Amazon to invest in the UK's least popular delivery service

With Prime subscriptions on the rise, Amazon is constantly exploring ways to cut the cost of regular home deliveries. One option the retail giant is considering is to invest in the companies that deliver its parcels, with UK courier firm Yodel currently the object of its desire. The Guardian reports that the two companies have agreed a deal that could see Amazon acquire 4.2 percent of the UK's least popular parcel delivery service for £8.7 million. While Yodel is now the second biggest service of its kind behind recently-privatized Royal Mail, customers haven't been so supportive, putting the company at the bottom of the delivery polls for the second year running. Amazon continues to use a variety of delivery firms across the world, but the company has recently begun using its own trucks to deliver parcels in the US. It's not clear whether Amazon could amass a bigger fleet on the other side of the Atlantic, but strategic investments such as this suggest it could be a possibility.

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Source: Guardian

Tags: amazon, courier, delivery, uk, uk-origin, yodel Next: Ducati's new bike jacket turns you into a human airbag .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Popular puzzle game Threes! now available for Android

Threes! is one of the best designed games you'll find on mobile. It doesn't have flashy graphics, and the gameplay falls into the "easy to learn, but difficult to master" category. The game exudes personality in every aspect, and it is painfully obvious that a lot of love went into its development. The game is essentially a matching puzzle, but gets very complex very quickly.
Threes! landed on iOS last month and today it has made its way to Android as well. The game is simple enough: you have a 4x4 grid of spaces and sliding left, right, up, or down will move tiles and bring a new tile onto the board. There are three basic tiles - 1 (blue), 2 (red), and 3 (white). 1s can be combined with 2s to make 3s and anything 3 or above can only be matched in a pair (3s with 3s, 6s with 6s, etc.) Of course, what starts as a matching game quickly evolves into an exercise in space management and planning as the board fills up. 
But, the best aspects of Threes! are in the other design features. Each number is a character (you'll notice there is a face on the #3 tile above) with a distinct voice and personality, and you are introduced to each character as you get bigger and bigger numbers. And, the game offers one of the best soundtracks you'll find in any game. There are only three tracks (obviously) and if you really dig the music, you can buy the album for whatever you'd like to pay. 
Maybe best of all, there are no in-app payments and no micro-transaction ecosystem in the game. The game will cost you $1.99 (which is a special limited time 33.3333333% off deal) and that's all you'll have to pay, which is somewhat refreshing given how much developers tend to go too far with free-to-play. If you want to play, you'll need an iPhone running iOS 6 or newer, or an Android device running Android 4.0 or higher. 

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Popular Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox files for bankruptcy protection

When the lights went out on Mt.Gox earlier this week, it wasn't entirely clear what was going on. Was the exchange about to be straightened out by another backer? What would happen to customers' coins? There were some big questions that needed answering. Today, according to the Wall Street Journal, we're at least enlightened to one of them, as it's reporting Mt.Gox is filing for bankruptcy protection. The news came from one of the firm's lawyers, speaking at a news conference in Tokyo. It was also revealed that Mt.Gox has debts currently to the tune of debt of about ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million). The exchange had been pulled offline earlier this month amidst fears that is was possible to carry out fraudulent transactions. Understandably, this caused a great deal of frustration and anxiety for those with money and currency invested in the system. What this new development means for those customers still remains unclear, but for now at least, it's in the hands of official process.

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Source: Twitter (WSJ), WSJ

Tags: bankruptcy, bitcoin Next: Xbox One update preview adds new audio, Kinect options and a fix for UK TV .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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