iPad 2 in March 2011.
The Mini Retina has Apple's latest chip, the A7, with more RAM.
What does all of this speed add up to? With a tablet as good as the Mini Retina, it's another reason to use a laptop less.
One of the greatest barriers to productivity (you know, doing actual work, not just browsing social media or watching movies) on a tablet is performance. Add a keyboard, and you're three quarters of the way to a laptop.
Which leads me to a final thought. The A7, or its successor the A8, would work just fine in a newfangled future 64-bit Apple device.
PC makers are already doing this with Intel's new "Bay Trail" chip, which is similar in performance to the A7.
Take Dell's Venue 11 Pro high-end tablet. It can be converted into a professional productivity platform via its modular design.

I have to think Apple has bigger plans for the A series chips than just the iPhone and conventional iPads.
An iPad Pro, anyone?

Geekbench scores for first-gen iPad Mini (top) and Retina Mini. Numbers are single core benchmark (left) and multicore. And, yes, it actually feels that much faster.

From Bordeaux to Warhol: Amazon goes high-brow

There's more to e-commerce than marked-down Kindles and superhero videos, and Amazon has the $200,000 artwork to prove it.

Amazon photographer Heather Shea photographs bottles of wine slated to go on sale at Amazon.com.

(Credit: Amazon) 

 

Tucked somewhere in the Amazon campus in Seattle, there is a room that has holds some very important racks of wine.
The bottles are handled carefully. With gloved hands, an Amazon photographer pulls each one off a wire rack and then photographs it so that online shoppers can see each bottle in a clean setting. An image of each bottle's label and description will be uploaded to site so shoppers can look at them in detail. This has happened thousands of times, for each type of wine Amazon sells. It is decidedly not how Amazon sells DVDs or books.
Rather, this is part of the online retail giant's push into new categories of high-brow products -- including a $700 bottle of Montrose Bordeaux and a $200,000 Andy Warhol original depicting China's Chairman Mao -- all in an effort to create a new revenue stream and meet the demands of a more elite base of clientele.
It's doing so through it's third-party marketplace. The site already dabbles in some pricey products, like $9,000 diamond rings, but its latest categories, art and wine, show a whole other level of commitment.
"Everything we do at Amazon starts with the customer and works itself backwards," said Peter Faricy, vice president of marketplace for the company. "Those are all categories customers have given us the feedback that they would love to get."

Peter Faircy, Amazon's vice president of marketplace.

(Credit: Amazon)

It's a far cry from Amazon's typical offerings, which began with discounted books and expanded to thousands of items -- all sold at bargain prices with free shipping. Still, it's a natural path of evolution for a company that strives to sell all things to all people. Although these products aren't the easiest to sell through the Internet -- Amazon knows that from past attempts -- it's worth the effort for the company.
The third-party marketplace is a good way to dive in. The platform lets Amazon open up product categories without actually managing the inventory. Third-party sellers pay a small revenue-sharing fee for each item sold on Amazon's site. Typically, sellers can even use Amazon's large network of warehouses to make its deliveries. In the case of wine and art, however, sellers manage all the shipping themselves. It frees Amazon from the responsibility of delivering such products, which can be difficult given the regulation and care needed to ship items like alcohol and artwork.
Amazon gets to show off a selection of products and its partner sellers, in theory, gets the eyes of Amazon's millions of customers.

Tapping into the wine industry
In the grand scheme of things, wine might not seem so lucrative. Amazon made $61 billion on its online sales in last year. In contrast, wineries shipped $1.46 billion worth of wine in 2012. But, that's a 10 percent increase from 2011, and a 24 percent increase from 2010, according to a report (PDF) co-produced by Ship Compliant, a software company that ensures wine shipments comply with individual state laws. The report analyzes the shipments from the 4,700 wineries from the US.
The majority of these sales come from wine subscription programs, a popular way for wineries to sell directly to consumers, but online sales are a growing portion, according to Jeff Carroll, vice president of strategy and compliance at Ship Compliant.

While there are smaller, competing third-party seller sites out there, Amazon, which launched its wine program about a year ago, has a chance to capitalize on a fledgling market.
To make the products look good for its third-party sellers and to try to garner trust from the customers browsing the pages, Amazon made its product pages uniform, ensuring the same type of information is available for each product, with high-quality visuals.
To achieve this in wine, each of the 800 wineries that sell through Amazon's site send a bottle of each type of wine listed for sale on the site. Currently, the number is at 6,500 unique wine labels, across 70 different varietals of grapes. More than a thousand of these wines come from countries outside the US, including France, Italy, and Australia. The price of the wines offered range from $10 up into hundreds of dollars.
The company photographs the bottles, scans the labels into its system, and lists more information than it ever has for any product. That includes what region the wine is from, what varietal of grape its made from, what type of blend it is, what type of barrel it's been aged in, how much alcohol is in it, and what types of food it pairs well with -- all the things a wine connoisseur would want to know when buying a bottle of wine.

Amazon Wine adds professional photography and dynamic shipping to its product pages.

Hall Wines, a winery in California's Napa Valley, sells several bottles of wine through Amazon, including a $125 Kathryn Hall Cabernet Sauvignon.
Jeff Zappelli, director of memberships for Hall Wines, said the winery sells out of the Kathryn Hall when it offers it on Amazon, but the reality is, it's a rare wine and there aren't many bottles for sale to begin with. What's more is, Hall Wines doesn't sell a large volume of the other wines it's offered on Amazon site either. But, that doesn't matter.
It's about introducing Hall Wines to millions of Amazon's existing customers, according to Zappelli. Hall Wines' owners initially had concerns about selling through Amazon, mostly because of a fear that selling it through a platform like Amazon -- a site known cheap commodity products and even cheaper shipping -- would diminish its brand. No doubt, it's still a concern for the many thousands of wineries that haven't signed up with Amazon.
But, Zappelli thinks selling Amazon has done the opposite for Hall Wines because it gives the winery access to instant customer reviews and feedback.
"How do we break down the barrier of the sales so we're really having a relationship with our customers and our members? Not selling through a wine store, where we don't have that feedback," he said.
He's also found a willing partner in Amazon to learn about his industry and incorporate new features that make selling wine online easier. That includes features like dynamic shipping. Once customers chooses a bottle of wine from Amazon, the site will let them know how many bottles of wine they would need to purchase from the winery in order to qualify for one-cent shipping.

Reproducing a gallery experience
This attention to detail is something Amazon needs to apply to its art category, which the company launched in August.
The online art sales business is also a small piece of the pie when it comes to art sales. Like wine, it's a nuanced industry. Amazon is currently working with more than 200 art galleries to sell 45,000 pieces of art on sale on its site.
While Amazon won't disclose what pieces it's sold so far, previously listed items include a $1.5 million Andy Warhol original called "Flowers" and a $975,000 painting from Helen Frankenthaler, titled "Adirondacks." Both are now marked "unavailable," a possible indication that someone actually bought them through Amazon. Norman Rockwell's "Willie Gillis: Package from Home," however, did not sell through the site. The painting -- which brought attention to Amazon Art during the section's launch due to its $4.85 million listing price -- sold at a Chicago auction house for $2.8 million. This listing has since been removed.
Beyond the issue of price, Amazon wants to convince customers that buying online is just as good as walking into a gallery. For each piece, Amazon asks merchants to provide details like measurements, materials used, it's condition, and a biography of the artist. It has yet to set up a way to photograph every piece of art, but it does make sure to have high-resolution images available so customers can zoom in and see brush stroke details.
Although Amazon can't altogether replace the experience of physically standing in an art gallery to look at pieces, it's tried to emulate the experience. This includes one feature Faricy is particularly proud of, "view in room." The feature generates an image of the selected art piece in a room with furniture. It's already developed a bit since Amazon Art launched, adding more pieces of furniture to the image, but Faricy says this is an area Amazon wants to develop more.

Amazon Art's "view in room" feature.

"View in room" has potentially broader applications. Faricy said he could see the same techniques applied to large flat-screen TVs. Dynamic shipping, which has been very popular among wine customers, could also be applied elsewhere on the Amazon site, he said.
Of course, these are just possibilities. It's still early days for both the art and wine categories, but if Amazon can tackle this, they can continue to move up the chain in the luxury markets. This includes the secondary market that resells used lux items, such jewelry or handbags, according to Marshal Cohen a retail analyst at NPD Group.
It's what eBay already does successfully, and a model Amazon wants to emulate since it's yet another way to sell everything.
"It's not only about having a product -- they want to be the first place you go," he said, no matter if you're selling or buying.

Snapchat's Evan Spiegel: Saying no to $3B, and feeling lucky

The son of successful lawyers, Spiegel grew up in a world of wealth, power, and privilege. Now the 23-year-old entrepreneur will be remembered for saying no to Mark Zuckerberg.

Snapchat CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September 2013.

(Credit: Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch) 

 

LOS ANGELES -- Like many a young man, Evan Thomas Spiegel is enamored of expensive cars. Unlike many young men, he can afford them.
A little more than two years after leaving Stanford University three classes shy of graduation, Snapchat's co-founder sits atop a hastily established empire that is already worth billions in the eyes of would-be acquirers -- including Facebook, which reportedly offered to buy Snapshot for $3 billion in cash.
Snapchat, which was valued at $800 million just a few months ago, makes an app for sending pictures and videos, called "snaps," that disappear after a few seconds. The service now processes more than 400 million snaps per day, and is a big hit with tweens and teens, although the company has yet to say how many people use it. Either way, it's attracted the attention of sober-minded VCs eager to write big checks in hopes of getting in early on the next Facebook. So for the moment, Spiegel is under no pressure to make a choice, whether the future involves a sale or raising more cash to build a company that he believes has an even bigger future.
Whatever else he does in life, the 23-year-old entrepreneur will forever be remembered for saying no to Mark Zuckerberg. Whether that decision turns out inspired or insane -- it was a bold statement of confidence from someone so young. Surprising? Not to those who know him.
"He really believed in his ideas," said Leo Rofe, a classmate who was a grade below Spiegel at the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, Calif. "He was adamant about them."
Later in life, Spiegel would prove to be so unshakeable in his convictions that he would make the gamble of a lifetime
.
Born lucky
Born June 4, 1990, to a couple of successful lawyers, Spiegel grew up in a world of wealth, power, and privilege. His mother, Melissa, the youngest woman ever to graduate from Harvard Law School, resigned as a partner from Pillsbury, Madison, & Sutro to work as a stay-at-home mom when he was a baby. Spiegel's father, John, was (and still is) a partner at the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, a job that afforded the family a very comfortable lifestyle in a $4.6 million home in Huntington Palisades, an upper class neighborhood in Pacific Palisades on the western fringes of Los Angeles.

"So if life isn't fair -- it's not about working harder, it's about working the system."
--Evan Spiegel

Along with his two sisters, Lauren and Caroline, Spiegel was treated to the finer things in life, including spring breaks in Maui, summers at La Jolla's Beach and Tennis Club, and vacations to Europe, along with frequent shopping sprees and a personal chef. But there was also plenty of extracurricular activity, and volunteer work. By most accounts, Spiegel turned out to be a well-adjusted, ambitious, and agreeable young man.
But that idyllic-sounding upbringing also had its less than picture-perfect moments. As an older teenager, Spiegel frequently overspent, a reality that led to many heated, money-related arguments with his father.
"You may condemn my love of material objects (like cars), but think about how you enjoy your Bose headphones," Spiegel wrote in a February 12, 2008, letter to his father. He was 17.
The note, accompanied by a plea for a new BMW 535i, came at the most tumultuous point in Spiegel's life, as his parents divorced after nearly 20 years of marriage.

John Spiegel's home on Toyopa Drive in Pacific Palisades.

 

 

Spiegel initially chose to live with his father, who bought a $4.25 million estate on Toyopa Drive, just four blocks away from his childhood home where his mother still lives. The senior Spiegel gave his son carte blanche to decorate the new home, a privilege that came with the professional decorating services of Greg Grande, the set designer on "Friends." Spiegel outfitted his new room with a white leather custom king-size bed, Venetian plaster, floating bookshelves, a state-of-the-art computer, two designer desk chairs, and custom closets. He also installed a movie theater with an 8-foot screen in the basement of the house, and was able to control the setup from his bedroom. His father's exceptional generosity was put to the test after 17-year-old Spiegel repeatedly overdrafted his bank account and begged for the BMW 535i, a $75,000 car. Spiegel, who was already driving a 2006 Cadillac Escalade, which his father bought new for $56,000, wanted the smaller car because he was "doing a lot more driving in the city," according to court documents filed by his parents during their lengthy and litigious divorce.

From 17-year-old Evan Spiegel, a suggested budget for monthly expenses 

 

 

At the time, Spiegel Sr. was giving Spiegel Jr. an allowance of $250 a week. Along with the new car, the younger Spiegel made a strong case for why he should get $1,992 a month for car, food, entertainment, and clothing expenses. He also wanted a $2,000 "emergency fund" because his "life is full of unforeseen expenses," as he wrote in the note to his father.
Spiegel declined repeated requests from CNET for an interview for this article.
As it turned out, Spiegel would not get what he wanted and moved back to his mother's house full-time after one particular money discussion escalated into a heated argument, which climaxed when Spiegel cut himself out of family photos. A few days after the move, his mother leased him the BMW he wanted.
But Spiegel didn't let the squabbles affect his stellar performance when away from the volatile home environment -- though he did get a speeding ticket for driving 62 miles per hour in a 35-mph zone a few weeks after getting the BMW. Mitch Kohn, Spiegel's 10th grade English teacher and his journalism adviser sophomore through senior years at Crossroads, remembers Spiegel as a prized student, one who decided to write a feature about the school's unconventional approach to teaching mathematics and interviewed the department heads.
"He decided he wasn't sure he liked the way Crossroads taught math from K through 12th grade," Kohn said. "I love the fact that...His opinions changed as he wrote the article. He came to understand the philosophy of it. He looked into whether kids were successful learning math that way. It just became this unbelievably good article...It was one of the best articles we had that year, by far."
His hard work paid off: He was admitted to Stanford. Spiegel got the news while vacationing in Prague.

The man and the myth
"The rhetoric of the entrepreneur is deeply embedded in Stanford's history. We've all heard the story -- young, white male drops out of college to follow a dream. His commitment to this dream helps him through highs and lows. He refuses to be another cog in the 'machine.' This romantic business fairytale pervades Stanford culture -- it is uniquely Silicon Valley."
"It" is Evan Spiegel, and these are his own words, as spoken to the audience at a Stanford Women in Business "Design Yourself" Conference on April 7, 2013.
"This brings me back to our fascination with the mythology of the entrepreneur," Spiegel told the audience. "An individual who is able to combine -- gracefully and authentically -- their life and their work. An individual who has identified a dream far greater than accumulation of wealth, but a dream that is achieved through participation in consumer society and the creation of a company."
The mythology of Evan Spiegel, the entrepreneur, started long before he met his frat brothers Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy, and years before he attended Stanford.
It started with a fascination with design during his teenage years, possibly even earlier. In the summer of 2005, when Spiegel was just 15, he took two continuing-education courses at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. One, on graphic design, made a strong impression on him.
"Her graphic design class took a hands-on approach to design thinking and was transformational for me as a student," Spiegel later wrote in a LinkedIn recommendation for his professor Milka Broukhim. "I will never forget the typography experiments we completed during the course as well as the time spent in the letterpress lab."

Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences in Santa Monica, an "elite, anti-prep mecca for entertainment-industry offspring," as described by Vanity Fair. The high-priced progressive institution, where students call teachers by their first names, cost the Spiegels around $75,000 every year in tuition fees for the three kids.

When working for the Crossfire, the Crossroads newspaper, Spiegel would walk around the neighborhood and ask local businesses to buy ads. Though part of the grade for the journalism class was to sell a certain amount of advertising, Kohn remembers Spiegel as a top earner who not only exceeded his sales goals, but helped coach the other kids on how to ask adults for money. And then, during his senior year, Spiegel decided he wanted to work for Red Bull. "I loved the brand, I loved the lifestyle, and I was obsessed with the beverage. I had to be a part of it," he said during the April 2013 keynote. "So I found a friend who knew a guy that worked there, and I begged him for a job. I called him repeatedly, we met for coffee, and I agreed to do anything at all for Red Bull."

The friend turned out to be Spiegel's priest, according to his mother, who also said during the divorce proceedings that Spiegel spent the unpaid internship "learning about marketing and assisting with various computer and graphic design projects."
Spiegel's version of his time at Red Bull is a tad different: "I learned how to throw great parties, and I had a blast."
The summer before college, he also took a class at the Arts Center College of Design in Pasadena. But once he got to Stanford, Spiegel had conflicting interests. He took a paid internship with a biomedical company. Later, convinced he wanted to be a teacher, he went to Cape Town in South Africa to teach students on how to get jobs.
Spiegel's first real taste of tech and entrepreneurship came when he crossed paths with Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, at a Stanford business school class he was sitting in on, thanks to the reference of a family friend. The story goes that Spiegel begged Cook for a job. The plea worked. Spiegel got to work with Cook and an engineer on a project called TxtWeb, which took information available online and made it accessible via SMS to people in India who didn't have broadband Internet access.
After the Intuit gig, Spiegel and his Kappa Sigma fraternity brother Bobby Murphy started FutureFreshman.com, a site with a guide for students, parents, and counselors on how to manage the college application process. No one, save for their parents, used it, Spiegel said.
Then, in the spring of 2011, Spiegel made the call that changed his life. The call was to Murphy to discuss switching from FutureFreshman to a new idea: disappearing picture messages.
Well, that's the myth anyhow.
Now you see him ...
The real creation story behind Snapchat is more complicated and involves Reggie Brown, a Kappa Sigma fraternity brother who came up with the idea of deleting picture messages.

Reggie Brown (left), Bobby Murphy, and Evan Spiegel (right) pictured celebrating Snapchat's launch in July 2011.

Brown brought the idea to Spiegel, and Spiegel recruited his FutureFreshman cohort Murphy to code the app. The threesome then worked together, spending the summer of 2011 at the Toyopa Drive residence in Pacific Palisades. Initially called Picaboo, the first version of Snapchat launched in July 2011. Brown, an English major with no coding skills, was assigned relatively menial marketing tasks and applied for a patent.
A month later, Brown was forced out of the company he helped bring to life, according to his version of events. Now he's suing Spiegel, Murphy, and Snapchat's investors for a substantial stake in the company. Brown claims to have designed the Snapchat logo and to have named the mascot "Ghostface Chillah." [The ghost recently lost its smiley face in a design tweak and currently goes by the moniker "NoFace Chillah."]
But life, as Spiegel has said, isn't fair.
Two years after the app's launch, Spiegel and Murphy have moved Snapchat, now a 28-person team, into a new office in Venice, Calif., and have turned the maker of the disappearing-picture app into one of the most talked-about Internet companies, one said to be valued in the billions. Though the company does not disclose the size of its user base, Pew Research Center's Internet Project recently estimated that 9 percent of adult cell phone users in the US use Snapchat. It's an impressive figure for a 2-year-old app, and one that doesn't account for Snapshot's popularity with teenagers.
Long ago having mended the strained relationship with his father, and obviously no longer burdened by overdraft fees, Spiegel is also back residing at the Toyopa Drive estate where just six years earlier he was pulling in $250 in weekly allowances. Despite living with his father, Spiegel may be the most envied guy around, if not for the billions he purportedly refused from Facebook, then for the fact that his girlfriend, Lucinda Aragon, is a 24-year-old model who socializes with the likes of Chrissy Teigen and Kate Upton.
Snapchat may prove to be as fleeting as the attention span of the teens who pass around disappearing picture and video messages, but if Spiegel's first 23 years of existence are any indication, the rich-kid-turned-celebrity-CEO has fortune on his side.

Evan Spiegel and his model girlfriend, Lucinda Aragon.

If not, odds are he'll be just fine. 
"I am a young, white, educated male. I got really, really lucky," Spiegel said in April. "And life isn't fair. So if life isn't fair -- it's not about working harder, it's about working the system."